NoobScience

Seed magazine has a short but interesting interview with Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide, a book that’s on my list of to-reads. This quote confirms my experience that sleeping on a problem is very helpful.

Seed: Should hugely consequential decisions always be rationally deliberated?
JL: No. Research suggests that it’s complex decisions, the ones that involve lots of information, that benefit the most from unconscious emotional processing. The conscious brain can only handle a very limited amount of information at one time - seven digits, plus or minus two. Unconsciously, however, you can process tons of information. It’s these complex decisions - like choosing a car, an apartment, or a leather couch - that often require the rational brain to turn off to some degree.

Two professors at the University of Rhode Island have developed thermochromic inks that change color permanently after reaching a certain temperature. They can be used in barcodes to indicate a product hasn’t been stored at safe temperature levels.

Discovery Channel reports that Georgia Tech scientists are harvesting hamster energy with tiny nanowire jackets. They say it would take a thousand hamsters to charge a cell phone, which is an adorable image, but not very practical. The technology can be scaled up, so someday you may be able to power your iPod with your clothing.

I love this set of images of exhibit prep at the American Museum of Natural History.

Carl Zimmer is one of my favorite science writers. He has an article in Seed’s online magazine about all the stuff you *don’t* see in natural history museums. I used to volunteer cleaning bird skeletons in a natural history museum - those back halls and rooms are fascinating! It was totally worth having my hair smell like rotten birds.

NASA has put together a beautiful interactive tour to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

They have a larger carbon footprint. Bummer. If we could only perfect the backpacks and harvest all that methane . . .

The Seattle science cafe, Science on Tap, is meeting tonight at the Queen Anne location.

Cabinet of Wonders has an interesting post about fingerprints.

The peeps at NASA/JPL put together a neat calendar to download. One Martian year is almost twice as long as one Earth year.