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Qwiki Science

I've been playing a bit with the alpha of Qwiki, a new website that offers users an innovative "information experience." The site collects images, videos, and text about topics from the internet and then displays the images future-aesthetically while reading the information in a delightful robot voice. There are still some kinks to work out, but overall it's kind of cute and fun! Here is Qwiki Science: And Qwiki Science Heroes--Carl Sagan: Just like on wikipedia, it's easy to fall into a procrastination spiral clicking on related links, but it's worth signing up and poking around!

The Evolution of an Internet Meme

I sort of love the "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" posters that have become the darling of interior decorating bloggers and graphic design jokesters alike in the past few years. I even have one of the posters hanging in my apartment. Then I saw Merlin's version. At first I LOLed, and then I was like "huh." How did we get here? How did this meme evolve from stoic World War II propaganda to hilarious Richard Dawkins jokes? And thus, the phylogenetic tree of "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" posters was born: High res here.

Fruit Fly Brain Redux: Readers' Favorites?

My recent posting, The Fruit Fly Brain Atlas Emerges generated quite a bit of interest from readers, perhaps because most of us are visual learners, including myself. One reader's comment reminded me how fun it was to explore the FlyCircuit database. It's easy to register; once you're in, you can not only browse the more than 16,000 neurons (I know...) but you can view 3D movies. I invite readers to send me via email your favorite image or movie, and why, and I'll post a future article compiling them. I think this will be fun!

Darwin's Letters: Interactive Timeline As a Teaching Tool

Anyone wanting to learn about Darwin's theories would do well to read his original letters. Thanks to an amazing resource from the University of Cambridge, the "Darwin Correspondence Project", you can access a treasure trove of his letters in an interactive timeline. This resource addresses: Darwin and Science Darwin and Religion Darwin and Ecology Darwin and Gender Darwin and Geology Darwin and Human Nature Enjoy the feast! Typical letters exchanged by Darwin and his closest friend, Joseph Dalton Hooker (© Cambridge University Library) Thanks, Karen James, for the tip!

Lab grown meat - what's the worst that could happen?

A cross posting from my Posterous space - a short imagining some implications of lab-grown meat. He was a huge man, thick forearms dotted with burns and pale scars. He spoke in a dull monotone about the unique difficulties in preparing synthetic meat. Roscoe wondered how much he weighed, and tried to calculate how much that would be worth when sold in Longpig wrappers. As he spoke, Roscoe noticed the chef was absent-mindedly palpating his own arm, as if feeling for the texture of the meat under his skin. Read Transubstantiation

The incessant hum of the insect heart

If you could press your ear to a ladybird's chest, what would you hear? Not the steady thump thump of a human heart, but something quite different. Discovery News reports on work carried out by Igor Sokolov and his team at Clarkson University, who used an atomic force microscope to listen to the faint sounds emanating from inside living insects. Listen to a ladybird The researchers used this atomic stethoscope to record the internal sounds of other insects including a fly and a mosquito, which you can listen to here. The work is published in Applied Physics Letters.

Why is science important?

Some time back film-maker Alom Shaha asked me to contribute to a project he was working on entitled Why is Science Important?. I'm pleased to see that the finished film is now complete, featuring such luminaries as Adam-Hart Davis, Professor Robin Weiss, Prof. Marcus du Sautoy, A.C. Grayling and Susan Blackmore, and skipping from Antarctic survey to rocket lab to fusion reactor. You can watch the film in individual clips here, or as a single half-hour film here. You can also contribute your thoughts as to why science is important by leaving a message here.

Chimpanzee Curiosity (Video)

The awesome videos just keep on coming. Check out this one from National Geographic. A juvenile chimp and her mother set out to do some fishing for termites in Congo's Goualougo Triangle, but the juvenile spots something interesting - an apparently not-so-well hidden camera - and investigates. I think it's so fascinating to see how the chimp approaches and investigates a new object. First by visually examining it, then by poking with a stick, and then by feeling it with her hand. Unfortunately, I can't embed it here, so go check it out on the Nat Geo site!

Welcome to the Blogiversity

I just realized that the (relatively) recent ScienceBlogs addition Dynamics of Cats is authored by a faculty member from my university. It only took me two months after he came on board to notice Steinn Sigurðsson's academic affiliation. The two of us, along with Monsieur Bérubé, are representing the school quite well. Additionally, my alma mater has a few bio-bloggers. Sadly, there is also a growing movement of anti-science on the hill. How is the blogging scene at your University? If you aren't an academic, how's the blogging scene in your town or community?

