What we're talking about Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Nobel Prize Notes
Autophagy wins a Nobel
Pharyngula October 3, 2016
Well, actually, Yoshinori Ohsumi has won the prize for his work on autophagy, a cellular process you may have never heard of before. The word means “self eating”, and it’s an important pathway that takes chunks of the internal content of the cell and throws them into the cell’s incinerator, the lysosome, where enzymes and…
Shocker: Nobel Prize In Physics Goes To Topology In Materials, Not Gravitational Waves! (Synopsis)
Starts With A Bang October 4, 2016
“‘Topology is destiny,’ he said, and put the drawers on. One leg at a time.” -Neal Stephenson If you want to understand the Universe, there are two big areas you need to know: Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which governs the gravitational force and the curvature of spacetime, and quantum physics, which governs all the…
Channel Surfing
Life Science
A new study illuminates this shadowy question. First, the video: And now, a press note from the American Chemical Society: Water striders’ ability to walk and jump on the surfaces of ponds and lakes has long amazed curious observers — and inspired robot designers who want to mimic the bugs’ talent. Now, scientists have measured…
…in alligators at least. Researchers from the University of Manchester, University of North Texas – Denton, and the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge – Grand Chenier, Louisiana teamed up to explore the effects of exposure to low oxygen on embryonic American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). Alligator eggs are often laid in nests where oxygen concentrations can reportedly vary between 11-20% (21% is normal atmospheric levels). This…
Check out this video from Reuters (via YouTube). It summarizes an exciting study from researchers at Imperial College London who were able to stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in mice by administering a modified virus to the animals. The virus worked by preventing the formation of the characteristic amyloid plaques that are responsible for…
Physical Science
Starts With A Bang
No Number Of Additional Galaxies Can Prevent The Universe From Needing Dark Matter
“In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” -Francis Bacon If you had previously thought the Universe contained a certain amount of stuff, like stars, galaxies and matter, then you might think that learning it had ten times as many galaxies might mean it had ten times as much…
“The supermoon is a 16-inch pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza. It’s a slightly bigger moon; I ain’t using the adjective ‘supermoon.’” -Neil deGrasse Tyson Earlier this month, the full Moon was the first “Supermoon” we’ve seen all year, where the bright full Moon coincided nearly perfectly with perigee, or the Moon’s closest approach to…
“From our home on the Earth, we look out into the distances … to imagine the sort of world into which we are born… . But with increasing distance our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly, until at the last dim horizon we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The…
Environment
…in alligators at least. Researchers from the University of Manchester, University of North Texas – Denton, and the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge – Grand Chenier, Louisiana teamed up to explore the effects of exposure to low oxygen on embryonic American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). Alligator eggs are often laid in nests where oxygen concentrations can reportedly vary between 11-20% (21% is normal atmospheric levels). This…
The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids: 52 Family-Friendly Experiments for the Yard, Garden, Playground, and Park is a good guide to home science experiments for kids, usually with adult involvement, ranging across a fairly wide range of age but mainly, I’d say, middle school for unsupervised work, or pretty much any age if supervised. All…
Andy Lee Robinson started the recent trend of making compelling graphics about climate change that move. He did a version of the Arctic Ice Death Spiral (a term coined by Joe Romm), which was highly acclaimed but that did not go as viral as it should have at the time. Then, a version with additive…
Humanities
Folks, I’m done. A recent story in the news involves the decision by FIDE, the world chess federation, to hold the Women’s World Championship in Iran. That’s a bit awkward, since Iran imposes certain religion-inspired dress requirements on women. This has led some players, most notably the current American women’s champion Nazi Paikidze, to boycott.…
Another day, another study on the benefit of vaccines. This time, it’s a study on the economic cost of vaccine-preventable diseases among U.S. adults — a cost that likely surpasses your wildest guesses.
The Pump Handle
Study: Despite ACA’s success, consistent insurance coverage still a problem for many Americans
If you look at the numbers, there’s no doubt that the Affordable Care Act is making a positive difference. In fact, just last month, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the nation’s uninsured rate had hit a record low. At the same time, the health reform law wasn’t intended as a silver bullet and a number of problems remain. One of those problems is known as “churning.”
Education
…in alligators at least. Researchers from the University of Manchester, University of North Texas – Denton, and the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge – Grand Chenier, Louisiana teamed up to explore the effects of exposure to low oxygen on embryonic American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). Alligator eggs are often laid in nests where oxygen concentrations can reportedly vary between 11-20% (21% is normal atmospheric levels). This…
Check out this video from Reuters (via YouTube). It summarizes an exciting study from researchers at Imperial College London who were able to stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in mice by administering a modified virus to the animals. The virus worked by preventing the formation of the characteristic amyloid plaques that are responsible for…
The Pump Handle
Report: Black students, students with disabilities bear brunt of corporal punishment
Corporal punishment in America’s public schools seems like a relic of the past — a practice we had surely banned long ago. The reality, however, is that it’s perfectly legal to physically discipline students as young as preschoolers in 19 states. And according to a new report, corporal punishment is most often used against black students and students with disabilities.
