Science
drorzel | November 10, 2006I would post some sort of wrap-up about the Lisa Randall chat yesterday, but Discover is broken. They don't have a link to a transcript on the site-- in fact, they haven't updated the front page to reflect the fact that the chat was yesterday, and is now over. There was a link that would sort of give you access to a transcript, but it's broken now, or at least doesn't work in either Opera or Firefox on my home computer.
It's pretty much of a piece with the chat itself, actually-- I thought it was pretty sharp of them to email physics bloggers with invitations to the chat, but the chat itself…
pharyngula | November 9, 2006So stop rubbing it in. Here's an article about the superiority of the bird visual system: it doesn't just have better acuity, it can process information faster. We're adapted to a sedate stroll, they're adapted to high speed aerobatics…and guess which one of us is crazy enough to pilot multi-ton vehicles at frightening speeds?
pharyngula | November 8, 2006
This week's Tangled Bank covers everything from spacewomen to cavemen in The Tangled Bank - The Future, Present, and Past at easternblot.net. The election news is all over, so it's time to read some science!
pharyngula | November 8, 2006Fascinating stuff…read this paper in PNAS, Evidence that the adaptive allele of the brain size gene microcephalin introgressed into Homo sapiens from an archaic Homo lineage, or this short summary, or John Hawks' excellent explanation of the concepts, it's all good. It's strong evidence for selection in human ancestry for a gene, and just to make it especially provocative, it's all about a gene known to be involved in brain growth, and it's also showing evidence for interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neandertal man.
The short short explanation: a population genetics study of a gene called…
pharyngula | November 7, 2006Here's an annoying case of political correctness run amuck.
…the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) Gene Nomenclature Committee…is renaming a number of genes that have potentially offensive or embarrassing names.
The shortlist of 10 genes -Â including radical fringe, lunatic fringe and, bizarrely, Indian hedgehog -Â was compiled in response to physicians’ worries about “inappropriate, demeaning and pejorative” names.
The problem arose because most of the genes were initially discovered in fruitflies, and their names were then transferred to the human versions of the genes, which were discovered…
catdynamics | November 6, 2006There was a flap last week when some LANL USB sticks were found in the possession of a petty criminal.
An actual security breach, as opposed to a hypothetical one.
Now Prof Foland at Nuclear Mangos notes a claim in the media that the sticks contained PAL codes!
That would be not good. If true. The media is not exactly 100% reliable on these matters.
PAL codes are the arming codes for warheads in the US nuclear inventory.
Modern nuclear weapons, in the US, are "locked" - there is an electronic or electro-mechanical physical block to detonating the device. Without the code to unlock it, you…
catdynamics | November 6, 2006So there was a somewhat subdued response to the "what science fields are most underfunded", but it got me thinking about a slightly different question, namely:
which science fields could rapidly produce more science results if given a sudden increase in funding?
This is a somewhat non-trivial question, since generating expertise takes time, so does building equipment and collecting data.
There are important fields, which would really have diminshing returns in response to sudden increases in funding - they are already manpower limited, and there is no fungible manpower where people with the…
pharyngula | November 6, 2006
A while back, I mentioned this new group that had formed here in Minnesota to sponsor better science teaching, the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education. Our first big public meeting is happening this Saturday at the Bell Museum in Minneapolis, at Science Education Saturday:
Some of the most popular and dynamic professors involved with evolutionary biology at the University of Minnesota - Mark Borrello, Randy Moore, PZ Myers and others - will join a panel of public school K-12 educators to present practical suggestions for the classroom, useful resources for teachers and ideas for…
catdynamics | November 5, 2006Ok, seriously, what are the most underfunded fields in science?
I have to agree with some of the other responses: the single most underfunded field across the board, where significant extra funding could leverage major long term results - is systematics - good old fashioned field biology, doing collection, classification, taxonomy, storing samples and preserving.
I'm hard pressed to think of fields in chemistry and physics where I can unambiguously say there is serious underfunding - not that there aren't a lof of fields which could use more funding, but most would be best served by steady…
catdynamics | November 4, 2006SciBling Chris Mooney has written an interesting book: The Republican War on Science.
I finally got around to reading it, just in time, as it were.
Seems a bit late, but I see Chris is still on book tour, and it is very current as a topic, plus it is now out in paperback.
War on Science is a book most scientists should read.
It was a hard book to read, mostly because the topic is somewhat depressing, but also to be fair (since this is a "review") because if could have used some editing to tighten up the text.
