jlynch | August 11, 2007ABC (Australia) is reporting that the Yangtze River dolphin or baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) may not be definitely extinct after all (see here and here). Wang Ding - who headed the survey team - is reported as saying:
This is only one survey and...you can’t have a sample in a survey, so you cannot say the baiji all is gone by the result of only one survey. For example, there is some side channels or some tributaries [where] we cannot go because of a restriction of navigation rules, and also we don’t survey during the night-time so we may miss some animals in the Yangtze River. ...
I’m pretty…
jlynch | August 11, 2007
Take eight minutes and watch this. Nice work by the buffaloes when faced by a weak lion defense.
(HT to Tim Sandefur for the link).
jlynch | August 11, 2007Births
1673 - Richard Mead, English physician
1722 - Richard Brocklesby, English physician
1858 - Christiaan Eijkman, Dutch physician, Nobel Prize Laureate
1905 - Erwin Chargaff, Austrian biochemist
1912 - Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs, German astronomer
1926 - Aaron Klug, Lithuanian-born chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1938 - Branko Stanovnik, Slovenian chemist
Deaths
1851 - Lorenz Oken, German naturalist
1854 - Macedonio Melloni, Italian physicist
1972 - Max Theiler, South African virologist, Nobel Prize Laureate
jlynch | August 9, 2007
To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything.
Events
1846 - The Smithsonian Institution is chartered by the U.S. Congress after $500,000 was given for such a purpose by scientist James Smithson.
1990 - The Magellan space probe reaches Venus.
Births
1839 - Aleksandr Grigorievich Stoletov, Russian physicist
1902 - Arne Tiselius, Swedish chemist, Nobel laureate
1913 - Wolfgang Paul, German physicist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1802 - Franz Aepinus, German scientist
1839 - John St Aubyn, British fossil collector
1896 - Otto Lilienthal, German aviation…
jlynch | August 9, 2007
You’re 50% Irish
You’re probably less Irish than you think you are...But you’re still more Irish than most.
How Irish Are You?
This despite being born, and spending 25 years, in Ireland. Just goes to prove how dumb these online quizzes are! (Via Mike).
jlynch | August 9, 2007
These are new licence plates for Oklahoma, where apparently the Koolade was drunk in vast quantities. I think I need to lie down.
jlynch | August 9, 2007Events
2001 - George W. Bush announces federal funding for limited research on embryonic stem cells.
Births
1726 - Francesco Cetti, Italian scientist
1776 - Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist
1896 - Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist
1896 - Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist
1896 - Erich Hückel, German physicist
1911 - William Alfred Fowler, American physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate
Deaths
1969 - Cecil Frank Powell, British physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1996 - Sir Frank Whittle, invented the jet engine
2006 - James van Allen, American physicist
jlynch | August 8, 2007Events
1576 - The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg observatory is laid on Hven.
1908 - Wilbur Wright makes his first public flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France.
Births
1901 - Ernest O. Lawrence, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1902 - Paul Dirac, English physicist Nobel Prize laureate
1921 - John Herbert Chapman, British physicist
1931 - Roger Penrose, British physicist
Deaths
1553 - Girolamo Fracastoro, Italian physician
1828 - Carl Peter Thunberg, Swedish naturalist
1977 - Edgar Douglas Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, Nobel Prize Laureate
1996 - Nevill Mott, Nobel Prize…
jlynch | August 7, 2007
Eh, no. The rest of the world of sports doesn’t care when a cheating misanthrope hits a ball and shatters the "most-hallowed record" in American sports.
Bonds, of course, played for ASU and his name hangs in the baseball stadium. This is nothing for ASU to feel proud about.
