science communication
jtoney | January 15, 2011
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cautioned in 1964 about a growing disconnect between technological advances and ethical awareness.
Photo: Dick DeMarsico/New York World-Telegram, courtesy Library of Congress
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day:
Let us consider his thoughts on science and technology, delivered December 11, 1964 in Oslo when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
This eloquent speech is prescient of today's challenges.
Unfortunately, there is no lack of evidence of "man's ethical infantilism" today. Here's hoping for growth.
This evening I would like to use this lofty and…
jtoney | January 9, 2011
Photo source (pschubert.)
I came across this gem from The Journal of Irreproducible Results (yes, it really exists) and figured that something light hearted would be appreciated after yesterday's horrific shootings in Arizona.
APPLIED MATH DEPARTMENT SEMINAR "FUZZY LOGIC"
Professor B. Vastor, Kings College, Cambridge, England
Fuzzy Logic is concerned with systems in which subsets are only vaguely defined.
This seminar will be held at 4:00 pm in room 347 unless the lecture there is running late. In which case it will be held in room 211. It will be held on June 15 unless Professor Vastor…
jgoldman | January 7, 2011It's here! After more than a month of reviewing, I am pleased to announce the list of posts that will be included in this year's edition - the fifth - of The Open Laboratory!
In no particular order:
Givin' props to hybrids by DeLene Beeland
The decade the clones came: Beware the mighty Marmokrebs! by Zen Faulkes
Can seabirds overfish a resource? The case of cormorants in Estonia by Hannah Waters
The Data Speak by Andrew Thaler
Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis by Darren Naish
Shark week! by EcoPhysioMichelle
Size really does…
jtoney | January 6, 2011
Confocal snapshot of the junction between two portions of the Drosophila digestive tract: the midgut and the hindgut. Cell nuclei are labelled in blue, membranes in green and muscles in red. This image was taken by Irene Miguel-Aliaga. {Source.}
This is irresistible. In a paper published in the journal Cell Metabolism, biologists at the University of Cambridge use an imaging method to:
uncover a central role for the Drosophila intestine in the regulation of nutrient intake, fluid, and ion balance.
Snapshots of different portions of the fly's digestive tract and its nerve cells, taken…
jtoney | January 5, 2011View full size
Tanya Kovacs of Iselin holds her 20 month old son Caleb as they take part in a rally in front of the State House opposing new vaccine mandates by the state for children. TONY KURDZUK/THE STAR-LEDGER
As reported by the Associated Press and in The New York Times this evening {"filed 7:50 pm}:
The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.
The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and…
jtoney | January 3, 2011
Last week, I shared an extraordinary study describing the human brain's "connectome" - our first glimpse into how neural connections are made in our brains. Recently, several studies have appeared attempting to link one's political views with our neuroanatomy - is this coincidence or somehow tied to the impending 2012 election cycle?
The most recent is a British study that purportes a link between political affiliations and the size of our amygdala...{hmmm....curious indeed...}
Fear and conservatism? I think we've all heard that before.
Researchers have found evidence that the brains of…
jtoney | January 2, 2011
A recent article in Science, "Computational Physics in Film" reminded me how far we have advanced in computer simulation - all based upon basic physics of fluid dynamics.
Exoticmatter NAIAD City flood from Igor Zanic on Vimeo.
A spectacular example blending fluid dynamics and art: "Naiad City Flood":
Some of the most spectacular examples of physics in film involve fluids, where non-linearities in the underlying Navier-Stokes equations that describe fluid motion lead to accumulation of remarkable geometric complexity.
Computer-based algorithms for animation offers more than speed,…
jtoney | January 1, 2011Protecting and sustaining our environment is a core value that seems to be common sense. It never occurred to me that this value might somehow conflict with religion - after all, isn't being a good steward of the earth a goal of numerous faiths? Apparently not.
As reported in The New York Times, there is a strong push back by Christian evangelists against environmentalism. I find this mind boggling.
This movement refers to itself as "Resisting the Green Dragon" {is such a moniker supposed to conjure images of fire breathing dragons in a prehistoric era?} and refers to enviornmentalism as…
jtoney | December 29, 2010I have been exploring our "Brain's Atlas" introduced in my recent post and discovered an extraordinary resource: the Relationship Viewer. A snapshot is shown to the right, appearing as a spiraling multi-colored pin wheel.
This interactive viewer developed by the research group of Dr. Arthur W. Toga at the David Geffen UCLA School of Medicine Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI) invites the user to explore:
Relationships in 2D brain, 3D brain and circular lines
As you explore the connections, the color scheme is:
Warmer colors mean stronger connections and cooler colors mean weaker…
jtoney | December 27, 2010
By inspire*dream*create*, Rachel Souza's Flickr Photostream
I realize that I am a new blogger for this site, and have enjoyed the challenge of sharing some of the latest scientific breakthroughs as they are happening. I have enjoyed reading some of my fellow bloggers, "Sciblings," learning about new discoveries from their perspectives.
