Postcard of the Interwebs - 7 December 2016

The Richer You Are the less You See of those not Rich: Interesting psychological study.

Sweetgrass an Effective Mosquito Repellant: Used by First Nations people and successfully tested for effectiveness vs DEET.

Inner Life of the Cell: A video on the cell in all its wonder.

BAM (Becoming a Man) program: Looks like an exceptional program to reduce crime and improve grades by teaching how to control harmful impulse behavior. It is also backed by peer review and studies.

Nuclear Waste Batteries: Just make waste into diamonds and add some coating and viola! Energy that can last a bit longer than mankind has recorded history!

Magic Mushrooms Help with Depression: What if a single dose of a medicine could help a person with depression and anxiety for half a year? Its called psilocybin and with two studies it shows it works.

Chocolate Bars with Less Sugar and Same Taste: Nestle is working on chocolate with restructured sugar. This will reduce the amount of sugar by 40%.

Dioramas at the Royal BC Museum

The life size dioramas at the BC Museum are very impressive. Its like a quiet oasis in the city.

Mammoth Exibit at the Royal BC Museum

We recently went to the Royal BC Museum to see the Mammoth exhibit. By That I mean an exhibit about mammoths not a really really big exhibit.

One of the big draws was the remains of a baby woolly mammoth, names Lyuba. She has been dated to be ~40000 years old and was preserved through bacteria in the mud which pickled the remains. There is even patches of the hair on the body! Because it was so well preserved by the mud and subsequently by the technique of the researchers, the case does not need to be refrigerated.

Here is a family tree of the elephant species throughout time. It shows the development and changes that occurred due to environmental, predatory and requirements placed on the species over time.

There were several rooms in the exibit showing bones, life size heads and bodies, interactive booths, informative panels, and short videos explaining the development of the elephants over time as well as to clear up misconceptions. For instance, did you know that the mammoths divided off from modern elephants in the Pliocene era and are not direct ancestors?

It was a worthwhile exhibit to visit and will be gone at the end of December.