Science
oracknows | November 24, 2007This video's so good that I'm half tempted to try this method for myself, just to see if it actually works...
Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog. MacGyver would love this.
oracknows | November 21, 2007It's that time again.
Oh, it's a day early because of the Thanksgiving holiday, but it's here nonetheless. It's time for the 74th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, this time hosted over at Med Journal Watch. I can't figure out why Christian is being heckled by skeptics, though, as he gives his address.
Don't forget that it won't be long before the next Skeptics' Circle comes around the pike. In fact, it will be longer than usual, thanks to the early appearance of this edition. The next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will appear on Thursday, December 6 and will be hosted by Pro-Science, a blog…
pharyngula | November 21, 2007If you've been following Lio lately, you know he has a new arthropod friend, rescued from the dinner pot.
Unfortunately, Lio missed the big news.
The fossil record has yielded various gigantic arthropods, in contrast to their diminutive proportions today. The recent discovery of a 46cm long claw (chelicera) of the pterygotid eurypterid ('sea scorpion') Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, from the Early Devonian Willwerath Lagerstätte of Germany, reveals that this form attained a body length of approximately 2.5m--almost half a metre longer than previous estimates of the group, and the largest…
pharyngula | November 21, 2007
A recent discovery in stem cell research is no minor event: researchers have figured out how to reprogram adult cells into a state that is nearly indistinguishable from that of embryonic, pluripotent stem cells. This is huge news that promises to accelerate the pace of research in the field.
The problem has always been that cells exist in distinct states. A skin cell, for instance, has one set of genes essential for its specific function activated, and other sets of genes turned off; an egg cell has different patterns of gene activation and inactivation. Just taking the DNA from a skin cell…
drorzel | November 21, 2007On a happier science-related note, the AIP's Physics News Update highlights a very nice article in The American Journal of Physics about the wide-ranging scientific investigations of Luis Alvarez:
Scientist as detective: Luis Alvarez and the pyramid burial chambers, the JFK assassination, and the end of the dinosaurs
Luis Alvarez (1911-1988) was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century. His investigations of three mysteries, all of them outside his normal areas of research, show what remarkable things a far-ranging imagination working with an…
drorzel | November 21, 2007I generally like Gregg Easterbrook's writing about football (though he's kind of gone off the deep end regarding the Patriots this year), but everything else he turns his hand to is a disaster. In particular, he tends to pad his columns out with references to science and technology issues. I'm not quite sure what the point of these is supposed to be, other than to demonstrate that he, Gregg Easterbrook, is so much smarter than the average football fan that he knows, like, rocket science and stuff. The problem with that is that his knowledge of rocket science seems to owe more to Star Trek…
denialism | November 21, 2007You guys might have noticed I've been quiet lately, that's because I've scheduled a thesis defense and am under deadlines. However, I couldn't let these two (1) papers(2) on reprogramming of human adult cells into stem cells slip by without some comment (NYT piece here)
These reports are a follow-up on landmark animal studies that we discussed previously that showed that expressing 4 genes in cells obtained from adult animals you could induce them to form embryonic stem cell (ESC) like cells that researchers dubbed induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). At the time we noted several…
catdynamics | November 20, 2007Can you, in fact, add ordered sets of unlike things?
One of the main objections to Lisi's simple theory of everything is that he cavalierly sets up ordered sets of mixed quantities - under the broad heading of they are all Grassman numbers
In particular, his connection puts in both fermions and bosons, which is generally not allowed - unless you do it under a super Lie algebra, or some other extended scheme, where you include an extra operator, that basically allows you to do this.
But, it is NOT actually true that you can not mix unlike variables in doing addition or multiplication of…
drorzel | November 20, 2007Believe it or not, this is actually book-related: I have in mind to do a chapter at the end of the book about the use of misrepresentations of quantum physics to promise magical results. I've been writing the dialogue to go with that this morning (because it's more fun than what I'm supposed to be doing), and it struck me that this might be a decent question for the audience. So,
What's your favorite example of quantum chicanery?
By "quantum chicanery," I mean somebody using the language of quantum theory to make wildly unrealistc promises of magical results. Examples abound-- Bob Park got…
oracknows | November 20, 2007I'm not sure what to think of Michael Siegel. I'm really not. Even now, I remain of two minds on him.