I have also noted a lack of civility in some articles on this site. To such bloggers, I would like to respectfully make a call to civility. I have noticed an unfortunate tendency for some of them to use terms such as "dumbass" and "stupid" in articles…
jtoney | December 24, 2010Today's announcement of a giveaway of 2,011 Nike shoes...well well!
Give it a try!
www.sharecare.com/static/nike giveaway
If you are an Oprah fan, you already know that she will be launching a new network on New Year's Day 2011. Oprah has recruited a "dream team" of go-to experts:
Dr. Phil, Suze Orman and Dr. Oz -- will be answering questions about health, wealth and mental well-being as part of the original series, "Ask Oprah's All Stars," premiering Sunday, January 2.
The recently launched webpage HuffPost Health is asking readers to submit questions for possible use on the show's launch…
jtoney | December 24, 2010
The IBM 705 Data Processing System, introduced in 1954.
The 705 would rarely run more than 3 or 4 hours without a major breakdown. It was not unusual to encounter a 705 that was ablaze." This should give all of us pause the next time our PC crashes!
What is your family's history? Have you ever reflected on what their lives was like, when life was seemingly simpler? What if we could take a snapshot of our lives, our families, just one, every ten years? What was your family doing 100 years ago?
Let me share some "snapshots" of our ordinary family {a personal and idiosyncratic point of…
jtoney | December 21, 2010
"We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before."
With my academic training and years of reflecting on how to teach science, I don't think I could develop a more compelling statement than this, written by a group of elementary school students.
As graduate students in science, we struggle mightily to get a paper published in a top journal. This story reported by Ed Yong in Discover magazine reminds us that pure science, the process of discovery, can be accomplished by young children. Some would argue that you need to be a…
jtoney | December 21, 2010
Jurvetson's Flickr photostream
Do you think that there should be universal access to the internet, regardless of how it is accessed? Should the internet be regulated by the federal government? If so, to what extent? Is "Net Neutrality" possible? For now, "neutrality" when it comes to accessing the internet is an illusion.
These questions, to some degree, have been addressed by the approval of new rules by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today. Below are some key things to consider:
Excerpted from an NPR story today:
A divided FCC has approved new rules meant to prohibit…
jtoney | December 20, 2010
Inspired by my earlier posting on the fruit fly brain:
I received a nice "holiday gift" from a researcher at the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) in Taiwan, Terry C.-W. Yeh. NCHC and the Brain Research Center at the National Tsing Hua University created the FlyCircuit database.
This 32 second video gives you a 3D tour of the various components of the fruit fly brain integrating data collected using more than 16,000 individual neurons - a startling example, to me, of the wonderment of science as a product of bridging computer science, molecular biology and neuroscience…
jtoney | December 18, 2010
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!
jtoney | December 17, 2010
From time to time, my office receives publisher's copies of books, uninvited and not upon my request. Today, a copy of Jay Hosler's "Evolution: The Story of LIfe on Earth" arrived. {The hubris of explaining the "story of life on earth" is unimaginable to me, but that's another story.} This piques my interest; is a careful review warranted, or should it be added to my "to do" list that increases with each semester? I fully recognize that this is a "hot button" issue, and I don't want to enter the debate per se. I am simply a curious scientist.
According to Amazon:
Product Description…
jtoney | December 16, 2010Scientists including the news media in the process of discovery is a volatile affair, as we have all witnessed recently. My fellow bloggers on ScienceBlogs, We Beasties, discussed the role of bloggers and scientists in the process of the NASA scientists announcing their discovery of "arsenic-based life forms".
Generally speaking, as a scientist I have always been bothered by the idea of a press release to announce a scientific discovery before I had an opportunity to carefully review the study myself. Typically, a friend or neighbor would say "Hey, did you hear about the discovery of…
jgoldman | December 5, 2010
I've got an article that appeared in this week's Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles about recent research from Hadassah University on the neurobiology of bilingual (English-Hebrew) reading.
Is the English-reading brain somehow different from the Hebrew-reading brain? You might not expect any major differences; after all, both languages are alphabetic and are read more or less phonetically by breaking words into their constituent sounds. Compare English and Hebrew to a logographic language like Chinese or Japanese, and the similarity between the alphabetic languages becomes obvious. But…
jtoney | November 30, 2010I am delighted to be part of ScienceBlogs, the largest online community dedicated to science. I accepted this challenge because I believe that most in my profession are far more focused on making the next discovery rather than explaining to the public the value of what they do. I invite you to join me on this journey and to share my articles with anyone who has that curiosity that each of us had as a child - remember discovering your first ladybug, seeing your first rainbow? You will be an important part of an ongoing discussion about the beauty and fascination of science.
So it begins:
"…