A few tidbits from the world of science this morning:
How Sex Is Like Your Thermostat. The point being, apparently, is that sex is a self-reinforcing behavioral feedback loop.
Having studied animal behavior (and no, that is not how I came to pick up the nickname that forms my user ID and the title of this blog) I can state with some certainty that almost all behavior consists of self-reinforcing feedback loops, so I guess I fail to see the point here.
Except, of course, sex.
Women’s Farts Smell Worse. Well, I’m not going to try to convince Mrs. Animal of that. Especially not if I want to keep a certain behavioral feedback loop in play.
Don’t Mess With The Steamer Duck. He’ll f**k you up.
And, finally, on a more serious note, it seems DARPA is getting into the fusion energy research game. Excerpt:
A US government agency has launched a new $30m programme to support alternative approaches to generating energy from nuclear fusion. The initiative has been created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), which falls under the auspices of the Department of Energy (DOE). In August, the DOE invited researchers to “develop and demonstrate low-cost tools to aid in the development of fusion power”. Research teams need to outline their proposals by 14 October with three-year grants ranging from $250,000 to $10m up for grabs.
Fusion reactors, should they ever prove feasible, are a major energy game-changer. But will they ever prove feasible? We won’t know unless we try, although I suspect (and this is a personal bias in play here) that a breakthrough is more likely from the private sector than from government.
