Weekly Webcrawl: June 6, 2014

Today’s Flickr crawl photo: Anthrax bacteria (green) being swallowed by an immune system cell Multiple anthrax bacteria (green) are being enveloped by an immune system cell (purple). Anthrax bacteria live in soil and form dormant spores that can survive for decades. When animals eat or inhale these spores, the bacteria activate and rapidly increase in number. Today, a highly effective and widely used vaccine has made the disease uncommon in domesticated animals and rare in humans. Image courtesy of Camenzind G. Robinson, Sarah Guilman and Arthur Friedlander, United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Part of the exhibit Life:Magnified by ASCB and NIGMS. www.nigms.nih.gov/Education/life-magnified/Pages/default….

Okay, can a girl please get a little forgiveness for not being so weekly in her weekly webcrawl lately? I promise to try to be better…

In the meantime, here’s your not-so-weekly scoop on some of the science things happening in the interwebs. Since I’ve been slacking, you get some extra links this time:

This was the big science meme-esque link going around this week: 10 Scientific Ideas Scientists Wish You Would Stop Misusing.

Some new research suggests that reading on a computer screen doesn’t engage the brain as much as reading a traditional paper-paged book. But it’s not just the screen itself that seems to be causing the problem, it’s about the way we read on screens.

Other research, though, suggests that those who spend a bunch of time on screens playing video games are likely to be more social and educated than their non-gamer counterparts.

I had to get a couple shots of novocain in my gum yesterday morning and it was freaking hellish. I really hope this research claiming to reverse tooth decay comes to fruition and soon.

Dude, I was just wishing this were possible the other day: Real-life eternal sunshine for the spotless mind!

Two scientific american articles: One on how pollution is killing the world’s poor and one on how learning to play music can reduce the developmental drawbacks of being raised in poverty.

I’m starting to get really into Last Week Tonight…at least the clips of it that appear in my social media feeds since I can never seem to stay up that late on a Sunday night. Here’s John Oliver’s brilliant interview with Stephen Hawking.

“The more time children spend in structured, parent-guided activities, the worse their ability to work productively towards self-directed goals.” I’ll have to keep that in mind over the next 18 years.

And finally, here’s a digital pen that lets draw with any color you see in the world.