General
sciencepunk | October 1, 2009
Researchers have submitted a paper for publication (read preprint) detailing how to use WiFi to see through walls. The system works by measuring interference between nodes of wireless devices. When someone walks through the field, the change in resistance is detected and plotted by a central computer. Ars technica reports:
The basic idea behind the work is the assumption that transmissions between any two IEEE 802.15.4 devices travel within an ellipse centered on a straight line between those points. It's not possible to know which path a given transmission took, as different paths will…
sciencepunk | September 27, 2009From New Scientist:
Iranian photographer Babak Tafreshi has won the 2009 Lennart Nilsson scientific photography prize. According to the award panel, his images "reclaim a night sky that most modern people have lost"
sciencepunk | September 8, 2009
These days I get excited when I see any big science news story break because I know it's only a matter of time before it appears in delightfully skewed fashion on the Save Your Breath for Running Ponies blog. Combining a love all all things sciencey with offbeat lifestyle advice, Running Ponies is how I want my science news reported. Here's their coverage of this week's haul of new species discovered in Papua New Guinea, including the 3-foot-long Bosavi Woolly Rat:
So you might be feeling a little bit bewildered right now, Bosavi Woolly Rat, having never seen people before and now all of a…
sciencepunk | August 30, 2009The week's tweets and more:
40 million year old plumage shimmers! Iridescence found in fossil feather: http://bit.ly/3FkVf
"Most of you are average" - nice roundup of science-themed t shirts: http://is.gd/2Auwn
Homeopaths go utterly apeshit over campaign to have WHO denounce magic pills: http://bit.ly/Oj0W
Meanwhile, the Faculty of Homeopathy insist magic pills can cure serious diseases: http://bit.ly/2wHro
Eco-friendly Jedi lightsabre: http://bit.ly/4zTzI|
Music box fed by Möbius strip plays endless, reversible melody. http://bit.ly/47y2mW
Deconstructing a Maybelline Pulse Perfect Vibrating…
illconsidered | August 27, 2009Please place any additional comments/replies about CO2 and H2O and absorption and greenhouse gases etc here...
[Update: I meant additional to the digression on the "did greenpeace lie" thread.]
sciencepunk | August 27, 2009Prepare yourselves for a seismic science showdown! In the reeeeeed corner: the man from Le Mans, Britain's very own Minister for Science, the Lord Paul Rudd Drayson! In the bluuuuue corner: the Rational Radical, Benjamin "Bad Science" Goldacre!
After a crossing swords on Twitter, the two agreed to go head-to-head in a no-holes-barred meeting of minds. Details have been released: fight night is Sept 16, 7pm at the Royal Institution. Attendance to this match is FREE, details on how to attend are in the press release issued by BIS below the fold:
Science reporting: is it good for you?…
sciencepunk | August 26, 2009This weekend I attended the delightful ScienceOnline conference in London, a collection of bloggers, press officers, scientists, writers, film makers and more. It was nice to see familiar faces such as Andy Lewis and David Colquhoun and even better to put faces to names I know only by browser and inbox - Gimpy, Jack of Kent, and more.
Then there were those I missed - such as the legendary Ed Yong, reliably touted as the best young science writer in the UK. Something Ed tells me time and again is to run an open thread to meet my readers, who, by and large, I know nothing about. So, in Ed's…
sciencepunk | August 8, 2009In north east India, bridges aren't built - they're grown! The rainforests of Cherrapunji are credited with being one of the wettest places on Earth, and timber bridges would quickly rot. Locals have an innovative solution - grow bridges out of living trees. Like many in the banyan family, the rubber fig has secondary roots that grow above the soil surface. By guiding these roots across chasms, villagers can slowly grow a strong, permanent bridge. Amazing pictures below the fold!
More pictures and info are available on the Living Root Bridges blog.
Hat tip to Mo at Neurophilosophy
illconsidered | July 28, 2009I have tried to make it quite clear a few times that regardless of no new record, there is no evidence that the underlying rising trend in global surface temperatures has reversed or stopped. But absent a short term rising trend the inattentive public is very vulnerable to disengenouous denialists claiming warming is over (did they ever admit it was happening??). So I am afraid that that talking point will not go away until 1998's record status does so as well.
