Science
pharyngula | September 9, 2006
A new xkcd comic hits the right note: science isn't about belief. Read the whole thing.
pharyngula | September 8, 2006The latest issue of Science has a fascinating article on Exotic Earths—it contains the results of simulations of planet formation in systems like those that have been observed with giant planets close to their stars. The nifty observation is that such simulations spawn lots of planets that are in a habitable zone and that are very water-rich.
(click for larger image)Final configuration of our four simulations, with the solar system shown for scale. Each simulation is plotted on a horizontal line, and the size of each body represents its relative physical size (except for the giant planets,…
pharyngula | September 8, 2006Since I saw this meme at Dr Crazy's place, I thought I'd toss it up here for the commenters to make suggestions.
" If I were designing a Pharyngula Halloween costume, it would consist of..."
It's actually relevant. I just put out a call at my university for volunteers for Cafe Scientifique, which we will be holding on the last Tuesday of each month…and the October calendar puts that on Halloween. I'm going to be trying to organize a panel session on "Mad Scientists and Monsters" as the topic that day, and ask the panelists to show up in costume. So let's see what suggestions you might come up…
drorzel | September 8, 2006One of the perks of this corporate blogging gig is that it's put me on the radar of book publishers, who have started sending me free stuff. We like free stuff, here at Chateau Steelypips, and we like books, so that's a Good Thing.
It's becoming almost too much of a Good Thing, though-- In the past week or so, I've received:
Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit (thank you, Peter), which I finished last night (review forthcoming).
The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney, in the spiffy new paperback edition.
The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock (thrown in with tRWoS by the publisher).
The…
evolgen | September 7, 2006Alfred Russel Wallace, the other guy who came up with the theory of natural selection, was quite the Renaissance man Victorian Era Superscientist. An essay in this week's issue of Nature reports the discovery of a letter from Wallace to William Talbot on a way to improve the mirrors used in telescopes. You can read the letter here. I won't touch on the science, but apparently Wallace mastered optics by the age of 20. Not bad for a guy who also happens to be known as the father of biogeography.
oracknows | September 7, 2006With all the nerdy preening and bragging going on due to Janet's nerd-off, I couldn't resist adding my contribution to the festivities. However, a question has nagged at me since I posted about this early this morning.
On January 10, 2005, my score on the Nerd Quiz was 92, making me a Supreme Nerd.
Today, I had to find out whether that had changed; so I took the test again. My score this time? Check it out, baby:
Nerd God, baby!
With that score, plus all my other nerd attributes, now there should be no doubt that I can compete with any ScienceBlogger here, even Mark! And if that's not enough…
pharyngula | September 7, 2006I'm having second thoughts about the virtues of proximity to my colleagues of that other discipline after watching this video of people plunking alkali metals into water. Cesium looks…interesting.
Fortunately, my chemistry pals aren't British, or I might have trouble understanding their comments. What the heck does "the dog's nuts of the periodic table" mean, anyway?
oracknows | September 7, 2006I just got a review copy of the new and updated paperback edition of fellow ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney's book The Republican War on Science (website). I didn't get around to reading it last time, but I've already started the first chapter, even though I only received the book the other day. Thus, it would be premature of me to try to review it. However, it's worth pointing out that, although my politics lean more conservative than probably all of the ScienceBloggers with whose politics I am familiar save perhaps Razib (certainly my politics are far to the right of Bora, Mike, and PZ--which…
pharyngula | September 7, 2006I was reading a review paper that was frustrating because I wanted to know more—it's on the evolution of complex brains, and briefly summarizes some of the current confusion about what, exactly, is involved in building a brain with complex problem solving ability. It's not as simple as "size matters"—we have to jigger the formulae a fair bit to take into account brain:body size ratios, for instance, to get humans to come out on top, and maybe bulk is an inaccurate proxy for more significant matters, such as the number of synapses and nerve conduction velocities.
There's also a growing amount…
drorzel | September 7, 2006This is nearly a month old, now, because I keep saying "Oh, Idon't have time to do this justice-- I'll write about it tomorrow." I really need to stop doing that.
Anyway, Physics News Update has a story about a scheme to measure gravity using Bloch oscillations, based on a paper in Physical Review Letters. This is especially interesting to me, because the most important paper of my career made use of Bloch oscillations to get our experimental signal.
A quick explanation below the fold:
Bloch oscillations are a weird phenomenon you encounter in condensed matter physics. The easiest way to…
drorzel | September 7, 2006Clearing some more posts out of Bloglines, to mark the start of the new term. My first lecture is today, and as a bonus, there's a film crew coming to my class...