The book covers the history of government science advice very briefly, before…
drorzel | November 4, 2006Over at Effect Measure, Revere (or one of the Reveres, anyway, I'm not certain if they're plural or not) has posted another broadside against PowerPoint, calling it "the scourge of modern lecturing." This is something of a sensitive point for me, as I use PowerPoint for my lectures in the introductory classes. I've been using it this way for more than five years, and I like to think I've gotten to be pretty good at it. I fully expect this to be brought up in my tenure review, though, and to have to justify my use of PowerPoint in class.
Here's the thing: PowerPoint is a tool, nothing more. It…
pharyngula | November 4, 2006
This odd marine worm, Xenoturbella bocki, is in the news right now, and I had to look it up in Pechenik's Biology of the Invertebrates(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) to remind myself of what it was. Here's the complete entry:
Xenoturbella bocki
This marine worm, first described in 1949 as an acoel flatworm and later claimed as either an early metazoan offshoot or a primitive deuterostome, has recently been affiliated with primitive bivalve molluscs, based upon a study of gamete development (oogenesis) and an analysis of sequence data from both 18S rRNA and mitochondrial genes. Little is known about…
oracknows | November 3, 2006I feel for you, ScienceBlogs compatriot Afarensis. I really do.
Sure, your Cardinals beat my Tigers in the World Series last week. Sure, the Tigers made a lot of embarrassing errors and showed every sign of letting their youth and inexperience lead them to choking under the pressure. Sure at times the Tigers looked like a Little League team, throwing balls away hither and yon to let unearned runs score, looking nothing like the lean, mean baseball machine that had earlier dispatched the mighty Yankees with such aplomb after losing the first game. Sure the Cardinals managed to win it all after…
catdynamics | November 2, 2006Nice article by MarkCC on why C sucksis not efficient for numerically intensive applications - looks like that's an even better way to get comments and readers than the old "dis String Theory" trick.
Chad has a pointer to a beautiful entry by Aaronson on nifty theoretical things in computer science
So, like, read 'em.
If he writes a book - pop-sci or for "peeple hoo no calculus reel good" I'll read it.
Hell, I'll review it! (Hint)
pharyngula | November 1, 2006On Halloween, I gave a short presentation as our first Cafe Scientifique of the year. The main intent was to introduce our schedule for the year and to give an amusing introduction to the media image of scientists by showing a few movie clips…and to say a few things about how we really ought to be seen.
I've put most of the clips on youtube, so you can see what I was talking about below the fold.
Here's the schedule for the 2006-2007 year.
Fall:
28 November : Theodora Economou: Causation in law and science
Spring:
30 January : The Chemistry Discipline: Chemistry in the home
27 February :…
drorzel | November 1, 2006NASA has scheduled a mission to service the Hubble. This should keep the space telescope flying and producing great science until 2013 or so.
Obviously, there are a lot of caveats in there-- the mission isn't scheduled until 2008, so the Hubble needs to last that long, and there can't be major delays or disasters with the Shuttle before then-- but this is genuinely good news. Congratulations to the scientists and politicians who lobbied hard for this.
pharyngula | October 31, 2006This is a gross violation of my expectations: the Halloween edition of The Synapse doesn't even once crack a zombie joke. I was terribly disappointed.
At least it does serve up a nice platter of brains.
drorzel | October 30, 2006Because I'm a Bad Person, I no longer remember who pointed me to Halfway There's primer on polling, but it's really an excellent of the effects of sample size, and why it's legitimate to project results based on small numbers of interviews. Some important notes from the conclusion:
Second, even a poll that is supposed to be within its estimated margin of error 95% of the time will be wrong and fall outside those bounds 5% of the time. That's one time in twenty. Therefore, whenever you see a political poll whose results seem way out of whack, it could be one of those flukes. Remember, polling…
pharyngula | October 29, 2006Here's a weird and trivial phenomenon to consider: gum disintegration syndrome.
I'm not much of a gum-chewer, and never have been…but I remember gum from when I was a kid, and you could chew and chew and maintain a flavorless wad for a long time. Recently, I thought I'd try gum as an appetite suppressant, and I got some of the sugarless stuff. To my surprise, I'd chew on it for a few minutes, and shortly I'd feel it losing its texture and getting runny, and then it would dissolve into small fragments that I'd just swallow. I thought it was those dang cheap confectionery companies, that the…
pharyngula | October 29, 2006Reconstruction of Priscomyzon in dorsal (top) and left lateral (bottom) views. b, Macropthalmia stage of Lampetra showing anterior location of orbit and smaller oral disc, both positioned in front of the branchial region. The total length of the specimen is 116 mm. Drawings in a and b are scaled to show equivalent head lengths: from anterior limit of the oral disc to rear of the branchial region. Horizontal bars indicate the anterior–posterior span of the oral disc in each species.
The life of a parasite must be a good one, and often successful; the creature at the top of the drawing above is…