Search Content

Displaying results 48951 - 49000 of 87947

We Want Your Vote

From the New York Times to the LA Times, Obama's and McCain's answers to the 14 top science questions are getting great coverage, but the biggest question remains: Who's better for U.S. science? Now's your chance to weigh in on their answers and tell the world what you think... Log on to www.sciencedebate2008.com/vote to give our presidential candidates an A - F grade and comment on how they responded. - Sheril, Chris, and the rest of ScienceDebate2008.com

Deforestation And The Death Toll

Myanmar ranks #4 in the world for annual forest area lost per year. Between 2000 and 2005, the country lost, on average, 466,000 hectares per year which puts their annual deforestation rate at 1.45% based on FAO statistics. Given deforestation results in higher flooding and erosion rates and mangroves serve as important buffers against storm surges, I'm wondering to what degree Myanmar's serious deforestation played a role in the tremendous loss of life from Cyclone Nargis...

Carnival of the Blue 9

"The ocean holds a special place in all of our souls. A place where life came about, evolved and was cradled. A historical refuge from extinction. A place where bountiful resources nurtured early civilizations. A superhighway and living market for modern civilizations. Yet a place where we can rest our weary bodies, contemplate and find inspiration." Carnival of the Blue 9 is now up at The Other 95% where host Kevin Z reminds us to 'Live like you love the ocean.' Of course, I already do...

Saturday snapshots

A few photos from yesterday afternoon; A raccoon skull I found on a hike yesterday. It is now a part of my bone collection. A white-tailed deer leg found on the same hike. It was a little gooey still so I decided to leave it alone. Hayley, an Australian cattle dog belonging to my in-laws. I do not know what kind they were, but there was an explosion of these flowers along the trail. Three new foster kittens. Caption this one as you like.

Best summary of the Kurzweil nonsense so far

From John Pavlus: How to make a Singularity Step 1: "I wonder if brains are just like computers?" Step 2: Add peta-thingies/giga-whatzits; say "Moore's Law!" a lot at conferences Step 3: ?????? Step 4: SINGULARITY!!!11!one There are other, perhaps somewhat more serious, rebuttals at Rennie's Last Nerve and A Fistful of Science. Now run along, little obsessive Kurzweilians, there are many other blogs out there that regard your hero with derision, demanding your earnestly clueless rebuttals.

Coverage of My Utah Talk

I didn't know there was a reporter in the audience. But the Salt Lake Tribune has a full length write-up of the talk I gave at the University of Utah law school on Monday. It nicely quotes the central punch-line of my (new) presentation, which obviously differs in tone from the talks I gave before the Democrats retook Congress in November 2006: "Now is the time to talk about solutions," Mooney said. You can read the rest of the article here.

Race, IQ & James Watson's great grandparents

Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, discusses race and IQ, arguing that the differences in the IQ scores of blacks and whites are due largely to environmental factors. Nisbett begins his article by mentioning James Watson, who recently retired from his post as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory following racist comments he made. Now it turns out that one of Watson's great grandparents was African. Related: On the peculiarities of the Negro brain

Film footage of classic neuroscience experiments

Here are 5 short clips from a film called The Squid and its Giant Nerve Fiber, which was made at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the 1970s. One of the clips includes footage of Alan Hodgkin performing patch voltage clamp experiments on the squid axon. Hodgkin, together with Andrew Huxley, used the voltage clamp technique to elucidate the mechanism of the action potential. The pair were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1963 for their work. (Via Pharyngula.)

15th Century Islamic psychosurgery

This beautiful illustration comes from a textbook called Cerrahiyetu'l Haniyye (Imperial Surgery) by Serefeddin Sabuncuoglo (1385-1470), who lived and practised medicine in Amasya in northern Anatolia. Sabuncuoglo's book, which was published in 1465, is the first illustrated textbook of surgery. It contains several sections devoted to the treatment of psychiatric conditions. The illustration above depicts the use of cauterization (the burning of small areas of tissue) to treat various neuroses.  (Found via this post at Mind Hacks)

A little DIY project for anatomophiles

New anatomical DIY project: get a CT scan, remix it to music, and post it on the web! That's what Jaymis did: Inside The Jaymis: Skeleton Animation - Wide Time from Jaymis on Vimeo. I got an MRI recently, but they didn't give me the results on a CD, so I can't do this. Now I feel all left out. Nevertheless, it's kind of odd looking at someone else's innards on a Sunday morning over tea. . . is this DIY TMI? Via Andrew Sullivan.

