Science
pharyngula | August 21, 2006Everyone go say hello to Thoughts from Kansas and The Scientific Indian, two new provinces in the vast and expanding Scienceblogs Empire. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
drorzel | August 21, 2006As hinted last week, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory has some new results conclusively showing that dark matter is a real, physical thing. This is big news, because the previous evidence for dark matter was all indirect, and based on inferring the mass distribution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies from looking at their motion. These results could indicate the presence of dark matter, or they could point to a flaw in our understanding of gravity at extremely long ranges.
The new observation shows fairly conclusively that dark matter and ordinary matter are different things, by combining two…
drorzel | August 21, 200660 MinuteS last night had an interview/profile thing on Michael Jordan, shot mostly at his fantasy camp for rich middle-aged guys. For those who haven't encountered the concept before, this is a pseudo-basketball-camp thing where investment bankers pay $15,000 apiece to spend a few days playing basketball with Michael Jordan. Or, based on the shots they had of the games, standing around stupidly while Jordan makes them look silly.
This got me thinking that this is a market we really need to exploit. I mean, granted, there are a lot more ex-jocks with a spare $15,000 than there are scientist-…
pharyngula | August 20, 2006These things are just sneaking up on me today: the Synapse #5 is out.
Are there any more carnivals lurking out there today?
pharyngula | August 20, 2006You can get a jump on the class—I've posted a list of the textbooks you'll need on the class website.
pharyngula | August 20, 2006The Inoculated Mind twists a Calvin and Hobbes comic to make a point about debates with creationists…I don't know if I should endorse that kind of tinkering with Holy Writ.
Oh, and while you're over there, Karl is also hosting Mendel's Garden #4.
pharyngula | August 19, 2006I'm sure you all remember that "It Works, Bitches" comic—you can now get it on a t-shirt.
pharyngula | August 18, 2006I neglected to include the latest carnival of Animalcules in my last round up. In my defense, though, I will say that they are very, very tiny and easy to miss.
drorzel | August 18, 2006As the "binary liquid explosive" plot sounds a little implausible, and the usual lack of, you know, hard evidence regarding the plot begins to become clear, the question has to be asked: what was really up with the terror plot that has banned an entire phase of matter?
Wondermark has the answer.
(Register link via Calpundit Monthly, Wondermark link via a mailing list.)
pharyngula | August 17, 2006Palaeos is gone! There is a brief note about being unable to support it any longer, and then poof, it's offline. Martin Brazeau has a comment on it's value; you can still see fragments of this great resource in google's cache, but even that will fade too soon.
This is troubling, and it's one of the worrisome aspects of using the net—there's no sense of permanence. It would be good if someone were to step forward and at least archive all of the pages, but the essential feature of the Palaeos site was that it was continually maintained and updated to reflect current information, and that's not…
razib | August 16, 2006So it seems that many bloggers here are talking about whether Pluto is a planet. Well, all I gotz to say to that is this: whose the stamp collecter now Orzel!?!?.
pharyngula | August 16, 2006
Next time you're cutting up a fresh bird, try looking for the lungs. They're about where you'd expect them to be, but they're nestled up dorsally against the ribs and vertebrae, and they're surprisingly small. If you think about it, the the thorax of a bird is a fairly rigid box, with that large sternal keel up front and short ribs—it's a wonder that they are able to get enough air from those tiny organs with relatively little capability for expanding and contracting the chest.
How they do it is an amazing story. Birds have a radically effective respiratory system that works rather…
pharyngula | August 16, 2006
I've been a bit sex-obsessed lately. No, no, not that way—it's all innocent, and the objects of my obsessions are all fish.
A little background explanation: one of my current research projects is on the genetics of behavior. This is a difficult area, because behavior is incredibly complex with multiple levels of causation, and one has to be very careful when trying to tease apart all the tangled factors that contribute to it. It takes numbers and lots of controls to sort out the various contributors to a behavior.
What we've done so far, though, is to identify and quantify a few simple,…
catdynamics | August 16, 2006News from Bíldudalur that a pair of viking era graves have been found with well preserved weapons and other items.
From local news in Bíldudal
Report in Mogginn and the official press release from The Archaeological Heritage Agency of Iceland
Hringsdalur is a small valley off Arnarfjörður - the Fjord of the Eagle, on the northwest coast of Iceland. It is one of the grandest of the WestFjords.
Two graves were found, one with a skeleton, a rusted knifeblade or arrowpoint, a decorated comb and other household items, the other, which they've just begun digging had that rather splendid and…
pharyngula | August 16, 2006
The Tangled Bank has been frinked: the latest irreverent edition is up at FrinkTank.
pharyngula | August 16, 2006It's almost official now: Pluto really is a planet. As Phil points out, though, this means there are now 12 planets, with maybe many more to come.
catdynamics | August 15, 2006No_Nym, guestblogging on Bitch PhD suggests that Princess Leia is to blame for the dearth of women in science and engineering...
Princess Leia - Return of the Jedi "slave girl" version 3.0
Hm. Not sure.
Her point on Dora the Explorer is good though, bringing in cousin Diego was a major sell-out.
Still not nearly as bad as "Princess Disney" or "Barbie".
Is this a good time to link to a favourite David Brin rant on the Evil That Is The Star Wars Meme?
I worried about this until a) Jar-Jar Binks and b) the Jedi attack at the arena to rescue He Who Can Not Act
Proof conclusive.
UPDATE: read…
evolgen | August 15, 2006Given the expected frequency of a certain outcome of a replicate in an experiment, we can estimate the expected variance around that mean (either by deriving it or performing simulations). I have heard that laboratory experiments tend to have greater variances than expected due to conditions not included in the model (ie, we can't control for every variable in an experiment) when determining the expected variance. I am looking for a citation that addresses the issue of variance in laboratory experiments. Specifically, I am interested in an article that deals with higher than expected variance…
drorzel | August 15, 2006You might think that, being a sciene blogger and all, I would have sources of science news that aren't available to the average person on the street. You would be right, though they're not as useful as you might think... The source for today's news teaser is actually a thank-you email from a prospective student I talked to on Friday.
So, anyway, those little scamps at NASA are playing all coy with some sort of announcement regarding dark matter:
Astronomers who used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 21, to announce how dark and normal…
catdynamics | August 14, 2006To what extent do you worry about AIDS, either with respect to yourself, your children, or the world at large?...
In this business, you tend to accumulate a lot of paper, and eventually you learn to cull it, ruthlessly-ish.
But there are always some things you keep, to remind you... one item in my stack is the 16 Dec 1982 issue of New Scientist, on page 713 is a 3 page news article on the mystery of the 500 cases of a new syndrome of "acquired immunodeficiency", including 11 cases in Europe. 175 of these had died.
The article discusses extensively the possibility that this is caused by…