Bottlenose dolphins are prevalent in tropical and temperate oceans.  They’re roughly limited to latitudes from 45 degrees north to 45 degrees south, although there are a few exceptions to that general rule.  Even for the exceptions, though, there appears to be a range limit:  Dolphins beyond 75 degrees of latitude are very rare.  Researchers from Read More

Nobody wants to make mistakes, but let’s face it, when a waiter brings you mashed potatoes when you asked for baked it’s not nearly as consequential as, say, leaving open the pressure relief valve of the containment structure at a nuclear power plant.  There are some places where mistakes are simply not tolerable, on an Read More

Kansas State University recently reached a first-ever milestone that’s garnering a lot of attention for the University.  What did you say?  You know their football team reached a number one ranking for the first time in school history?  I didn’t know that.  No, I was talking about a recent published thesis on the salt-scaling durability Read More

When I was a kid I had an “Erector Set,” a collection of small-scale lightweight metal girders and the bolts needed to hold them together to build miniature bridges, buildings, whatever…  One of the neatest things to build was a crane, which you could then use to lift random objects (although anything heavier than a Read More

Prefabricated structural panels reduce on-site building costs and time, and also offer consistent quality control. These panels can incorporate interior and exterior walls and insulation, so it’s easy to construct a complete facility. Well, minus the roof, because the structural requirements there are a little more complex. At the University of Maine they’re addressing that Read More

By now, everyone has at least heard some of the hype surrounding the promise of replacing fossil fuels with renewable alternative biofuels. One of the unanticipated problems associated with generating energy from biofuels is the competition for feedstock.That is, if you’re trying to generate fuel with the same crops that are food sources, you’re going Read More

It’s somewhat ironic that the search for knowledge about the smallest particles in the universe requires some of the largest facilities in the world. Electrons, that weigh less than one-billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a kilogram, are whirled around by apparatus composed of pieces that weigh thousands of kilograms. Those giant pieces Read More

If you were raised right, you know that you should clean up after yourself. Unfortunately, we don’t always translate our individual knowledge of what’s right to our corporate activities. That’s why we have environmental contamination—people forgot to clean up after themselves. Still, it’s not necessarily too late. You can incorporate lessons from this doctoral research Read More