Social Sciences
drorzel | June 25, 2008
Annals of Medicine: The Itch: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
The neurobiology of itching. Sadly, it doesn't include a cure for hives.
(tags: medicine psychology science)
Swans on Tea » Ghostly Visages
Video of laser-cooled atoms in a trap with the magnetic fields not balanced. I used to spend half an hour a day tweaking the Xenon MOT using this sort of picture.
(tags: physics low-temperature atoms experiment science video youtube)
Plenty to Go Around :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
"A new book from Stanford University Press called…
sb admin | June 24, 2008As weâve noted before, research on nanotechnology safety has lagged behind the use of nanomaterials in consumer products. Three recent stories describe the potential rewards and risks of nanotechnology and some of the efforts to learn more about nanomaterialsâ effects on humans and our environment.
Much of the use of nanotechnology in todayâs consumer products is of questionable value to society â the tiny particles are used to make tennis rackets more lightweight, skin cream more sheer, and socks less smelly. But nanomaterials also hold great promise for making solar cells and water…
pharyngula | June 23, 2008We've got a couple of appalling examples of awful journalism to scowl at today. The first is this credulous piece by Gordy Slack in The Scientist. I've been unhappy with Slack before — he sometimes seems to want to let creationist absurdity slide — and I got yelled at by some readers for my uncharitable interpretation of his review of the Creation "Museum". Well, I think I've been vindicated now.
This article tries to give credit to the Intelligent Design creationists for some discoveries or interpretations. It's wrong from top to bottom. Here's his list, with my brief rebuttal; Jeffrey…
grrlscientist | June 23, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Yellow-rumped warbler, Dendroica coronata, After Hatch Year male.
Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU [larger view].
People Hurting Birds
The National Council of SPCAs (NSPCA) in South Africa said it was out of options trying to prevent a bird hunt organised by the High School Hans Strijdom in Mookgophong (Naboomspruit). The school apparently organised a bird hunt to take place over the weekend to raise funds, but the NSPCA condemned it as unethical. "The linking of a school with flagrant slaughter, turning killing into sport…
drorzel | June 22, 2008
Postcards from Nowhere
"It is the artists, and a certain line of thinking about art, that have given the people with the cash permission to buy and sell what amounts to nothing, and to do so for ever larger and more insane sums of money."
(tags: art culture society stupid humanities)
evolvingthoughts | June 21, 2008
A conference is being held in Sydney soon about whether God is necessary for morality. I find that an almost incomprehensible question. Of course humans are moral without gods to back up their moral systems. They can't help it. It's what humans do. We are social apes that follow rules. Sometimes the sanctions for following rules (which turn out to be sanctions for potential defectors rather than the majority, who will tend to follow rules with or without promises of reward or punishment) rely on a god. Mostly, they don't. The famous Euthyphro Dilemma (whether something is good because God…
laelaps | June 18, 2008
An illustration of Koch's reconstructed "Missourium."
On January 12, 1839, an interesting article appeared in the pages of pages of the Philadelphia paper the Presbyterian. Written by Albert Koch (although it appeared in the paper as unsigned), the article made the bold claim that the remains of a mammoth had been discovered along with stone tools in Gasconade country, Missouri, proving that Native Americans had lived alongside the extinct animals. Looking at vestiges of the ancient hunt, Koch proposed that the mammoth had sunk into mud or some other trap and keeled over at which point the…
oracknows | June 17, 2008She was thin, white skin stretched over bones like worn parchment over old sticks being rhythmically blown in the wind as her chest rose and fell, each time with what seemed like a major effort. Incongruous with the rest of her body, her abdomen was distended, a balloon that looked dangerously close to popping, also rising and falling with each breath. She moaned softly and looked at me.
I introduced myself, told her I was a surgeon, and continued, "Your oncologist asked me to see you about your belly pain."
"Go ahead," she croaked, hardly acknowledging my presence in the way that patients…
pharyngula | June 17, 2008I just got around to reading this very nice article by Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman, which we godless heathen ought to find reassuring and optimistic. They describe how religion is fading, even here in the United States, and that it is a natural consequence of economic trends. In particular, the main reason atheism is growing isn't that we've got lots of wild-eyed proselytizers, it's simply that security and an absence of fear make religion irrelevant and even unattractive.
Rather than religion being an integral part of the American character, the main reason the United States is the only…
grrlscientist | June 15, 2008
My favorite picture of my friend, Jessica, an aspiring actress.
Image: GrrlScientist, 15 June 2008.
I took a little time away from writing today because a friend of mine, an aspiring actress, invited me to her improvisational acting class graduation. Even though I understand what improv is, I have never been to an actual performance, so I didn't know what to expect.
