Science
drorzel | January 28, 2009Physics World's news aggregator had a story yesterday with the headline Chilly solution to neutrino mass problem, and the one-sentence teaser
Ultracold atoms could be used to measure the mass of the neutrino.
This creates a wonderful image of somehow turning a magneto-optical trap or a Bose-Einstein Condensate into a neutrino detector, which is a nice thought, but highly improbable. Even a BEC has a density a million times less than the density of air, and a volume that's way too small to catch any neutrinos.
So what's going on? The answer is cool in its own right, and the path from the…
ddobbs | January 28, 2009I'll let the Boston Herald News tell the tale:
A celebrity from the moment he bounded off an American Airlines [AMR] flight Monday night at Miami International Airport, Lancy redux "very quickly integrated into the menagerie and held his own," said Lou Hawthorne, CEO of BioArts, the firm that auctioned off five dog-cloning procedures last July.
The Ottos spent $155,000 to win the second-round auction.
drorzel | January 28, 2009The American Physical Society has sent out another of its email alerts encouraging people to write to Congress in support of more funding for science. Actually, they're urging people to send two messages: a thank-you to Speaker Pelosi for the generous science funding in the House stimulus bill, and a letter to your Senators asking for more funding.
The explanation from the message:
As you may be aware, the U.S. Congress is currently formulating a
stimulus package to help spur the recovery of our economy. In
addition to the tax cuts in the draft packages being discussed,
the packages include…
oracknows | January 28, 2009
If you've browsed the redesigned front page of ScienceBlogs, you'll see that our benevolent ScienceBlogs Overlords at Seed Magazine have started a project that they have so humbly termed The Rightful Place Project: Reviving Science in America, which is described thusly:
In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of "a world connected by our own science and imagination." He recently stated, "promoting science isn't just about providing Resources--it's about protecting free and open inquiry... It's about listening to what our scientists have…
bioephemera | January 27, 2009
To follow up on my earlier post about Semiconductor's short film "Magnetic Movie," I want to share my favorite Semiconductor film: "Brilliant Noise." It gives me goosebumps every time I watch it.
In daily life, we avoid looking at the sun, but I challenge you to rip your eyes away from this film. In Semiconductor's hands, the sun is dynamic, unpredictable, even ominous. Quite the makeover for an object we take for granted!
More. . .
Brilliant Noise from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt
NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, USA. 2006
(click the four…
bioephemera | January 27, 2009While I was at work, Sciencepunk beat me to posting that Damien Hirst (of dead-shark fame) has created an original artwork for the anniversary reissue of Darwin's On the Origin of Species:
Human skull in space (oil on canvas)
Damien Hirst
Hirst says:
As in a lot of my work, there's a nod to the scientific. The painting sits firmly in the tradition of "still life" and is made up of objects I've come to imbue with my own meanings, some of them Darwinian in origin, and that I guess are seen in other areas of my work. The painting has an X-ray-like quality to it, as if it is revealing something…
awild | January 26, 2009Ted Schultz writes:
Postdoc Scott Solomon has arrived here at the Smithsonian to work on the systematics and phylogenetics of Trachymyrmex and Acromyrmex ants and fungi. Scott has spent a fair amount of time collecting in South America, but we want to be sure that we have an exhaustive representation of species as well as multiple examples of species from across their ranges. Â To that end, we're contacting folks to inquire about whether they might have Trachymyrmex or Acromyrmex specimens that we can use in this project, particularly from undercollected localities.
Ideally, we require…
drorzel | January 26, 2009Much of LiveJournal has been sunk in a sea of suck for the last couple of weeks, but there's a really interesting discussion of science education over at "Faraday's Cage is where you put Schroedinger's Cat." The first post has to do with the idea of "gatekeeping":
In my class today, a very brief discussion occurred between the teacher and another student about a topic which has bothered me for a long, long time: gatekeeping.
