Misc
apalazzo | February 25, 2007Visualizing sound waves using a PVC pipe, gas and a lighter in some guy's garage. Now this is how physics should be taught!
apalazzo | February 25, 2007This week, many things have been happening up north. The most important being ... from the NY Times, Canadian Court Limits Detention in Terror Cases :
Canada's highest court on Friday unanimously struck down a law that allows the Canadian government to detain foreign-born terrorism suspects indefinitely using secret evidence and without charges while their deportations are being reviewed.
...
The decision is also the latest in a series of events that has seen Canada reconsider some national security steps it took after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Last September, a judicial inquiry…
apalazzo | February 20, 2007Yes it is the Fire Golden Pig. Welcome to the economic based renaming of our current astrological year.
I was just told this funny story by Dr J.
This is the year of the Gold Pig in the Chinese calendar. The calendar is based on a repeating cycle of twelve animals ... so that last year was year of the dog and next year is year of the rat. Then superimposed on that cycle is a "heaven cycle" consisting of ten symbols, two symbols for metals, two for wind, two for wood, two for earth and two for fire. Each year the calendar advances by an animal and a heaven symbol. So if one labeled the animals…
ksharpe | February 20, 2007
Sharpen your pencils (or your favorite graphic design app) and strap your thinking cap on. Seed has paired with Threadless to bring you a contest you won't want to miss. Design a tee shirt around the theme of "science is culture." Submit your design by midnight on March 19 for your chance to win an impressive grand prize bundle including $1500 in cash, a $300 Threadless gift certificate, a 60gb iPod loaded with science videos—including sweet Seed Magazine video salons—and more.
If you're looking for inspiration, browse Threadless's impressive collection of cool, user-generated tees. There's…
ksharpe | February 19, 2007Hot off the presses: Skeptical Inquirer magazine has a new rememberance of Carl Sagan by David Morrison, which highlights Sagan's sometimes-forgotten role as a skeptic.
From the article:
Throughout his career, Sagan devoted himself to the quest to improve public understanding of the nature of science. He wanted every citizen to have a "baloney detector" as defense against sham in commerce and politics as well as science. He felt that it was the duty of scientists to face these issues squarely and publicly. The Cosmic Connection (1973), which includes extensive discussions of extraterrestrial…
sarahdasher | February 14, 2007Manhattan was besieged by a fusillade of ice pellets this morning. Weather like this always makes me think of home.
Meteorologists at the Mount Washington Weather Observatory are known for the weather-related antics they devise to entertain themselves during eight-day winter shifts at the Obs. Now, thanks to YouTube, their pranks are available for public consumption.
Here, Ryan Knapp and John Salge make use of the World's Worst Weather (Temp: -22F, Winchill: -68F) to turn boiling water into snow--before the water even hits the ground.
stoat | February 14, 2007I'm happy to say that in one respect at least the UK leads the world: the proportion of the U15's having sex. According to UNICEF we storm ahead with 38%, way ahead of our nearest rivals the repressed Swedes (figure 5.2d). We also do best at getting drunk, too (5.2b), though we only just beat the sober Finns.
Of course, as far as the report goes, these count as negatives not positives. But how do the children count it?
apalazzo | February 14, 2007This was sent by MF (initials are meant to keep my source out of trouble, I hope that I won't be subpoenaed on this one):
Menstrual cycle phase modulates reward-related neural function in women
In other words, giving roses at the wrong time will do nothing for you!
Ref:
Jean-Claude Dreher , Peter J. Schmidt , Philip Kohn , Daniella Furman , David Rubinow , and Karen Faith Berman
Menstrual cycle phase modulates reward-related neural function in women
PNAS (07) Advanced Online Publication 10.1073/pnas.0605569104
sarahdasher | February 13, 2007More than 175 million roses are sold in the U.S. in the the days leading up to Valentine's Day. From seedling to shipping crates, a cocktail of chemicals protects those blooms.
It takes a lot of lethal pesticides to say, "I Love You."
Seventy percent of cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported from countries where pesticide application is not as tightly regulated as it is on U.S. farms. A survey of 8000 workers in cut-flower plantations near Bogotá, Colombia found that workers were exposed to 127 different pesticides, 20% of which are banned in North America because they are considered…
sarahdasher | February 12, 2007
According to a recent poll conducted by ACNielsen, in cooperation with the Sydney Morning Herald, 78 per cent of Australians would be willing to drink recycled sewage water, including toilet water, provided that it was treated to drinking water standards.
