Search Content

Displaying results 16301 - 16350 of 87950

The Friday Fermentable: Happy Birthday Wine Authorities!

I can't believe that it's only been a year. Back in March I wrote about the importance of local wine shops, community resources just as important as your library or local farmer. Therein I sang the praises of my local heros, Seth Gross and Craig Heffley, proprietors of Wine Authorities in Durham, NC, and their then-recent ink in Food & Wine magazine. My latest Wine Authorities favorite is an unusual German Pinot Noir Spätlese from Weingut Schäfer in Mettelheim (US$18.99). Yes. Red. German. A German Rhinehessen red. An overripe red. No kidding. Their notes, accessible on their…

Brains of gay people resemble those of straight people of opposite sex

The differences between heterosexual and homosexual people are as much the subject of fascinating science as they are a source of social debate. And in many cases, the former can help to inform the latter. There is now plenty of research which shows that a person's sexual orientation, far from being a phase or a lifestyle choice, is a reflection of fixed properties of their brain that develop at an early age. A new study adds new weight to this evidence by using brain-scanning technology to look at the differences between the brains of gay and straight people. Ivanka Savic and Per Lindstrom…

The Florida Keys are Oil-Free!

KEY WEST, FL - After a few days of work and research discussions here, it's time for a couple days of true vacation. The Family Pharmboy chose to leave the 101°F of North Carolina for the cooler and breezier climes of the gorgeous and peaceful Florida Keys. We're here to right a wrong and to also dump this year's summer vacation cash with some of our old and new friends who are currently being adversely affected by the terrible news on the northern Gulf Coast. However. There is no BP Deepwater Horizon oil in the Florida Keys. Repeat: There is no BP Deepwater Horizon oil in the Florida Keys.…

Pregnant pauses and rapid-fire - how do different cultures take turns to talk?

Talking with someone comes so naturally that we forget sometimes how skilful it is. Rhythms of conversation and cues of grammar need to be judged so that people can take their turns at talking without cutting off their partner or without leaving pregnant pauses. The former is rude, the latter awkward. That's certainly how things are usually conducted in English, but a new study suggests that this pattern of turn-taking  applies across human cultures. By studying 10 languages from all over the world, Tanya Stivers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics discovered a universally…

The Book of Exogenesis

The Book of Exogenesis: In the beginning was the word, and the word was a meteorite... Earlier this month, a report, based on NASA studies of meteorites found on Earth, suggested that some building blocks of DNA may have been formed in space. As it turns out, DNA components have been found on meteorites before, but it's never been entirely clear if the space rocks came to Earth bearing these molecules, or if they were contaminated upon arrival. Furthermore, this recent study of meteorites was the first to discover trace amounts of three molecules -- purine, 2,6-diaminopurine, and 6,8-…

Like Taking Candy From A Baby

...err..well, not exactly. But it is a much easier way for a 45 ton sperm whale to get a quick bite to eat. This amazing footage of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) shaking cod fishing lines 108 m deep off the coast of Sitka, Alaska, is the first ever of sperm whales feeding - albeit not on its usual prey, the massive squids of the deep sea. Most of the time, sperm whales dive to a staggering 900 to 2600 feet (that's up to half a mile or so deep) to catch their meals. At such depths, with no light and such a wide expanse, filming feeding is nigh impossible. But we do know that eating…

The Extinction of the Hundsheim Rhino - Being a Generalist Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be

The skeleton of the Hundsheim rhinoceros, Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis. From Kahlke and Kaiser, 2010. In any given environment, it might be expected that a generalized or unspecialized species might be less prone to extinction than one which depends upon a narrow temperature range, a peculiar kind of food, or other aspect of natural history which is key to its survival. An herbivorous mammal which can subsist on a variety of grasses, leaves, and other plant foods, for example, may be more likely to survive an ecological disruption than a species tied to foliage which might die back during…