Politics
Steve Schmidt, bless his pointy Republican head, makes a very important point here. And to underscore the point, let me ask you this: How do we go from having an “election” to having a “president elect”? The process is actually a bit subtle and somewhat more complicated than one might think. Election day happens, but…
My current model (subject to change) puts Arizona in the Clinton Column. This is the prediction that has resulted in the most head scratching from those observing this, but it turns out that the Clinton Campaign seems to agree. Clinton surrogates, including Chelsea, Michele Obama, and Bernie Sanders will be in the state over the…
There are some interesting, and in some cases, potentially disturbing, things going on with the state by state numbers in the current election. Most of this has to do with third party candidates, and most of it with Gary Johnson. First, I’ll note, that despite fears among liberals and progressives that a lot of Bernie…
Medicine
Respectful Insolence
The Texas Medical Board vs. Stanislaw Burzynski, round ∞: Will Burzynski slither away yet again?
It’s been a while since I wrote about Stanislaw Burzynski, the Polish ex-pat physician who is not an oncologist but treats cancer patients in his Houston clinic with a mixture of a compound he calls “antineoplastons” (ANPs) and “gene-targeted” therapy. The former are really a mixture of various chemicals he isolated from the blood and…
The profile of an injured worker in Wyoming puts a face on the issues raised in a recent Labor Department report.
…in alligators at least. Researchers from the University of Manchester, University of North Texas – Denton, and the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge – Grand Chenier, Louisiana teamed up to explore the effects of exposure to low oxygen on embryonic American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). Alligator eggs are often laid in nests where oxygen concentrations can reportedly vary between 11-20% (21% is normal atmospheric levels). This…
Brain & Behavior
Check out this video from Reuters (via YouTube). It summarizes an exciting study from researchers at Imperial College London who were able to stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in mice by administering a modified virus to the animals. The virus worked by preventing the formation of the characteristic amyloid plaques that are responsible for…
The Pump Handle
Report: Black students, students with disabilities bear brunt of corporal punishment
Corporal punishment in America’s public schools seems like a relic of the past — a practice we had surely banned long ago. The reality, however, is that it’s perfectly legal to physically discipline students as young as preschoolers in 19 states. And according to a new report, corporal punishment is most often used against black students and students with disabilities.
Scientists have taken notice that humpback whales may shown signs of heroic altruism in this video posted by CNN on YouTube:
Technology
I have another tablet review for you. (See the bottom of the post for some followup on my last review.) This is a “tablet PC” meaning a tablet that runs a full on PC operating system, as opposed to a tablet-oriented operating system. The Jumper EZpad 5SE Tablet PC is a pretty high performance tablet…
Andy Lee Robinson started the recent trend of making compelling graphics about climate change that move. He did a version of the Arctic Ice Death Spiral (a term coined by Joe Romm), which was highly acclaimed but that did not go as viral as it should have at the time. Then, a version with additive…
First, for the record, I want one. But, since my current smart phone is a Nexus 6, I don’t need one yet. I’m fine for a while. Google essentially invented Android, and the Nexus phones were pretty close to being Google phones, but they were not. They were simply very well designed and powerful smart…
Information Science
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Reading Diary: The jazz of physics: The secret link between music and the structure of the universe by Stephon Alexander
The jazz of physics, the physics of jazz, the chemistry of jazz, the jazz of chemistry, the jazz of computer science, the computer science of jazz, the math of jazz, the jazz of math, the jazz of biology, the biology of jazz, the jazz of engineering, the engineering of jazz. And why not the jazz…
National Novel Writing Month Project NaNoWriMo is an international project< involving thousands of writers, or would be writers, who commit to writing an entire novel within the month of November. (I hear that you can finish a work already started, but you have to produce 50K words during the month for the novel to count).…
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Around the Web: What About the Planet?, Partisan polarization on climate change and more on the science and politics of climate change
What About the Planet? Partisan polarization on climate change is worse than ever Three things Ottawa should do to fight climate change It’s Happening Now: Climate Change Is Killing Off the Yellow Cedar ‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’ Could Ontario’s climate strategy trigger an industrial exodus? Why…
Jobs
The profile of an injured worker in Wyoming puts a face on the issues raised in a recent Labor Department report.
Denver Post reporters investigate the lives and deaths of Colorado’s oil and gas workers; employees from Donald Trump’s California golf club say he only wanted to hire “pretty” women; cobalt mining in Congo comes with dangerous risks for adult and child workers; and Harvard’s dining staff goes on strike for living wages.
A Labor Department report describes the ways in which our state-based workers’ compensation system is failing injured workers. Will the report become a roadmap for reform or another government report that collects dust?
