Science
catdynamics | October 6, 2009Nobel Prize in Physics, in case you hadn't heard, went to Kao for Fiber Optics and Boyle and Smith for developing the fundamental CCD technology.
Some people, naming no names, seem a little unhappy about this.
Well, ol' Alfred had his purpose when he endowed the Nobel Foundation with his ill gotten gains, and such things are somewhat binding.
Further, pushing the Swedish Academy on these things, to do the "right thing" and give the Prize to one of your pet subfields, however more "fundamental" it may be, tends to backfire.
Think of the Academy as a very proper and very small club, about…
pharyngula | October 6, 2009Well, actually, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak won the prize for discovering telomeres and telomerase, a strange and clumsy arrangement that we have evolved to cope with the fact that our enzymes make awkward fencepost errors when they hit the ends of our chromosomes. They're definitely important, though — as they press release mentions, these are critical functions in stem cells, cancer, and ageing.
Would you believe the creationists are already sneering at it? Intelligent design creationism really is an anti-science movement.
drorzel | October 6, 2009The sneaky folks at the Nobel Foundation have thrown a spanner in the works when it comes to the Physics prize. All the speculation has surrounded exotic quantum effects and theoretical esoterica, and they turn around and give it to something -gasp- practical...
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics is split three ways: half to Charles K. Kao "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication," and the other half to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor."
Now these aren't…
grrlscientist | October 5, 2009tags: Scientia Pro Publica, Science for the People, biology, evolution, medicine, earth science, behavioral ecology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, blog carnival
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
As you know, the first full week of October is Nobel Prize week, the week when new discoveries and innovations that benefit humanity are celebrated on the worldwide stage. In short, this is the one week of the year when scientists get to be international "rock stars"! So in honor of the Nobels, I think it is appropriate to celebrate science…
oracknows | October 5, 2009...and, no, I don't mean Orac, his last few posts notwithstanding.
No, don't worry, this post is most definitely not about Bill Maher. Rather, it's how, while doing searches for that craziness, I found even more disturbing craziness. Even though I was disappointed in him on this one issue and even though I often don't agree with him on religion, never let it be said that I don't still have considerable admiration for Richard Dawkins. That's why, when I came across some truly over-the-top attacks on Dawkins, I thought it would be worthwhile to mention them, as a little wafer to cleanse the…
drorzel | October 5, 2009The Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak for "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase." Who's HI, you ask? HI is the commenter who picked Blackburn and Greider in the official Uncertain Principles betting pool.
Congratulations to Blackburn, Greider, and Szostak, who get to split about a million dollars. And Congratulations to HI, who gets the right to author two! guest posts on this blog. Send me an email from the address you left in the comment form, HI, and we'll get this set up.
drorzel | October 5, 2009As you may or may not have heard, there's a new Stargate franchise on the SyFy channel with John Scalzi as a creative consultant. It may have slipped by without you noticing, because John is too modest to hype it much...
Anyway, given the Scalzi connection, I checked out the pilot on Friday, and it was fine. I'm not a huge fan of the other series in the Stargate family, but they're reliably entertaining when nothing else is on, and this will probably fall into that category. I doubt I'll be re-arranging my social calendar for this, but it was pretty good.
The show did do one thing that really…
grrlscientist | October 4, 2009
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) was just published recently at Lab Rat. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 12th edition.
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 host for the upcoming 5 October edition will be me. To send your…
grrlscientist | October 4, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
oracknows | October 4, 2009I hadn't planned on writing much, if anything more, about the whole Bill Maher debacle, but PZ has shown up in my comments and graciously tried to explain what's going on at the AAI convention regarding the truly awful choice of Bill Maher for the Richard Dawkins Award:
Look, I don't know what else I can say. I didn't endorse Maher; if they'd run this decision by me months ago, I would have said, "Are you nuts?". But of course, I have no clout with the AAI. Dawkins consented to the award initially, because he didn't know much about the full views held by the crackpot; he would certainly have…
bioephemera | October 3, 2009I'm guessing this type of behavior is why this breed of bird is so rare:
Thank 3QD for the laugh. ;)
grrlscientist | October 2, 2009
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) was just published recently at Lab Rat. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 12th edition.
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 host for the upcoming 5 October edition will be me. To send your…
drorzel | October 2, 2009We're currently in the early stages of the annual DonorsChoose fundraiser, helping to raise money for educational projects. This is especially important in the current economic climate-- even before things went south, many schools and classrooms were strapped for cash, but now it's even worse.
But I can understand if that's not a noble enough cause for you. Helping poor people isn't enough for everyone. So here's something to sweeten the deal: PETA doesn't like DonorsChoose because some of the science classes seeking funds are looking for dissection equipment for biology classes. Janet gives…
grrlscientist | October 2, 2009
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) was just published recently at Lab Rat. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 12th edition.
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 host for the upcoming 5 October edition will be me. To send your…
awild | October 1, 2009This tiger moth caterpillar may appear normal at first glance. But a closer look reveals it to be plagued by dozens of wasp larvae, slowly consuming it alive as they cling to its back:
photo details (top photo): Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 200, f/7, 1/200 sec, indirect strobe in a white box
(bottom photo): Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
bioephemera | October 1, 2009
Cajal's Revenge, 2007
Katherine Sherwood
It's been a while since I've been able to focus on my Art vs. Science series of posts, so I understand if you've forgotten Part One and Part Two. A quick recap: in Part One, I asked,
I think that lay audiences approach scientific art differently - perhaps more credulously - than they do other forms of art, simply because lay audiences feel insecure and uncertain about basic science. Audiences may have so much respect for science, that they extend respect reflexively when science appears in other contexts - like art or entertainment. Anyone who's had…
bioephemera | October 1, 2009I've simply got too much to do this week to review these articles with the time and thought they deserve, so I'd just like to point them out to you.
First, Scibling Bora has written a massive critique of "Investigative Science Journalism." It's well worth a read, but set aside some time for it. One of the interesting issues Bora addresses is trust:
Journalists display an inordinate amount of skepticism - even deep cynicism - about anyone's honesty. Everyone's a liar unless proven not to be. Scientists, knowing themselves, knowing their colleagues, knowing the culture of science where 100%…
bioephemera | October 1, 2009
A gift idea for the person who already has everything: spider silk couture! (Or the closest thing to it). It took one million spiders to produce the silk for this textile from Madagascar (although the wild spiders were released after their silk was extracted, so some of them may have been repeat donors.) The video is absolutely fascinating:
The silk is naturally golden and undyed. Each individual thread in the cloth was made by twisting 96 to 960 individual spider silk filaments together. I would love to touch it - I can't really imagine what it must be like, can you?
Via Wouldn't You Like…
grrlscientist | September 30, 2009
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) was just published recently at Lab Rat. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 12th edition.
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 host for the upcoming 5 October edition will be me. To send your…