Using Extragalactic Particles To Calibrate An Atom Smasher

By Angela Leroux-Lindsey Hold out your hand: Look closely. If you're outside on a sunny day, you might see dust motes and pollen dance in the air, perhaps landing on your skin, and bright rays of sunlight peek between your fingers. To the naked eye, your skin provides a barrier between your body and these exterior elements. The light refracts around your palm, not through it. But microscopically, the air is filled with particles that have the ability to traverse solid matter. Sunlight is actually composed of tiny “packets,” or quanta, of light called photons. Most structures built of wood or…

Meet Anoiapithecus, the flat-faced fossil ape

The face of Anoiapithecus. From Moya-Sola et al. (2009). One of the most controversial aspects of the whole Darwinius kerfuffle has been the primate's proposed status as "the ancestor of us all." The fossil, named "Ida", has been popularly touted as the "missing link" connecting us to all other mammals, but how can we really know if Darwinius fits this role? The truth is that we can't, and it is nearly impossible to parse direct ancestor-descendant relationships among fossil vertebrates, especially when we're talking about a fossil that lived over 40 million years before the first…

Personal genomics in 2008: the year in review

Nature has a list of the top news stories of 2008, and "Personal genomics goes mainstream" comes up second: In January, an international consortium announced the launch of the 1,000 Genomes Project, which aims to provide a catalogue of human genetic variation. In October, the Personal Genome Project, which hopes to sequence and publish the genomes of as many people as possible, released initial data for ten participants. Meanwhile, as researchers wondered what they could glean from the results coming from personal-genomics companies, the prices of such services dropped. The firm 23andMe,…

Fantastical Fridays: NMR Goes Natural, Baby!

There are a number of approaches scientists take to get at the fundamental nature of life, and one of those is elucidating the chemical structures of the molecules that make life happen, particularly proteins, which are the workhorses of the cell. One of the two primary methods for determining these structures is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and the other is x-ray crystallography. My current work is in the former, meaning I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a huge magnet and even more time staring at a computer screen trying to make sense of the data I get from the magnet. As…

Are You Getting More Radiation than Tokyo? It Depends

This article was co-authored with Dr. Rama Hoetzlein, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Media Technology at the Aalborg University at Copenhagen. Dr. Hoetzlein prepared the graphic. With increasing concern about radiation exposure in Japan and beyond, you might wonder: How much radiation am I getting? It depends... Note that Dr. Hoetzlein and I are not experts in nuclear engineering; this graphic has been prepared using authoritative source material and is intended as a general guide. This visualization shows a map of low level ionizing radiation levels received from…

Templeton prayer study meets expectations

I have no idea how this stuff gets published. I've been sent a new paper that tests the effect of prayer, and I was appalled: it's got such deep methodological problems that nothing can be concluded from it, but that doesn't stop the authors, who argue that they're seeing that Proximal Intercessory Prayer improves vision and hearing in people in Mozambique.Proximal Intercessory Prayer (PIP) is their very own term for what they do, to distinguish it from distant prayer. What is it, you may ask? Here is their protocol. Western and Mozambican Iris and Global Awakening [two evangelical/…

A closer look at the Eyjafjallajökull ash

The ash plume from Eyjafjallajökull, piercing the cloud deck above the volcano. Image courtesy of the Icelandic Met Office, taken on May 13, 2010. See the latest report on the eruption. With all the rapid fire news on eruptions as of late, combined with my busy schedule during the school year, I haven't been able to post as many articles on some basic aspects of volcanology. I will try to remedy some of this over the summer and the first will look at volcanic ash and specifically the ash from Eyjafjallajökull. I've taken some photomicrographs of the ash from Eyjafjallajökull (sent to me…

Comments of the Week #169: from a theory of everything to discovering today's Universe

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.” -Isaac Asimov Just like every week, we've had a slew of new stories to share with you here on Starts With A Bang! It's been great fun to put these stories together, to share a new corner of the Universe with you, and to explore what's going on at the frontiers of science together. Want to take a look at everything that' happened, in case you missed anything? Let's take a look: How close are we to a theory of everything? (for Ask Ethan), Jupiter's Great Red Spot gets its first-…

What's the difference between HeLa and HeLa S3 cells? Part II: The life and careers of Florence Rena Sabin, MD