This represents a sea change of public opinion. Two years ago, a UMR Research poll found that 68% of Australians were "uncomfortable" with drinking recycled water. Until recently, the Australian government ruled out grey- and blackwater recycling because of this "yuck factor."
Yet as drought continues to ravage the country this summer,…
sarahdasher | February 12, 2007Marine biologist (and Harvard Ph.D.) Randy Olsen gave up his tenured professorship to pursue a career in film. Some might call this a rash move--but it gave Olsen time to create one of the more talked-about scientific documentaries of the decade.
Flock of Dodos is a humorous look at the debate between proponents of evolution and intelligent design. Since its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, in April 2006, it has played in film festivals all over the U.S. and abroad.
Now Flock of Dodos makes its rounds in celebration of World Darwin Day. See if it's playing at a movie…
sarahdasher | February 7, 2007It's New York Fashion Week, and all eyes are on the models. This time, though, they are facing a new kind of scrutiny.
In 2006, Madrid's Fashion Week made headlines for banning models with a body-mass index of less than 18.5--in other words, a 5'9" model must weigh more than 124 pounds. The resolution followed the deaths of Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos and Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston, both from anorexia. Ramos died of a heart attack, reportedly after months of eating only lettuce and diet soda, and Ramos, from a systemic infection facilitated by months of susbsisting on only…
sarahdasher | February 7, 2007
The MO is simple: Propagate. Mutate. Kill.
As a neophyte virus, I obliterated 86% of humanity. One glance at the high scores shows me that I have a lot yet to learn.
Click here to play for yourself.
stoat | February 5, 2007Nature, in the course of editorialising on the vast waste of money that is the US return to the moon plan (although they don't say that), sez, making the analogy with the return to the South Pole in the IGY:
since humanity's return to the South Pole, Antarctic science has been central to the great project of understanding the changes that humans are inflicting on the Earth. An Antarctic component to the nascent global carbon dioxide monitoring effort was established in 1957. Since then the contributions have been legion: discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole; the extraction of greenhouse-gas…
apalazzo | January 31, 2007A number of cells were bidirectional, in that they did not a have a peak firing rate in a preferred direction that was at least doubled that in the opposite direction, raising the possibility that apparently reverse replay events merely reflected forward replay of neurons in the opposite direction.
Foster & Wilson Nature (06) 440:680-683
sarahdasher | January 30, 2007Dave Ng and his loyal readers are are propagating their own viral version of the Truth, using a Google bomb campaign to climb Google's search rankings. It's not as nefarious as it sounds:
Currently, the Truth is #30 in the Google search rankings, up from #300 a week ago. With a little help from you, it could be #1.
You can read more about his campaign here.
ksharpe | January 30, 2007Just in time for the Spring semester, ScienceBlogger Zuska has rolled out an online course of sorts. She's conducting a college-level corse entitled Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science--as professor and student. The course explores science, women, and pleasure. From Zuska's syllabus:
This course explores the existence of pleasure, intellectual excitement, and desire as an important component of theorizing and doing science and engineering. We will examine the presence and/or absence of accounts of pleasure/desire in feminist theories of science, and in mainstream science and engineering…
stoat | January 25, 2007I used to play Go at university and after, but rather dropped out when I had children. Recently I've started playing online again, though its a somewhat inhuman way of playing. One of the themes of those times was that computers were rubbish at Go, in contrast their chess performance (one of the problems is that its pretty hard to evaluate a go position, particularly at the start, by any kind of counting. In chess (I think) you can count pieces and locations pretty quickly). So of course we Go players took that as clear proof that Go was a more interesting game :-)
The Economist has a little…
ksharpe | January 25, 2007Flickr user estherase presents two views on labware: lyrically beautiful, and...another way, beneath the fold.
sarahdasher | January 18, 2007There are two more doctors in the house. (Okay, a doctor and a doctoral candidate.) Go check out Signout and Science to Life for tawdry tales of medicine, biochemistry and the life of a first-year resident.
Welcome!