The theatre itself is located in the basement of a building in Chelsea. It was like a cave; low ceilings and thick concrete support pillars in the middle of the space -- all painted black -- and a collection of old movie…
pharyngula | June 11, 2008Gosh. I sure hope the creationist extremists never get any substantial political power, because guess what some of them would like to do: they want to violently expel use crazy evolutionists. Ask Tom Willis, an utterly insane creationist (who is also, scarily, active in Kansas politics):
The arrogance displayed by the evolutionist class is totally unwarrented. The facts warrent the violent expulsion of
all evolutionists from civilized society. I am quite serious that
their danger to society is so great that, in a sane society, they
would be, at a minimum, denied a vote in the administration…
tetrapodzoology | June 9, 2008
Actually, given that they've been extinct for quite some time now, 2007 wasn't really a particularly good year for either terror birds, aka phorusrhacids, or for mega-ducks (on which read on), but it was a pretty good year in terms of the new material that was published on them. Phorusrhacids were covered a few times back on Tet Zoo ver 1 in 2006 (go here and here): we looked at their phylogeny, taxonomy, anatomy and palaeobiology, and at the then-new discovery of BAR 3877-11, a gigantic Patagonian skull, 716 mm long, and most similar to the skull of Devincenzia pozzi (Chiappe & Bertelli…
thusspakezuska | June 9, 2008Because we can't keep our mouths shut forever, nor can we always stay locked safely within our homes, it is inevitable that we must interact with and speak to other human beings. And because of this, it is (nearly) inevitable that we will, at one time or another, say or do something that someone else interprets as offensive.
You know what I mean. You're nattering blithely along, everything's good, we're all happy - except, suddenly, some of us aren't. And you don't understand why. You are a good person. You are not a sexist, you are not a racist, you are not a homophobe. You are an…
jrosenhouse | June 8, 2008Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Wheaton College English Professor Alan Jacobs argues that religion is overrated as a social force. My SciBling Razib has already written a lengthy response.
Jacobs gets down to business in the third paragraph:
Of course, I can't universalize my own experience -- but that experience does give me pause when people talk about the immense power of religion to make people do extraordinary things. When people say that they are acting out of religious conviction, I tend to be skeptical; I tend to wonder whether they're not acting as I usually do, out of…
drorzel | June 6, 2008
'When We Left Earth' Shows When Man Stretched to Reach the Moon - NYTimes.com
"Like many gadget-happy Americans, NASA took lots and lots of home movies. For this series it threw open the doors of its film and video archives, which have been transferred to stunning high-definition format."
(tags: television space science history)
Physics of GPS relativistic time delay « Unused Cycles
More than you may have wanted to know about how relativity affects GPS.
(tags: physics science education blogs precision-measurement space relativity)
Crooked Timber » » Money talks and the social…
josh donlan | June 6, 2008550 cites will have populations of more than 1 million by 2015. 58% of the known human pathogens are zoonotic - they can jump between humans and animals. 371 people have been diagnosed with avian influenza as of March 2008, including 235 deaths. 5,000 western lowland gorillas have died from Ebola virus over the past several year. Visit Wildlife Conservation Society's State of the Wild website (or buy the book) to learn more about the state of the wild. You can also watch video presentations of the recent event in New York City.
laelaps | June 6, 2008One of the joys of working on this book has been discovering little tidbits of information that have been overlooked. I haven't turned up anything especially earth-shattering, but I have found a few things that overturn some of the "received wisdom" so often repeated in textbooks and technical paper introductions. For example, it is commonly said that the little perissodactyl Hyracotherium got its name because Richard Owen thought it looked like a hyrax when he named it in 1839. This piece of information has been repeated for over 150 years, yet Owen himself took a moment to correct this…
clock | June 5, 2008Spider Silk Can Be Stretchy Like Springs Or Like Rubber:
Spider silks are incredibly stretchy, but are they stretchy like elastic or springs? The answer lies in their amino acid content. Spider silks are made from proteins, and biologists have just discovered that the secret lies in the silk protein's amino acid content. Spider silks with high proline contents behave like elastic rubber bands, while spider silks with low proline content behave like stretchy springs.
Scientists Uncover How Plant Roots Respond To Physical Forces Such As Gravity, Pressure, Or Touch:
Researchers at Washington…
laelaps | June 5, 2008
The skull of Machairodus, from Owen's A History of British Fossil Mammals, and Birds.
Digging through the seemingly endless mass of 19th century paleontological literature that I have collected via Google Books, I happened across a very interesting quote from Richard Owen in his 1846 textbook A History of British Fossil Mammals, and Birds. Earlier in the week, while researching William Buckland's relationship to the bewitching "Red Lady" during the 1820's, I was struck by some of the rhetorical techniques used by Buckland to diminish the importance of the skeleton. Among them was the…
pharyngula | June 5, 2008OK, this is a little rude, a bit funny, and a lot sacrilegious. I'm all for sacrilege, though, so I can't condemn it too much.
Authorities were alerted after a parishoner heard "rustling and groaning" coming from inside the confession box and pulled back the curtains to reveal a goth-rock couple engaged in oral sex, ANSA said.
The agency said the pair -- a 31-year-old laborer and a 32-year-old teacher -- defended their conduct saying: "We are atheists and for us, having sex in church is like doing it any other place."
Well, yes, but they are also human beings who live within a society which…