Scientific Literacy and Partisanism

Read this article. It deals with scientific literacy, politics, and religion in the United States, focusing on stem cells and evolution. Here's a taste: To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. To find out what I think about rephrasing the question and substituting "develop" for "evolve…

Iran Also Has Molecular Markers

It looks like the United States is not the only nation sending molecular markers into orbit. From the New York Times: The spacecraft is small by world standards -- a microsatellite of a few hundred pounds. Launched in October by the Russians for an oil-rich client, it orbits the earth once every 99 minutes and reportedly has a camera for peering down on large swaths of land. The punch line comes in the next paragraph: the satellite is owned by Iran. No report as to whether it's a CA or AT repeat.

Editor's Selections: Colin Firth, Beer, and Octopodes

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week: Liberals Are Conflicted and Conservatives Are Afraid and Colin Firth is published in Current Biology. From the Neurocritic. Despite what beer commercials tell you, not everyone responds to alcohol in the same way. The Science Life blog discusses the science of drinking. How does an octopus integrate its visual perception with its motor actions in order to navigate? Seems simple, but a great post at Cephalove suggests that it might not be as easy as it sounds. If you're an octopus, that is.

DonorsChoose Update

The latest word on the ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose fundraising challenge is that as of Tuesday the total amount of donations had reached $12,325.59, plus $10,000 in matching funds from Seed. Here at The Scientific Activist we've raised $345.00 in generous donations, bringing us to 7% of our ambitious goal of $5,000. That's great progress, but I know we can do even better than that! It's a great cause--helping to bring quality science education into our schools--and any donation, regardless of its size, is a positive step forward. To donate, click here! "http://www.donorschoose.org/images…

The Turning of an Atheist

He's not an atheist! He's found god! This atheist is no more! He has ceased to be (an atheist)! He's found god on his way to meet his maker! He's a deist! Bereft of doubt, he thinks no more! If you hadn't written his book for him, he'd be wandering around a nursing home dribbling spit! His intellectual processes are now history! He's off his rocker! He's kicked his skepticism, he's lost his marbles, run away from reason and joined the bleedin anti-science brigade!! THIS IS AN EX-ATHEIST!!!

I get cranky about bad science to drive away intellectually deficient partners

That's my hypothesis, and I'm sticking to it. My obnoxious, curmudgeonly ways must be an adaptation, selected by evolution over many generations to optimize my mating opportunities by forcing stupid people to flee from my presence. Hey, that's as good as the explanation that PMS evolved to drive away infertile mates, don't you think? I wonder if I can get it published somewhere. But no! Bethany Brookshire and Rebecca Watson have ruined it all for everyone by exposing the fallacious reasoning behind my argument! See, this is why everyone hates the uppity ladies.

Why IQ matters - a graph.

Note from Sandra: Steve posted this as a joke, for being so outrageous as to be self-parody. It's hard to convey irony in text, and Question Technology revealed that some people took it seriously. Omni Brain doesn't endorse the views of the revealed source, psychologist/racist Linda Gottfredson. It is indeed a "snippet of junk floating around the web" (76 Google search results); I'm not sure where Steve found it but he's not espousing racism, classism, sexism, or any other ism evident in this chart. Or more appropriately... Why socio-economic status matters.

Mice on drugs - Very strange animations.

Check out the brains of mice on drugs. This site is a very strange one to say the least- it starts with a bunch of high mice in a club of sorts just struggling to stand up. Then the interactive flash demo starts in which you have to drag a mouse into a comfy chair which transports it into a weird device that shows what's happening to the mouse's brain depending on what it snorted, smoked, or injected earlier. Freakin' weird - a wee bit trippy ;). Especially from an academic institution. Check out the Mouse Party.

Living alone?

Lonely at dinner? Give this new product from a Dutch art company a try, it includes a DVD which "will allow a lonesome dinner to become one full of holiday fun and good cheer with dinner companions eating, drinking, and engaging in conversation. The DVD will feature actors reading out different scripts in other for people to pick out which type of people they would want best." -via engadget and some other news site Of course there isn't a video to help you to not feel like an idiot after having a made up conversation with a TV screen.

Pilobolus: A performance merging dance and biology

Pilobolus dance company members Otis Cook and Jennifer Macavinta perform the sensuous duet "Symbiosis." Does it trace the birth of a human relationship, or the co-evolution of a pair of symbiotic species? That's left for you to decide. Gorgeous, organic choreography blurs the boundaries between the two performers, who use the body's own geometry to lift, move and combine. The music, recorded by the Kronos Quartet on Nonesuch Records, is a compilation of works: "God Music" from Black Angels by George Crumb, "Fratres" by Arvo Pärt, and "Morango ... Almost a Tango" by Thomas Oboe Lee.

