Science
bioephemera | February 13, 2010
Upcoming at Observatory in NYC: Entomologia (Feb 26-April 4), a group show of art incorporating and inspired by insects. I'm particularly intrigued by the discussion scheduled for April 3, "Transgenics, Cybernetics, and Evolution:"
Silkworms engineered to produce pharmaceuticals and hormones, cyborg dragonflies designed for high-speed missions and surveillance... In connection with her recent work, Shanna Maurizi has been delving into the nether regions of genetic engineering and transgenics, molecular biology, and military cybernetics.
Ok, sounds good to me! Plus it's curated by Curious…
grrlscientist | February 13, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is almost here once more and it is still seeking submissions for Monday's edition of this blog carnival! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written blog essays to me?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The most…
grrlscientist | February 13, 2010tags: Look Around You: Ghosts!, supernatural, documentary, science, BBC, satire, parody, humor, comedy, fucking hilarious, streaming video
Ghosts is part of the hilarious British comedy "Look Around You", series. The episodes are a satire/homage of 1970s and early 1980s educational videos and schools programs, with a different scientific subject being discussed in each episode, or "modules" as they are referred to in the series.
pontiff | February 12, 2010In the New York Times today there is an interesting article about Helene Hegemann whose debut novel, "Axolotl Roadkill," drew wide praise. You know this story: turns out that the book contains plagiarized passages (plagiarism: check, sales rising: check.) What I find fascinating about the story, however, is not this rehash of a tried and true marketing tactic, but Ms. Hegemann's defense of herself, summarized in this quote:
"There's no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity," said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by her publisher after the scandal broke.
Why do I love this…
awild | February 12, 2010
Tapinoma sessile, the odorous house ant, with larvae
Last summer I replaced the old covering on our porch roof. When I peeled back the rotting shingles, I was greeted by a frenzy of frenetic brown ants- thousands of them- running about every which way. Dozens of fat queens scurried for cover. It was an impressive display of formicid infestation, reminiscent of the swarms of invasive Argentine ants in California.
But these weren't exotic pests. This was a native species, Tapinoma sessile, whose pleasant blue-cheese odor lends it the name "odorous house ant".
Tapinoma sessile is found…
drorzel | February 12, 2010What's the application? Optical tweezers use focused light beams to trap small particles in the focus of the beam, and drag them around by moving the beam.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How do we move these tiny little things around without touching them?" 2) "How do we measure the forces exerted by biological molecules?" 3) "How do we tie knots in DNA strands?"
How does it work?The basic optical tweezer scheme uses a single beam of light focused down to a very small spot. If you take some small (mostly) transparent object and place it in the beam, it will feel a force pulling it…
drorzel | February 12, 2010There have been a bunch of stories recently talking about quantum effects at room temperature-- one, about coherent transport in photosynthesis , even escaped the science blogosphere. They've mostly said similar things, but Thursday's ArxivBlog entry had a particular description of a paper about entanglement effects that is worth unpacking:
Entanglement is a strange and fragile thing. Sneeze and it vanishes. The problem is that entanglement is destroyed by any interaction with the environment and these interactions are hard to prevent. So physicists have only ever been able to study and…
grrlscientist | February 12, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is almost here once more and it is still seeking submissions for Monday's edition of this blog carnival! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written blog essays to me?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The most…
drorzel | February 12, 2010Miscellaneous stories and links about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
-- There's a nice review by Margaret Fisk (who has been reading it for a while, and mentioning it on her blog, which kept turning up in the vanity search):
Orzel does a wonderful job of finding physical parallels to explain quantum concepts in ways that make a reasonable amount of sense, whether in the behavior of dogs on a walk or the "magically" refilled food bowl. Though scientifically inclined, through a series of events I ended up with little formal training, and this book is written for people in just that situation…
grrlscientist | February 12, 2010tags: employment, creative thinking, motivation, career, rewards, inspiration, science, psychology, Daniel Pink, TEDTalks, streaming video
Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. If you think about it, the rewards described in this video are the very things that motivate blog writer to provide their content for free.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading…
razib | February 11, 2010The End of the Space Age:
It's important to recognize, though, that the decision in question belongs to all of us, and not just to Barack Obama. The administration wouldn't be cutting the manned spaceflight program if Americans were still enthusiastic about going to the stars -- if space exploration still occupied a privileged place in our imagination, if our jocks still wanted to be astronauts and our nerds still wanted to build rockets. Obama is simply bowing to our culture's priorities: Our geeks want to build a better XBox, and our jocks want to buy it to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare…
tqa | February 11, 2010
The Sandwalk
Down House, Kent, England
31 August 2008
1/45 sec @ f/4; 18mm focal length
Technorati Tags: blogpix, darwin, Raw, sandwalk
awild | February 11, 2010
click to enlarge
The top-tier journal Nature doesn't often deal in purely phylogenetic research. So when such a study graces their pages we know it's big stuff.
Yesterday, Nature published a 62 gene, 75 species analysis of the evolutionary history of the arthropods. Arthropods, as readers of this blog likely know, are animals with a chitinous exoskeleton and jointed legs. They include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, centipedes, and others. This is a staggeringly diverse group, and one found just about everywhere on the planet. Most animals are arthropods.
This study has been in the…
drorzel | February 11, 2010What's the application? Measuring the distance from the Earth to the Moon by bouncing a laser off one of the retro-reflector arrays left there by the Apollo missions.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How does the distance from the Earth to the Moon vary over time due to things like tidal drag?" 2) "Does the strength of gravity change over time?" 3) "What can we do with a laser to really cheese off people who think the Moon landings were fake?"
How does it work? This concept is simplicity itself. You simply point a laser at the Moon, fire off a short pulse of light, and wait for it…
grrlscientist | February 11, 2010tags: art, sculpture, paintings, science, nature, Tom Shannon, TEDTalks, streaming video
John Hockenberry visits artist Tom Shannon in his Manhattan studio for an intimate look at his science-inspired art. An eye-opening, personal conversation reveals how nature's forces -- and the onset of Parkinson's tremors -- interact in his life and craft.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe…
grrlscientist | February 10, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than one week away and it is still seeking submissions! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written blog essays to me?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The most recent edition of Scientia Pro Publica (…
pharyngula | February 10, 2010This is nicely done — clear and comprehensible. I also very much like the statement that doctors have an obligation to state the truth.
drorzel | February 10, 2010What's the application? Using lasers to reduce the speed of a sample of atoms, thereby reducing their temperature to a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How can I make this sample of atoms move slowly enough to measure their properties very accurately?" 2) "How can I make this sample of atoms move slowly enough for their quantum wave-like character to become apparent?"
How does it work? I've written about laser cooling before, but the nickel version of the explanation is this: You can think of a beam of light as being made up of photons…
awild | February 9, 2010
Figure 1. Relationship between normalized metabolic rate and body mass for unitary organisms and whole colonies (from Hou et al 2010)
The notion that insect colonies and their constituent individuals are analogous to multicellular organisms and their constituent cells has been a controversial idea for decades. Is it useful, for example, to think of an ant colony as a single individual? Do superorganisms really exist as coherent entities? Or do insect colonies function more as aggregations of individuals?
Last week, PNAS published the first application of empirical methods to test the…
grrlscientist | February 8, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is just one week away and it is still seeking submissions! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written blog essays to me?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The most recent edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science…