This post is the second in a series on the origin and history of HeLa S3 cells. The first post can be found here. In this post, we discuss the life and careers (yes, careers) of the remarkable physician-scientist, Florence Rena Sabin. "Too bad you're not a boy, you would have made a good doctor." Florence Rena Sabin was born in the mining town of Central City, Colorado, on November 9, 1871, two years after her sister and lifelong companion, Mary. Florence's father. George Sabin, had moved from Vermont to Colorado in the midst of the Colorado gold rush and a notable 1859 gold strike between…

Lost Near Helsinki

tags: Lost, nature, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day This is the view from the view from the bus stop where I became temporarily lost, outside Helsinki, Finland. Image: GrrlScientist, 6 March 2009 [larger view].

PostRank

I'm trying out a new side-bar widget from PostRank. It's intended to grab browsing readers and send them on from wherever they enter the blog to other posts that have recently proved popular. Whaddayathink?

Friday Cephalopod: the lonely fisherman

It's a quiet, lonely life for a squid in the deep, just drifting along, dangling a pair of lines, hoping to snag dinner. There are two videos of this squid, one from 2014 and another from 2013.

Hypsugines: an assemblage of 'pipistrelle-like non-pipistrelles' (vesper bats part XV)

As we've seen throughout this series (see links below for previous parts), recent phylogenetic studies have found a number of 'pipistrelle-like non-pipistrelles' to form a novel clade previously unsuspected from morphological studies [composite above shows - l to r - Hypsugo cf. joffrei (from Kruskop & Shchinov (2010)), Neoromicia capensis (from Fernloof Nature Reserve), and Laephotis botswanae]. Following Roehrs et al. (2010), I'll refer to this as the 'hypsugine group'. Hypsugines occur across the Old World and Australasia, and at the 'core' of the group are the Hypsugo species.…

Amazing social life of the Green iguana

Hooray: another of those articles that I've been promising to publish for weeks and weeks. Thanks mostly to the importance of the species in the international pet trade, the Green iguana Iguana iguana is typically imagined as a rather uninspiring lizard that sits around on branches all day long, occasionally munching on salad or sitting in its water bowl. It's true that some captive individuals become remarkably charismatic and idiosyncratic, but for the most part the Green iguana is generally thought of as a rather dull animal that doesn't really do much of interest. Today we're going to…

Feathers and filaments of non-avian dinosaurs, part I

By now most people know that feathers are no longer unique to birds. Thanks mostly to a series of wonderful fossils from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning Province, China, we now know that feathers first appeared in non-avian theropods, and were - later on - inherited by early birds... What doesn't seem so widely recognised is that several researchers had been predicting the presence of feathers in non-avian theropods for an awfully long time, it's just that these people had been mostly dismissed as cranks indulging in way too much speculation. As it happens, the logic they…

Britain's lost tree frogs: sigh, not another 'neglected native'

If you like amphibians and non-avian reptiles, Britain is a crappy place to live: we have just three native lizard species, three snakes, three newts, two toads and two frogs. But do we have a few more: are various 'neglected natives' lurking in our midst? This depauperate herpetofauna mostly owes itself to the fact that Britain was glaciated for most of the time that it was connected to the European mainland, and by the time conditions were more equable there was a window of just a few thousand years before (at about 7000 years ago) the English Channel formed. As a result of all this the…

Oh no, not another new Wealden theropod!

I think I said recently that there have been way too many dinosaurs on Tet Zoo lately. It isn't that I don't like dinosaurs: it's just that I aim to provide balance and, let's face it, writing about charismatic megafauna all the time - especially dead charismatic megafauna - doesn't help. However, I'm sure you'll all forgive me for discussing my own published research. Last week another new paper came out with my name on it; hey, I'm fourth author of four, but it all counts, right? It's on another new bloody dinosaur... Given that I write on Tet Zoo about such diverse subjects as the global…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

As always on Tuesdays late in the evening, there is a bunch of new papers published in PLoS ONE and here are my personal favourites of the week: Oxytocin Increases Generosity in Humans: Human beings routinely help strangers at costs to themselves. Sometimes the help offered is generous--offering more than the other expects. The proximate mechanisms supporting generosity are not well-understood, but several lines of research suggest a role for empathy. In this study, participants were infused with 40 IU oxytocin (OT) or placebo and engaged in a blinded, one-shot decision on how to split a sum…

