Search Content

Displaying results 50551 - 50600 of 87947

Scanning "Dakota"

Here's a short video about the famous Edmontosaurus specimen named "Dakota," focusing on how NASA technology was used to look inside the slabs containing the skeleton. There are a few things about Dakota that have been taken a little bit too far (i.e. just because Edmontosaurus had a deep tail does not mean that all hadrosaurs did, and it will be interesting to see how the Brachylophosaurus specimen "Leonardo" differs from Dakota), but the video is a good general overview of what has been released about the fossil to date;

Fimo Fractals

I feel bad: I am infringing on Karmen's territory.  She put up a delightful href="http://scienceblogs.com/chaoticutopia/2007/12/heres_wishing_you_the_very.php">fractal Christmas tree for everyone.  And she opened the title="Chaotic Utopia Curio Shop" href="http://www.cafepress.com/chaoticutopia" target="_blank">Chaotic Utopia Curio Shop to meet all of your fractal needs.  Be sure to check it out, especially if you do not have the patience or skill to make these yourself: These are featured on the blog, href="http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/fimofractals">Evil Mad…

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

As you've probably heard, Isis the Scientist has gotten herself some new digs around these parts. Her blog, "On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess," also got itself a shiny new banner. And while I've got to admit that I admire her for strongly-held opinions on footwear and other subjects, I'm disappointed by her obvious failure to cite her sources. Banners from my pre-partnered days, in order of creation. All of these banners far predate the creation of Dr. Isis's pretentious little blog. :)

Ramachandran at the Royal Society tonight

Neurologist and neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran is giving a talk at the Royal Society in London tonight. Entitled Nature and nurture in brain function: clues from synesthesia and phantom limbs, the talk begins at 6.30pm GMT. The lecture is free and does not require a ticket or advance booking, so if you're in London it's well worth attending. If you can't make it, the talk will be webcast live. I'll be there, as Ramachandran has been somewhat of an inspiration to me.  [Thanks Vaughan]

Banned from posting comments

The first person to be banned from commenting on this blog is Thought Provoker, aka Quantum Quack, for his trolling (that is, "making comments intended only to disrupt a thread and incite flames and confusion") and insipidity.  I will use the spam filter to prevent trolling, insipidity, stupidity, morphing, slagging, spamming, sockpuppetry and...ahem...wanking on this blog. (See Pharyngula's killfile dungeon for a definition of all these terms.) And I will be quite ruthless - Thought Provoker was given one warning about leaving irrelevant comments, but he persisted. 

Doesn't matter if you're black, white, or. . . plastinated?

If this story is to be believed, Body Worlds creator Gunther von Hagens is going to plastinate Michael Jackson. I have no objection to plastination per se, but I think it would be uniquely tragic for Michael Jackson to remain an object of invasive voyeurism after death. That's exactly what he was from his earliest childhood, and it seems to have affected his mental health so profoundly. Andrew Sullivan may have put it best: "He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell."

Wine on the weekend

This is the clever label for Chateau Skulls, a grenache blend from south Australia. Wikipedia sez, The label is an original artwork by István Orosz (b. 24 October 1951; Kecskemét) Hungarian painter, printmaker, graphic designer and animated film director, is known for his mathematically inspired works, impossible objects, optical illusions, double-meaning images and anamorphoses. The geometric art of István Orosz, with forced perspectives and optical illusions, has been compared to works by M. C. Escher." I blogged about Istvan Orosz earlier, in this post on anamorphosis.

Why wasn't this in the Ten Commandments?

This looks like a really good rule. Do not allow others to molest children, expose all molesters to authorities, they are the worst garbage to infest any society. Maybe it was on that set of tablets Moses smashed — it's certainly a more useful law than the ones about how to cook goats or what kind of clothes to wear or the injunction to do nothing useful on Sunday. But no, that's from the hobo ethical code. Isn't it nice that hobos have a better moral foundation than priests?

Peace Wreath Prevails Over Bigots

Thanks to Mustafa Mond, FCD for bringing this to my attention. The notorious peace wreath (reported on below) which was garnering a $25/day fine from the owner's homeowner association will stay put. According to the committee chairman, who was backpedaling so fast that it made it hard to hear him, the threatened fine was a "misunderstanding." Also, the owner of the wreath, Lisa Jensen, said that hundreds of strangers offered to pay the fine for her to keep up the wreath! The story had a happy ending after all.