EuroScience = blue jello, go-go boots, and tasers

In the interest of supplying an educational, scientific alternative to the third presidential debate, I give you this: This video is the creation of those kooky Europeans at Marie Curie Actions, who also gave us this disturbingly throbbing website. It all has something to do with science education and careers, but I can't look away from the video long enough to tell exactly what. If this is what an EU research career is like, I may have left science too early.

Facebook creep?*

Want to see how Facebook's deafult settings have crept over time from mainly private to overwhelmingly public? Matt McKeon's got you covered with a very nice year-by-year data visualization. By 2010, the only things that aren't public are birthday and contract information. Was this what Zuckerberg had in mind years ago, when he said users were dumb ******s for sharing so much personal data with him? Hmmmm. . . *yes, it's a pun. I do indeed sink so low, occasionally.

imagine if Ke$ha joined Science Cheerleader!

What if Ke$ha joined Science Cheerleader? Yes, it would be awesome/disturbing/disorienting. No, it hasn't happened - yet. But this parody may induce a double-take: Now, NASA should clearly have just used THAT at their press conference. In case you're not into the auto-tuney-teeny-bop scene, the video is a parody of Ke$ha's "We r who we r" . And this is a parody of "Take it off" about meteors, asteroids, and comets. From Jank.

Rachel Maddow will give me nightmares tonight

This is wicked. Maddow compiled crazy deranged comments from a collection of ministers who will be speaking at Rick Perry's big prayer event in Texas, where he purportedly will work out economic policies with these wackos. Near as I can tell, that policy will involve sending Oprah to Gitmo, herding the Jews off to Israel, and avoiding sex with demons. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Now you can be afraid, too.

Chernoff Faces

The stuff in this post at the Social Science Statistics Blog is seriously cool. Data representation in faces (in the post, the data represented is baseball stats -- go Braves!). From the post: Chernoff faces are a method introduced by Herman Chernoff (Prof Emeritus of Applied Math at MIT and of Statistics at Harvard) in 1971 that allows one to convert multivariate data to cartoon faces, the features of which are controlled by the variable values. Go read it.

Molecular projector creates world's smallest lettering

Taking the art of small print to a whole new level, physicists at Stanford University have created the world's smallest lettering, just 1.5 nanometres tall: Colin Barras reports in New Scientist: The researchers wrote a computer program that works out how to arrange the carbon monoxide molecules such that they scatter electrons into waves of a particular shape. The software also demonstrated how varying the energy of the electrons could produce different shapes from the same pattern of molecules. Full story

I Want One of These

For my aquarium: The picture's from CNN. The caption reads: The Antarctic ice fish is one of many species documented during a 10-week expedition exploring the Antarctic sea floor. Researchers examined marine life and uncovered potentially new species below the surface of the cold Antarctic water. The ice fish has no red blood pigments or red blood cells. This adaptation to the frigid environment allows it to use less energy to pump blood through its body.

The enchanted loom

Here's a beautiful quote by the great neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952), from his 1941 book Man on His Nature: Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of sub-patterns. Sherrington made a significant contribution to the discovery of the neuron, and coined the terms neuron and synapse. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work.

Escaped Rhino Drill in Japan

The Tokyo Zoo is prepared for anything. In this case, they foil the escape attempts of two employees in a giant paper maiche rhino outfit. (fyi - this video is in fact still available, just blow in it a few times if it gives you trouble) Via Arbroath via BoingBoing. From the YouTube comments and also pointed out by BoingBoing - Any simple task in Japan requires the effort of tens of aging men dressed in fluorescent jackets and hard hats. Thanks Bill K.

