Physical Sciences
jdupuis | April 13, 2012Paper books vs. e-books: I still can't decide
Is blogging and tweeting about research papers worth it? The Verdict
Open Access To Scientific information: Policy Guidelines Released by UNESCO
Receptivity to Library Involvement in Scientific Data Curation: A Case Study at the University of Colorado Boulder
How Librarians Can Successfully Navigate the 7 Cs of Social Media
Why Gamification Can't Be Stopped
How Teamwork Can Damage Productivity
Weighing the costs of conferencing
Ebooks 101: DRM (Digital Rights Management)
'A Model Discipline' (poly sci & "physics envy")
The Conundrum of…
oracknows | April 13, 2012You know, I really, really hate the way quacks abuse molecular biology. I know, I know. I've said it before, but certain quacks have a way of willfully misunderstanding the latest advances in genomics, molecular biology, and biology in general. Of course, this isn't limited to just medicine, unfortunately. After all, we have Deepak Chopra and his quantum woo, which abuses physics and quantum theory in the name of "proving" mind-body dualism, a bastardized version of "intelligent design" creationism that is based on Eastern mysticism rather than Christianity, and, of course, a "conscious…
oracknows | April 6, 2012Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to expect. This is one of those times, and it doesn't help that it's a holiday week plus a week I was traveling. So I dug way back into the archives, back to five years ago, for a little gem that reminds me that I really should write about evolution more. As the AACR meeting showed me this year, it's actually highly relevant to cancer research. Besides, if you haven't been reading at least five years, it's almost certainly new to you!
Well, well, well…
esiegel | April 3, 2012"...the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing."
-Leon Lederman, author of The God Particle
The Higgs Boson: you know the deal. It's the last undiscovered particle in our current picture of all the fundamental particles in the Universe.
Image credit: Fermilab, retrieved from eurekalert.org.
If we can find it, we'll either have a big clue as to what the next step to take in physics will be, or we'll be forced to admit that physics works too well, and many of the great…
carlyo | April 3, 2012The Kavli Science Video Contest has wrapped up with over 260 entries! Now its time for the People's Choice Vote, in advance of the awards ceremony on April 29, in Washington, DC, as part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival. People's Choice Voting begins April 2 and closes April 13. Voting is easy, just view the videos on YouTube and click 'like" for your favorites. Click here to view the videos.
We will be highlighting the Top 20 Finalists on our blog for the next two weeks. In today's blog get to know the first five of the top 20 Finalists:
SPOTLIGHT ON KAVLI VIDEO CONTEST:…
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2012Jimmy Carter has a new book out about the Bible. He discusses it in this short interview over at HuffPo.
He takes a straightforward approach to dealing with morally or scientifically troubling passages:
Thank you so much for talking with me President Carter. As I warned, I am going to be asking the tough questions. So ... Did God write the Bible?
God inspired the Bible but didn't write every word in the Bible. We know, for instance that stars can't fall on the earth, stars are much larger than the earth. That was a limitation of knowledge of the universe or physics, or astronomy at that…
stoat | March 17, 2012From Climate 'tech fixes' urged for Arctic methane I find ameg.me who say:
AMEG POSITION
DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY
We declare there now exists an extremely high international security risk* from abrupt and runaway global warming being triggered by the end-summer collapse of Arctic sea ice towards a fraction of the current record and release of huge quantities of methane gas from the seabed. Such global warming would lead at first to worldwide crop failures but ultimately and inexorably to the collapse of civilization as we know it. This colossal threat demands an immediate emergency scale…
carlyo | March 15, 2012
By Larry Bock
Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival
When searching for a prime, real-life example of how science and technology are making a difference in the world right now, my thoughts lately turn to a small but feisty greentech startup that you may never have heard of: Kurion, Inc.
Based in Irvine, CA with 15 employees, this profitable three-year-old company which specializes in nuclear waste cleanup has quietly and effectively been using its technology at the front lines of Fukushima, the site of what is being called one of the largest nuclear disasters in…
jhalper | March 11, 2012A somewhat accidental discovery and random meetings between proteins in a cell: These are the subjects of two new online articles. Each, it its way, involves a technological advance that will, in turn, lead to further scientific discovery.
The first involves a partnership between a physics group and a cancer-research group. Among other things, such collaboration is essential for dealing with large data sets - multiple gene expression patterns, for example. When the team made their discovery, they were looking not just at gene expression, but at pieces of genes. More precisely, they were…
pharyngula | March 7, 2012Those Australians…they recently ran a segment on their Dateline program featuring their fellow Australian Ken Ham and the Creation "Museum", which includes portions of an interview with me. Actually, I seem to be the only critic to get any airtime in the show, which is flattering, but I could have used a little more support!