Music Cognition Blog

I just got an email about a new blog on music cognition, Sound and Mind. From the email: The vision for Sound and Mind is to provide an interdisciplinary hub, a place for cognitive musicologists, scientists, and critical theorists to discuss and critique each other's work and to build professional relationships, potentially leading to collaborative projects. Go check it out. Coincidentally, I just got a copy of Levitin's This Is Your Brain On Music, though I'm not sure when I'm going to get to it. It looks interesting, though.

UCL launches iTunes platform

Today sees the launch of UCL's iTunes platform, which can be used to download, among other things, lectures and seminars. There's not much material on there yet, but the university promises that highlights of UCL on iTunes U will include: first-hand expert accounts of the history of neuroscience, produced by the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL a weekly audio round-ups of news from UCL [and] UCL's hugely popular Lunch Hour Lectures, providing the public with a behind-the-scenes look at cutting-edge research

Giant neural stem cells in Times Square

(Image: Kymmy Lorrain/BrainCells, Inc.) The two winners of GE Healthcare's 2007 IN Cell Image Competition will be going on display on the NBC screen in New York City's Times Square at 7pm on Friday, March 7th and Saturday, March 8th. This confocal image, which won the vote of the scientific panel of judges, shows cultured stem cells from the human neocortex. The cells are stained with antibodies for the neuronal marker Tuj1 (green), the glial cell marker GFAP (red) and DNA (blue).

A Car that Runs on Compressed Air!

This looks great! My only question is how much energy does it take to compress the air need for their 200km trip. That energy must come from somewhere (like a coal burning electricity plant). On the flip side, the cost can't be too high if 1.5 euros fills your tank. As a bonus I'm sure that some contraption could be designed that allows the driver to manually compress air through human power (in case you run out of air). Very cool stuff. (HT: Cliff Schecter)

Still Confused about siRNA vs. miRNA?

Here is an illustration from a recent PLoS Biology paper: Two complexes: 1- miRNA. Imperfect base pairing between the small RNA and the target. This complex sorts the RNA to p-bodies (processing bodies) where other proteins join in. The mRNA is either destroyed or stored. 2- siRNA. Perfect base pairing. The mRNA is destroyed and that's it. A picture is worth a thousand words. Ref: Chu Cy, Rana TM Translation Repression in Human Cells by MicroRNA-Induced Gene Silencing Requires RCK/p54. PLoS Biol (2006) 4(7): e210

Who doesn't love 110 acres of concrete on the ocean floor?

Business owner: So if we destroy 1.1 acres natural habitat all we have to do is put 110 acres of concrete on the ocean floor? Government: I am going to have to ask you to refrain from using concrete and use the government mandated 'artificial reef' Business owner: Umm...sorry artificial reef. Won't people get wise? Government: Nope...were promoting diversity...who doesn't like a reef? Scuba Business Owner: I like reef! I just love diving on old ships, planes, concrete, tires. Best dive spots ever! Sadly this is true.

Baby Walrus Gets Bling

Still trying to figure out where the dividing line is between my new project, ZooBorns, and Zooillogix, but this definitely spans the two. Sixteen-month-old Pacific walrus Akituusaq shows off his new set of titanium crowns at his home in Sea Cliffs at the New York Aquarium. "Aki" was fitted with these crowns by Wildlife Conservation Society Global Health Program veterinarians working with a dental consultant to protect his tusks from damage during growth. Aki seems to be adjusting well to his new armor.

Look at those leatherbacks go!

Friend of the blog LO alerted me to The Great Turtle Race, wherein a passel of leatherback sea turtles "race" from Playa Grande in Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands. The linked website it tracking the turtles via satellite, so you can watch their progress and root for your favorite. (I'm pulling for Stephanie Colburtle, "an intensely patriotic turtle who can fly through the water like an eagle".) There is also information there about leatherback sea turtle populations and ways you can help protect them.

Maybe I should offer a course in Born Again Christianity

After all, if the New Life church in Yorktown, Indiana can offer a course in the New Atheism, I must be qualified to discuss all the nuances and fluff and crazy beliefs of Christianity. I am most amused, though, by their choice of instructor. It's some fellow named Jim Spiegel, who derives his authority from having written a book about atheism. The title? The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief. Yeah, he has credibility. I wonder if that guy who made Reefer Madness ever published a textbook on neuropharmacology…

Proof that God exists!

Here it is, the proof from breast ironing. Simple selectionist models can't explain why human beings would mutilate secondary sexual characteristics and genitalia, therefore god exists. We also know the Christian right is exactly correct: God really does obsess over people's sex lives, and he is a kind of sick pervert who likes to hurt children. We can also suspect that he's probably male, since testicle flattening, penis knotting, and scrotum binding don't seem to come up often in his prescribed lists of genital abuses.

Programming note.