"Extraordinary" Embryonic Animal Pics

These shots are stills from a new National Geographic Documentary airing this month called "Extraordinary Animals in the Womb". You quiero dar puntandas una pierna...Chihuahau fetus Peter Chinn the show's producer used a mixture of endoscopic cameras, ultrasound imaging and computer modeling to create the most accurate and detailed embryonic animal pics ever witnessed. Kangaroo joey in poucho. Embryonic Emporer penguin, one week after gestation... More pics below the fold... Alien Almost-born kitten. Paracitic wasp in a cocoon.

DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2008: more ScienceBloggers roll out challenges.

We're in day 2 of our month-long drive to fund projects in public school classrooms across the U.S. As I write this post, the generous readers of ScienceBloggers have given a total of $5,589. And, since yesterday, challenges have been mounted by: Dispatches from the Culture Wars (challenge here) Signout (challenge here) The World's Fair (challenge here) Zooillogix (challenge here) Check out the ScienceBlog leaderboard to follow our progress. And thanks for being such a generous bunch of blog readers!

A day in Oslo

I have had no sleep in two days, and I think I'll sleep well tonight — especially after tonight's meal at Mares in Oslo. Oh my — just perfect food at every bite, and good company with a few smart people from the university here. There will be more tomorrow. I'll be speaking at the Litteraturhuset at 3:30, and at 5:00 we'll be having an informal Norwegian picnic at Vigelandsparken. Come on by, it will be lots of fun.

Hahahahahaha!!! Help, Youtube is Repressing Me!!!

First, have a look at this video of Huxley dancing. Now, have a look at this email I just got from YoutTube: Dear gregladen, Your video, Dancing, may have content that is owned or licensed by SME. No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information. Sincerely, - The YouTube Team Hahahahaha.... .... ah ... nope ....

Talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation. (Now where did I leave my teeth again?)

What do you get when you mix a bunch of octogenarians and nonagenarians with The Who? You get this: It's a band called The Zimmers. Members range in age from 69 to 99. I particularly like the mass instrument smashing at the end of the video. I have to admit, however, to the near irresistable urge to respond to the lyric "Hope I die before I get old" with "Too late!" Even so, I hope I can still rock if I make it to my 80s or 90s.

Oh, you nasty Wookiee!

I'm disappointed to find out that Chewbacca is a bad, bad Wookiee: (CBS) HOLLYWOOD, Calif. A Chewbacca impersonator is accused of sexually assaulting a Marilyn Monroe impersonator in front of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood in June. The wookie then reportedly evaded arrest, police said. According to an officer with the LAPD, Chewbacca allegedly took the platinum-coiffed actress's hand and placed it on his private parts as the characters performed for tips from tourists. Chewie, how could you?

"warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany"

Hitler wth Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin, 1935 On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated Hitler's birthday. The celebrations, initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) became a tradition. Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany" and added with "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." Photo and text from here.

Native Skeptic

What does skepticism look like from a Native American perspective? ...change is never an easy obstacle to overcome. People fear the unknown and find comfort in daily routines, habits, and ritual tradition. Society itself has become too comfortable with some of the ways we think and perceive issues in America. People tend to not understand what is outside of that "comfort zone" that they have created for themselves simply because they are afraid of a change.... Visit Native Skeptic on Blogspot.

The 112th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: Skeptic Party

Skeptics, unfortunately, have an image problem. The woo-loving crowd thinks we're all stodgy and buzz-killing, but we like to party just as much as anyone else. Indeed, the latest Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is proof positive, as our host Cheshire hosts a Skeptic Party. Next up is the Unincredible Hallq, who, I hope, will be back from his blog break by June 18, which is when the the next Circle will appear once again.

What happened to the Skeptics' Circle?

The short answer is: "Heck if I know." I heard from the host on the 19th, and he said it might be a day or two late. However, we're now out beyond three days, and still no Skeptics' Circle. True, there's a minimalist post with some of the links, but no Circle. I have an e-mail in, but no response yet. I'm sorry for the delay and the confusion. I'll let you know what's going on when I know.

Happy Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving here in the States; so I plan on taking the day off from blogging that I might partake of the American custom of stuffing myself to the point of unconsciousness while hanging out with my family. In the meantime, bow before the genius of the Muppets, as they perform one of my favorite songs of all time: I thought it appropriate for the holiday, given its beginning. The use of Beaker in this video was particularly inspired.

