Tag: science

kurowrites:

squeeful:

tilthat:

TIL that the reason lead levels in children’s blood have dropped 85% in the past thirty years is because of an unknown scientist who fought car companies to end leaded gasoline. He also removed it from paint, suggested its removal from pipes, and campaigned for the removal of lead solder from cans.

via ift.tt

Yep.  It also correlates extremely strongly with an increasing decrease of violent crime.  One of the symptoms of low level constant lead exposure is increased aggression and volatility. 

“Unknown scientist”? That was Clair Cameron Patterson.

palaeofail-explained:

palaeofail:

From a children’s book.

None of these animals were dinosaurs! Deinosuchus was an alligator (not a crocodile), Euparkeria was an earlier archosaur (the group containing dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and crocodiles), and Dimetrodon was a relative of mammals.

Dinosaurs are not extinct – since birds are dinosaurs, they survive to this day.

Anatomically modern humans have existed for far more than 35,000 years – closer to 200,000 years, in fact.

The upper estimate of Deinosuchus’s size is around 10m/35 feet, not 16m. It also probably had a broader, more alligator-like skull.

Euparkeria looked less dinosaur-ish than this, and more like a weird lizard with a chunky head. It was also probably largely quadrupedal, and wouldn’t have walked with erect legs, instead having a semi-sprawled posture. And it couldn’t turn its wrists so that its hands faced downwards. This would have been achieved by sticking the entire arm out, so that the hand could rest flat.

Dimetrodon’s sail was likely not to help it control its body temperature – there are many related, similarly-sized animals that lived in the same environment that didn’t seem to need any such radiators. Rather, the sail was probably for display amongst members of its species. Its head was somewhat more boxy than this, and the last few centimetres or so of each bone in the “sail” was likely exposed, sticking up above the sail like a sort of spike.