Messing with Wikiland

Wikileaks busts Gitmo propaganda team The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed this week in a report by the government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainee ID numbers from Wikipedia last month, the systematic posting of unattributed "self praise" comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro's encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as "an admitted…

Do you want to be a Super Geek?

RAIDs (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive [sic] Disks) are considered pretty handy for a number of things. This is an example of productive and practical use of a RAID. Granted, this project does not have the archaic grandeur of a Floppy Disk RAID, but then again, the capacity and performance of this system are utterly superior to those of a Floppy Disk RAID. The following is meant as an instruction sheet of how to build a rock-hard USB stick RAID system and simultaneously transform from an ordinary nerd to a SUPER LINUX GURU. Get your sticks together and go here.

Palin demands that Wikileaks director Assange be hunted down and captured or killed

Or, at least, that's what I assume she means when she asks "Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" Equating her recent book with the quarter-million or so cables among US embassies and the state department, she is known to have tweeted: Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked,but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act? And imagine, we actually passed by an opportunity to have Sarah Palin in the White House! Much more here.

The first photograph of human beings ever

This comes from a Daguerreotype taken by Daguerre himself in 1838. It is probably a picture of a man (on the left) getting his shoe shined by a shoe shiner (in the right, less distinct). The image would have been exposed for about ten minutes, so the crowds wandering around on the street, carriages, etc. would be visible in this photograph as nothing other than a virtually undetectable fog as the occasional photon-chemical interaction would occur. To see the original photograph, of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, and learn more about this photo, visit The Hokumburg Goombah.

"Britain is not an island...well, yes it is, but..."

"Tensions in Latvia...are tense..." .. You know all those silly misquotes and verbal foibles that get passed around the internet that you've heard a thousand times? Here's a bunch that seem newer and less previously heard. At least to me. They are, of course, GNU quotes. Check them out. A couple of more good ones: "I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix." (by guess who) "That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it." (by some Congressional Rep from Texas).

Neolithic Cannibalism

Cannibalism has been documented again and again in archaeological contexts, as part of normative human behavior. Here's a recent report (I've not looked yet at the original) from the German Neolithic: Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports. The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period. Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised. source See more on Cannibalism

Hispanic Children Rarely Get Top-Notch Care For Brain Tumors

Hispanic children diagnosed with brain tumors get high-quality treatment at hospitals that specialize in neurosurgery far less often than other children with the same condition, potentially compromising their immediate prognosis and long-term survival, according to research from Johns Hopkins published in October's Pediatrics. More than a decade after the Institute of Medicine's landmark report Crossing the Quality Chasm, the Hopkins investigators say their findings detect persistent gaps in access to specialized care among certain patients, raising questions about how far across the chasm we…

Tiny Cameras Show Albatrosses on the Hunt

Tiny little cameras were attached to albatross as they flew around over the open ocean hunting. This is important because it is really hard to study albatross at open sea, and virtually impossible to follow individuals one might like to track from, say, a nesting grounds out many miles (they fly fast and far). By attaching cameras, temperature and depth gauges to the birds one gets some VERY interesting results. I've written a review of a paper that just came out in PLoS on this topic and posted it at Surprising Science, here. Please have a look.

Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh Killings Video

A few years ago, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, working for Reuters in Iraq, were killed along with several other non-military personnel in a very badly botched US military operation. Much more recently, Wikileaks has released the half hour long video taken from one of the US helicopters involved in the massacre. You need to go here and read the story, and watch the long version of the video (pasted below). Especially if you are a tax-paying US citizen, because this is your war. This is you pulling the trigger.

Waste = Food

Café Scientifique: Waste = Food Tuesday, February 16, 2010, 7 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m. Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater, Minneapolis, MN Tickets: $5-$12 Call 612-825-8949 for reservations University of Minnesota College of Design alum Sarah Wolbert promotes an ingenious view of rebalancing urban food systems - one that involves design of detritivore and decomposition systems that eat waste products. This method of using waste as nourishment can actually improve the safety and security of our food supply. Wolbert will share ideas from her graduate design thesis and involve the audience in generating…

Congo Volcano Erupting

Mount Nyamulagira, 25km (16 miles) from the eastern city of Goma, erupted at dawn on Saturday, sending lava into the surrounding Virunga National Park. About 40 endangered chimpanzees and other animals live in the area. But the country's famous critically endangered mountain gorillas are said to be safe as they live further east. source These are very special chimpanzees. I believe I've blogged about them elsewhere, but I'll write new something about them soon. I've driven though this range of volcanoes, and flown over them as well. Erik has details here

September 11, 2001: What we saw from our apartment

This video was shot by Bob and Bri, who in 2001 lived in a high rise a mere 500 yards from the North Tower. On this seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I think it's important to post this again. It is the most prolonged and continuous video of the attack that I have seen, and, as such, It is difficult to watch. That's why it's so important to watch. Very likely I will continue to post this every year on September 11 while I'm still blogging, so long as I feel the need to do it.

