Technology
razib | August 25, 2008Update: Please read Sandman's response after you look over this post....
New Evidence Debunks 'Stupid' Neanderthal Myth:
Blades were first produced by Homo sapiens during their colonization of Europe from Africa approximately 40,000 years ago. This has traditionally been thought to be a dramatic technological advance, helping Homo sapiens out-compete, and eventually eradicate, their Stone Age cousins. Yet when the research team analysed their data there was no statistical difference between the efficiency of the two technologies. In fact, their findings showed that in some respects the flakes…
pzminion | August 21, 2008Guest Blogger Danio, one last time:
Part I
Part II
Part III
The current standard of pediatric care mandating that all newborns undergo hearing screenings has been applied successfully throughout much of the industrialized world. Early identification of hearing impairments gives valuable lead-time to parents and health care providers during which they can plan medical and educational interventions to improve the child's development, acquisition of language skills, and general quality of life.
Up to 12% of children born with hearing loss have Usher syndrome. However, diagnosing Usher…
ejohnson | August 21, 2008In this post: the large version of the Medicine & Health channel photo, a comment from a reader, and the best posts of the week.
Gram-stained Bacilli and Cocci bacteria at 1000x magnification. From Flickr, by kaibara87
Reader comment of the week:
You can't Live forever, says PalMD of denialism blog (who knew?), but some people persist in the mistaken notion that lifestyle choices—a healthy diet, regular exercise—can extend the lives of those living with chronic illnesses without the use of physician-prescribed drugs.
Reader Suricou Raven has her own suggestion for living a long life:
I…
ejohnson | August 20, 2008In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Politics. A few of the 2,008 Chinese drummers at the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Summer Olympics. From Flickr, by beastandbean
Education & Careers. From Flickr, by preciouskhyatt
Reader comments of the week:
On the Education & Careers channel, DrugMonkey talks about the eccentricity of certain academics in Everyone LOVES the Freakazoid Professor...so long as she's productive. While tenured professors might have more leeway to…
drorzel | August 20, 2008Via Swans On Tea, a ranty blog post titled Sucky Schools - How To Repair Our Education System, which takes its structure and much of its tone from Paul Lockhart's "Mathematician's Lament" (which, unfortunately, is a PDF file). I'm fond of ranty posts about education reform, but both of these kind of lose me. Lockhart, in particular, strikes me as being an excellent example of the dangers of being too attached to a subject.
He writes with great passion and at great length about the fun and creativity involved in math, which is all very nice. Unfortunately, it also leads to paragraphs like this…
edyong | August 14, 2008What would you do if someone asked you to help transcribe an old book onto a website? Chances are, you'd say no on the basis that you have other things to do, or simply that it just doesn't sound very interesting. And yet, millions of people every day are helping with precisely this task, and most are completely unaware that they're helping out.
It's all thanks to a computer program developing by Luis von Ahn and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University. Their goal was to slightly alter a simple task that all web users encounter and convert it from wasted time into something productive. That…
worldsfair | August 14, 2008CELEBRITY: Who are you?
GENETICIST: I am a geneticist.
CELEBRITY: Like, is that a big word for someone who is not as cool as me?
GENETICIST: It is a word that describes my role as a scientist who can answer any questions you might have about genetics.
CELEBRITY: And why would I care about genetics?
GENETICIST: That, my friend, is a very good question! Genetics is more important than you would think. We are now living in a society where the progress we see in the biological sciences, and in genetics in particular, is impacting tremendously on the societal, economic, political and even…
skookumchick | August 12, 2008As I'm transitioning away from an academic/personal life of long-distance commuting, I thought this would be a good time (or perhaps the last good time?) to share some of my tips for how to help one's marriage/partnership survive two academic careers in two cities.
Of course, I only have this last year as experience with faculty life (although my husband has been a faculty member for 5). But before that, there was 4 years of my commuting as a grad student (a 3.5 hr commute), and 1.5 years of LDR (a plane trip) as an undergrad. But that was a long time ago, and I was a different person then…
gregladen | August 9, 2008Two security researchers have developed a new technique that essentially bypasses all of the memory protection safeguards in the Windows Vista operating system, an advance that many in the security community say will have far-reaching implications not only for Microsoft, but also on how the entire technology industry thinks about attacks.
