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Today the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Daniel Shechtman for the discovery of quasicrystals - a material whose components are arranged in a seemingly ordered pattern, but one that never repeats itself. Earlier this year I interviewed mathematician Edmund Harriss for an unrelated feature about design and science, and he told me a wonderful anecdote about these curious materials: I work on aperiodic tiling, sets of shapes that fit together but never becomes periodic - there's never one single unit that repeats again and again. The initial example by Robert Berger had 10,000…
He was 56, and just recently stepped down from his position at the helm of Apple.
This is important if you are considering that choice:
Did you know that the British scientific journal Nature publishes a section, called Futures, edited by Henry Gee, which presents a short science fiction story every issue? Well, if you go to this week's Futures in Nature, which is available on line (and not behinda firewall) you will see something special. I'm not going tell you what it is, I'm just going to tell you to go and look, read it, and enjoy. GO! Why are you still here? Click here.
The finding for which this year's Chemistry Nobel was awarded earlier today was sufficiently unexpected and counter to the orthodoxy of the time that today's prize winner was tossed out of his own research group for reporting it. His 1982 discovery has to do with how atoms are organized in solid matter, and is based on observations made with electron microscopy. Daniel Shechtman's imagery... ...showed that the atoms in his crystal were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Such a pattern was considered just as impossible as creating a football using only six-cornered polygons,…
The Amazon Kindle originally promised a technology that would improve your reading experience, at the same time cutting the cost of books in half. Those books would arrive on your Kindle through the magic of the Whisper Net, a free space age delivery service. The Kindle itself would be easier to use, lighter weight, and more readable than an actual book. Well, there's good news and bad news. As the Kindle technology and the eBook market have developed, all of those original promises have become either vapor or else very different than first imagined. Nonetheless, I want a new-old Kindle…
... Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues ... It's hard to imagine anyone packing more lies and distortions into a single commentary. Mr. Hertzberg uses libelous language in characterizing the so-called "hockey stick" -- work of my own published more than a decade ago showing that recent warming is unusual over at least the past 1,000 years -- as "fraudulent," and claiming that it "it was fabricated from carefully selected tree-ring measurements with a phony computer program." These are…
I went to graduate school to study Anthropology, so naturally, there was very little funding. Some semesters, I paid the bills working as an administrative assistant for one Harvard Muckimuck or another, often at the Kennedy School of Government, but for a while, at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. There, I was the assistant to the director, a man named Marvin Kalb. There is a chance you've heard of him as well as his brother, Bernard. Kalb was the Shorenstein Center's original director and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy.…
"In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Saul Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Brian Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Adam Riess was to play a crucial role. ... "The two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected -- this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. ... For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery…
By Dr. Janice Bishop, Senior Scientist SETI Institute October 3, 2011 Two small depressions on Mars found to be rich in minerals formed by water could have been places able to support life relatively recently in the planet's history. These findings were published October 1, 2011, in the journal Geology. The team, led by Catherine Weitz of the Planetary Science Institute, studied layered outcrops at the western region of the huge Valles Marineris canyon system. Many ancient clay-rich rocks have been found on Mars in recent years. What is interesting about this study at Noctis Labyrinthus is…
Threaded comments have advantages but they also have disadvantages. I won't mention the disadvantages because if you don't know what they are already than they aren't disadvantages to you. The advantages are: 1) You can keep track of a sub-conversation in a comments stream; 2) You can refer to a specific upstream comment easily (which in non-threaded contexts often uses a reference to a comment number, which has the disadvanage of not being fixed if old moderated comments are inserted prior to the numbered comment); and 3) at least in some cases, you can subscribe to a specific comment (…
Remember last summer's tornado in North Minneapolis? North is one of the more challenged neighborhoods in the region, with a high poverty rate and where the schools are struggling against all odds. One of the schools in North Minneapolis that needs your help is one of the schools damaged by that tornado. So they got a double hit. I've hand selected all of the schools based on my interaction with local and regional schools, with a focus on supporting doable project related mainly to science or math. In addition, DonorsChoose carefully inspects budgets and proposals to make sure they are…
Oh great, it's got healing powers. Thank you news person for reporting that as though it wasn't insane.
The prize went to Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann, and Ralph Steinman for their work on the immune system. Beutler and Hoffmann's work enhanced our understanding of the activation of innate immunity in humans. In other words, the link between cytokine and swelling and related issues. Among other things, this work resulted in the development of Etanercept, a treatment for Psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn's disease. Steinman discovered dendritic cells and the role they play in adaptive immunity. These are part of the mammalian immune system. They mediate between antigens (…
With a science connection. OK, I admit not much of a science connection, but really, it's hard to find them. I'm trying to cover all the bases here, so I've got a suggestion for an adult, a child, and a dog. For the adult, the obvious choice is this "Man in a Cage" costume, wherein a gorilla holds you in a cage. I'm not sure how much you have to pay the gorilla or if there are other options such as, maybe, an orang-utan. I'm sure this can easily be adapted to be a "Woman is a Cage" as you wish. It is called the Man in a Gorilla Cage Costume and is available in fine costume stores on the…
Scott Lohman will be talking to Jen Hancock, the author of Handy Humanism Handbook. Jen blogs at Happiness Through Humanism. She is an author, blogger and humanist activist. Her website is at Jen-Hancock.com. Scott is the president of the Humanists of Minnesota. Atheists Talk is produced with funding from the Minnesota Atheists, the Humanists of Minnesota, and the generous support of our members and donors. We also wish to thank Q. Cumbers restaurant for purchasing on-air advertising and for providing a great place to eat and gather. Details here. Next week, I'll be interviewing Don…
Freethoughtblogs.com has just added seven new bloggers, and I thought you'd want to know. With this new group of bloggers, FTB.com has become too big for our own sidebar listing us! Gonna have to go drop down soon. Here's the rundown: Dana Hunter is a science blogger and writer of science fiction, and she's into geology. If you don't know her blog, you should, it is one of my faves and one I regularly check. The name of Dana's blog is En Tequila es Verdad which I think is some kind of drink. You will find her blog here. Al Stefanelli is the Georgia State Director for American…
A friend of mine send me this: This was my letter to Raytheon and the National Science Foundation To whom it may concern. I am writing on behalf of my mother, Renee-Nicole Douceur. I am trying to figure out by what standard you consider a stroke a non-emergency. Almost a month ago I received a phone call from my mother informing me that she had a stroke the week before. As I am sure you can imagine, my heart dropped and my emo...tions kicked in because I was unable to be by my mother's side during this scary time. I know that she has put in almost 3 years of dedication for Raytheon and…