Will South Park teach the controversy?

South Park's amusement factor has been up and down for me, but I may have to make an effort to catch this evening's episode. Cartman's plan to propel himself into the future goes horribly wrong. South Park Elementary faces strong opposition to the topic of evolution being taught to the 4th graders, especially from Ms. Garrison who has to teach it. Eric Cartman can't be bothered with what's going on in class. He's busy manipulating his own personal time-line to align with the precise release date of the newest, hottest game.

Presidential candidates invited to ScienceDebate2008

ScienceDebate2008, an initiative calling for a presidential debate on science and technology policy, today announced that it has formally invited the presidential candidates to a debate on April 18 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, four days before the Pennsylvania Primary. ScienceDebate2008, is spearheaded by ScienceBloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, among others, and has garnered over 10,000 supporters to date including endorsements from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Click here to learn more about…

Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann endorses Obama

Our latest AVoteforScience videos are up and a new article in Science talks about the effort and other grass roots efforts this year. I will note that Science forgot to mention that the AVoteForScience effort was done in partnership with Seed Magazine/ScienceBlogs. In fact, it couldn't have been done without them. Of particular interest will be the video by Murray Gell-Mann who received the Nobel prize in physics in 1969. Murray reads the letter from he and 75 of his fellow Laureates in science encouraging the public to vote for Obama.

More AVoteForScience videos!

Here are the latest videos in our AVoteForScience YouTube Challenge. They include videos from Dr. Jose Morales at Columbia University, Dr. Robert Dottin of the Center for Study of Gene Structure and Function (below) and beloved scienceblogger and marine scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum. You'll never guess who they are voting for this year? Now there is one little issue. Sheril has decided not to tell you who she is voting for. Hoy coy. Perhaps some polite nudging in the comments will get her to tell you. Here is Robert Dottin...

Help!

I will be speaking for UKSG's conference next April. They haven't given me a topic… but they want a talk title by the end of this month. I have to write a paper alongside the talk, and I hate writing papers with every last fiber of my being, so if I have to do it, I want to make it count for something. Anybody got any suggestions? What should I write and talk about, that the UKSG audience needs to hear? If you think you're among the intended audience, what would you want to hear or read from me?

Feathers are Not Just for Flying

In a recent issue of Science magazine, researchers Li et al., were able to determine the plumage color of an extinct non-avian theropod dinosaur. This was possible due to the presence of melanin-containing melanosomes, which were preserved in the fossilized feathers. The fossilized remains were from a Jurassic troodontid, Anchiornis huxleyi, an ancestor of Archaeopteryx and modern birds. The presence of colored feather patterns in a bird prior to the evolution of true flight, suggests that feather coloration may have evolved for reproductive or communication purposes. Click here for more…

Jillian Wright Says...

Obama also talked in the address (and in previous speeches) about the need for an overhaul of our energy policies, transportation systems, and national infrastructure. To my mind, acheiving those goals requires that science be allowed to move to the forefront. We need good engineers and scientists working on solving our environmental and energy problems so we can get this whole mess turned around. If science is not respected, there will be no more cutting edge breakthrough in America; that work will be done elsewhere. Read more responses from The Rightful Place Project on Facebook

Sal Leggio Says...

The rightful place of science is in guiding decisions that involve how we live on the planet. The spirit of open inquiry should guide us, rather than preconceived notions about how things ought to be, based on narrow beliefs. All of these anti-evolution people who say that "evolution is just a theory" should remember that there is no mathematical certainty about religion either. If there were, there would be no need for faith, and then, there are religions that don't need faith. Read more responses from The Rightful Place Project on Facebook

Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review

From the New York Times: Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience. Will be interesting to follow the Shakespeare Quarterly experiment...

Open Lab 2009

Open Lab is a project that collects all the best science blogging of the year, kills a few trees, and prints them all together in something called a "book". Of course, I am featured in Open Lab 2008 (with 49 of my closest friends), and I'd love to be this year as well. Here is how you submit a post: Just click on this thing. Of course, just nominating all of my fabulous posts would look a bit funny, so nominate posts from your other favorite bloggers as well. Don't worry about how many you submit---the editor can handle it.

