Science
oracknows | January 23, 2009When it comes to science, I've always detested The Huffington Post.
Nearly four years ago, when Arianna Huffington's vanity group political blog went live, I was the first one to notice a most disturbing trend about it. As far as I knew at the time (or know now), I was the only one to have noticed that The Huffington Post had become a hotbed of antivaccine propaganda a mere three weeks after its launch. It was home to David Kirby, author of that paean to the mercury militia Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Controversy and now antivaccine blogger on both…
drorzel | January 22, 2009My graduate alma mater made some news this week, with a new quantum teleportation experiment in which they "teleport" the state of one ytterbium ion to another ytterbium ion about a meter away. That may not sound like much, but it's the first time anybody has done this with ions in two completely separate traps, in different vacuum systems. It's also written up in Physics World, though they spell Chris Monroe's name wrong throughout.
The paper is coming out in Science, and I may try to write it up for a ResearchBlogging post over the weekend. I may also need to add it to the quantum…
rallain | January 22, 2009Question: When is the Sun directly overhead? (assume you are in the United States of America)
Common Answers:
Everyday at noon.
On the summer solstice (June 21ish)
Answer: For continental U.S. the answer is never. Since the Earth's rotation axis is tilted 23.5 degrees with respect to its orbital motion around the Sun, one would have to be less than 23.5 degrees above or below the equator to have the Sun pass directly overhead (once per year).
Here is a video I made over the course of a day in Louisiana. Note that it rains and then the clay softens the pen falls. At the end, my dog hit…
pharyngula | January 22, 2009Usually, Begley is reasonably good on science, but her latest piece is one big collection of misconceptions. It reflects a poor understanding of the science and of history, in that it confuses long-standing recognition of the importance of environmental factors in gene expression with a sudden reinstatement of Lamarckian inheritance, and it simply isn't — she's missed the point of the science and she has caricatured Lamarck.
Some water fleas sport a spiny helmet that deters predators; others, with identical DNA sequences, have bare heads. What differs between the two is not their genes but…
amillikan | January 22, 2009President Obama's inaugural address yesterday was met with enthusiasm by ScienceBloggers, who were particularly pleased by his promise to "restore science to its rightful place." But it was the inclusion of "non-believers" among the nation's religions that prompted the most discussion.William Connolley of Stoat called it "a token nod" in the midst of a mostly religious ceremony, while PZ Myers of Pharyngula thought it to be "a small thing, but appreciated."
grrlscientist | January 22, 2009tags: continental drift, geology, earth science, streaming video
This video shows how the continents have split apart and drifted around the globe. Further, it also shows their predicted movements in the future [1:20]
sciencewoman | January 21, 2009New blogger Mrs. Comet Hunter is in the latter stages of her Ph.D., and she's at the stage of trying to figure out how to break her work out into discrete publishable chunks. She recently wrote a post about the topic, and she sent me an email to ask some related questions. With her permission, here's the bulk of the email:
Dear ScienceWoman,
I've been reading the Sciencewomen blog for a couple of months now (I know, I'm new to the blog thing) - and find it very interesting! I especially like your shoe posts, and "Ask ScienceWoman". I have a suggestion for an Ask ScienceWoman topic: how to…
pharyngula | January 21, 2009First, a warning: this is a link to a good science article, but it's hosted on the Suicide Girls site, which contains many pictures of young ladies with attitude and tattoos in a state of deshabille. You may discover you are blocked at work. But do persevere! It will be worth it even if you have no interest in naked women!
Anyway, one of the broad points of dissension in the discussion of the evolution of religion can be split along one general question: was religion directly adaptive in the evolution of humans, or was it more of a side-effect of other useful cognitive and social properties?…
oracknows | January 20, 2009I never thought I'd finally see the day, but George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States, and Barack Obama is. I have to say, I've paid attention to Presidential Inaugurations since 1981, and I can't recall one greeted with as much excitement, hope, and expectation. All around my university, in my medical center, and even in my cancer center, auditoriums were set up and the oath of office and inaugural speeches televised on the big screens there. At my cancer center, the auditorium was packed. Our cancer center director was there, as was most of the center leadership and many…
awild | January 20, 2009New Orleans, January 2009
The first major public exhibit to open in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was the Audubon Nature Institute's Insectarium. We took advantage of a lull in our schedule last week to make the pilgrimage to what turns out to be a surprisingly ambitious operation. It well exceeded our expectations.