First, there's a very nice essay at Fighting for Science on the Equivalence Principle. Via See You at Enceladus.
Next up, Biocurious offers thoughts on the desirability of a Unified Theory for biology. I don't quite agree with Andre about the disunification of physics, but it's worth a look. See also RPM.
Finally, Alex has reposted his lists of the Best and Worst parts of science. I meant to link these months ago, so I'm grateful…
pharyngula | September 6, 2006While browsing through the UW Alumni magazine (yes, I read it; no, please don't ask me for money, I'm poor), I ran across a nice quote I thought I'd share:
Imagine it like the software in a computer that is five years old…these [stem] cell lines are inherently inferior. We're forced to focus our efforts on lines that are inherently less innovative.
Dr Anthony Blau, commenting on Bush's veto of a bill that would open up new cell lines for research
pharyngula | September 6, 2006But I like it anyway. It's a series of charts illustrating channels of communication of science.
I appreciate the distinction made between "Average Citizen" and "Informed Citizen." Maybe there ought to be another box interposed between "Mainstream Media" and "The Average Citizen" labeled "Fox News/Talk Radio/Other Organs of Propaganda," though. And shouldn't there be another arrow from "Mainstream Media" to "Informed Citizen"?
pharyngula | September 5, 2006I'm teaching a course in developmental biology this term, and as part of the coursework, I'm making students blog. The idea is to force them to ferret out instances of development in popular culture, in their personal experience, and/or in their reading—I'm not asking for treatises, but simply short articles that let me know their eyes are open. This year I'm also encouraging outsiders to take a look at and comment on what they're saying, so every week I'll be posting a round-up of links to the developmental biology blog…and here they are:
a human-specific gene
first neurons
Hox regulation…
pharyngula | September 5, 2006One after the other, I got two requests to promote some worthy causes which need letter-writers to help out. Here they are:
Save wilderness:
Over the strong objections of Native people, wildlife biologists, sportsmen's groups, and the general public, the Bureau of Land Management remains intent on leasing one of the most remarkable wetlands complexes on the planet. The place is the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the largest single block of wild public land left in the United States.
Save minds:
On Monday, the Ohio Board of Education will hold…
evolgen | September 5, 2006I got all excited when I read the following article title in the week's issue of PNAS:
Abnormal sex ratios in human populations: Causes and consequences
I hoped the authors would discuss meiotic drive and segregation distortion. It turns out they're concerned with son preference and sex-selective abortion. I guess stuff like this doesn't really interest them.
pharyngula | September 5, 2006Since we biologists were just bizarrely accused of being like a bunch of animal rights activists, I am surprised that when I read that PETA opposes experiments on gay sheep, I find myself opposing PETA and thinking that the experiments sound cool and interesting and informative. I'm also a little disgusted with the way PETA finds it necessary to lie in their criticisms.
The Next Hurrah has a thorough take-down of PETA. Particularly amusing is the statistic that the research involves 18 sheep a year, while meat-packers butcher 4 million per year…so which one do the kooky extremists of the…
pharyngula | September 5, 2006Carl Zimmer is one kinky dude—he has a new article on sexual cannibalism in the NY Times, and his expansion on the topic in his blog is also darned interesting, focusing on the scientific duels fought over adaptationism and exaptations in explaining the phenomenon.
evolgen | September 5, 2006Razib pointed out this blog article on theory in biology. The author deals with three, self defined, points:
Unifying theory in biology.
Theory vs. experimental biology.
Justification through medical applications.
His first point, that biology (or a given biological discipline) lacks a unifying theory, is a bit silly and comes across as physics envy. But even physics doesn't have a unifying theory, with different models for small objects and large objects. In his second point, he argues that there is a rift between theoretical and experimental biologists. He is correct, there is a…
catdynamics | September 4, 2006Ok, so I'm a bit behind on my reading, but Prof Johnson's group at OCCF came up with an intriguing study last year conjecturing that terrorist attacks follow Salpeter's Law.
see semi-technical article in PhysOrg or the pop article in the Grauniad
Richardson had found a similar law for the size of conventional warfare, but Johnson et al have now shown similar statistics apply to terrorist acts, with the frequency of attacks of a given size scaling roughly as t-2.3 -- -2.5
In a further refinement, instantly recognizable to all stellar theorists, the slope is flatter, but normalization lower…