Science
drorzel | December 18, 2006We recently acquired some lab space that was previously occupied by a biologist, and will be offering part of it to whoever we hire for our job opening. The space will probably need some extensive remodeling, both because it hasn't been touched in years, but also because it was set up for biology work.
Thinking about the space, and what would be needed to make it useful for a physicist, led me to the following rule of thumb for identifying the type of science done in a lab:
If a room has more sinks than electrical outlets, it's a biology lab.
I'm sure something similar could be done for most…
drorzel | December 18, 2006Bill Hooker is a regular advocate of "open science," and is currently supporting a new subversive proposal: to make all raw data freely available on some sort of Creative Commons type license.
It sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea on the face of it, but I have to say, I'm a little dubious about it when I read things like this:
First, note that papers do not usually contain raw (useful, useable) data. They contain, say, graphs made from such data, or bitmapped images of it -- as Peter says, the paper offers hamburger when what we want is the original cow. Chris Surridge of PLoS puts it…
oracknows | December 16, 2006Here's an interesting little tidbit of a study:
Newswise -- Lead chelation therapy -- a chemical treatment to remove lead from the body -- can significantly reduce learning and behavioral problems that result from lead exposure, a Cornell study of young rats finds.
However, in a further finding that has implications for the treatment of autistic children, the researchers say that when rats with no lead in their systems were treated with the lead-removing chemical, they showed declines in their learning and behavior that were similar to the rats that were exposed to lead.
Chelating drugs,…
oracknows | December 15, 2006This rather puts one's life and place in the universe in perspective, doesn't it?
drorzel | December 15, 2006One of the requirements of the Nobel Prize is that the laureates give a public lecture at some point, and as a result, there is generally a seminar scheduled a little bit before the actual prize ceremony, at which the laureats give lectures about the work for which they're being honored. These frequently involve props and demonstrations, but George Smoot takes it to a new level, using the Cal marching band to demonstrate the Big Bang:
"Professor Smoot came up to the band and asked if later that week, when we practiced at Memorial Stadium, we could do a formation like the universe forming. He…
drorzel | December 15, 2006A flurry of press releases hit EurekAlert yesterday (one, two, three), indicating the release of a bunch of data from NASA's Stardust mission. This is the probe that was sent out to fly through the tail of a comet, and catch tiny dust particles in an aerogel matrix, and return them to Earth for analysis.
The mission appears to have been a pretty impressive success, scientifically speaking, with a bunch of interesting findings relating to the age and composition of cometary material and interstellar dust. The full scientific results are released today in Science Express, and if you've got the…
catdynamics | December 14, 2006From Gordon via Chad Fermilab is claiming single top quark decay to b quark + W
ie the accelerator produced a t-quark as part of some quark/anti-quark ensemble, without simultaneously producing an anti-t-quark.
So what does this all mean...
well, there are three generations of quarks - the up and down, from which all normal baryonic matter is made (ie protons and neutrons); strange and charming; and bottom and top (aka beauty and truth) - with top being the heaviest.
The three generations, or "flavours", essentially duplicate each other in key properties, except the successive quark pairs…
drorzel | December 14, 2006The physics story of the moment is probably the detection of single top quarks at Fermilab. Top quarks, like most other exotic particles, are usually produced in particle-antiparticle pairs, with some fraction of the kinetic energy of two colliding particles being converted into the mass of the quark-antiquark pair (see this old post). There's a very rare process, though, mediated by the weak nuclear force, that allows the production of a single top quark, without an anti-top (it's paired with a bottom quark and a W boson).
The D0 (or DZero) collaboration at Fermilab recently announced the…
drorzel | December 13, 2006Here's the day's final repost of an old blog post about space policy. This is yet another post from 2004, with the usual caveats about linkrot and dated numbers and the like.
This one is more or less a direct response to comments made in response to the previous post attempting to argue that using the Moon as a step toward Mars isn't a priori idiotic. Again, I'm not sure how successful this is, but you can judge for yourself:
In the comments to the previous post about the Moon/ Mars proposal, Jake McGuire raises a number of interesting points, which deserve a full response. Having sat on that…
drorzel | December 13, 2006Yet another in today's series of reposts of articles about space policy. This is another old blog post from 2004, back when the Moon-and-Mars plan was first announced. As with the previous posts, any numbers or links in the post may be badly out of date, and there are some good comments at the original post that are worth reading.
