science & society
apalazzo | August 7, 2008A pocket-size lensless microscope that uses on-chip optofluidic microscopy (OFM).
The sample is dragged in front of the detector and an image is extrapolated. Now imagine if every cell phone had one of these?
Ref:Xiquan Cui, Lap Man Lee, Xin Heng, Weiwei Zhong, Paul W. Sternberg, Demetri Psaltis, and Changhuei Yang
Lensless high-resolution on-chip optofluidic microscopes for Caenorhabditis elegans and cell imaging
PNAS (08) 105:10670-10675
Update: someone just informed me of this interview of Changhuei Yang on NPR, click here to listen.
apalazzo | July 28, 2008As a scientist, I traffic in data, ideas, models and theories.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how the whole process works. And many scientists and science philosophers have thought about this as well. One inescapable fact: humans tend to duck, deny and fool themselves into believing certain ideas even when data points the other way. It's the little voice in our head that says "I am not biased, it's everyone else." Humans are highly prone to much cognitive dissonance. It's just that in science you must confront this reality head on, all the time.
These tendencies exist everywhere and are…
apalazzo | June 5, 2008From Andre at biocurious:
Janet Iwasa has had an unusual scientific career. After finishing her PhD with Dyche Mullins at UCSF she started a postdoc in Jack Szostak's lab at Harvard but not to do bench work or even simulations like her postdoc colleagues. Instead, Janet is a full time animator and graphic designer.
Some of Janet's work can be viewed at her website, onemicron.com. Her latest work, a website called Exploring Life's Origins explores the early evolution of cellular life, including the RNA world hypothesis and the emergence of a protocell.
Also check out this piece at Nature…
apalazzo | June 1, 2008I heard about the report on the the latest Science Mag Podcast.
Some general notes:
-NIH budget will see a 0% increase
-NSF budget will see a 15% increase
-There is a significant increase in funding to the Department of Energy (up 21%)
-Support of research (basic and applied) would fall 0.3%. According to AAAS:
In real terms, the federal research portfolio would fall for the fifth year in a row, down 9.1 percent from 2004.
But now things may be changing due to new legislation introduced in the Senate.
From the podcast, here's what Science Magazine's Deputy Editor Barbara Jasny had to say:…
apalazzo | April 20, 2008They announced rain today - instead it is sunny, warm and ... a perfect distraction. Since I haven't yet decamped for lab and am waiting for my wife to shower so that we can have a short picnic by the river before i head out to work, I'll just leave you a few links to some VERY interesting and insightful articles in Slate.The three part series was written by Daniel Engber and focus on how certain elements of our society (i.e. climate skeptics, the ID movement, and the tobacco industry) have cultivated this notion of super-skepticism in an attempt o discredit current scientific consensus.
The…
apalazzo | April 3, 2008Click here for more details.
Unfortunately I'll be in Montreal the week of April 27th giving talks at UofM's IRIC (I'll post details in the next couple of weeks), but I'll try to attend events on the first day of the festival.
apalazzo | March 30, 2008OK there's been a whole story here at Scienceblogs that has been developing over the past two years. It started when PZ, Richard Dawkins and other prominent anti-ID critics were interviewed under false pretenses for a movie, first entitled Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion then renamed Expelled. And did I mention that the movie features Ben Stein, the former Nixon speech writer and cultural personality? PZ then tried to go see a pre-screening of the movie but was ironically expelled. Oh and did I mentioned that Richard Dawkins successfully attended the same pre-screening…
apalazzo | March 24, 2008There have been some interesting posts about the relationship between scientists and the public.
Here's a little snap shot:
Jake at Pure Pedantry advocates that scientists should refrain from making subjective assessments of the general population's lifestyle based on their scientific findings. Scientists should stick to the facts and descriptions of the natural world.
Larry Moran discusses Bruce Alberts' commentary in a recent issue of Science Alberts' writes that the biggest challenge for science education is to teach citizens how to think scientifically.
