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I have a friend who gets a tremendous kick out of science, even though he’s an artist. Whenever we get together all he wants to do is chat about the latest thing in evolution or quantum mechanics. But when it comes to math, he feels at sea, and it saddens him. The strange symbols keep him out. He says he doesn’t even know how to pronounce them. In fact, his alienation runs a lot deeper. He’s not sure what mathematicians do all day, or what they mean when they say a proof is elegant. Sometimes we joke that I just should sit him down and teach him everything, starting with 1 + 1 = 2 and going as far as we can.

the idea behind the modular configuration is to define a spatial solution which would be able to grow and adapt according to the changing need; or according to varied conditions at different locations. notionally, if more and more modules were to be added, the clinic facilities could grow infinitely but always confined the circular matrix, defined by three differently sized courtyards.

There is a glacier in Antarctica that seems to be weeping a river of blood. It’s one of the continent’s strangest features, and it’s located in one of the continent’s strangest places — the McMurdo Dry Valleys, a huge, ice-free zone and one of the world’s harshest deserts. So imagine you’re hiking through this – – which has been kept ice-less since God was a child because of something called the katabatic winds, which sweep over the valleys at up to 200 mph and suck all the moisture out of them. Anyway, you’re hiking along, passing dessicated penguin carcasses and such, and you come to this. A bleeding glacier. Discovered in 1911 by a member of Robert Scott’s ill-fated expedition team, its rusty color was at first theorized to be caused by some sort of algae growth. Later, however, it was proven to be due to iron oxidation. Every so often, the glacier spews forth a clear, iron-rich liquid that quickly oxidizes and turns a deep shade of red. According to Discover Magazine – The source of that water is an intensely salty lake trapped beneath 1,300 feet of ice, and a new study has now found that microbes have carved out a niche for themselves in that inhospitable environment, living on sulfur and iron compounds. The bacteria colony has been isolated there for about 1.5 million years, researchers say, ever since the glacier rolled over the lake and created a cold, dark, oxygen-poor ecosystem. Even weirder: scientists think that the bacteria responsible for Blood Falls might be an Earth-bound approximation of the kind of alien life that might exist elsewhere in the solar system, like beneath the polar ice caps of Mars and Europa.

Oysters and hazelnuts: Elizabethan popcorn Elizabethan audiences at The Globe and The Rose theaters gnoshed on oysters, mussels, hazelnuts, walnuts, pies and dried fruit while attending plays by the likes of Shakepeare and Marlowe. The evidence has emerged from the most detailed study ever carried out on a Tudor or early Stuart playhouse. Archaeologists have been analysing the thousands of seeds, pips, stones, nutshell fragments, shellfish remains and fish and animal bones found on the site of the Rose Playhouse on London’s South Bank. Museum of London Archaeology has just published the findings in The Rose and The Globe: Playhouses of Shakespeare’s Bankside, written by archaeologists Julian Bowsher and Pat Miller.

The good people at Flowing Data uncovered this old graphic which they dubbed the "Engineer's Guide to Drinks." The name's fitting: unless you're an engineer these diagrams will probably leave you more frustrated than inebriated.

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur ’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. 2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian. 3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still. 4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption. 5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work. 6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery. 7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. 8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. 9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie. 10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. 11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it. 12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. 13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, “You stay here; I’ll go on ahead.” 14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me. 15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: “Keep off the Grass.” 16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, “No change yet.” 17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion. 18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large. 19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. 20. A backward poet writes inverse. 21. In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes. 22. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion. 23. Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects.

It’s easy enough for anyone to knock up a CAD model, but if they want to print it in 3D, they need to either lay out a lot of money for a 3D printer or find a local print shop who will do the work for them. Hewlett Packard wants to change all of that: just as their inkjet and laser printers are ubiquitous in consumer homes, HP wants to branch into affordable mainstream 3D printing

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Researchers in Germany and the UK have discovered symmetry hidden in solid state matter at very small scales. The findings, published in the journal Science, indicate that symmetry involves the golden ratio famous from art and architecture. The research was supported in part by the NMI3 ('Integrated infrastructure initiative for neutron scattering and muon spectroscopy') project, which was funded under the 'Coordination of research activities' Thematic area of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to the tune of EUR 21 million

Scientists say that in mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is the same as the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one.

'Such discoveries are leading physicists to speculate that the quantum, atomic scale world may have its own underlying order,' Professor Tennant, who led the HZB team, said, adding that 'similar surprises may await researchers in other materials in the quantum critical state.