clock | September 24, 2006Virtual reality, computer simulations and video games are all over the place these days. See some innovative uses, e.g., in tech education, in teaching immunology and in figuring out the dynamics of drug activation by discovery of Magenstrasse in the stomach.
clock | September 24, 2006Wild Bees Make Honeybees Better Pollinators
How?
By sexual harrassment!
Wild bees behave like the male audience of Girls Gone Wild - obnoxious and aggressive. So, the honeybees keep running away from them - from flower to flower.
Winners: Flowers.
Seriously:
Compared to honeybees, wild bees did not contribute much directly to crop pollination. But on farms where wild bees were abundant, honeybees were much more effective in pollinating flowers and generating seeds, Greenleaf found.
There appear to be two reasons for that. Male wild bees, probably looking for mates, will latch onto worker…
clock | September 24, 2006Daniel Collins of Down To Earth blog, did a little research on the power law as it applies to the recent and current standing of various (mostly science) blogs, with some interesting obervations about the edge effects, the gradual lowering of the slope, and the slow move of the cut-off point towards the right.
The main points:
- science blogosphere is still young, growing and developing.
- the power-law works only for the high-ranked blogs, i.e., the "B/C-list", and breaks down for superpopular blogs as well as low-ranked blogs.
- we play the Red Queen game, i.e., each one of us needs to…
clock | September 23, 2006The 83rd edition of the Tar Heel Tavern, the blog carnival of NC blogging, is up on Poetic Acceptance.
Shortly before I moved here to Seed, Erin took over the management of the carnival and did a great job updating and beautifying the homepage and the archives.
Although I have hosted Tar Heel Tavern five times before, I have not done so since I quit managing it. So, to make up for the lost time, I will be hosting next week, on October 1st, right here. Send your entries by midnight Eastern Time on Saturday at: Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com.
Then, on October 14th, I hope to see a lot of you in…
clock | September 22, 2006Carnival of Bad History #9 is up on World History Blog.
Friday Ark #105 is up on Modulator
clock | September 22, 2006
The 2007 Triangle Science Blogging Conference will be a day-long conference Saturday, January 20, 2007 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. This is a free, open and public event for bloggers, scientists, science educators and anyone interested in discussing science on the Internet.
The conference is organized by Anton Zuiker, Brian Russell, Paul Jones and myself (you may remember I have been pushing for something like this for a while now).
You can get all the information on the conference wiki, where you can also register for free.
For all the news and developments, check out the Blogtogether blog.…
clock | September 22, 2006Now we know that Bush is correct when he says that everything he says comes directly from God. The source of Bushisms is Jesus himself!
(Hat-tip: Carel, the artist who made my banner)
clock | September 22, 2006From October 09, 2004. I'd write it differently today, but the main point still stands.
Life begins, takes its course, and ends.
The course of Life determines the directionality of Time. Without Life, it would be impossible to determine which way the Time goes, what is Past and what is Future.
Every living organism dies, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Life becomes Non-Life.
But, when does Non-Life become Life? This seems to be the key question in the discussions about abortion, stem-cell research, and other touchy political/religious topics.
Usual answers: at the time of fertilization, or 40…
clock | September 21, 2006But this Science Fair project comes really close...
(Hat-tip: Pratie Place)
clock | September 21, 2006Right after last year's ConvergeSouth I tried to get my school to let me teach a class on blogging. Posted on October 13, 2005 here and again on January 16, 2006 here.
Somewhat related to the whole ConvergeSouth experience. I've been pitching a blogging course to my school for a while now (not NCSU, but a community college where I teach). It's been slow and disheartening so far. Nobody knows what blogging is. Also, there is a rule that one needs to have an appropriate degree for a class. In the case of a blogging class, this would mean, or so they said, either journalism school or computer…
clock | September 21, 2006Herbert George Wells was born at Bromley, England on this day in 1866. He was apprenticed as a draper, which inspired several of his novels, then taught school before securing a scholarship to the Normal School of Science at South Kensington. Although his writing covers a broad range, he is now best known for his science fiction work, mostly between 1895 and 1905, starting with The Time Machine and including The War of the Worlds.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
Whilst there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though…
clock | September 21, 2006Change of Shift, the nursing carnival, has ventured out to a new host. The 7th edition is now up on kt.
clock | September 20, 2006Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor have been wrongfully charged and are awaiting execution by firing squad in Libya for allegedly infecting children with HIV. They were tortured and forced to sign "confessions" written in Arabic they did not understand. In fact, the poor hygiene and bad practices in the hospital are to blame.
You can get more information in Nature (free access) editorial and news report and even more detail in an official report (pdf) and a letter (pdf) to Qaddafi.
What can you do?
First, ask your congresscritters what are they going to do about this - are…
clock | September 20, 2006People argue bad science, psuedoscience and nonsense for a variety of reasons, some religiously motivated, some politically motivated, some out of ignorance, some out of arrogance, some out emotional needs, some due to psychological problems.
When they encroach onto the scinetific turf and argue nonsense within a scientific domain, they use a limited set of rhetorical tools. The exact choice of tools depends on the motivation, as well as the forum where they advocate the nonsense. Some, the generals in the army in War On Science, have big soapboxes, e.g., TV, radio and newspapers. Some…
clock | September 20, 2006I have some great news to share. Thanks to an amazing outpouring of support in the first three weeks of The North Carolina Back to School Challenge we have raised over $24,569 for North Carolina kids!
When we started this campaign, we knew we were setting the bar high. But we're counting on you. And we know you won't let us down.
Fund a proposal before the campaign ends a week from Saturday--many proposals are 'almost there'.
Imagine the students that will be left out in the cold if we DON'T reach our $50,000 goal. Without your support today, some classrooms just won't get what they need this…
clock | September 20, 2006Bird Moms Manipulate Birth Order To Protect Sons:
----------------snip-------------------
Since 2002, Badyaev, Oh and their colleagues have been intensively documenting the lives of a population of house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus) on the UA campus.
Throughout the year, the researchers capture birds several times a week to band and measure them and to take DNA and hormone samples. During the breeding season, the researchers locate the nests, keep track of activity in the nest, follow nestling growth and development, and take DNA samples from the chicks.
The researchers have also been…
clock | September 20, 2006Paramecia Adapt Their Swimming To Changing Gravitational Force:
The researchers placed a vial with pond water and live paramecia inside a high-powered electromagnet at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla. The organisms are less susceptible to a magnetic field than plain water is, so the magnetic field generated inside the vial "pulls" harder on the water than on the cells. If the field is pulling down, the cells float. If it's pulling up, they sink.
Using water alone, Valles and Guevorkian were able to increase the effect of gravity by about 50 percent. To increase…