Dan at BitesizeBio adds his two…
apalazzo | March 22, 2008A docudrama by Piet Hoenderdos on Douglas Hofstadter, philosopher and author of one of the greatest books ever published, Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.
[HT: Mental Floss]
apalazzo | March 8, 2008From Lucy M. Ziurys, professor of astronomy and chemistry, University of Arizona.
1) There is an incredible amount of interesting organic chemistry happening n the vacuum of space.
2) When the earth formed, it is likely that it had no carbon. Over its lifetime, the earth acquired carbon from asteroids, comets, meteorites and cosmic dust.
From David Catling, European Union Marie Curie Chair, University of Bristol.
3) It is now believed that most of the earth's water did not come from asteroids. Why? The deuterium/hydrogen ratio in the ocean does not match the ratio found in asteroids. We are…
apalazzo | February 17, 2008As an outsider, I'm glad to hear all the new developments coming from those who study human behavior. It would seem from my ignorant, non-expert, outside-of-the-field perspective that there is a revolution going on. Many have abandoned the platonic view of thought, the juvenile Freudian view of motivation, and the idyllic view of the blank slate. What has replaced these ideas is the realization that the human brain is a product of evolution - our mental world was molded by our history. It is full of tools or what some refer to as modules - a language module, a moral module, a simulation (…
apalazzo | January 15, 2008Read it here.
Fortunately, I was able to see him give a talk, just a month ago. Unfortunately he will not get a Nobel despite creating a whole field of research while going against the paradigms of the day.
Click here to watch an episode on Nova dedicated to his research.
Update: Orac has this nice tribute.
apalazzo | January 15, 2008Behind the scenes I've been ranting at my Scienceblog neighbours. Since I've been busy writing my k99 grant and have little energy to write about any of the new papers out there I'll repost some of my comments in modified form here.
Why are cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology never covered in the media? I've spoken to so many science journalists - most of whom have no science training. I've come to the conclusion that the barrier is too high - as a result when it comes time to write about these topics, most science journalists end up writing about "genomes" and "junk…
apalazzo | January 7, 2008What goes into a journal's impact factor? It turns out that this is a good question. These impact factors are calculated by Thomsom Scientific and attempt to quantify the import of any particular scientific journal.
But did anyone read this commentary in the December 17th issue of JCB? It's a revealing look as to how impact factors are compiled.
From the article:
With the aim of dissecting the data to determine which topics were being highly cited and which were not, we decided to buy the data for our three journals (The Journal of Experimental Medicine, The Journal of Cell Biology, and The…
apalazzo | January 6, 2008Yes I'm over a week late - this occurred when I was taking a year-end blogging break. The new legislation, signed into law by GWB states that if your research is funded by the NIH, any manuscript you produce must be deposited in PubMed Central within 12 months of the publication date. From Open Access news [posted December 26th]:
This morning President Bush signed the omnibus spending bill requiring the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to mandate OA for NIH-funded research.
Here's the language that just became law:
The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that…
apalazzo | January 3, 2008A link to Nature which has a summary of the primary candidates' stance on science issues. (HT: Mike)
Bora just announced the selections for Open Lab 2007, the best science blogging of the year (which I was a judge, although Bora may have forgotten ...)
The Edge asked its illustrious members, which include some of the smartest scientists and thinkers on the planet "WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?" There is also a nice sub-question:
Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?
Speaking of science &…
apalazzo | December 17, 2007From Lawrence Krauss, in a discussion with Natalie Jeremijenko that is featured in the latest issue of Seed:
I think that's what makes science special. As a scientist and someone who tries, for better or worse, to extol the virtues of science in a society that doesn't appreciate many of those virtues, I think that ultimately the good stuff wins out even if it takes a while to do it. Because the final arbiter of success isn't people. In science, it's experiments. It's the ability to make it work. If it works, then people buy into it, whether they like it or not. And I really think that's…