gregladen | February 10, 2012According to Rick Santorum, it is.
Strange.
Brad Johnson has context and analysis here.
I think Rick Santorum is trying to destroy America.
gregladen | February 10, 2012A team of researchers based in Namibia, South Africa, Australia and the United Kingdom now report fossils from a Namibian deposit that seem to be animals and apparently date to about 760 million years ago. This extends the known time span of animals on the planet by about 17 percent....
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gregladen | February 9, 2012A new multi-part special, Wild Mississippi will be first aired on February 12 at 6 Central on National Geographic Wild. I can't watch this when it is on because I don't get the channel on my TV, but I copped a review copy and have enjoyed it quite a bit.
Here's the description of the first episode:
Nat Geo WILD travels to the starting point of the mighty Mississippi River -- Lake Itasca in Minnesota, where the 2,350-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico begins. Harsh cannot begin to describe the winter in this region, where temperatures reach 33° below zero. Survival strategies are as…
gregladen | February 9, 2012When I was a kid, I saw a photograph in an old Life magazine of a man standing on the ice somewhere in the Arctic, and a killer whale breaking trough the ice, much of the whale's body out of the water, a very short distance from the man. The whale was so close to the man that it was hard to say if the wincing expression on his face was due to being splashed with cold seawater or the thought that he was about to be ruthlessly mauled and eaten by the most vicious and dangerous creature on Earth.
Those were the days...
Go read my latest post at Surprising Science. You might be surprised!
gregladen | February 9, 2012There is a learning technique pioneered in language studies by Pimsleur which makes sense: You learn a word (or some other thing) and over time forget it, and the "forgetting curve" is steep. But, if you re-encounter that same information while the curve is descending you learn it again and the descent into nothingness is shallower. Encounter it again and the line flattens out. This is why if you take a Pimsleur language course, they tell you to NOT study ahead; You are to use each module daily, not skipping a day and not doing two modules in one day. Very nice idea but not mathematically…
gregladen | February 9, 2012My State is better than your state! (Or Province or District.)
The No Child Left Behind Law, for better or worse, is a Federal program to make states to a better job in education. It is a fairly specific plan. But many states came up with their own plans which are different, yet in some cases, still considered effective. A state can apply for a waiver of the NCLB regulations if they have come up with an alternative that is as good or better.
The Federal government is reported to be prepared to grant waivers to ten states and they are, alphabetically: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana,…
gregladen | February 8, 2012The Russian probe destine for the Mars system never made it out of Earth Orbit and recently crashed back into Planet Earth. Why did the rocket ship fail? There has apparently been a lot of obfuscation of what caused this disaster, but now there is some better information. It may have been caused by a computer programming error.
From Irene Klotz at Discovery News:
In a report to be presented to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin on Tuesday, investigators concluded that the primary cause of the failure was "a programming error which led to a simultaneous reboot of two working…
gregladen | February 8, 2012... well, not really, but ...
No matter how interesting the big expensive science NASA does is, or how important the work is to understanding our planet and solar system or figuring out important problems, nothing is as cool as seeing your own house on a satellite photograph, as it were:
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded a scene on Jan. 29, 2012, that includes the first color image from orbit showing the three-petal lander of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit mission. Spirit drove off that lander platform in…
gregladen | February 8, 2012The following is a short version of the litany of global warming denialists' current rhetoric:
"Current pause in global warming"
"lack of global warming for well over 10 years now."
"There is no credible (statistically significant) data that says global warming is occurring"
"fifteen years of warming, then fifteen of cooling"
"The last decades "rate of warming" is flat."
"Forget global warming...no warming in 15 years."
Are these things true?
Here's Peter Gleick's take on it.
gregladen | February 8, 2012Rumors have been in the air for days, but we now think it confirmed that Russian Scientsts have penetrated the liquid part of Antarctica's Lake Vostok. The lake has been frozen over for something like 20 million years. Certainly there was life in it at the time. Is any of it still there? Has something new evolved? Just as interesting is question of paleoclimate data preserved, we hope, in the sediments at the bottom of the lake. The top section of the lake's bottom probably contains sediments that have formed over the last 20 million years, in the ice-bound southern lake, but below that…
gregladen | February 8, 2012If all the water currently trapped in all the glaciers across the entire world melted, the sea level would rise far more than most people imagine. Almost everyone living anywhere in the world at an elevation of below about 500 feet with a direct drainage to the sea would be directly affected; The sea level rise itself might be a bit over 300 feet, but oceans tend to migrate horizontally when they rise onto previously uninnundated land surfaces. So if you lived at 500 feet above sea level in most of Maine, you'd have a much shorter walk to the rocky shoreline, but if you lived at 500 feet…
gregladen | February 8, 2012At the moment, the Wandering Albatross of the Southern Ocean is getting a free ride; Changes in wind patterns due to Global Warming seem to enhance the efficiency of foraging of this pelagic bird. However, as Global Warming continues, this rare case of a positive benefit of anthropocentric climate change will probably reverse. Climatic hormesis, as it were.
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gregladen | February 8, 2012There is a guest commentary by Genie Scott at Real Climate:
Imagine you're a middle-school science teacher, and you get to the section of the course where you're to talk about climate change. You mention the "C" words, and two students walk out of the class.
Or you mention global warming and a hand shoots up.
"Mrs. Brown! My dad says global warming is a hoax!"
Or you come to school one morning and the principal wants to see you because a parent of one of your students has accused you of political bias because you taught what scientists agree about: that the Earth is getting warmer, and human…
gregladen | February 8, 2012I know some of you are Piercians, and some of you are interested in Neuroscience. So, without comment I give you this abstract of a recent paper:
Past experience provides a rich source of predictive information about the world that could be used to guide and optimize ongoing perception. However, the neural mechanisms that integrate information coded in long-term memory (LTM) with ongoing perceptual processing remain unknown. Here, we explore how the contents of LTM optimize perception by modulating anticipatory brain states. By using a paradigm that integrates LTM and attentional orienting,…
gregladen | February 7, 2012This August, Mars Science Robot Curiosity will land on the surface of the Angry Red Planet equipped with a Penny to tell how big things are.
The camera at the end of the robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has its own calibration target, a smartphone-size plaque that looks like an eye chart supplemented with color chips and an attached penny.
When Curiosity lands on Mars in August, researchers will use this calibration target to test performance of the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. MAHLI's close-up inspections of Martian rocks and soil will show details so tiny, the…
gregladen | February 7, 2012Should we worry about calderas, like Santorini or the Yellowstone Caldera, blowing up with little warning? Sort of, in geological time that is. Turns out that the period of time between not much happening and the buildup of magma prior to a major eruption is startlingly short.
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gregladen | February 5, 2012I support and endorse Sharon Sund for US Congress. Sharon will represent the Third District in Minnesota.
For years, the Third District, in which I live, was represented by a moderate Republican, Jim Ramstad. Though I never voted for him, it was not all that annoying that he was in Congress because, as I say, he was moderate. Ramstad was pro choice, suppored stem cell research, he was not anti science and he was pro gay rights (but did not support gay marriage). I mention all this because it should reflect the electorate of the 3rd District which he represented.
Around the time of his…