Hey there science fans! It is the Ides of March, and while it would be far outside the proper use of a science column to tell you to beware some arbitrary date invented by Shakespeare, it still could not hurt anything to avoid all rotundas today, especially if you have been kind of a dick to your friends recently.

Might want to avoid Caesar salads too. It would be terrible for your death to make the news as “Persons Dies Choking On A Crouton On The Ides of March!”

Got plenty of scientastic stuff to share with you wonderful people this week, so let’s dig in!

First off, let’s start small with this rather clever little device.

Being someone who really hates the heat (and vice versa… to be honest, the heat started it), I find evaporative cooling very interesting. It seems like it turns humidity into a good thing for fighting heat, instead of something that makes heat a million times worse.

Trust me, I have had plenty of both dry heat and the humid kind. Dry is way better.

But what really impressed me about this fellow’s gadget was that he looked at one of those plastic room deodorant cases and realized that would be ideal for holding the wet sponge.

Something designed to let air go through it that is cheap and easy to work with. Genius. Then all you need is a computer fan and a sponge you have cut down to the right size, and a little water.

I bet you could make a mint mass-producing a slicker, more consumer-friendly model.

Let’s go one size up, and talk teeth. Specifically, growing brand new ones as an adult.

The method is crude and frankly a little horrifying so far (poor mice 🙁 ) but the science is there for it to be a possibility in the future, and I find that very interesting.

We might see a future where a lot of the complicated dental work that we do today is replaced by a simple procedure where they take out the bad tooth and then stimulate your mouth to grow a new tooth instead.

This might mean that in the future, dentists have a lot less work, or at least that their work is simpler and requires less specialized training.

Imagine a future without dentures! Old people with perfectly healthy, new, fresh, straight teeth, able to eat whatever they like and to heck with Fixodent and all its ilk.

Sounds great. A little creepy, but still, pretty great!

Next up in scale we have that always relevant subject, exercise.

Some researchers in Australia claim to have found the world’s most efficient fat-burning exercise regimen.

Now by “efficient”, they mean “the most fat burned for the least amount of pain”, which just shows that these are fitness researchers who have their priorities straight.

Here is how it works : you do three 20 minute sessions on the exercise bike a week. During these sessions, you pedal like crazy for eight seconds, then pedal at a slower rate for twelve, then repeat fifty nine more times or so.

This makes your body release loads of fat-burning chemicals while keeping your muscles from building up lactic acids, which are the main thing that make you feel tired.

This supposedly means that for an hour’s worth of exercise a week, you will get the same results as if you jogged for five or six hours a week.

Sounds sort of annoying to do, but I imagine it’s fine once you get used to it.

Moving up another notch on our scales of ten, let’s talk about a worldwide internet for robots.

First off, let’s get this out of the way : HELLO SKYNET!

Are we done now? Good.

It’s called Rapyuta, and idea is that robots worldwide would use wireless Internet access to plus in to a database of existing solutions for the sorts of problems robots might face, or if they have just solved a problem themselves, upload that database to the system.

That way, instead of every robot starting from scratch and having to reinvent the wheel every time it comes across a problem that is not in its own local database, robots all over the world can share solutions and the state of robot intelligence can advance far, far more rapidly.

In essence, it gives robots culture. And given that robots have computers for brains, that is a culture that can advance incredibly fast.

Finally for today, we have this large scale simulation of just what it is like in the local neighborhood of our little old Solar System.

And just look at all those stars with planets around them. All those marvelous possibilities!

As we have learned in this column before, evidence is piling up that having planets is the normal thing for suns and having none is the distinct outlier, which means that you can pick any star in the night sky and say “Yup. There’s planets there. ”

The video illustrates that point in a marvelously perspective enriching way by starting with Earth and then zooming out while keeping our friendly yellow sun centered at all time.

It has that Powers of Ten feeling of majesty and scope, and really makes a little naked beach ape sitting at a computer on this little clod of dirt feel both inspired and humbled.

FYI, the video was made using the Hayden Platentarium’s Digital Universe, which is the world’s most comprehensive and accurate simulation of the universe.

I would really love to play around with that for a little while.

“Plot a course to Omicron Beta, Ensign Ro. Maximum warp. ”

Then play the TNG theme while you watch the universe go by.

Well that is it for this week, loyal science fans! Meet me back here next week and I swear I will once more have my pockets full of marvelous things for us to gape and wonder about.

Until then, true believers thinkers, keep your minds open, your standards high, and your hearts ready to be filled with the wonder of the true magic of this wonderful and amazing Universe!