So when will that happen? I'm not talking about statistically insignificant 0.05oC win by a nose in one record but not another, I…
sciencepunk | July 27, 2009
My coverage of the awesome Science Tent at the Secret Garden Party is now up at Guardian Science Blog. Pictures of the science debauchery to follow:
I'm standing in a field in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. All about are the typical trappings of a music festival. The bright morning sun is glinting off discarded canisters of nitrous oxide, testament to the strict search policy in place at the gates. Revellers lie asleep where they fell, skin reddening, and sullen queues of hungover men and women snake from the standpipes and toilet blocks.This is the Secret Garden Party, one of Britain's new…
illconsidered | July 16, 2009
Lots of FUD about climate models get thrown around in the Climate Wars, but what is it they are really doing anyway?
The contrarians would have us believe they just take in a bunch of contrived parameters and spit out the worst case possible scenario for global average temperature increase. But the truth is the kinds of models the IPCC report on are very complex and nuanced.
Since I'm no expert and pictures are worth thousands of words, I would like to offer a few beautiful video realizations of GCM output.
The first is from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) CCSM climate…
illconsidered | July 15, 2009So a couple of regular supporting commenters have said they will abandon AFTIC unless I do something about a couple of regular antagonistic commenters. It is a difficult question for me as I do appreciate having help answering the various misinformation that is bandied about here. I really don't have the time myself.
But I have a hard time with the idea of banning anyone for their content rather than for habitual profanity or abusive behavior, even though I agree people like crakar and snowman offer only information pollution.
My advice for dealing with this style of contrainism is mostly…
illconsidered | July 10, 2009Some comments came up about Ian Plimer`s recent fiction novel "Heaven and Earth".
They were off topic for that thread so I have moved them here and any discussion can follow below.
Thanks.
sciencepunk | July 9, 2009Check out my guest post at the venerable Times Online:
Built into the streets of New York City is a solar calendar on a truly massive scale. Every year around July 12th, New Yorkers are treated to a spectacular phenomenon as the setting sun aligns directly with the east-west streets of Manhattan's main grid, turning them into canyons filled with golden light. The effect is known as Manhattanhenge in reference to the much older stone monument near Salisbury. The term was coined in 2002 by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the charismatic director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American…
sciencepunk | July 5, 2009According to a press release from the University of Washington, tropical islands may become deserts as the climate band delivering their only supply of fresh water creeps north:
The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years, probably because of a warmer world, according to research published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience.If the band continues to migrate at just less than a mile (1.4 kilometers) a year, which is the average for all the years it…
sciencepunk | June 23, 2009Thanks to the Deputy Dog blog for unveiling these awesome hidden towers of Nevada:
Although they look like retro-futurist prefab apartments, the structures are actually the water intake towers for the Hoover Dam's hydro-electric power station. The images were taken during the construction of the dam, and the towers are now mostly submerged in water. See the Deputy Dog blog for more images.
illconsidered | June 23, 2009As per a request from comments here is an open thread for whatever might be on your minds. The request came when once again touching on the issue of 21st century temperatures. I have tried once, twice, three times in posts and so many others times in comments but this argument will likely not die until we get the next record breaking high. GISS thinks this will likely come in the next year or two if the El Nino they predict comes.
Here is an opportunity for other approaches on this, or any other issue...
illconsidered | June 17, 2009Via MT, I came across a most excellent and interesting essay by Herman Daly on the Oil Drum (one of those great and meaty blogs that I only wich I had the time to read everything on!)
The subject is how to establish a steady state economy versus the current paradigm based on the fantasy of eternal growth. The reason you should read it is because it is not your usual Utopian hand wave about what a perfect world would be like, it is a specific set of policy prescriptions.
Worth your time!
sciencepunk | June 3, 2009
Apathy Sketchpad has an excellent article musing on the problems of delivering a truly random sequence. Not only is this very hard, humans are also exceptionally bad at recognising a truly random sequence when they see one:
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to tell if your numbers are random enough or not. For example, some episodes of the dreary logical fallacy roadshow that is Deal Or No Deal used an Excel spreadsheet to randomise the assignment of 22 sums of money to 22 boxes -- for which there are probably more sequences than there are grains of sand in the world -- and the seeding was…