This particular student is a grad student in mechanical engineering, and she was talking about her personal teaching philosophy. She said it bothered her that in the…
awild | January 26, 2009
Rachelle Adams writes:
I have begun a one year postdoc molecular project focusing on the species in the Solenopsidini tribe with Ted Schultz and Seán Brady at the Smithsonian, Washington DC. Due to the vastness of this tribe and its taxonomic challenges, I want to thoroughly sample each genus currently classified in the tribe as well as those that were historically classified as solenopsidines. ANY samples that belong in the genera listed below are needed. I have also included a species âwish listâ that will complement a morphological study done by Juanita Rodriguez and my dissertation…
drorzel | January 26, 2009FemaleScienceProfessor posted a few days ago about "intense" editing of scholarly writing, and the different reactions students have to the experience:
Although an individual student's response to being intensely edited can vary with time and mood, there tend to be typical responses from each student. These typical responses are no doubt related to very deep aspects of their psyches and stem from previous experiences with teachers, women (maybe even their mothers..), or anyone who has ever criticized their punctuation. Who knows from whence these reactions spring.. Whatever the source, it's…
grrlscientist | January 26, 2009tags: ants, hymenoptera, excavating ant city, nature, science, streaming video
This fascinating video details how a scientist learns what an ant colony looks like in the wild -- it's astonishing how big these things can get [3:16]
drorzel | January 25, 2009Michael Brooks's 13 Things That Don't Make Sense turned up on a lot of "Best science books of 2008" lists, and the concept of a book about scientific anomalies seemed interesting, so I ordered it from Amazon. It's a quick read (a mere 210 pages, and breezily written), but ultimately a frustrating book.
It took me several chapters to pin down what bugged me about the book, but it all became clear when I looked at the back cover flap, and saw that the author is a former editor of New Scientist. The really pretty much sums it up-- in physics circles, New Scientist is known for publishing three…
awild | January 25, 2009
Figure 1. For the 32 most-studied ant species, the percentage of publications 1984-2008 in various contexts.
In thinking about where the myrmecological community ought to devote resources in the age of genomics, it occcured to me that putting some numbers on where researchers have previously concentrated their efforts might be useful. So I went to BIOSIS previews and quantified the number of publications in 5-year intervals from 1984 to 2008 recovered under searches for various well-studied ant species (methods and full data here). Here's what I found:
Number of publications 1984-2008…
grrlscientist | January 25, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
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 enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
drorzel | January 25, 2009In his inaugural address, President Obama pledged to "restore science to its rightful place." Following up on that, the Corporate Masters have launched the Rightful Place Project, asking bloggers, readers, and scientists to define the rightful place of science.
Many of these responses will focus on narrow matters of policy, but as many have said with regard to the economic crisis, this is no time for timid measures. It's a time for big thoughts and bold action. With that in mind, here's my take on the question of science's rightful place, which, in the end, boils down to defining what science…
catdynamics | January 24, 2009"Making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science..."
So, the supplemental funding bill is moving through the House committee in sub-sections as different "Titles" of it are processed through the political sausage factory.
It is "House Resolution 1" - which is a statement on its priority level.
Huffington Post very kindly put up a pdf - all 647 seven pages.
Science is in Title III - starting page 48.
What have we got?
NASA: $400M for science - at least $250M of which to accelerate climate research missions; $150M…
amillikan | January 24, 2009In his inaugural address January 20, President Obama made a promise to America to "restore science to its rightful place." At Seed Media Group, we are firmly committed to President Obama's vision and will work to make it a reality. To this end, we have launched a new initiative we're calling The Rightful Place Project, to invite a national discussion around the President's idea of a "rightful place" for science. Come join in.
pharyngula | January 23, 2009Somebody is going to have to declare Jerry Coyne an official member of the "New Atheist" club and send him the fancy hat and instructions for the secret handshake. He has a substantial piece in The New Republic that is both a review of two recent books by theistic scientists, Karl Giberson (who really detests me) and Ken Miller, and a definite warning shot across the bows of those who believe science and religion can be reconciled.
First, let's consider the reviews of the two books — they're less interesting, not because they're poorly done, but because Coyne's opinion is almost identical to…
drorzel | January 23, 2009The last course report covered the first six classes of the relativity unit. This week, we had the final two relativity lectures, and today was the start of quantum mechanics.
Class 7: This lecture was about how you can use special relativity to show that a magnetic field in a stationary frame is an electric field in a moving frame. The basic idea is that when you move to a frame that is moving in the same direction as the (canonical) current, you see the spacing between the negative charges decrease due to length contraction, meaning that the wire no longer appears neutral. This leads to an…
drorzel | January 23, 2009The Physics and Astronomy colloquium this week was by Jill Linz from Skidmore, talking about a couple of physics outreach programs she's worked on. This being right up my alley, I made it a point to get in early enough to see the colloquium (I spent the morning at home with the sick SteelyKid, and Kate was good enough to come home for the afternoon), before giving an exam in the afternoon.
Linz took a somewhat different approach to physics outreach than a lot of other projects, which tend to focus on high-school students taking physics. She pointed out that if you look at the full student…