In a presentation at the Black Hat briefings, Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. will discuss the new methods they've found to get around Vista protections such as Address Space Layout Randomization(ASLR),…
hrynyshyn | August 6, 2008Every corner of my regular morning stroll through the internet is littered with references to coal. One could say that coal is in the air. And it doesn't smell good. First, there's this depressing news from British Columbia:
Teck-Cominco's eye-popping, $14-billion purchase of Fording Canadian Coal this week sends a clear signal that coal will play an important role in the future of British Columbia. The deal makes Teck-Cominco the world's second-largest producer of metallurgical coal -- the kind used in steelmaking -- and solidifies its status as Canada's largest diversified mining company.…
oracknows | August 5, 2008Bizarrely enough, Suzanne Somers has been a common topic of discussion on this blog since the very beginning. Indeed, in one of my earliest substantive posts, way back in December 2004 when I had just started this blog on Blogger, I used her as an example of how misleading breast cancer testimonials can be. At the time, I only knew Somers as a breast cancer survivor who had decided to turn to "alternative" therapy. What she really meant was that she had undergone surgery and radiation but had decided not to undergo chemotherapy, opting instead for mistletoe extract
I also explained at the…
grrlscientist | August 4, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, Macaw Wasting Disease, myenteric ganglioneuritis, proventricular dilatation disease, Bornaviridae, avian bornavirus, negative strand RNA viruses, pan-viral microarray, ViroChip
One pair of the Little Blue (Spix's) Macaw, Cyanopsitta spixii.
This species is extinct in the wild and its captive population consists of roughly 70 to 100 individuals.
Image: Fundação Parque Zoológico de São Paulo (São Paulo Zoo), Brasil.
For more than 30 years, a mysterious disease, known as proventricular dilatation disease (PDD), has sent chills of terror down the spines of…
tqa | August 4, 2008
There have been a number of indications that the Associated Press isn't being as neutral in the election as we would expect from a major media outlet. At an event in April, two Associated Press employees gave McCain a box of donuts and a cup of coffee - both prepared to his tastes - while the Chairman of the AP asked Obama a question about Afghanistan, where "Obama bin Laden is still at large". Concerns have been raised regarding AP campaign coverage of Iraq and health care, among other issues. The hypothesis that there might be a solid pro-McCain bias at the AP has received additional…
edyong | August 3, 2008With their latest film WALL-E, Pixar Studios have struck cinematic gold again, with a protagonist who may be the cutest thing to have ever been committed to celluloid. Despite being a blocky chunk of computer-generated metal, it's amazing how real, emotive and characterful WALL-E can be. In fact, the film's second act introduces a entire swarm of intelligent, subservient robots, brimming with personality.
Whether or not you buy into Pixar's particular vision of humanity's future, there's no denying that both robotics and artificial intelligence are becoming ever more advanced. Ever since…
jfiore | August 1, 2008It has been said that the Olympics is rather like a genetic freak-show: All of the extreme outliers from the population show up and do their thing. While specific "genetic gifts" are pretty much required to reach the top of most any sport these days, a little technology can certainly assist in the process. This week's Electronic Design cover story is The 2008 TechnOlympics and discussed some of the technology that will be used in Beijing.
One item that caught my eye was the increased use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. Although wind tunnel testing has been used on cyclists…
clock | July 31, 2008So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Patterns of Positive Selection in Six Mammalian Genomes:
Populations evolve as mutations arise in individual organisms and, through hereditary transmission, gradually become "fixed" (shared by all individuals) in the population. Many mutations have essentially no…
dmunger | July 17, 2008When we're in a crowded space, making visual judgments becomes more difficult. But it doesn't take much to trigger a crowding effect. Clicking on the picture below will take you to a quick movie (QuickTime required) that should demonstrate the effect. Focus on the cross to the left, then start the movie (it may start automatically, depending on your browser). In two seconds, a "T" will flash briefly on the right side of the screen. Your job is to determine whether the T is upright or inverted (upside-down). After another two seconds, three Ts will appear. This time, you must judge only the…
clock | July 14, 2008How free access internet resources benefit biodiversity and conservation research: Trinidad and Tobago's endemic plants and their conservation status:
Botanists have been urged to help assess the conservation status of all known plant species. For resource-poor and biodiversity-rich countries such assessments are scarce because of a lack of, and access to, information. However, the wide range of biodiversity and geographical resources that are now freely available on the internet, together with local herbarium data, can provide sufficient information to assess the conservation status of…
nisbetmc | July 10, 2008
In the latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, Harvard University's Cristine Russell contributes an important analysis on the next stage in climate change media coverage. She spotlights reporters such as the NY Times' Andrew Revkin who are among an "advanced guard" of journalists who are figuring out how to strategically frame coverage of climate change in ways that resonate with new audiences and across a diversity of media platforms.
"Climate change will require thoughtful leadership and coordination at news organizations," asserts Russell. "Editors will need to integrate the…
edyong | July 9, 2008Imagine watching a movie where every now and then, key frames have been cut out. The film seems stilted and disjointed and you have to rely on logic to fill in the gaps in the plots. Evolutionary biologists face a similar obstacle when trying to piece together how living species arose from their common ancestors. It's like watching a film with a minimum of footage; the species alive today are just a few frames at the very end, and the fossil record represents a smattering of moments throughout the film's length.
But the gaps, while plentiful, are being slowly filled in. With amazing…