ScienceBlogs is getting a systems upgrade tonight. Among other things, this means that commenting is being turned off at 7:00 PM EST (although deceptively, the comment forms will still be visible), and new posts won't go up from about 7:00 PM EST until sometime tomorrow morning, when we hope the upgrade will be successfully completed. If you have something to share that just can't wait until the comments have been re-enabled, feel free to email me. I'll catch you on the flip-flop!

Drill, Baby, Drill

Biologist fears Gulf oil threat to dolphins "We will brace for the worst if the oil comes here, but we don't think there is any protection we can give to the dolphins if it does. What will happen if they can't move away from it? It scares the hell out of me," Randall Wells said in a telephone interview this morning, shortly after returning to his Sarasota laboratory after a morning on the water conducting an emergency survey of dolphins he has studied since 1970. source

Carnivals

I've not been good about posting current carnivals over the last week or so ... thus, some catching up: Scientiae Carnival: Fools and Foolishness at Women in Science The Second Carnival Of Mathematics: The Math Geeks are Coming to Town! at Good Math Bad Math Tangled Bank #102 at Further Thoughts Carnival of the Green at Conserve Plastic Bags Circus of the Spineless at from Archaea to Zeaxonthol Encephalon Goes to Paris (Hilton) at Of Two Minds MedBlogs Grand Rounds 4:28 at GruntDoc

Karen Armstrong: 2008 TED Prize wish: Charter for Compassion

As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.

Spitzer Makes Remarkable Bounceback

Governor Spitzer, only recently deposed for committing the crime of being a Democrat on the Republican Hit List, has already launched a new career as a Telescope: Spitzer Finds Organics and Water Where New Planets May Grow from PhysOrg.com Researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered large amounts of simple organic gases and water vapor in a possible planet-forming region around an infant star, along with evidence that these molecules were created there. They've also found water in the same zone around two other young stars. [...]

One form of Linux beats another form of Linux

From Slashdot: "After major improvements in SMP support in FreeBSD 7.0, benchmarks show it performing 15% better than the latest Linux kernels (PDF, see slides 17 to 19) on 8 CPUs under PostgreSQL and MySQL. While a couple of benchmarks are not conclusive evidence, it can be assumed that FreeBSD will once again be a serious performance contender. Some posters on LWN have noted that the level of Linux performance could be related to the Completely Fair Scheduler, which was merged into the 2.6.23 Linux kernel."

The Wedge Strategy

"The Wedge Strategy" refers to a document (the Wedge Document) developed by the Discovery Institute in 1998 and leaked by Tim Rhodes in 1999. It outlines a strategy to insinuate a specific subset of Christian Fundamentalism into the public education system. Although Wedge Proponents have denied this, the Wedge Strategy is still very much in use (more or less), so it is important for people interested in protecting our system of education from religious freaks to know about it. You can download a copy of it here (large PDF, 0.5 megabytes).

Robin Chase: Getting cars off the road and data into the skies

Robin Chase rose to fame by founding Zipcar, the world's biggest car-sharing business, but that was one of her smaller ideas. In this presentation she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a no-fee mesh network as sprawling as the United States Interstate highway system. But how could you build a free wireless system that vast and pervasive? Chase finds the answer in a few short lines from The Graduate. And it has nothing to do with plastic.

Grant writing open thread

While I'm trying to hammer my grant application into good enough shape to show my collaborator and given that it's been nearly a year since I did this last, now seems as good a time as any to have an open thread. Say your piece. Oh, and by the way, I see that HIV/AIDS denialists have infested Tara's brief post about Christine Maggiore. While you're waiting for more pearls of insolence from the fevered mind of Orac, you might want to give her some tactical air support.

Riyadh Lafta makes it to Canada

DWE reports: Dr. Lafta has now been allowed to visit Canada, where he is meeting with researchers from the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University. On Friday, he'll be participating in a live interactive webcast. Dr. Riyadh Lafta Al Mustansiriya University, Baghdad Iraq "Death in Iraq" Friday, July 20, 2007, 7:00 pm Live interactive Webcast in Seattle: UW School of Social Work, Room 305, 4101 15th Ave NE In Person: Wosk Center for Dialogue, 518 W. Hastings St. Vancouver BC, CANADA

How would you describe this graph of global sea level?

How would you describe this graph of global sea level from the University of Colorado? Well if you're Jennifer Marohasy, you call it a "dip in global sea level" and say that "since 2005 the steady upward trend has stumbled". The most recent observation is right on the long term trend line. You can get a better idea of trends with this version, which removes the effects of changes in air pressure and seasons: Who are you going to believe, Marohasy, or your lying eyes?

