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gregladen | July 15, 2010The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you'll see).
mspringer | July 15, 2010It's a pretty nice time for quantum optics and laser physics at Texas A&M, with us moving into a brand new lab and acquiring several new laser systems. One of the systems we're moving isn't new (we've had it for a few years, and the technology is considerably older), but we're about to put it to work on a new project. It's a relatively high-power Nd:YAG laser.
The operating parameters are about 2.5 joules per pulse, with 10 pulses per second for an average power of 25 watts. Each pulse is about 8 nanoseconds long. This is a rather hefty amount of light. Though any Class 4 laser requires…
cortex | July 14, 2010Over at Sciam's Mind Matters, Melody Dye has a great post on the surprising advantages of thinking like a baby. At first glance, this might seem like a ridiculous conjecture: A baby, after all, is missing most of the capabilities that define the human mind, such as language and the ability to reason or focus. Rene Descartes argued that the young child was entirely bound by sensation, hopelessly trapped in the confusing rush of the here and now. A newborn, in this sense, is just a lump of need, a bundle of reflexes that can only eat and cry. To think like a baby is to not think at all.
And yet…
gregladen | July 14, 2010You know Darwin sailed, famously, on The Beagle. But did you know he also sailed on another boat? Check it out.
More Bird Body Part Blogging: Spurs and blades on the wings of jacanas, lapwings, sheathbills and archaeotrogonids (clubs, spurs, spikes and claws part II)
gregladen | July 14, 2010This could be one of the strangest stories out ... well, this week. Prominent Twin Cities lawyer, Aaron Biber, has been charged with getting a 15-year old boy drunk and sexually assaulting him. I don't know a lot more about the case than that.
In his defense, Biber claims that the 15 year old was in charge of the relationship, and as evidence of this, he has one or more photographs of the youth wearing an Adolph Hitler costume. A judge is current considering whether or not to allow the photographic evidence to be used in court.
Scant details here.
krandall | July 14, 2010By Dr. Cynthia Phillips
Planetary geologist at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute
Jupiter's moon Europa could be the best place beyond the Earth to search for life. This small moon, about the size of Earth's Moon, is one of the Galilean moons first discovered 400 years ago by Galileo. The Galilean moons were the first objects observed to orbit another planet, and they revolutionized the way our solar system was understood.
Today, the moons of Jupiter are known to be a scientifically rich part of our solar system, and they are yielding a new revolution…
gregladen | July 14, 2010First, strange creature passes in front of BP Oil Spill Cam. Click here to help identify it. Hat TIp Mad Lolscientist.
Second, "Chupacabras in Texas?"
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
See Commentary by Joshua Rosenau.
gregladen | July 14, 2010Well, at Gombe, the longest running chimp project, fifty years today!
Fifty years ago today, Jane Goodall arrived at Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve (now Gombe National Park) in Tanzania and began documenting the lives of the chimpanzees that lived there. When Goodall ended her fieldwork to advocate for the chimps and the environment in general, other researchers took up the work, and the Gombe chimp research project is now one of the longest running studies of a population of wild animals. Since the study's start in 1960, researchers have published more than 200 scientific papers about the…
gregladen | July 13, 2010Here (below the fold) is my new blog roll. If you were expecting to be there and don't see yourself, let me know. I'm trying to keep my blog roll blog roll-like in that it includes mainly people with whom I exchange linking now and then, and especially whose who's blog roll I'm on. I've deleted seemingly defunct blog as well. It is quite possible that I accidentally deleted a blog that I shouldn't have.
July 14th AM version:
10,000 Birds
A Blog Around The Clock
Almost Diamonds
a Nadder!
Angry by Choice
Archy (John McKay)
Armchair Dissident
Beagle Project
Ben Zvan
(((Billy))) The Atheist…
gboustead | July 13, 2010
I got into this stuff because of science fiction. I was a huge nerd in high school. I remember there was a time that between UPN, TNN, and The SciFi Channel you could watch six straight hours of Star Trek on a Friday night. None of those networks exist anymore. I built a Stargate in my parents’ basement freshman year (see above)--though I never got it to send me anywhere. When my Junior English teacher told me to write a paper on John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or another famous American author, I wrote it on Phillip K. Dick.
As I grew older, and my knowledge of science fact began to…
gregladen | July 13, 2010Today the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund released results from a statewide survey of what Texans think about the intersection of politics and religion with public schools. We released results from two questions back in May. One showed overwhelming support for putting teachers and scholars, instead of politicians on the State Board of Education, in charge of writing curriculum and textbook requirements. Another revealed that nearly 7 in 10 Texans agree that separation of church and state is a key principle of the Constitution.
Source: TFN
gregladen | July 13, 2010I've actually studied the relationship between storm activities and tree falls in a rain forest, so when I saw this, I thought it was quite interesting.
Study Finds Amazon Storm Killed Half a Billion Trees
A single, huge, violent storm that swept across the whole Amazon forest in 2005 killed half a billion trees, according to a new study funded by NASA and Tulane University, New Orleans.
While storms have long been recognized as a cause of Amazon tree loss, this study is the first to actually quantify losses from a storm. And the losses are much greater than previously suspected, say the…
gregladen | July 13, 2010A regular cell phone does not do enough, and has a small screen. An iPhone or smart phone is not easy to hold as one might hold a phone, but has all sorts of functionality and an OK screen. An iPad is kind of cool, but it does not have phone capacities. And, if it did, it would be hard to hold up to one's ear.
But, with a little tweaking ....
cortex | July 13, 2010Joe Keohane has a fascinating summary of our political biases in the Boston Globe Ideas section this weekend. It's probably not surprising that voters aren't rational agents, but it's always a little depressing to realize just how irrational we are. (And it's worth pointing out that this irrationality applies to both sides of the political spectrum.) We cling to mistaken beliefs and ignore salient facts. We cherry-pick our information and vote for people based on an inexplicable stew of superficial hunches, stubborn ideologies and cultural trends. From the perspective of the human brain, it's…
gregladen | July 13, 2010National Center for Science Education staff will be featured at two key panels at the Netroots Nation 2010 conference in Las Vegas at the Hotel Rio. Details below the fold.
"The ABCs of the Education Culture Wars"
Time: 4:30pm - 5:45pm
Date: July 22, 2010
Steven Newton, NCSE
Dan Quinn - Texas Freedom Network
Michael Bérubé - Literature Professor, Penn. St. Univ.
Judy Jennings, Ph.D. - Texas Board of Ed. candidate
Rebecca Bell-Metereau, Ph.D. - Texas BOE candidate
Activists and leaders on the right have spent the past three decades running "stealth" candidates and funding pressure groups…
gregladen | July 13, 2010Skeptically Speaking's podcast on Cruelty is now available here. Next week's show will be Adventures Among Ants, with my close personal friend Mark Moffett. You're gonna like Mark. Details here.
gregladen | July 12, 2010
... in Kruger Park. Waterbuck have a neat adaptation: Nasty tasting subcutaneous fat. It is said that lions and leopards avoid them for this reason. I assure you, however, that they do not avoid them totally. In fact, I'm not sure if it works at all. They seem to be hunted in reasonably close proportion to their numbers in the environment.
But then you have the lions all going "ick, ick ... ptui ... why do we kill these tings again?"