nicole dyer

Nicole Dyer is back, masterfully merging the ever-popular "Science Confirms the Obvious" series with her favorite new artform, SciKu (an instant cult classic).

Check out her latest brainchild (after the jump), and add your own 17 syllable sciku as a comment; it will live on forever on PopSci.com.

Nicole Dyer is back, masterfully merging the ever-popular "Science Confirms the Obvious" series with her favorite new artform, SciKu (an instant cult classic).

Check out her latest brainchild (after the jump), and add your own 17 syllable sciku as a comment; it will live on forever on PopSci.com.

Brace yourself. Features Editor Nicole Dyer has hit her SciKu stride-- check out her latest piece of work and read amazing SciKu from our talented users (you might wanna sit down for this)

Here at Popular Science, innovation is the name of the game. Now, our Features Editor has pushed the envelope on the blog's ubiquitous form by invoking a great form of poetry known for its compact use of language and emotive imagery. We bring you Nicole Dyer. We bring you SciKu.

It was all smooth sailing for seafaring extremist Ken-ichi Horie. That wasn’t exactly what he was hoping for when he set sail for Japan from Hawaii in the world’s most sophisticated wave-powered boat, named the Suntory Mermaid II

Chuck Cage sits down with editor Nicole Dyer and writer Cliff Kuang to get the inside scoop on the future of the environment. In this episode of Cocktail Party Science, the three tear open the eco-friendly green megalopolis to learn more about the pod cars, maglevs, energy-generating sidewalks and more.

Wise question. I wish I had asked it before leaving my phone and two years worth of numbers in a taxi. Fortunately, backup systems abound. If you go through cellphones like toilet paper, try the Universal Pro kit ($80; datapilot.com). It includes cables that let you transfer data to your computer from just about any phone, and it syncs with Microsoft Outlook.

Just when we were coming back around to the idea of drinking good old fashioned tap water, the Associated Press today announced that it has found traces of dozens of pharmaceuticals in the drinking water of an estimated 41 million Americans.

Nanocomp Technologies Inc. of Concord, New Hampshire has managed to make the largest sheet of carbon nanotubing ever, rekindling the long-standing dream of a fantastical space elevator that lifts us into orbit along an ultra-light yet ultra-strong carbon nanotube cable. Sure, at 18 square feet, the sheet is smaller than a beach blanket but it contains a billion billion nanotubes, which makes it 200 times as strong as steel and 30 times less dense.

Check out our inaugural episode of Cocktail Party Science, in which host Chuck Cage, senior editor Nicole Dyer and Web editor Megan Miller talk to Eric Hagerman, author of Your Sewer on Drugs. Youll get a behind-the-scenes account of what it was really like to dive into the manholes of San Diego in the name of science.

Funding for the majority of federal science and technology programs in the United States has declined or remained flat during the past seven years. And dont assume that will change with the next administration. Politicians simply dont know jack about science and technology, says former Congressman John Porter, a moderate Republican from Illinois. In fact, fewer than 3 percent of our Congressional representatives have any science background. By comparison, 8 out 9 top officials in China are scientists.

Given that Americans drink billions of gallons of diet soda every year, it comes as little surprise that one of the most popular articles abuzz on the New York Times Web site is about the potentially waist-thickening effects of diet soda. The article highlights a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota who scrutinized the dietary intake of 9,514 volunteers ages 45 to 64 over the course of nine years. The Times honed in on the effects of diet soda: specifically, drinking one can of the stuff each day can increase the risk of developing metabolic disorder, a scary collection of risk factors including increased waist circumference, high blood pressure and low levels of good cholesterol, by 34 percent.

But the same study also came to an even more depressing conclusion: that consuming a healthy diet dominated by fruits and vegetables does nothing to reduce the risk of contracting chronic disease.

Nineteen-year-old expert skier Janne van Enckevort was told that this cap would harden when his head struck the ice. To make sure, he removed the spongy pads lining the hat, crumpled them into a ball, and then smashed them against the floor. The ball stiffened upon impact, then quickly softened again.