News

When most of us think of a beaver dam, the image above comes to mind. But CBC News brings us the story of what is reportedly the world’s biggest beaver dam – 850 meters long (~2800 feet!). Check out the satellite image from Google Earth: Image courtesy of FreshBrainz Apparently the massive dam was first found in 2007, but has gotten even larger than before, and the ease with which it is found on Google Earth is stunning. Researchers estimate that the dam has been under construction for 20 years! “[Beavers] are one of the few species that really leave…

Image courtesy of Saturday Morning Central If you were to name a ‘comfort food’ – something that you will reach for when you’re feeling down – chances are that chocolate would be in your top 3, if not the first thing out of your mouth. Now a study out of University of California, Davis, and University of California, San Diego published in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that there is a link between chocolate consumption and actual depression. They note that “of 931 men and women in the San Diego area showed that people who ate an average of…

Back in August of 2009 the Consumerist featured a New York Times article about a growing Japanese trend of single men carrying ‘2-D Girlfriends’ around everywhere with them. The rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life. According to a government survey, more than a quarter of unmarried men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan said they were not “going out with anybody”. Now Sears.com is getting in on this new trend, featuring the…

Apparently this happened last month, but since there is 137 YEARS of content … I don’t think it will get old for a while! For my first search I looked up an area of interest in my current work: Multivariate. Here is what I found: I really hadn’t expected much, as multivariate statistical analysis isn’t exactly in PopSci’s wheelhouse … but the reference to the Journal of Irreproducible Results was priceless – and a complete time-sink! In fact, there was something linked off the front page that I just have to share:   Anyway … Check out the Popular Science…