This installment contains my attempt at finding reasons why it wouldn't be completely idiotic to try to put a permanent base on the Moon. I'm not sure this was entirely successful, but it's worth a shot:
It's a little foolish to attempt to comment on the merits of…
drorzel | December 13, 2006This is the second in a series of old posts about space exploration in general, and the Bush Moon-and-Mars plan specifically. This is a repost of an old blog post from 2004, so any numbers or links in the post may be out of date. There were also a few comments to the original article, that you may or may not want to read.
In this installment, we have my half-assed explanation of the conceptual problems behind the Space Shuttle program:
There are essentially two arguments for why we ought to support manned space flight, and if you dip into the comments at any of the other fine blogs linked in…
drorzel | December 13, 2006As threatened in passing yesterday, I dug up some old posts on space policy, and will re-post them here. This first one dates from January of 2004, around the time that Bush first floated the idea of the new Moon-and-Mars plan that's re-shaping NASA.
The original post has a ton of links in it, and given that this is lazy-blogging, I haven't checked that they still work. There are also a handful of comments over at the original site, if you'd like to see what people said back then.
Anyway, here's the first installment, on the relative worth of manned and unmanned space missions:
The Mars…
catdynamics | December 12, 2006Grauniad Science Weekly has a Creationism Special podcast this week.
Wolpert, Conway-Morris and Buggs are up.
drorzel | December 12, 2006Monte Davis, of "Thinking Clearly About Space" has another snarky look at overblown space enthusiasm, providing a helpful taxonomy of X-Treme Spacers:
Alt.Tech
Chemical rockets have let you down: after decades of gritty engineering they remain expensive and trouble-prone. It's time to start over with a space elevator, deployed by laser launch and magnetic catapult. From the top, nuclear salt-water hotrods will set out to roam the solar system. This team will take the field as soon as a few remaining kinks are worked out.
On a vaguely related note, Dennis Overbye questions the need for a Moon…
pharyngula | December 12, 2006Isn't she pretty? This is Promachoteuthis sloani, a new species of deep water squid trawled up out of the North Atlantic.
Many more photos of this creature are available online, and you can also download the paper describing it.
pharyngula | December 11, 2006Today, I gave my final lecture in developmental biology this term. We have one more class session which will be a final discussion, but I'm done yapping at them. Since I can't possibly teach them everything, I offered some suggestions on what to read next, if they're really interested in developmental biology. They've gotten the fundamentals of the dominant way of looking at development now, that good ol' molecular genetics centered modern field of evo-devo, but I specifically wanted to suggest a few titles to shake them up a little bit and start thinking differently.
For the student who…
drorzel | December 11, 2006Over at Bora's House of Round-the-Clock Blogging, we find the sensational headline Beaten by Biologists, Creationists Turn Their Sights On Physics. On seeing that, I headed over to the editorial in The American Prospect that it points to, expecting to be scandalized. When I got there, I found this:
U.S. creationists have changed tactics. Though none have explicitly abandoned ID in public, the focus of their scientific cover arguments has shifted from organic change to the creation of the universe. They have picked up on the controversial claim that human life could only have evolved because…
pharyngula | December 10, 2006In a few weeks, on January 3-7, I'm going to be attending the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Phoenix. I'm going to be part of a panel in a Media Workshop, along with a few other names you might recognize:
Blogs are online "diaries" that are growing in popularity. Popular political and social commentary blogs are making the news, but is there more out there than chatty gossip and collections of links? How about some science? Can this trendy technology be useful for scientists? Come to the Media Workshop and find out! Experienced science…
pharyngula | December 8, 2006Good news for Olduvai George—he's got new commissions that are keeping him busy—but that means he might be a little tied up for a while. Still, he's nice enough to give us an eclectic mix of interesting creatures.
pharyngula | December 7, 2006Behold the spectacularly long-tongued glossophagine nectar bat, Anoura fistulata:
Anoura fistulata feeding from a test tube filled with sugared water; its tongue (pink) can extend to 150% of body length.
This length of tongue is unusual for the genus, and there is an explanation for how it can fit all of that into its mouth: it doesn't. The base of the tongue has been carried back deep into the chest in a pocket of epithelium, and is actually rooted in the animal's chest.
Ventral view of A. fistulata, showing tongue (pink), glossal tube and tongue retractor muscle (blue), and skeletal…