Science
drorzel | November 5, 2007I'm suffering muscle twinges in my neck and shoulder that are usually linked to excessive typing. As I have a grant proposal to review, a senior thesis to help whip into shape, and a book under contract, this means that blogging will be substantially reduced while I ration my typing to those things that pay the bills. You'll get more linking and less thinking, at least until my shoulder calms down a bit.
I don't want to pass up a set of links-- two press releases and a news story-- on some new results regarding friction:
If you want to reduce the friction between tiny objects, just increase…
denialism | November 5, 2007The mainstream media has been reporting on this paper (open access at PNAS) on the hunt for the origin of HIV in the Americas.
The surprising result was the finding that HIV first came to the United States from Haiti (rather than the previous origin which was thought to be a flight attendant from Canada) between 1966 and 1972, and flew under the radar of public health authorities for over a decade. The infection, spread initially by heterosexuals from Haiti, went undetected from as early as 1966 until 1981 and then only because it had jumped into a highly susceptible population. This…
pharyngula | November 4, 2007The scienceblogs team seems to be forming a united front on at least one specific issue: in support of research in the face of animal rights extremists. This is prompted by the case of a researcher in drug addiction whose home was vandalized by domestic terrorists, and who has written an op-ed defending the use of animals in research.
I said at length what I think about animal research several years ago, in our biology discipline's policy statement on dissection. It's pretty darned simple: we can't figure out how something we don't understand works without studying the subject. We can't learn…
oracknows | November 4, 2007I've written before about how animal rights cranks have started resorting to terroristic tactics in order to intimidate or frighten researchers into ceasing to do animal research. As you may guess, I have little but contempt for the Animal Liberation Front (is that anything like the People's Front of Judea or the Judean People's Front?) and their ilk, who routinely use lies such as the claim that no good has ever come of animal research or the utterly risible claim that we can now somehow replace the use of animals with computer or cell culture models, coupled with vandalism and intimidation…
laelaps | November 1, 2007A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending one of the Science Communication Consortium's (SCC) panel discussions on communicating science (moderated by blogger Kate of The Anterior Commissure), and for those who missed the last one another discussion is fast approaching. On November 15th the SCC will host Dr. Lee Silver (Princeton - Molecular Biology), Dr. Gavin Schmidt (Goddard Institute for Space Studies - Climatology), and Dr. Wendy Chung (Columbia - Clinical and Molecular Genetics) at Rockefellar University in NYC to present their ideas on effectively communicating controversial…
oracknows | October 29, 2007I was half-tempted to e-mail this one to P. Z. or Larry Moran, but my inherently merciful nature got the better of me. Because it was so idiotic, I was afraid that, after P. Z. and his regular readers got through with it (or even worse for this poor ID advocate, Larry Moran), there wouldn't be anything left other than a hint that there may have been a smear on the pavement where he had been. And, as much as this particular ID advocate and woo-meister has gotten on my nerves in the past outing me and all on at least three separate occasions, even I didn't want to see that. Besides, why should…
drorzel | October 28, 2007On Thursday last week, the Schenectady weather forecast I have in my Bloglines feed called for "Tons of Rain," which I thought was amusingly unprofessional. I mentioned this to Kate yesterday (after it had, in fact, rained quite a bit), and she said "I wonder how much rain you would need to make a ton?"
Being a physics nerd, of course I had to try to come up with an answer.
We know that one cubic centimeter of water has a mass of one gram, so a (metric) ton of water would be 1,000,000 cubic centimeters, or one cubic meter. Our yard is about 20m x 50m, so if rain covered our yard to a depth of…
drorzel | October 28, 2007The Times today has an article on famous scientists who have nutty ideas, inspired by the James Watson kerfuffle of the last couple of weeks. Of course, they had to mention at least one kooky physicist, leading to this wonderful set of paragraphs:
Sometimes the wandering from one's home turf extends all the way to the paranormal. In 2001, when officials of the Royal Mail, the British postal service, issued a package of stamps commemorating the centenary of the Nobel Prize, they sought the counsel of Brian Josephson, who shared the prize for physics in 1973 for his superconductivity research.…
razib | October 27, 2007Just listened to an interview on NPR with the author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. She mentions how she had a reflexive prejudice against nuclear energy and generally opposed its use because of her environmentalist impulses. That's not surprising of course, people are terrified of nuclear energy because of its associations.