Comments of the Week #46: from the Universe's timeline to Pluto

“Time is the longest distance between two places.” -Tennessee Williams I'm always stoked to give you weekly recaps at Starts With A Bang, just in case there's anything you missed. We saw some fantastic posts this week, including two amazing contributions from Brian Koberlein and Amanda Yoho! Here's what we saw: The timeline of the Universe (for Ask Ethan), Superman vs. Baseball (for our Weekend Diversion), The Cat's-Eye Nebula (for Mostly Mute Monday), From Heaven to Earth, (a Jovian treat by Brian Koberlein) The Big Bang by Balloon, (a story of cosmic exploration by Amanda Yoho), Impending…

Architecture of the VLPFC and its Monkey/Human Mapping

If you ever said to yourself, "I wonder whether the human mid- and posterior ventrolateral prefrontal cortex has a homologue in the monkey, and what features of its cytoarchitecture or subcortical connectivity may differentiate it from other regions of PFC" then this post is for you. Otherwise, move along. The mid/posterior ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (pars opercularis and pars triangularis, or Brodmann's Areas 44 and 45) is very clearly different, both anatomically and functionally, from its anterior sector (which involves the pars orbitalis, or Brodmann's Area 47). It is also probably…

Blowing smoke over secondhand smoke

I'm currently in Las Vegas anxiously waiting for The Amazing Meeting to start. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2007. "What do you think about second hand smoke?" he asked me. I sensed…

Afghanistan: thumb on the scale

Some needs to edit this to add faces from the Obama administration to those from the Bush administration. Because lives are still in the balance and Obama has his thumb on the scale. Jackson Browne:

Making the Web Work for Science (video)

Making the Web Work for Science - Full from Jordan Mendelson on Vimeo. From left to right: Tim O'Reilly, Jimmy Wales, Stephen Friend and John Wilbanks - via Jonathan (there is also a shorter summary version here)

Clock Quotes

Doctor Legsandbrains: "Apart from being a complete failure, the experiment was a great success". - Phillip Jose Farmer (January 26, 1918 - February 25, 2009, R.I.P.), from "Only Who Can Make a Tree?" in "Book of Phillip Jose Farmer", 1971.

Star Wars Versus Star Trek, Courtesy of Lego

tags: star wars, star trek, lego, streaming video This is an amusing fan-flick using starships made from legos, showing a battle between the starship enterprise and the x-wing fights from star wars [3:16]

New Single From Qoph

Qoph is an excellent heavy psych rock outfit from Lidingö not far from where I live, and I'm really excited to learn that their third album is on its way! Here's the first single. I like it!

One eel-powered Christmas tree is cool, but don't take it too far

No. "If we could gather all the electric eels from all around the world," they would free their imprisoned brother from his Yuletide servitude and bio-tase the crap out of you, bro. Just sayin'.

Interview with me

Bora Zivkovic, my fellow SciBling from 'A Blog Around the Clock', was gracious enough to interview me as part of his interview series from the 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Check it out here.

Factoid of the Day

From Dean Baker: If physicians in the United States received the same pay as physicians in Europe, this step alone would save $80 billion a year from the country's health care bill - approximately $800 per family.

Comments of the Week #153: from the expanding Universe to the CMB's location

"Science and religion are both the same thing. They're there; they're life. If it's not science, it's not a fact." -Chuck Berry We always take pride in what we put out into the world here at Starts With A Bang, and I like to think that all of you take that same pride in everything you do. Before we get into anything else, I have some sad news to share with you: one of our long-time commenters, known here as MandoZink, has died of cancer. (He also commented elsewhere as BeyondApsis, if you knew or encountered him elsewhere.) His real name was Ron. He was so curious about everything; he loved…

Kefli

Kefli was my second horse, back in Yugoslavia. I raised him from foal until he was almost 3 years old. I sold him a few days before I left for he US. I just got a picture of him, from a few years later:

EurekAlert! update

I got my rejection letter from EurekAlert earlier today. Apparently, the wording of the letter is somewhat different from what Hsien Li got a few days back and she has now posted both versions for you to compare.

