Brewing coffee is a never-ending science project, according to barista Sam Penix, owner of Everyman Espresso in New York City. Grind-size, brew method, coffee beans (which are really seeds), water temperature can all affect the flavors that end up in your cup. Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, explains some of the chemistry of coffee.

http://sciencefriday.com

Everything is a little bit magnetic, says physicist Richard Hill, of The University of Nottingham. So with a powerful magnet, it is possible to levitate almost anything--strawberries, water, insects. In a recent study, Hill levitated fruit flies to see how they behaved when they didn't have gravity pulling them down.

A few years ago, Science Friday, in collaboration with microbiologist Vince Fischetti and his lab at The Rockefeller University, conducted an experiment looking into a perennial holiday concern: will alcohol kill bacteria in homemade eggnog? We bring you the results. Please note: the sample size in this study is rather small, a single batch of nog.

Imagine what you might do if you could print your own solar panels. That's kind of the dream behind Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein's Solar Pocket Factory -- although they see it more as the "microbrewery" of panel production rather than a tool for everyone's garage. With over $70,000 of backing from a successful Kickstarter campaign, the inventors are now working on refining the prototype. If all goes well, by April they'll have a machine that can spit out a micro solar panel every few seconds. In the meantime, Frayne stopped by Flora Lichtman's backyard with a few pieces of the prototype to explain how the mini-factory will work.

Cockroaches are constantly grooming themselves, says entomologist Coby Schal of North Carolina State University. To clean its antenna, a cockroach will grab ahold of it with its front leg, bring the antenna to its mouth, and run the antenna from base to tip through its mandibles like a piece of floss. Publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schal and colleagues investigate the benefits of clean antennae.


Related videos

Bedbugs: http://www.sciencefriday.com/v....ideo/08/27/2010/psyc

Luminescent Millipedes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjVNnkvZvR0&feature=share&list=UUDjGU4DP3b-eGxrsipCvoVQ

Rhino Beetles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih_98UtAJSQ&list=UUDjGU4DP3b-eGxrsipCvoVQ&index=21

http://www.patreon.com/scifri - Please Help Support Our Video Productions!
You’d think that bats and birds fly in similar ways—in fact, many scientists used to consider bat flight a minor variation of bird flight. But, with the aid of high-speed video, researchers have discovered that bat flight is much more complex than initially thought.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Footage ands Stills
Provided by Kenny Breuer and Sharon Swartz Joe Bahlman, Atilla Bergou, David Boerma, Rhea von Busse, Jorn Cheney, Nick Hristov, Tatjana Hubel, Nicolai Konow, Lauren Reimnitz, Andrea Rummel, Cosima Schunk, Dave Willis, Dan Riskin, Hamid Vejdani.
Bat Research supported by NSF, AFOSR and Brown University
All procedures involving animals were performed in an AAALAC-accredited facility in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and approved by the Brown University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Collisions between two spiral galaxies can be spectacular affairs, filled with drama and romance. Dr. Barry Rothberg of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, details how the massive events play out and why the fate of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, could already be sealed.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Footage and Galaxy Visualizations Courtesy of NASA; ESA; and F. Summers, STScI;
G. Besla, Columbia University; and R. van der Marel, STScI

Patrik Jonsson, Greg Novak and Joel Primack, UC Santa Cruz, 2008
V.Springel, Heidelberg University, Germany
T.J. Cox, Voxer
Phillip Hopkins, California Institute of Technology
Lars Hernquist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Large Binocular Telescope Corp., Barry Rothberg and the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics, Potsdam

A mystery of the animal kingdom: How do owls turn their heads 270 degrees without damaging their blood vessels? At last an answer, published this week in Science, as the winning poster in the 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. Fabian de Kok-Mercado, of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Philippe Gailloud, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, dissected and X-rayed owls to discover how the birds do the twist.

Bat biologist Nickolay Hristov, of UNC's Center for Design Innovation and Winston-Salem State University, develops new techniques for filming and visualizing bats and the caves they occupy. Some of the tools in his kit include a long-range laser scanner--for modelling bat cave morphology--and portable thermal cameras--to capture bat-life when the lights are off.

***Help Support Our Video Productions!!! - http://www.patreon.com/scifri
After being hunted off of the mainland of New Zealand centuries ago, a new generation of the earth's rarest sea lions species has miraculously returned to the Otago Peninsula. Jim Fyfe, a ranger with the Department of Conservation, is tasked with watching over each new batch of sea lions pups and ensuring their safety as they usher in an era of hope for these charismatic creatures.
Produced by Chelsea Fiske and Brandon Swanson
Music by Audio Network
Stills provided by the New Zealand Sealion Trust, UW Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, The New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Special Thanks to New Zealand's Department of Conservation

http:/www.sciencefriday.com
It could be at least 15 years before NASA lands a mission on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, to search for signs of life beneath its icy crust. In the mean time, a team led by astrobiologist Kevin Hand of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is using ultra-chilled vacuum chambers to simulate what Europa's surface might be like. Their work will inform future missions and give scientists clues to how they might detect life on a faraway moon.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Christian Baker
Music by Audio Network

Additional Video by
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Caltech, Kevin Hand and Robert Carlson
Shutterstock, Sergio Martinez (C.C. BY 3.0)
Scratchikken (C.C. BY 3.0)
Special Thanks to
Chau Tu and Preston Dyches

Here's the scoop on coffee's flavor: the taste comes from compounds locked into roasted coffee beans. Add hot water, and those flavors escape into your pot -- but not all flavors escape at the same time, says Harold McGee, food science writer and author of On Food and Cooking. For example, sour flavors, acids, come first and the plant carbohydrates responsible for coffee's body come later. Taste for yourself with this counter-top chemistry experiment.