Dr. Siegel first came to my attention back in July, around the time I was getting into online tussles with a certain opponent of indoor smoking bans, before which I had never heard of him. He's a Professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at Boston University School of Public Health who's made quite a reputation for himself casting a skeptical eye on what he considers to be extreme exaggerations, bad science, and even lies about the risks of tobacco and secondhand smoke. My…
catdynamics | November 19, 2007Sun Microsystems to put 10,000 servers in a box in a Japanese coal mine
I kid you not
"Sun and a consortium of other businesses are going to lower self-contained computing facilities into a no-longer-used Japanese coal mine. The goal is to create an underground data center that will use up to 50% less power than a ground-level data center, the vendors claim.
(h/t Muhahhahaaaa)
The coolant will be ground water and the site's temperature is a constant 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) all year, meaning no air-conditioning will be needed outside the containers. This reduces the energy…
oracknows | November 19, 2007...apparently, that's what the Discovery Institute thinks, as William Dembski proudly announces, for reasons that escape me:
Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host and bestselling author, has joined the Discovery Institute in the role of senior fellow. The position cements a longstanding friendship and recognizes a commonality of values and projects across a spectrum of issues.
"Michael Medved is an intellectual entrepreneur, a political and cultural polymath with great insights, judgment and wit. We are delighted to have this new relationship with him," said Discovery…
drorzel | November 19, 2007I have to spend the day working with a thesis student who needs to finish up by tomorrow (no pressure), so I don't have time to write up the seven-part detailed explanation of the physics of deep-fried turkey that I was hoping to do. Maybe next year.
In its place, inspired by Backreaction's post on scaling behavior, here's a question for my readership:
How do you feel about deadlines?
Do you do your best work with a tight deadline, or do you seize up under the pressure? Does the approach of an important deadline lead you into a procrastinatory frenzy in which you affix processed meat to…
grrlscientist | November 18, 2007This story reminds me of those days not so long ago when I was teaching molecular biology to a small group of motivated and talented high school sophomores and juniors. Basically, a group of high school biotechnology seniors from Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco, California, were invited to participate in the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM), hosted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. iGEM focuses on the hot new field of synthetic biology: this field genetically manipulates proteins and other molecules that are constructed by living cells…
pharyngula | November 18, 2007Wilkins is about to review a new paper on sociobiology by Wilson and Wilson, but he hasn't quite done it yet. I'll be looking forward to it, though.
Wilkins calls himself an unflinching sociobologist. I'm more of a lapsed sociobiologist with a fairly positive view of the field. The book Sociobiology was actually my very first serious introduction to the depth of biology — I picked it up when I was an undergraduate, way back in 1975, and read it all the way through. I was impressed in my naive fashion, and was baffled by the sociobiology wars that raged for a time — I was particularly…
catdynamics | November 16, 2007WebMD stirred up the news recently when they drew attention to recent fatal cases of the common cold.
Specifically, the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report feature on Ad 14
Adenovirus is one of the common respiratory viruses that cause the "common cold" (which is really a catch all for generic symptoms caused by several different viral infections).
Or, if you prefer, it causes "'flu like symptoms", which are not at all, typically, like actual influenza symptoms, which tend to be a lot more severe than most people think when they "come down with "the 'flu".
There are about 50 strains (…
catdynamics | November 16, 2007Penn State engineers have come up with an interesting twist on fuel production, coming up with a cell that very efficiently produces hydrogen
Here is the NSF headline press release on this
The cell uses microbial fermentation of acetic acid to generate hydrogen, but with a twist. Oh, and the technique also works (not as well) for cellulose, which is the prima plant waste material we all would like to find something useful to do with.
A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words:
Click for high-res version.
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
The basic idea is one of…
pharyngula | November 16, 2007
We had a seminar from Marco Restani of St Cloud State University yesterday — he's a wildlife biologist who talked about Tasmanian Devils. Just a little tip: don't ever invite wildlife biologists or conservation ecologists to give talks. They are the most depressing people in the world, and they really make it hard to hide away from the ugly realities. This talk was no exception: the Tasmanian Devil is in big trouble, and is facing at least two major threats, each of which may be sufficient to wipe them out. And just looke at that guy! He's adorable! How can you let them go extinct?
The first…
drorzel | November 15, 2007Via email, a plug for the newish site 60 Second Science, which is a project from Scientific American built around a podcast featuring one-minute explanations of, well, science.
The email was specifically highlighting their new project, a set of video podcasts going by the name of Instant Egghead. The first video (also the only one so far) is a one-minute explanation of how we know there's dark matter using items found in editor George Musser's office.
It's a well-done video, and a nice explanation of galaxy rotation curves using coffee, crumbs, and a CD. I do have one quibble about the…