Anyway, the show was recently aired, my name is played up as an atheist opponent of creationist nonsense, and now I'm suddenly receiving lots of email from Australian creationists because they want to persuade me to their foolish cause. And some of them are just weird. I'…
drorzel | March 7, 2012Luis Alvarez: the ideas man - CERN Courier
Luis Alvarez - one of the greatest experimental physicists of the 20th century - combined the interests of a scientist, an inventor, a detective and an explorer. He left his mark on areas that ranged from radar through to cosmic rays, nuclear physics, particle accelerators, detectors and large-scale data analysis, as well as particles and astrophysics. On 19 November, some 200 people gathered at Berkeley to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Alumni of the Alvarez group - among them physicists, engineers, programmers and bubble-chamber…
esiegel | March 5, 2012"I soon became convinced... that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a waste of time unless one first ascertained what the population of the Universe really consists of." -Fritz Zwicky
You very likely know that there are four fundamental forces in the Universe: gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. While only some particles experience the nuclear and electromagnetic forces, anything with mass or energy -- which is everything we know of -- is subject to gravity.
Image credit: CountInfinity by Ananth.
The strong nuclear force binds all…
drorzel | February 16, 2012Problem solving like a physicist | Science Edventures
Another way, which looks the same on the surface, is to break the nasty problem into a sequence of steps. "First, find the relationship between A and B. Then, calculate B for the given value of A. Next, substitute A and B into C and solve for C in terms of A..." That's a sequence of smaller problems that will lead to a solution of the nasty problem. But it's not scaffolding: it's spoon-feeding and it teaches none of the problem-solving skills we want the students to practice. I've heard from number of upper-level instructors declare they…
jhalper | February 16, 2012
At age 28, theoretical physicist Dr. Zohar Komargodski became head of a research group in the Institute's Particle Physics and Astrophysics Department. A recent paper, published with Prof. Adam Schwimmer of the Physics of Complex Systems Department, made some waves in the physics world with a proposed proof of a 23-year-old theorem. If the proof stands, it will have implications for many fields, including the analysis of LHC results and supersymmetry. Komargodski and Schwimmer claim they had been kicking around various ideas for a proof for several years before the solution came to them -…
oracknows | February 13, 2012As I survey the lack of reason that infests--nay, permeates every fiber of--my country, sometimes I despair. Whether it's because of the freak fest that the race for the Republican nomination has become, with each candidate seemingly battling to prove he can bring home the crazier crazy than any of the others, or antiscience running rampant in the form of evolution rejectionism, antivaccine lunacy, and anthropogenic global warming (AGW( denialism, it's hard for skeptics and rationalists not to be depressed. Personally, however, I always looked to the north, to Canada, for a little more sense…
carlyo | February 10, 2012
By Larry Bock
Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival
It's both funny and remarkable how some of the most simple and natural acts we do each day are teeming in science.
Take for example, the kiss.
A kiss, especially a passionate one, sets off a cascade of emotions and chemical reactions in our brain and body that would surprise most of us if we knew the whole story.
Well, just in time for Valentine's Day, Sheril Kirshenbaum, science writer and author of the recent book, The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us, sheds light on exactly what goes on…
oracknows | February 5, 2012It's amazing how fast six months can pass, isn't it? Well, almost six months, anyway, as it was five and a half months ago that I wrote about a particularly execrable example of quackademic medicine in the form of a study that actually looked at an "energy healing" modality known as "energy chelation" as a treatment for cancer chemotherapy-induced fatigue. Actually, the study design itself wasn't so bad, leaving aside the utter ludicrousness of the concept of "energy chelation." Rather, it was how the authors spun interpreted their results that set my head spinning. Surprisingly, a letter to…
oracknows | February 3, 2012A couple of weeks ago, I made the observation that there seems to have been a--shall we say?--realignment in one of the central arguments that proponents of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM) make. Back in the day (say, a few years ago), such CAM practitioners and apologists used to try very, very hard to argue that their modalities had actual efficacy, that they had actual, measurable effects that made them medicine rather than woo. Never mind that even back then they had been trying for at least a couple of decades to come up with preclinical and…
pharyngula | February 2, 2012That sad article on gyres as an explanation for everything has had more fallout: not only has it been removed from Science Daily's site, not only has Case Western retracted the press release, but one of the editors at the journal Life has resigned his position over it. The editorial board of the journal was completely surprised by the wretched content of the paper, which is not encouraging; apparently they exercise so little oversight at the journal that they were unaware of the crap their reviewers were passing through. One board member thinks it is a hoax, and laughed at off. Think about…
gregladen | February 2, 2012Over the last few weeks, there has been quite a bit of discussion on the Blogosphere about certain global warming related issues. Denialists have come on strong with two major and widely disseminated distortions of scientific reports and consensus, and scientists and those interested in saving the Earth and who love puppies have countered with numerous well thought out and well done responses.
But it is hard to keep track of all this chatter. Pursuant to making that job easier, I've assembled a bunch of links that will help you track this discussion. There may be missing items, and if so…