Helsinki Mereltä Nähtynä

tags: travel, culture, Suomenlinna, Helsinki, Finland, cities, photography Helsinki Mereltä Nähtynä. Photographed from the ferry as it returned to Helsinki from Suomenlinna in Finland. Image: GrrlScientist, 20 May 2010 [larger view] Canon SX100 IS.

Those lovely squiddy colors

This is a wonderfully done, very clear explanation of squid color, made using simple hand-drawn animation. See, this is communicating science! CreatureCast Episode 1 from Casey Dunn on Vimeo. (From the Creature Cast at the Dunn lab)

Criss-Cross

From CosmicVariance and Baez Fun, high symmetry, exact solutions of the N-body Coulomb problem. From Cris Moore's web page at the Santa Fe Institute Pretty. Everybody is doing it, might as well Google it on.

America: Putting Swedes into shock since the death of Roosevelt

Every once in a while, someone from Sweden notices American politics. The state of the nation may make us residents weep, but at least we can be entertained by the startled expressions of horror from the foreigners.

Weird & wonderful stuff at Zooillogix

Zooillogix is the latest addition to ScienceBlogs.com. It's chock full of weird and wonderful stuff from the animal kingdom, like the Peter's elephant nose fish, which detects prey using electrical fields emitted from its chin.

Botanical Wednesday: Acacias have the scariest fruit ever

Jehovah should have said, "But you must never eat from the tree of the knowledge of lions because when you eat from it, you will certainly die." That would have been a credible threat. (via National Geographic)

Hitchens on Falwell, via Fox

Some more priceless quotes from Chris Hitchens regarding the late Jerry Falwell, including "If you gave Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox". Thanks to Bill from Dover and mg for the heads-up.

From the Archives: Interview with Michael Morgan of Morgan & Claypool

I'm on my annual summer hiatus for the month of July so I'll be only publishing my weekly Friday Fun posts as well as re-posting some of the interviews I did a few years ago on the old blog with people from the publishing, library and science worlds. Not that my posting of late has been particularly distinguishable from the hiatus state, but such is the blogging life after nearly ten years: filled with ups, downs, peaks, valleys. This interview with Mike Morgan is from April 24, 2007. ===================================== It's time for another in my occasional series of scitech publishing/…

Pumas of South Africa, cheetahs of France, jaguars of England

In the previous article (required reading) we looked at European leopards. But the leopard wasn't the only big spotted Panthera species that lived in Europe during the Pleistocene: it was joined by a second, far less well known animal: Panthera gombaszoegensis (originally Leo gombaszoegensis Kretzoi, 1938). This cat seems to have been very jaguar-like and in fact the name 'European jaguar' is often used for it. In fact, it may actually be a jaguar - that is, a member of the species Panthera onca - and some cat experts classify it as an extinct Panthera onca subspecies (Hemmer et al. 2001,…

The armadillodile diaries, a story of science ethics

In the previous post we introduced the aetosaurs, a strange and fascinating group of armour-plated quadrupedal Triassic crurotarsans. Equipped with stout limbs, a strange upturned snout and (usually) toothless jaw tips, aetosaurs have been interpreted as omnivores, herbivores, and even as armadillo-like generalists. But it's not just their lifestyles that have been the subject of controversy. By following the publication dates of various recent technical papers on these animals, it seems that some aetosaur workers themselves have been acting in a controversial manner... Aetosaur fossils were…

Comments of the Week #65: from the highest temperature to the Earth's tilt

“We are a singularity that makes music out of noise because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.” -Jack Gilbert Although you had lots to say, it came almost exclusively on two of our posts, so let's jump right in and see if we can expand what we've been talking about on your Comments of the Week! Image credit: Ethan Shipulski, via http://mindblowingphysics.pbworks.com/w/page/52081285/Graviton%202012.   From Denier on temperature limits and singularities: "If at “some high temperature, you will restore the potential that caused our…