Word nerd Ammon Shea quit his job as a furniture mover in New York City to spend an entire year reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary. The result, in addition to eyestrain, headaches, and skeptics’ puzzlement, was Shea’s new book...
lawnmower survey n.— «Over a 20-hour mission the team surveys 5km x 4km sections by running the AUV up and down, building up about 15 overlapping swaths of sonar data in a process known as a lawnmower survey. The multi-beam sonar produces...
DFD-er n.— «The trip to Rockaway Beach involves riding the A train over a different sort of New York landmark: Jamaica Bay. At the 116th Street stop is a busy area with delis and beach shops and, where 116th Street meets the ocean, an...
wet fish n.— «Both fish reside in the middle-water column of the ocean, causing those in the fishing industry to refer to them as “wet fish.” This means that a lot of water must be pulled into boats when scooping them in from...
acoustic ranching n.— «Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole hope to prove fish can be trained to associate certain sounds with feeding, by putting thousands of black sea bass in a dome-shaped structure at the...
bomb pulse n.— «Because of atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs between 1945 and 1960, the atmosphere received a sharp spike of carbon-14, commonly called the “bomb pulse,” that has been declining to normal levels as excess...