No, global warming hasn't stopped

John Lott claims: The final numbers will be out in March, but the initial information makes it look as if 2007 will be the coldest in a decade. So much for the claim that "the probability that 2007 would be the hottest year as 60 percent." NASA has 2007 tied for second, but he's referring to the RSS version of lower troposphere temperatures, which have 2007, far from being the coldest in a decade, in fifth place: Looks like someoen got caught by an error in the satellite data.

Dr. DB needs to be hit hard

So hit him. Hit him hard. He's 40,000 hits away from 1,000,000 visits. Help get him over the top. Given that I'm starting to get in that range (866,000 hits as of this morning), here's hoping someone will help me out in around two or three months, which is when I estimate that I'll be approaching 1,000,000. Of course, I'm looking forward to the blogging death match that Dr. DB will have to participate in once he hits 1,000,000.

Usenetters in denial over Rosh

Atrios mentions the Washington Post article on Mary Rosh. Meanwhile, Calpundit reports that Lott has backed out of doing an interview. I guess Lott is never going to answer these questions. Julian Sanchez has an update where he observes that over in talk.politics.guns some folks, having seen Lott's confession, three posts from Clayton Cramer and the Washington Post article have formed the only possible conclusion: there is a massive forgery campaign underway. Julian also points us to the US News article on Lott and Rosh.

Embryonic Cognition

I picked up my pen a few evenings ago, planning to take a few notes for upcoming posts. The following poem spilled onto the page, instead: Embryonic Cognition And so the twists tighten Embracing us in the grip Of convergence Spinning helplessly Towards emergence A burgeoning mind Of the societal body Do we think? Do we know? Or do we cry out Like helpless children Echoing a lonely fear A collective infant voice Rising from the clamor "Am I the only one?" But does the mother listen? KLF (9/11/2006)

The difference between objects and scenes... random thoughts

I'm in the middle of my qualification exams and ran across this interesting paper: Liu, Z Kersten, D Knill, DC Dissociating stimulus information from internal representation--a case study in object recognition. Vision research. 1999; 39(3): 603-12. However, I'm very confused about them calling the figure on the left an object. This is a collection of objects in 3D space - making it a scene. I'm not sure that this nullifies their model - but this is not object recognition. People should really start using ideal observer analysis with scene perception...

Science Creative Quarterly

In addition to containing the Truth, the Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ) contains a whole lot of really excellent science writing. Some of it is by ScienceBloggers, but much of it is not. I recently heard of the site from a Signout reader named Benjamin Langer, who himself has a very nice critical piece on intelligent design in the current edition of SCQ. Why I hadn't heard about this publication before, I don't know. I can only hypothesize that I perhaps have been living under a rock. I have become a linking machine. Man, do I need a day off.

Guilty Planet Heads to the Gulf

President Obama called it "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced." So I thought I should face it and head to the Gulf. With me is Jessie Lozier, who I have known all of her 18 years (here we are in 1998 and today at our hotel in the French Quarter). As a future biologist and possible veterinarian/science journalist, I thought this would also be good for her to see. We'll be blogging from our trip regularly over the next ten days. I am also now on Twitter. More soon...

Arctic Goo: Dat New New

Well, it may not be as hip and fresh as Kid Cudi's track Dat New New (pardon the unusual digression, but he is from Ohio...), but a 12-mile slick of arctic goo has hit the streets -- or at least the oceans -- around arctic Alaska. According to The Anchorage Daily News, the goo is organic (not oil, but some kind of organism) and one coast guard official said the following: "It kind of has an odor; I can't describe it." Arctic Goo: Dat New New.

That's a Wrap!

Hard to believe it's already been two weeks, but the Microcosm edition of the ScienceBlogs Book Club has come to an end. Please stay tuned in this spot for news about future installments of the Club. If you have any comments or suggestions about what you'd like to see in the future, or how we can make the Club better, please leave them in the comments below, or drop us an email. We'd love to hear from you. Photo by seriykotik1970 on Flickr.

Acetaldehyde (The gross center of the alcohol metabolism chocolate)

Acetaldehyde is an intermediate metabolite of alcohol: It's the first stop for ethanol on the way to benign acetate. Aldehydes tend to be short-lived and toxic species because of their reactivity, and acetaldehyde is no different. On the way to your hangover, though, alcohol goes from ethanol to acetaldehyde (via alcohol dehydrogenase) to acetate (via aldehyde dehydrogenase). Many east Asians, interestingly, lack an adequate supply of aldehyde dehydrogenase, and they experience a sort of accelerated hangover on consumption of even moderate amounts of alcohol.