For me an easy way to dispel this sort of terror in most of my friends is simply to point out that the two nations with the highest per capita consumption of nuclear energy (by far) are France and Sweden (Finland is #3, though there is a…
drorzel | October 26, 2007Over at Neurophilosophy, Mo links to an article by a physicist, posted on the arxiv, that claims to explain visual perceptions using quantum mechanics:
A theory of the process of perception is presented based on von Neumann's quantum theory of measurement and conscious observation. Conscious events that occur are identified with the quantum mechanical ``collapses'' of the wave function, as specified by the orthodox quantum theory. The wave function, between such perceptual events, describes a state of potential consciousness which evolves via the Schr\"odinger equation. When a perceptual…
catdynamics | October 25, 2007Accuweather is now forecasting return of Santa Ana conditions late saturday persisting for sunday and monday - though not predicted to be as strong as this week's winds.
This is bad news for the wildfire situation in southern california, as the bigger fires are unlikely to be fully contained by then.
There is also the possibility of new fires springing up in other locations - eg the San Gabriels were pretty much not touched in this round, slightly different wind direction might make them vulnerable.
Might not be done yet.
grrlscientist | October 24, 2007tags: Tangled Bank, blog carnival
The 91st edition of my favorite blog carnival, Tangled Bank, is now available for your enjoyment. This blog carnival is devoted to linking the best blog essays about science, nature and medicine. The editor included two of my submissions, so you should go there to show them some support!
oracknows | October 23, 2007For those not in academic biomedical research, "PI" stands for "principal investigator"; i.e., the person who wrote the grant that funds the laboratory effort and (usually) the leader of the laboratory. Unlike Revere, I've only been a PI for around 8 years and an NIH-funded PI for only around two and a half years, I still remember what it was like to be a graduate student and then a postdoc laboring away under my PI, all for the greater glory of his name (and, hopefully, mine), as well as to produce preliminary data to bolster the next grant application.
Via Revere, I find this rather amusing…
catdynamics | October 22, 2007I have family (in-laws) and lots of old friends in SoCal, so I checked in on the fires on-line this morning - looks bad.
But, really, it is a local disaster, right?
At lunch the e-mail came in - the San Diego Supercomputer Center is erratic and heading for going down later today. Don't expect it will be up to much this week.
Staff were ordered to stay home, power is "erratic"...
dammit.
We have 100,000 hours to burn on that big iron, this semester, it can't burn down.
SDSC just e-mailed. All systems down at noon local time...
drorzel | October 22, 2007A little while back, Popular Mechanics published a list of 25 Skills Every Man Should Know. Seven of the 25 are car-related, another four have to do with construction, and an additional six are outdoorsy things. Of course, they also threw in "extend your wireless network," for the nerds out there, but it does tend toward the parodically ManlyMan side of things.
In response, Cut to the Chase posted a list of 20 "practical skills every self-sufficient adult should have", which probably errs in the other direction, with entries that are far too humorlessly sensible. (Though I notice that "Know…
laelaps | October 19, 2007While the a number of my classmates spent their evening at the football stadium I hopped the train to New York to attend the "How various media outlets are used to popularize, communicate, and promote science" panel discussion, part of a series in the Science Communication Consortium. Even though the discussion didn't necessarily answer the questions posed at the beginning of the seminar (namely where is science communication going, although Christopher Mims had a bit to say about this, as we'll see), there were some interesting points made all around.
Kitta MacPherson of the Newark Star…
pharyngula | October 18, 2007My latest column for Seed is now available online. It's an abbreviated summary of how vertebrates make segments (so it's illustrated with a fly…), with special emphasis on the global and clocklike mechanism we use.
laelaps | October 17, 2007"Thinking again?" the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin.
"I've a right to think," said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried.
"Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly...."
[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 9]
It seems that creationists/ID advocates aren't the only folks discontented with Darwin's theory of natural selection, as I have been hearing murmurings that some scientists are considering genetic changes to be far more important to evolution. It's been difficult to find details about this "phantom menace…
oracknows | October 16, 2007I know, I've been a bad blogger about this lately, but better late than never. A couple of blog carnivals for you:
surgeXperiences #106
Cancer Research Blog Carnival #2
Grand Rounds, vol. 4, no. 4
drorzel | October 16, 2007OK, the monkey business may have been a little too abstract for a good audience participation entry. So let's fall back on a classic:
What science-related superpower would you most like to have?
Because this is a Dorky Poll, "science-related superpower" here means a supernatural ability that is useful for doing science. Because battling crime is passé.
Personally, I think I'd have to go with the ability to manipulate small objects remotely. I'm a big guy, and I have big hands, and you know what they say about big guys with big hands...
That's right, they have a lot of trouble turning screws…