The entrance on Canal Street.
Spying on live bumblebees.
Inside the bees' nest.
Yes, educational bits too.
This ant looks familiar.
Not a family exhibit: stick insects have sexual relations in public.
They let non-insects in too.
Another one.
The proud…
drorzel | January 20, 2009SteelyKid was delivered by Caesarean section (MacDuff won't stand a chance...). They let me in to the operating room just before the moment of delivery, and I stuck around while they cleaned her up and did the early tests that they do on newborns, before they brought her over for me and Kate to see.
While we were waiting (and quietly rejoicing), the surgeons were going about the business of closing things up. I have an unholy aversion to all things medical, so I tried not to pay too much attention to what they were doing, but I gradually became aware of a pattern: one of the nurses would…
bioephemera | January 19, 2009
Sardine eggs
Richard Kirby/BNPS
Over the last few weeks, I've received many interesting link ideas from readers. I've gotten behind on sharing them, so I'm going to try to catch up. Thanks to Laura for this gallery of beautiful plankton photos by Richard Kirby. Read more here.
Ludia sarsii
Richard Kirby/BNPS
amillikan | January 19, 2009In this week's Science Saturday, science writers Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer look ahead at the scientific controversies and discoveries of the coming year. Will Craig Venter finally produce artificial life in 2009? Will NASA find proof of Martian life? Will the public become even less informed about science? And perhaps most importantly, will Obama's science policy improve on Bush's?
drorzel | January 19, 2009I think I missed this the first time around, but this weekend, I watched the bloggingheads conversation about quantum mechanics between Sean Carroll and David Albert. In it, David makes an extended argument against the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics (starting about 40:00 into the conversation).
The problem is, I can't quite figure out what the problem is supposed to be.
The argument has something to do with a thought experiment in which you take a million particles, prepared in a state such that a measurement of their spin will give an equal probability of measuring "up" or…
awild | January 19, 2009
Camponotus discolor male, queen, and worker
Here's an image I should have taken years ago. It's a stylized shot of the different castes in an ant colony, perfect for a textbook illustration of the morphological distinctions among males, gynes, and workers. Better late than never, I suppose.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper
drorzel | January 19, 2009Over at Biocurious, Philip is thinking about digital notebooks, and has found a system that works for him:
My computer algebra system of choice is Mathematica, and because of Mathematica's notebook system, it became extremely straightforward to include sufficient commentary among the analysis and calculations. The important "working" details of my day are recorded on paper that is heavy on scribbles, numbers, and comments on the minutiae of a particular instrument or measurement, followed by references to specific data files collected that day. The Mathematica notebooks where I visualize and…
bioephemera | January 18, 2009
Magnetic Movie
Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt)
Last fall I stopped by the Hirshhorn Museum's Black Box theatre to watch a short film by Semiconductor (the artistic team of Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt). Magnetic Movie is a color-drenched, imaginative tour of Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. The film is below the fold, but before you watch it, take a moment to consider your expectations when you're watching a film about "lab science". Ultimately, does this film transcend or offend those expectations? And what are your expectations for scientific art in general?…
rallain | January 18, 2009Podcasts are great. While cleaning the car today, I listened to a new one - Stuff you missed in history class (itunes link). In one episode, they were talking about alternative theories about early visits to America. There was some guy that was claiming the Chinese visited the new world 70 years before Columbus (or something to that effect).
This is a great example of how similar science and history are to each other.
Both science and history make 'models'. In history this may be 'the Chinese visited americas before the Europeans'. It is just like a model in science. It is an idea that…
bioephemera | January 18, 2009Even after several readings, there's an exchange I completely fail to understand in Seed's interview with outgoing presidential science adviser John Marburger:
Seed: Did you see President Bush ever change his mind based on the scientific evidence that you presented him?
John Marburger: As far as I can tell, the president, as a matter of principle, doesn't think it's wise to defy nature. By the time I've arranged a presentation about something for the president, all science questions have been resolved. And he expects it. He would probably fire me if I permitted a science question to leak into…
drorzel | January 18, 2009Looking for a way to kill some time on a Sunday morning? You could do worse than yesterday's bloggingheads.tv Science Saturday conversation between Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer:
It's a wide-ranging conversation, covering what to expect from the Obama administration, artifical life, the possibility of life on Mars, Sanjay Gupta, and the future of science in the media. It's like a Sunday-morning talk show, only with smart people.