Seroquel/Quetiapine (Give me a calmative!)

Seroquel antagonizes serotonin, dopamine, and histamine, but it doesn't look a whole lot like any of these: The benzothiazepene (benzene fused to the seven-membered ring containing nitrogen and sulfur) ring system bears a little resemblance to the benzodiazepines, the class to which Valium belongs, but sulfur and nitrogen are completely different kettles of fish from almost every standpoint - not to mention the rest of the ligand, particularly the piperazine (six-membered ring containing two nitrogens) moiety. Seroquel finds use as an antipsychotic, along with numerous off-label uses.

The World Science Festival!

The World Science Festival starts today in New York City with tons of exciting events from BioArt to The Science of Star Trek and all sorts of great stuff in between! If you can't make it to New York there's also a twitter page and a blog here on ScienceBlogs accompanying the event that you can follow along with, and I had the chance to write a post over there about how I got into science as a kid. So go check it out! "What if Science Were Like Sports?" Here's a little teaser:

New blog to follow: Genomics Law Report

A quick pointer to a new blog on the genomics scene that's just been officially launched: Genomics Law Report, a corporate blog from legal firm Robinson, Bradshaw and Hinson. One of the contributors, Dan Vorhaus, is an advisor to the Personal Genome Project and provides one of the highest signal-to-noise ratio genomics feeds on Twitter. Dan's latest post, an excellent analysis of 23andMe's latest push into consumer-driven research, is a good place to start reading.  Subscribe to Genetic Future.  Follow me on Twitter.

Editor's Selections: Touch, Phobias, and Temperature

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week. "Whether it's a raised eyebrow or curl of the lip, we usually think of emotions as conveyed through facial expressions and body language," writes BPS Research Digest's Christian Jarrett. But, how well can we communicate emotions purely through touch? A great explainer post from the Neurobites blog. Exploring Phobias in the Brain. An Introduction. Can fruit flies use their antennae to sense temperature? The answer seems to be yes, and the HighMag blog has the pictures to prove it.

...and Geico Commercials

Some biologist in Poland said this: "A scientist showed me a picture of an American boxer. He had all the traits of Neanderthal man. These people are among us. They are part of the human race, probably more prevalent once upon a time, but who still exist." Apparently those dudes from the Geico commercials are practicing the sweet science. But there are Neanderthals among us. Razib knows about them . . . Big ups to whoever comes up with the best Polish invention for this item. (Via The Panda's Thumb.)

Alfred Wallace, Optical Engineer

Alfred Russel Wallace, the other guy who came up with the theory of natural selection, was quite the Renaissance man Victorian Era Superscientist. An essay in this week's issue of Nature reports the discovery of a letter from Wallace to William Talbot on a way to improve the mirrors used in telescopes. You can read the letter here. I won't touch on the science, but apparently Wallace mastered optics by the age of 20. Not bad for a guy who also happens to be known as the father of biogeography.

Congrats Reed

Dr. Reed Cartwright has successfully defended his doctoral dissertation. Reed's a Panda's Thumb contributor and theoretical population geneticist. We'll forgive him for the second point, seeing as how he did have my academic grandfather as an advisor. The Panda's Thumb was the great inspiration for me to start blogging. I found a link to the website from EvolDir, and the rest was history. I'm a day late on this. Some of us are still working toward that elusive dissertation and fall behind on things like blog reading.

Get it? Got it. Good.

This week, the SEED kings are asking us: "If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?" This is the first thing that comes to mind, and the scientific method is a good answer as well. I'm going to take a step back and say the public should understand what science is. That way they can tell the difference between this and science. From there, an understanding of evolution should come naturally. Answers to last weeks question can be found here.

She's Fast Enough For You, Old Man

All of the ScienceBloggers are taking the quiz to determine which science fiction spaceship on which they belong. The quiz has 48 questions, so I'm not taking it on principle. Also, I don't particularly like sci-fi (or SF, or whatever the hell it goes by these days) . . . and I haven't heard of most of these movies or shows that the ships are from. If it were up to me, I'd be on board the Millennium Falcon if it were captained by Chris Walken with Jack Lemmon riding shotgun.

Call for Mendel's Garden #26 Submissions

The 26th edition of Mendel's Garden will be hosted by A Free Man on December 7. If you have written a blog post about any topics in Genetics in the past month or so, send a link to Chris (chris[at]afreeman[dot]org) to be included in the carnival. We're also looking for hosts for upcoming editions. If you would like to host the original genetics blog carnival, send me an email (evolgen-at-yahoo-dot-com). Every month from February onward is available.