Uncategorized
gregladen | October 27, 2011Well, now's your chance to put him on the spot!
Jim, who is famous for his book on the Physics of Superheros and more recently The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-Free Exploration of the Science that Made Our World, though I knew him originally because of his work with emergent properties in complex systems, will be Desiree Schell's guest on Skeptically Speaking.
Seriously, if you have not heard or seen Jim speak you have missed something very enjoyable. If you have, I know you are simply going to tune in if you hear him once you'll be a fan. And, if you've not ever heard…
gregladen | October 26, 2011According to this press release:
Scientists have proven that the fungus Geomyces destructans causes white-nose syndrome, a fast-spreading and highly lethal disease of bats.
Research published today (Wednesday, Oct. 26) in the journal Nature provides the first direct evidence that this fungus is responsible for a disease that is decimating bats in North America.
Research at the USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and other institutions, showed that 100 percent of healthy little brown bats exposed…
gregladen | October 26, 2011Are you adopted or from India?
I have a friend who wants to know about her birthmother and family in India, and is seriously considering going to India to check into her own background. I assume she is not the first person who was born in India, adopted by a US family and then got interested in her own past. If you have experience or knowledge in this area, could you help her? I would appreciate that.
You can't link weather to climate change, right?
Wrong. Of course you can. You can even link specific weather events to climate change if you are willing to adapt the way your brain works…
gregladen | October 25, 2011Please note, the whole "left side right side" brain thing is WRONG and we've known it has been WRONG for a very long time. Very. Long. Time. The reality is complex and interesting, but it is probably not what you think.
The following video on this topic is pretty good:
gregladen | October 25, 2011I have a few items for you from the Evolution Front.
First, you can have a free copy of an excerpt form the book Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig: Click here for the PDF file.
That was complements of the NCSE. Speaking of the NCSE, you can also have the latest copy of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education in its new on-line format:
CLICK HERE
And when you are done reading that, you can watch this:
"What Americans Think of Evolution"
gregladen | October 25, 2011A new study confirming the accuracy of existing global temperature records has been ignored by the all the major television news outlets, except for one mention in a CNN news brief. But the omission is most conspicuous at Fox News, which routinely casts doubt on the temperature data, accuses climate scientists of doctoring research to exaggerate global warming, and often just makes up its own temperature facts....
Read more
lborkowski | October 25, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Scathing Report: Polio Eradication "Not ... Any Time Soon"
Douglas Starr at Discover Magazine: Sparks of Truth: Can Science Bring Justice to Arson Trials?
Scicurious at The Scicurious Brain: Grab your Coffee, I think this paper may depress you
Patricia Leigh Brown at California Watch: On edge of paradise, Coachella workers live in grim conditions
Andrew Villegas at Kaiser Health News: Groups Thank "Obamacare," and Not Sarcastically
And in the "worth hearing" category: Not Exactly Rocket Science blogger Ed Yong talks to BBC's…
gregladen | October 25, 2011Looks interesting, but so far my "highlighting" in ebooks is fairly quirky and has to do with specific objectives I have that others may not know. In other words, sharing them would be potentially problematic considering how easy and common it is to take anyone's words off the web and get all whingy about them.
gregladen | October 25, 2011w00t! My blog post on Urban Heat Islands has won the prestigious Editor's Selection Award from ResearchBlogging.org News!
See the awarding blog post here, and the awarded blog post here.
Thank you Sarah Kendrew.
Two other posts won the award as well: Ovarian Cancer at Microfluidic Future and In Praise of the Comet at the.soft.anonymous. I suppose we will be splitting the prize money.
pharyngula | October 25, 2011The BBC is running an interview with Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, and it's very good. Bell-Burnell is the woman who discovered pulsars, and until I heard this interview, I hadn't realized how it was done.
Yeah, there weren't computers available so the reams of data came out on strip chart - paper chart - and the configuration produced a hundred foot a day and I ran it for six months, which gave me about three miles of paper, which I had to analyse by hand. I would go through the charts and I would log where I saw what I thought were quasars and I also saw that there were chunks of manmade…
gregladen | October 24, 2011If anyone reading this knows the (Chinese?) dialects being spoken, feel free to throw in a translation! (Or must make stuff up if you like.)
Below the fold. May not be work safe. Depending on where you work.
gregladen | October 24, 2011When climate changes, causing habitats to move, birds can get up and fly away to a new habitat, so really, they'll be fine. Right?
Well, no.
Read more.
gregladen | October 24, 2011The Universe has been simulated more accurately than ever before. There's a video. More whooping cranes have been shot to death, you can check on the details yourself but I suspect this problem is related to the fact that you can legally hunt some cranes (not whooping cranes) so you accidentally shoot the nearly extinct cranes.
What is your professional responsibility? Physioprof wants to know. What does a science librarian want to read? How are we doing with this malaria vaccine? Scientists were recently lauded at the white house.
What are the most pressing energy related challenges…
gregladen | October 23, 2011Years ago, I read an old newspaper account of chaos in 19th century New York City; A storm damaged many of the cages at the Central Zoo, and most of the wild animals got out. The next day or two was spent rounding up the animals, and even the mayor and the governor, who were experienced big game hunters, got involved in tracking down the rhino and the hippo and the lions and the rest of them.
A few months ago, for some reason, that story re-emerged in my memory for the first time in decades, so I went and looked it up and found out that it was a hoax. I don't remember if I knew it was a hoax…
gregladen | October 23, 2011As you know, my nephew LeRoy is a contestant on the X Factor. I expect you to go vote for him on Tuedsay, OK? Assuming there is voting. I'm not sure how it works, actually.
Anyway, here's LeRoy getting through the last round (and some other guy):
gregladen | October 21, 2011What is scarier than Halloween?
1804
Lewis and Clark struck out on their famous expedition. Alexander Hamilton was shot to death in a duel. Morphine is invented. Short distance transport is done on foot or horses, long distance on clipper ships or packets. The world population reaches 1 billion.
1927, over a century later
Horses are still widely used but some people are driving around in cars and trains have been in use for almost a century. The War of 1812, the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War 1 have all come and gone. The first transatlantic phone call is made.…