[Picture from Sports Illustrated.]
jlynch | August 7, 2007Back last December I reported that the Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) was "effectively extinct". Now I must report that the species has been declared officially extinct, the first official extinction of a large vertebrate for more than 50 years.
jlynch | August 7, 2007Over at Corpus Callosum, Joseph highlights a "Pick Your Candidate" webpage. You enter your stand on various issues, and the page ranks the candidates based on their similarity to your views. Here’s the Top Five it spat back at me:
Kucinich
Gravel
Obama
Clinton
Edwards
Somewhat satisfyingly, the least compatible choices are all Republicans and all negative scores: Thompson, Brownback, McCain, Cox, Giuliani, Huckabee, Tancredo, Romney, and Hunter. The only Republican to get a positive score (10) was Ron Paul.
Give it a try.
jlynch | August 6, 2007Events
1991 - World Wide Web debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.
Births
1844 - Auguste Michel-Lévy, French geologist
1932 - Dr. Maurice Rabb, Jr., African American ophthalmologist
Deaths
1639 - Martin van den Hove, Dutch scientist
1848 - Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist
1912 - François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist
2004 - Colin Bibby, English ornithologist
jlynch | August 6, 2007August 6, 2001, is the day that George W. Bush received the Presidential Daily Brief headlined, "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." The PDB stated that Al Qaeda maintained a support structure in the U.S. that could aid attacks, that one idea was to hijack U.S. airplanes, and that the FBI had detected "suspicious activity," including surveillance of federal buildings in New York. The memo also noted that the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates had received a warning that Al Qaeda was preparing an attack in the U.S. with explosives.
On August 6, 2001, Bush was at his ranch in the…
jlynch | August 5, 2007Two weeks to go before the semester begins here at ASU and I still have syllabi to put together for my two classes (more on them closer to the start) along with three book reviews to finish. It has been a lazy Summer for a change, but that means there is much to do during the last few weeks before classes start.
Below the fold is your Today in Science
Events
1961 - Second successful manned orbital flight (USSR, Gherman Titov)
1964 - Prometheus, the world’s oldest tree, is cut down.
1991 - Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web.
1996 - NASA announces that the…
jlynch | August 5, 2007Bush’s attempt to temporarily amend the FISA law passed the House last night (227 to 183), with 41 Democrats voting with the Republicans to allow Bush & Gonzalez continue their attack on civil liberties. Only two Republicans voted against the measure.
The voting record of the Arizona representatives is as follows:
Republicans
Renzi, Franks, Shadegg, Flake - all "Yea"
Democrats
Pastor, Grijalva, Giffords - all "Nea"
Mitchell - "Yea"
Harry Mitchell should be ashamed of himself and certainly shouldn’t be supported by progressive voters in Arizona in 2008, those very same voters who…
jlynch | August 4, 2007Events
1858 - Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable after several unsuccessful attempts.
1969 - Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 kilometers).
Births
1930 - Neil Armstrong, astronaut and first human to stand on the Moon.
Deaths
1880 - Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra, Austrian physician
1957 - Heinrich Otto Wieland, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate
jlynch | August 4, 2007In a follow up to this story, Virgil Renzulli (VP of Public Affairs here at ASU) has this to say:
At ASU, as at most American research universities, positions funded by external grants are completely dependent on that funding. Robert Pettit, former director of the university’s Cancer Research Institute (CRI), attempted to secure funding to continue his research, submitting proposals to both the National Cancer Institute and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, but these were not selected by those agencies from among the many competing proposals. That is the sole reason why 22…
jlynch | August 4, 2007After nearly two weeks away from regular Intertube access, I’m back. Below the fold is your day in science:
Births
1719 - Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German minerologist and geologist
1805 - William Rowan Hamilton, Irish mathematician
1906 - Eugen Schuhmacher, German zoologist
1912 - Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, Russian mathematician, physicist, philosopher, and mountaineer
Deaths
2003 - Frederick Chapman Robbins, American Nobel Prize Laureate
2005 - Anatoly Larkin, Russian-American physicist
jlynch | August 4, 2007The School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) here at ASU has joined forces with NASA to scan the original Apollo images of the Moon and to place them online for the general public. See here. [Hat tip to /. for the link]
jlynch | August 3, 2007Doing this
and only suffering bruises of the liver and lung, stress fractures to vertebrae and a small fracture on the top of one hand.