Brain sweat
Can you name three countries where the capital is located on an island, yet other parts of the nation are on the mainland?
Anecdotal evidence
One day the famed German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) was approached by an assistant, who excitedly declared that he had just discovered a universal solvent.
“And what is a universal solvent?” asked Liebig, who gained fame for his fundamental contributions to organic chemistry and the invention of beef bouillon.
“One that dissolves all substances,” the assistant explained.
Liebig nodded, then asked: “And where are you planning to keep this solvent?”
Scifaiku
sequined planet
approaching nirvana –
Elvis Centauri
– J.B. Wocoski
Just asking
Do fish get cramps after eating?
Brain sweat answer
Denmark (Copenhagen) Equatorial Guinea (Malabo) and United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi)
Mole on the dole
Being fat and lazy is usually not the fast track to romance and mating, unless you're an African mole rat.
The Damaraland mole rat of southern Africa (Cryptomys damarensis) and its better known cousin, the naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber), are the only known mammal species to live and breed cooperatively, with some members of the colony devoting much of their lives and energies to helping others reproduce.
Researchers at the University of Pretoria in South Africa studied colonies of mole rats to determine their energy demands and activity levels.
They discovered that more than 95 percent of the colony's workload was handled by industrious mole rats, with an indolent minority content to lay about, demanding more food and building up their fat stores.
The only activity these lazy louts engaged in was sex and the occasional digging spree to produce new mating burrows.
Patently absurd
Floating shade
U.S. Patent No. 5,076,029
Long walks are nice. Long walks under a broiling sun are not. The floating shade, patented in 1991, provides a moveable shadow in the form of a large, flat helium-filled balloon that remains continually overhead due to looped ropes under the armpits.
Precious photos
Among the casualties of World War II was Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, a T. rex-sized dinosaur whose rare fossilized remains were unearthed in the early 20th century by famed German collector Ernst Stromer in Egypt.
Stromer took the fossils to Munich in 1915, where he displayed them in a museum later destroyed by Allied bombs. The fossils were lost.
Enter Josh Smith, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Washington University at St. Louis, who visited the archives of another German museum in 2000. While thumbing through old photographs donated to the museum by Stromer's son, Smith found two surviving photographs of S. aegyptiacus' remains. Smith announced his discovery this month in the Journal of Paleontology.
Aside from their historical importance, the photographs allow a direct comparison between actual pictures of S. aegyptiacus bones and a handful of illustrations drawn by Stromer, providing new insight into a largely mysterious dinosaur that lived 66 million to 96 million years ago.
Smith has a history with Stromer. In 1999, while retracing Stromer's travels through Egypt, Smith and colleagues uncovered not only Stromer's original dig site, but the fossilized remains of an entirely new genus of dinosaur – a four-legged beast estimated to be the second most massive dinosaur ever to walk the Earth.
Smith named it Paralititan stromeri.
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