halloween

Show us how you celebrate Halloween using STEM! Carve science themed pumpkins, create gooey spooky experiments or dress up as your favorite Mad Scientist! Have fun with your STEMtastic creations! How do you enter? It's easy! From now until Halloween night, just post pictures of your activity or creation onTwitter, Instagram and/or on our Facebook wall and use #ScifestBoo!  (Be sure to tag us) Contest is open to groups and individuals (ages 5-18). Note: Parents and teachers can post on behalf of children.  
With Halloween quickly approaching, I thought it would be fun to take some time to appreciate bats. Amazing animals!
Enjoy this video of how animals at the Brookfield Zoo celebrated Halloween early this year. Happy Halloween!
Grant deadline today, which means I didn’t have time to produce yet another scintillating epic for my not-so-super-secret other blog. I did, however, have time to take note of a highly annoying thing on Facebook that was brought to my attention last night and is worth a brief mention here, so that the blog doesn’t go without a post today. The National Vaccine Information Center, founded and run by Barbara Loe Fisher, is about as antivaccine as they come. It’s also pretty blatant about spreading misinformation about vaccines hither, thither, and yon, disguised as “vaccine safety” public…
On Aetiology, Tara C. Smith continues her series on the science of The Walking Dead, explaining how diseases spread and how they might cause zombiism. One thing that would be observed in any real contagion would be an incubation period— the time between when a virus (for example) enters your body and you start showing symptoms of infection. For a virus like the flu, this could be about two days during which you don’t feel sick but could still be infecting people around you—even if you don’t bite them. Tara also expresses nerd rage at the show's "doctors" pursuing antibiotics to treat the flu…
Clip Art from www.LeeHanson.com Just in time for Halloween: Besides being an excellent way to avoid predators, roosting or hanging upside down is optimal for taking off into flight. Bats are not able to launch into flight from an upright position because their wings do not generate sufficient lift while at a dead stop. Additionally, their hindlegs are rather underdeveloped, so they are not able to run to generate lift for take-off. Instead, bats essentially fall into flight.  Learn more in this video comparing flight mechanics in bats and birds: Source:Animal Plant
Join us TODAY- Tuesday October 29th at 5:30 EST, for our very first Google Hangout on Air! In preparation of our "Science in Fiction" Kavli Video Science Contest launch (Nov. 1)  we are hosting a "Science of Monsters" Hangout! We have recruited an incredibly talented team of zombie and monster experts that have graciously dedicated their time to participate in the Hangout. With Halloween just days away, enjoy our spirited live Hangout on Air by listening to our experts tackle questions like "Why are zombies hungry all of the time? What regions of the brain change in the fictional zombie? What…
"Where there is no imagination there is no horror." -Arthur Conan Doyle Halloween, for those of you who've been here a while, is my favorite holiday. Every year for the past dozen years now, I've dressed up as whatever I've wanted for Halloween. And -- if you haven't seen the pattern yet -- it's almost always a partially-clothed, revered hero (or villain) from when I was a young child. In case you haven't figured out what character I've chosen for my Halloween costume this year, maybe this piece of music will make it more clear, from the video game Street Fighter II. It takes a bit of courage…
On July 9th, 2012, Anoka High School student Justin Aaberg committed suicide. Here in Minnesota, when a kid commits suicide we don't talk about it; often the other kids in the school are never told. There's just a funeral service and a yearbook page but no discussion, no action, no response. But, Justin was one of several kids who successfully took their own lives in the Anoka Hennepin School District, the largest school district in Minnesota, and they were among a much larger group who came close to doing so, because they were gay or thought to be so, and were thus bullied and shunned and…
tags: prank, Halloween, funny, streaming video This bratty brother scares the hell out of his sister so she will, no doubt, be plotting her revenge.
tags: pumpkin carving, Halloween, funny, streaming video What do you think: might this pumpkin carving design make Martha Stewart jealous?
tags: halloween prank, fake trick-or-treater, humor, funny, prank, scaring the neighbors, streaming video This is a funny video of a series of pranks committed on the videographers' neighbors. Truly inpsired! This is the original in high definition. For this Halloween Prank, the videographers (and pranksters) fixed up a life size dummy to look like a trick-or-treater, complete with bag of candy and hidden microphone. Then they went door to door with their fake "Timmy" to see what kind of reactions they would get. More videos from this videographer.
tags: halloween costumes, effeminate boys, humor, satire, funny, fucking hilarious, ONN, Onion News Network, streaming video Anna Stephenson stops by Today NOW! to show parents of girly sons costume tips to survive Halloween without accentuating their child's already obvious homosexuality.
What strange things happen in the lab on Halloween? Read part I and part II to find out what's going on. (Reposted in honor of Halloween) "All those beauties in solid motion All those beauties, gonna swallow you up Hi hi hi hi hi hi One time too many Too far to go I - we come to take you home" - Swamp by the Talking Heads The lyrics of Swamp were pounding in my brains as I cleaned up what I could and threw the rest of the mess into the autoclave bag. At least I hadn't knocked over all the flasks. Maybe there was some hope for this experiment. "Poor cells," I crooned, "you don't know I'm…
Braconid wasps attacking caterpillar - pumpkin by Lorenzo Rodriguez Urbana, Illinois
Strange things happen when it's Halloween week in the lab. (reposted in honor of Halloween) Catch up on the story by reading part I. I came back the next day, hoping to see dead cells in the culture dish. Quickly, I pulled the dish from the incubator. Yikes! Yellow media, again! I carefully set the dish on the stage and took a look. Oh no! The cells were piling on top of each other. I fed the cells and ran to elevator to find the scruffy guys from Howard Hughes. "What do I do?" I moaned, "Aren't these cells supposed to die?" Scruffy #1 just laughed. Well, I guess you'll have…
Reposted in honor of the holiday. What's it like when you work in the lab on Halloween? It started out innocently enough. "Go get some BHK cells," he said, "then transform the cells with these plasmids and use G418 to kill the cells that didn't get transformed." Cautiously, I ventured upstairs to the Howard Hughes floor on top of an adjoining building. I nervously glanced through the hallway, expecting someone to challenge my presence and ask me what I was doing wandering around their floor. Nothing. The halls were still. I walked into a lab room and found two scruffy looking guys. "…
I'm trying to keep my ZooBorns plugs to a minimum, but thought readers might enjoy this series on animals eating, shredding, and staring confusedly at Halloween pumpkins on my other website.
It seems that with every new Halloween there is a new opportunity for some appalling racist act or another. Locally, we had such an event at Hamline University, and nationally, where else: The Bush Administration. The Hamline event ... and my source here is Minnesota Public Radio, something I heard in the car ... involved a Halloween party in which several college boys dressed up in black face as primitive savages. They and the girls who helped them are in significant trouble. I heard about this while driving Julia (seventh grade) to school. She objected: She did not understand the…