Nieman Reports on Evolution and Global Warming

The Winter 2005 issue of the Nieman Reports has many articles about the news coverage of Evolution and Global Warming. Both topics, of course, are ill served by the tradition of "he said, she said" which gives undue prominence to advocates from the Discovery and Competitive Enterprise Institutes. You can read the entire issue (5.8 MB PDF) or just the Intelligent Design section, the Global Warming section or the Global Warming section with multimedia (2.3MB PDF+QuickTime).

Orac attracts a Holocaust denier

Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on February 2, 2006. Enjoy! It had to happen sooner or later. I'm only surprised that it's taken so long. What is it? Well, finally, Orac has attracted a Holoaust denier in the comments of his last post on David Irving, Holocaust denier extraordinaire (spelling errors not corrected): There is much that can be said about Irving, I…

Pandas are bad mamas

Life is cruel and brutal, I guess. Ya Ya, a seven-year-old panda and new mother of twins, "appeared tired" when nursing the younger cub in a patch of grass, the paper said. Her head sagged, her paws separated and her baby fell to the ground next to her. The panda then rolled on to her side and crushed her baby beneath her. I remember that chronic exhaustion when our kids were piping hot and fresh from the uterus, too.

The Australian's war on technology

Nick Ross writes: The Australian's technology coverage (in print) is a mixed bag in that it has some of the very best technology writers in the country but their section's reputation gets tainted by almost-incessant, poisonous beat-ups of the National Broadband Network coming from elsewhere on the masthead. These have done it few favours in the regards of Australia's technology community.   In other words, it's just like their coverage of climate science and renewable energy.

Leakegate: Is that true, or did you read it in the The Times?

Two contradictory stories describing the same adjudication: The Sunday Times Ed Miliband's adverts banned for overstating climate change vs The Guardian Climate change adverts draw mild rebuke from advertising watchdog One way to determine which story is more accurate is to do what anarchist does and carefully read the adjudication. But the shortcut to the truth is to note that the first story was written by Jonathan Leake. Further coverage of the Leakegate scandal is at John Quiggin's.

The Sweetest Brain Lamp Ever

Everyone and their mother (especially their mothers) have sent me a link to this brain lamp. I think I'm required to post it now. So here it is: According to Lervik Design: MYBrain. The table lamp A replica of the designer's brain, originated from an MR scan at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. The image was processed through a 3D-printer, and became this unusual lamp shade design. Yes, it is bright. Design Alexander Lervik 2007 Thanks Eamon and David!

Links

Tom Spencer thinks that Reynolds is "making wild evidence-free claims about the nature of other scholarship in the field just to distract you from the trouble his man Lott is in." It is certainly odd that Reynolds doesn't provide any evidence that the research he criticizes is "utter bilge" while insisting that criticism of Lott is "best done by those who ... have done actual work, and have actual evidence relevant to the matter at hand.

Neal Knox defends Lott

Pro-gun activist Neal Knox has leaped to Lott's defence. He claims that Lott is in trouble for getting the same result in his survey as Kleck when in fact concerns were raised because Lott's brandishing number was so very different from Kleck's. I was going to do a detailed dissection of Knox's claims, but gzuckier beat me to it. Mac Diva does not believe the story about the Independence Institute editing Lott's article. I will post more on this tomorrow.

The Beauty of Night Rockets

The long exposure presents all kinds of interesting visuals, from simple Estes propellant grains showering down... ...to the errant path of an unstable rocket: Here's another example of an unstable flight followed by the fiery forward spray of a motor closure failure under pressure: And different propellant grains provide wonderful lighting: And of course, all kinds of high jinks come out at night in the deep desert, like the washing machine tub full of scrap propellant: Pyro bliss.

Obama on Guilt

...it was the one trick my mother always had up her sleeve, that way she had of making me feel guilty. She made no bones about it, either. "You can't help it," she told me once. "Slipped it into your baby food. Don't worry, though," she added, smiling like a Cheshire cat. "A healthy dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It's what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion. President Barack Obama in Dreams from My Father.

Old News: Venter's on a Boat!