A disturbing 12 year old...with brain rot

Ouch, this is painful to watch. It starts with pictures of kittens and Bambi and bagpipers (bagpipers?), and then this 12 year old kid comes on to declare evolution invalid. He throws up a list of objections to evolution culled from some creationist website somewhere—among them, for instance, is that there is no inheritance of acquired characters—and then he spends most of his time babbling incoherently about how evolution is impossible. Warning: it also ends with a bagpiper. The 8 year old atheist sounded much more intelligent. (via DoubleViking)

Are you having trouble reading this?

You roll your head, hoping to loosen the knots in your neck, and shut your eyes. After rubbing them you settle back into staring, hunched inches away from the computer screen. Despite the brief reprise your vision remains cloudy, causing the words on the monitor to blur. At this point, you need to know: With each further click on the keyboard, video watched on YouTube, and e-mail sent--are you damaging your vision? The answer? It depends. Go here to find out. Thanks, Scott, for the tip.

10 New Amphibians Discovered

Researchers in a remote Colombian jungle have identified 10 new species of amphibian. Keeping with Zooillogix's official policy, because the creatures are finally known to Western science, now and only now can we all consider them to exist. Scientists from Conservation International and the Ecotropico Foundation explored the mountains in the Tacarcuna area of the Darien near Panama to discover the new species. Oranged-legged rain frog Many more below the fold... Another kind of rain frog Salamander Bolitoglossa taylori Poisonous frog of the Dendrobatidae famlily Glass frog of the…

Did you know?

If you are one of the 10 or 20 people in the world living outside of the Zooillogix bubble, you might not know that I collect zoo and aquarium shot glasses. If you send me a new one (scroll down on left sidebar), I will shower you with love and praise. For example Miriam Goldstein of the inimitable Oyster's Garter sent me this awesomeness from the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. I suggest you all go check out the Oyster's Garter immediately because anyone cool enough to send me this obviously also has a cool blog.

Mining the Ocean Floor is Good!

The Mining Journal reports on statements by Nautilus representatives at the Numis Mining Conference with respect to criticism levied in Science. Norgate argued that the high percentage of copper in the seabed surrounding Papua New Guinea would mean that less 'land' would need to be disturbed to generate the same amount of copper as open cut mining. She also said that water that was brought in during the dredging process would be purified before the water was returned to the ocean, preventing toxic pollution from entering the ecosystem.

Protection for the Supernatural Being Looking Outward

The Haida Indian nation and the Canadian government have signed an agreement to set up BC's Quenn Charlotte Islands as a marine protected area (MPA).  The MPA will allow for protection of Bowie Seamount or in the Haida tongue as Sgaan Kinghlas (Supernatural Being Looking Outward), by far a better name.  The 55km by 24km seamount rises up from the 3,000 meter deep seafloor to come within 25 meteres of the surface. The top of the seamount is quite productive and a feeding ground for Steller Sea Lions

Allah Fish!

I once had a corn chip that looked like Sammy Davis Jr. Unfortunately I was hungry and consumed it. I stumbled across this in my surfing around the web. Allah Fish! Last year, in the U.K. an Oscar was found at a pet shop that resembled the Arabic Script for Allah. However, this is not the first Allah Fish. In 2003 a fish in India had marking on its tail fin with patterns resembling Arabic characters, on one side of the body reading "Laillah Illalah" (there is no God but Allah) and, on the other, "Sahni Allah" (warning from God).

In The Future We Will All Have Gills...

and live in underwater cities made of lollipops and children's dreams. And we will tour the ocean depths with Undersea Tourist Boats! O what a glorious future we will have when the year 2000 comes!  PZ turned me on to the Paleo-Future blog, a wonderful site where the future of yesteryear is relived. The above image is the only one to come true from a series of postcards produced by Hildebrands (a leading German chocolate company of the time). Paleo-Future also has a some more posts on future human inhabitation of the world's oceans.

A New Species at a New Vent

A recently-discovered jellyfish has been found at newly discovered vents in the Pacific Ocean. Credit: WHOI Last week while DSN focused on charismatic megafauna with notochords, a newly discovered species without pharyngeal slits at a newly discovered vent field was uncovered at 8500 feet during the expedition discussed by Kevin.  The new species is from the Cnidarian (phylum of jellyfish, corals, anemones) order stauromedusae.  The jellyfish's resemblance to Medusa lends itself to the new vent's name.  The new species is unusual in its color (pink) and its proximity to to the…