retrospectacle
Posts by this author
November 1, 2007
Its been a bad year for animal communication. First Alex the Grey Parrot suddenly dies, now the famous sign-language-using chimp Washoe has also died Tuesday night of the flu.
Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central…
October 30, 2007
Bush says "Congress worst in 20 years." All irony meters simultaneously explode. I just imagine Bush and Congress embroiled in a "No, you are!" "Noooo, you are!" "Nooooo you are times 10!" "You are times infinity!" - type battle of (COUGH) wits. That lasts about 10 minutes and they settle the fight…
October 29, 2007
Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, recently gave this excellent speech at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conference. In addition to being an engaging speaker, he may also be one of the only…
October 28, 2007
To the West, the idea of a modern, gender-equal, progressive sort of academic environment seems incongruous with Saudi Arabia's religious establishment. However, the current ruler, King Abdullah, is investing $12.5 billion in creating just such an environment--a graduate research institution where…
October 27, 2007
I'm a huge fan of artistic expressions which gets inspiration from the natural world, which is why I was absolutely floored by these beautiful clockwork insects created at Insect Lab by Mike Libby. These clocks are made from actual dead bugs; tiny clockwork gears and spings are worked around the…
October 26, 2007
The Society for Neuroscience meeting is coming up, taking place in San Diego in the midst of all the furor and flames. While I'm not going to the meeting, I was reminded of a funny fake science poster I saw at SFN back in 2004: "Joint Encoding of Motion and Music in a Neuron in the Sea Monkey…
October 25, 2007
I got back into Detroit last night after a long flight from Charles de Gaulle, after spending a week and a half traveling from Amsterdam to Antwerp to Paris. Hopefully you all enjoyed the chemistry-related blogging of Wired blogger Aaron Rowe in my absence, looks like he's kept things busy here (…
October 15, 2007
In but a few hours I'll be on a jet plane to Amsterdam, to give an academic talk at a meeting. Today has been a mix of stress (blogging scholarship, practice talks) and exhilaration (my friend's thesis defense is today and I'm gonna be in Europe soon!) exacerbated by more caffeine and less sleep…
October 15, 2007
As I mentioned in a previous thread, I'm responsible for inviting three speakers to the 2008 Neuroscience Spring Symposium. Its an incredible opportunity to meet scientists from around the US, and I've already had the pleasure of being turned down by both Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker. However…
October 14, 2007
There's a new viral film breezing through the internet, demonstrating what appears to be a way to make ordinary soda glow. Only one problem, its a big fake.
The video claims that just adding baking soda and some hydrogen peroxide to Mountain Dew will result in the over-caffinated beverage…
October 13, 2007
Some say nothing quite says "I love you" like a diamond ring, but *I* say nothing quite says "I'm a huge geek" like these rings.
You know, there's so many times I've wished I'd been able to generate random numbers between 1 and 20. Wait! Now I can with this cool D20 ring, *and* look fashionable.…
October 12, 2007
The Fibonacci numbers form a sequence defined by this relation (don't be scared!):
What this means, in English, is that it is a sequence of numbers whose relationship is this: after the first two numbers, each proceeding number is the sum of the previous two numbers. For example 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5,…
October 12, 2007
Looks like speculations turned out to be true, and Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize early this morning, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."…
October 11, 2007
This is one that we had at my Pirates Vs. Ninja's party, which was a going away party for my badgerific friend Lisa. She's defending her thesis on Monday, good luck Lisa! This might fit in well with the rest of the geeky cakes...
Let see what we got going on here. First, pirate-speak ("We'll miss…
October 11, 2007
I have immense respect and awe for people with artistic talent. Since I have have absolutely none to speak of, the process of developing a piece of art from sketch to completion (and making it look beautiful) is something that baffles me. Artists who focus on the illustration of specimins, science…
October 10, 2007
I received an email today to this effect, which was rather interesting:
You seem to be sincere in your presentation. Before I cast a vote, would you be kind enough to answer this, please:
You are the only person around and you are wandering on a isolated beach. You do not have a care in the world…
October 10, 2007
[I figured that some of you may be new to Retrospectacle due to the blog scholarship contest. I am also writing a manuscript and about to leave to give a talk in Antwerp. So, I thought I might repost a few of my more thought-provoking neuroscience posts today. I hope you enjoy them. -Shelley]…
October 9, 2007
[This is part of a series I'm doing here on Retrospectacle called 'Science Vault.' Pretty much I'm just going to dig back into the forgotten and moldering annuls of scientific publications to find weird and interesting studies that very likely would never be published or done today (and perhaps…
October 6, 2007
Here's a neat trick demonstrating the density of sulfur hexafluoride--its more dense than the surrounding air, so the tin foil boat floats. Jay Leno tried the trick out and started drinking the gas, which has the opposite effect on the tone of your voice as helium does. Hilarity ensues.
Jay Leno…
October 4, 2007
I had a mystical experience, and this is what came of it.
(Pictures below the fold....)
October 4, 2007
As I mentioned earlier in the week, I'm trying to raise money for a classroom-in-need to buy some books about neuroscience, using the case of Phineas Gage as a jumping off point. (And if you haven't yet donated, they would be most grateful for even a dollar!) I thought it would be interesting and…
October 2, 2007
What happens when you take the "science" out of "neuroscience"? Well, you get something quite akin to Dr. Mario Beauregard's theories on spirituality and the brain. Dr. Beauregard and his graduate student Vincent Paquette are studying the spiritual experiences of Carmelite nuns.
First, we had to…
October 1, 2007
This year I'm taking part in the the DonorsChoose fundraiser taking place at ScienceBlogs. DonorsChoose is a website where teachers can ask to have small teaching projects funded, and potential donors can peruse the proposals can fund ones that seemed worthwhile. Many of the teachers who submit…
October 1, 2007
In undergrad, I used to study learning and memory in honeybees so always felt a sort of respect for the hard life of a bee. If you never felt a little sad to see a honeybee die after spending its lone sting or a little in awe of their ability to use a brain the size of a pinhead to transmit the…
September 28, 2007
Some Japanese researchers have engineered frogs with transparent skin, so organs, blood vessels, or even tumors can be observed without performing a dissection.
"You can watch organs of the same frog over its entire life as you don't have to dissect it. The researcher can also observe how toxins…
September 27, 2007
Blogs are becoming powerful tools of first-hand journalism, most recently evidenced by the conflict going on in Myanmar. A London blogger named Ko Htike has been blogging the violence against monks occurring in his homeland, but from his current locale in England. Htike wakes up in the middle of…
September 27, 2007
This year I am in charge of the UM Neuroscience program's Spring Symposia, which is where students nominate and invite interesting scientists to come give a talk on their work. The students also get to have dinner and hang out with the speakers informally (read: bar). I've been mulling over names,…
September 26, 2007
In keeping with my discussion of Japanese foodstuffs (see fugu) this week, I thought I'd post a bit about the alcoholic drink sake. Sake, often called rice wine, has polished rice kernels as its raw material and is produced from the combined effects of a mold and a yeast. However the term "rice…
September 26, 2007
The following is a guest post by Tim Marzullo, Graduate Student in Engineering/Neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
"Tri, Dva, Odin, Zashiganiye!" (Three, Two, One, Ignition!)
A review of "Live from Cape Canaveral" by Jay Barbree
"Live from Cape Canaveral" by Jay Barbree serves as a well-…