This is a pretty old video we made about Craig Venter that I've shared before on Hydrocalypse, but I think now is a good time to share it again. When Craig isn't creating synthetic bacteria, he's sailing the world, searching the oceans for interesting DNA sequences. We were inspired by this lifestyle (and sometimes even his science too) and SNL, and from that came Venter's on a Boat, by Hydrocalypse Industries (warning: the song contains a lot of bad language):

Blog Action Day on the Environment: October 15th

Tomorrow, 15 October, is the inaugural Blog Action Day. This means that thousands of bloggers from across the internet will publish posts on a single topic: the environment. So far over 14,000 blogs have signed up, with an estimated audience of over 12,000,000 readers. And, especially considering the outcome of the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday, the topic couldn't be more relevant. Check out the official site for more details: Hat tip to A Blog Around the Clock

Fantastical Fridays Going on Hiatus

The Scientific Activist will be taking a break from Fantastical Fridays for a while, starting with last week. (Yes, I know, this post is a little late). Things have been pretty busy in the lab lately and that, combined with the fact that I haven't had home internet access for over a month (until two days ago), means that I have a lot of blogging to catch up on. Instead of being tied down to a Friday feature, I'd like to keep things a bit more open for now.

Incredible photos from Nikon's Small World contest

PDN Photo of the Day website says: Here we present ten of the finalists from Nikon's 35th Annual Small World Photomicrography Competition, which recognizes photographs shot through a microscope. Contest winners will be announced on October 8. Until October 2, the public can select their favorites in the "Popular Vote" section of the Nikon Small World web site. Above image: © Shamuel Silberman, Ramat-Gan, Israel Embryo of guppy fish (40X) Reflected light by fiber-optics

Who is the Hottest Science Blogger?

Stew, of Flags and Lollipops and Postgenomic, is compiling a new statistic for his blog aggregator: the hotness of science bloggers. Head on over to Flags and Lollipops to vote for the hottest science bloggers. I scrolled through for a bit and could not find a picture for evolgen. I'm not sure where the pictures come from, but Tim Lambert's deltoid looks like a thong and John Lynch is represented by a picture of Bert and Ernie. And this picture is freakin' awesome!

NESCent

Does anyone know anything about NESCent (the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina)? They're affiliated with Duke, UNC, and NC State (the Research Triangle universities), and they offer postdoctoral fellowships. One of my committee members suggested it as a possible location for a postdoc, but I'm concerned that any potential project would be way heavy on computational work. I'm just trying to get a feeling for the center from anyone familiar with the research going on there.

Visual scene processing in familiar and unfamiliar environments

Are you looking forward to the paper? You know you are.... an fMRI study of scene processing... Almost through the review process...I'll post the abstract very very soon....you excited yet??? Ok... fine here's a sampler... Humans and animals use information obtained from the local visual scene to orient themselves in the wider world. Although neural systems involved in scene perception have been identified, the extent to which processing in these systems is affected by previous experience is unclear.......

What is the coolest psychology experiment?

Psychology as a science is very new and has had roughly less than 150 years to fill up the shelves of libraries with results. A good number of those shelves have to be filled with wacky ridiculous experiments of all sorts - from Harlow's monkey mother studies to Dan Simons' Inattentional blindness studies (the gorilla walking across the room experiments). So my question to everyone is... What is the most ridiculous, wacky, or fun study you've ever run into?

Head on over to...

...Scientopia, a new science blogging collective that just opened shop today. You'll note that several of its founding members are refugees from right here at Sb, including White Coat Underground, Good Math, Bad Math, Adventures in Ethics and Science, The Questionable Authority, This Scientific Life, and Thus Spake Zuska. There are also several other intriguing-looking blogs there with which I'm not familiar. I might have to check them out. Hmmm. The entire collective looks rather promising...

Third time is the proof

There's just no way around it any more. IF: If you're from Colorado, and if you're a fundamentalist Christian, then you must be gay. There's nothing at all wrong with that, of course, and you should just stop living a lie and come out with it. We should have known, I think. The bright lights, the adoring audiences, the singing, the showmanship…being a pastor at one of these fundie megachurches is just like having a hit show on Broadway.