From mantis shrimp to trap-jaw ants, some of the fastest organisms on the planet are ones you may never have heard of. Biologist Sheila Patek, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says the creatures she studies move at speeds that are hard for us to imagine, let alone perceive. Patek shared some of her high-speed video and explained how these organisms pull off their top speeds.

footage and images courtesy of sheila patek, patrick green, roy caldwell. music by philip lynch, freemusicarchive. produced by flora lichtman

"I'm pure geek, pure logic," says Temple Grandin, author of many books on animal welfare and on autism. When Grandin is not on the road for speaking engagements, she can be found in the Animal Sciences Building at Colorado State University in Fort Collins--where she is a professor and scientist. We visited Grandin in her office to hear about her life and work, and to see which office ornaments will accompany her when the department moves to its new building on campus.

In perhaps the cutest study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, psychologist Marcel Zentner and Tuomas Eerola found that babies will spontaneously boogie when they hear music and other rhythmic sounds. The findings suggest babies are not great dancers, but they smile more when they do hit the beat.

Originally published on ScienceFriday.com on March 19, 2010.

Although evolution is overwhelmingly accepted by scientific communities, it remains a taboo and often misunderstood subject for much of the rural American South. Dr. Amanda Glaze studies this deeply rooted cultural sentiment and its religious and societal influences in universities, schools and communities throughout the Southeastern United States. Using both quantitative and qualitative approaches, she strives to understand the lived experiences and perceptions of her fellow teachers and the community around her to better inform science teaching and teacher education nationwide. She also teaches evolution-based science courses for high school and college students in the hopes of shifting the next generation's views on the subject.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Stills by Shutterstock.com
Special thanks to
Dr. Amanda Glaze and her family
Robin Spoon
Becky NeSmith
The Gaddy Family
Jacksonville High School

http://www.sciencefriday.com/breakthrough
In the second episode of Science Friday and HHMI's series "Breakthrough: Portraits of Women in Science," three scientists share stories about India's first interplanetary mission—a mission to Mars. With limited time and budget to design and launch the satellite—called MOM (for Mars Orbiter Mission)—Seetha Somasundaram, Nandini Harinath, and Minal Rohit spent long hours in the clean room, followed by tense and exciting moments tracking the satellite as it entered Mars's orbit. Their efforts helped India become the first nation to successfully reach the Red Planet on its first attempt.

Produced in collaboration with the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Produced by Emily V. Driscoll and Luke Groskin
Directed by Emily V. Driscoll
Filmed by Anshul Uniyal
Edited by Emily V. Driscoll
Animations by Jason Drakeford
Production Assistance by Manjunath Kelasgiri and Lokanatha Reddy
Lighting by Manjunath A G

Sound by Sathya Murthy for Felis Productions
Music by Audio Network
Color by Troy Cunningham / Running Man Post

Photographs by
AFP Photo/Manjunath Kiran, Associated Press
EPA b.v./Alamy, Malin Space Science Systems
NASA/JPL/USGS

Additional Video by DECU ISRO and SaiRocket

Project Advisors:
Laura A. Helft, Laura Bonetta, Dennis W.C. Liu and Sean B. Carroll -
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Special Thanks to
Deviprasad Karnik, Nandini Harinath, Minal Rohit, Seetha Somasundaram, Indian Space Research Organisation
Natalie Cash, Priti Gill, Abhishek Chinnappa, Shanta & Sankara Jalagani, Nirmala Somashekhara, Prajval Shastri, Zoe Timms,
Christian Skotte, Danielle Dana, Ariel Zych, and Jennfier Fenwick
Science Friday/HHMI © 2016

*** We're now on Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/scifri - Please Help Support Our Video Productions! ***
It's a grim job, but someone has to do it. Every day, the Smithsonian Institution's Feather Identification Lab receives dozens of envelopes filled with the remains of birds scraped off the sides of airplanes. Using this scant evidence and the Smithsonian's enormous collection of preserved specimens, scientists at the lab must identify the victims in the hopes of preventing future aviation accidents.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Stills and Video by Smithsonian Institution, Feather Identification Lab, Element Materials Technology, Bryan Heitman, Leonard Brown(http://www.youtube.com/LeonardBrownArtbyLeonard ) , YouTube User CaptainFULLHD (C.C. BY 2.0), Robert South, Micah Maziar (C.C. BY 3.0), Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (C.C. BY 3.0)

How beasts of burden do the locomotion.

Please support our videos http://www.patreon.com/scifri
Although the praire outside of Choteau, Montana is best known as the fossil quarry that provided definitive paleontological insights into the parenting habits of dinosaurs, it’s also the perfect place to hunt less famous fossilized treasures, namely dino poo (known as coprolites). The same flood event that occurred some 70 million years that buried huge numbers of hadrosaurs and their nests also preserved their feces for posterity. Using the coprolites found in the region, paleontologist Karen Chin has discovered unique insights into the climate, ecology, and behavior of the species who created it. In her lab at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Chin and collaborators examine the poop in microscopic detail using state of the art chemical analyses. Their findings have revealed the unusual dietary habits of hadrosaurs in the area as well thriving populations of invertebrates.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Article by Lauren J. Young
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage and Stills Provided by Pond5, Karen Chin, James Super
Huge Thanks to the Two Medicine Dinosaur Center, Karen Chin, Frank Garrett Boudinot (Julio Sepulveda laboratory), the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Rockies, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.