Linux Took Over the Web. Now, It’s Taking Over the World On August 25, 1991, a Finnish computer science student named Linus Torvalds announced a new project. “I’m doing a (free) operating system,” he wrote on an Internet messaging system, insisting this would just be a hobby. But it became something bigger. Plus, Linux is now finding its way onto televisions, thermostats, and even cars. Click to Open Overlay Gallery The Idea But Linus shouldn’t get all the credit. In 1984, Richard Stallman started working on GNU, a Unix-clone that stands, paradoxically, for “GNU’s not Unix.” Soon, other developers were using the Linux kernel in combination with GNU and a wide variety of other tools in cobbling together their own operating systems. The Web The rise of Linux mirrors the rise of the web, which just happens to have started around the same time. Even Microsoft, once the sworn enemy of Linux, has embraced this open source OS. There are a few reasons for all this. But Linux also got lucky. The Great Beyond Android now dominates the smartphone market.
Vitamins’ Old, Old Edge It took hundreds of millions of years for plants to become such proficient vitamin C manufacturers, but vitamin production can change in far less time. Our own ancestors needed just thousands of years to alter their production of vitamin D. When humans left equatorial Africa and spread to higher latitudes, the sun was lower in the sky and supplied less ultraviolet light. By evolving lighter skin, Europeans and Asians were able to continue making a healthy supply of vitamin D. Aside from vitamins D and K, we humans can’t make any of the vitamins we need to stay healthy. Many vertebrates can make vitamin C, and use an identical set of genes to do so. Unlike a frog or a kangaroo, however, we have crippling mutations in one of those genes, known as GULO. “It’s not just us — it goes back a long time,” said Guy Drouin, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Ottawa. It Wasn’t Just Us
Why do we eat spoiled food? | TED-Ed As mentioned in this lesson, most microbes are not all that harmful to humans. In fact, they actually help us make food the wonderful treat that it is! Watch: The beneficial bacteria that make delicious food Love chocolate? Interested in knowing all about this wonderful food? Watch this lesson from TED Ed! The history of chocolate What can be better than the smell of baking bread?
How the squishy 'octobot' may change the course of robotics Step aside, T-800 and R2-D2. The future of robotics is on the horizon, and it is squishy. Harvard researchers have engineered the first robot that is both autonomous and completely soft-bodied. The fleshy automaton, described Thursday in the journal Nature, runs on hydrogen peroxide and was designed to look like a small octopus. This "octobot," researchers say, is a major step toward developing functional robots that don’t need hard skeletons or rigid moving parts. “One long-standing vision for the field of soft robotics has been to create robots that are entirely soft, but the struggle has always been in replacing rigid components like batteries and electronic controls with analogous soft systems and then putting it all together,” said co-author Robert Wood, a professor of engineering at Harvard, in a statement. Wood and colleagues used 3-D printing to build the octobot’s rubbery body. Despite having no skeleton, octopuses are remarkably powerful creatures.
NASA is growing a Martian garden to prepare for life on Mars As many of us witnessed in director Ridley Scott's sci-fi drama "The Martian," the soil of Mars is devoid of the organic nutrients otherwise vital to support plant life. To get around this, the character of Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, uses his own feces to supplement the otherwise dead soil and grow potatoes. But does this science match up with how the first Mars farmers might actually introduce agriculture to the red planet? In addition to experimenting with crops grown in space, NASA is beginning to trial "Martian Gardens" to figure out the kinds of vegetables that might tolerate soil sourced from the red planet. "Soil, by definition, contains organics; it has held plant life, insects, worms. In an effort to simulate the crushed volcanic rock on Mars, researchers gathered 100 pounds of similar soil from Hawaii. Lettuce plants grown as part of a Martian Garden comparing (left to right) potting soil, regolith simulant with added nutrients and simulant without nutrients.
Demi oignon, citron, fin de lait, que faire de ces petits restes du quotidien? Nous jetons chaque année 20kg de nourriture par habitant par an*, mais de quoi sont composés ces déchets alimentaires ? Bien souvent ils sont faits de petites choses que l'on laisse traîner dans son frigo sans même les remarquer. Si on vous dit demi oignon, reste de citron, ça vous parle ? En cuisine, l’oignon est un véritable allié pour relever une poêlée de légumes ou une salade. Voici donc une recette rapide et efficace pour lutter contre le gaspillage alimentaire en donnant une seconde vie à vos restes d’oignons : Les ingrédients : 1 demi oignon125 ml de vinaigre de cidre60 ml de vinaigre de vin rouge25 gr de sucre rouxQuelques grains de poivreSel La préparation Épluchez puis émincez votre moitié d’oignon en lamelles très fines.Dans une casserole, versez les deux types de vinaigres, le sucre et le sel. Et voilà ! Découvrez toutes nos astuces pour apprendre à bien conserver vos oignons : Comment bien conserver un oignon ? Le thé est la boisson la plus consommée au monde après l’eau !
Scientists unveil the 'most clever CRISPR gadget' so far - STAT For all the hoopla about CRISPR, the revolutionary genome-editing technology has a dirty little secret: it’s a very messy business. Scientists basically whack the famed double helix with a molecular machete, often triggering the cell’s DNA repair machinery to make all sorts of unwanted changes to the genome beyond what they intended. On Wednesday, researchers unveiled in Nature a significant improvement — a new CRISPR system that can switch single letters of the genome cleanly and efficiently, in a way that they say could reliably repair many disease-causing mutations. Because of “the cell’s desperate attempts” to mend its genome, said Harvard University biologist George Church, “what often passes as ‘genome editing’ would more appropriately be called ‘genome vandalism,’” as the cell inserts and deletes random bits of DNA where CRISPR cuts it. article continues after advertisement “Most known human genetic variations associated with disease are point mutations,” said Liu. Play Video Close
Students Win NASA Contest With a Greenhouse Designed for Mars Greek students have attempted to take one step forward in the quest to make Mars more hospitable: They created a self-supporting greenhouse that grows spinach and is brilliantly named Popeye. This May, the students' design won NASA's International Space Apps Challenge, a competition over the course of 48 hours in cities across the world. Its goal is to produce open-source solutions to address various needs for life on Earth and in space. In the designs, the greenhouse is comprised of a solar-powered system enclosed in a protective dome. It's supposed to grow spinach over a 45-day period to supply potential astronauts on Mars with food. According to Reuters, the greenhouse's air garden is equipped with a "suite of solar-powered sensors and electrical systems" that nurture and monitor the spinach by providing plenty of water and carbon dioxide. The Red Planet isn't exactly known for its welcoming nature. Homepage image: Flickr, Jason
TIME for Kids | Future Food In March 2017, about 25 people were invited to a kitchen in San Francisco, California, for a tasting event. On the menu? Fried chicken. “This is some of the best fried chicken I’ve had,” one guest said. The compliment was extra special considering the source of the meat. It had been grown in a lab by scientists from Memphis Meats. SARAH CASILLAS—GETTY IMAGES to remove something by pulling it out (verb) The dentist will extract the infected tooth. cells cell DANIEL ALLAN—GETTY IMAGES one of the tiny units that make up all living things (noun) A scientist examined the cells through a microscope. from animals such as chickens, ducks, and cows. CHICKEN WITH A TWIST At a 2017 tasting event in San Francisco, California, Memphis Meats serves fried chicken made from cellular meat. Memphis Meats is one of several companies in the United States and around the world making cellular, or lab-grown, meat. Why Cellular Meat? Traditional meat production also requires lots of cows. Challenges Ahead
FCC advances privacy proposal for U.S. internet users