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grrlscientist | May 29, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the…
gregladen | May 28, 2010
You probably know that there is a new primate fossil, nicknamed "Ida," and that there is quite a buzz about it. (Well, you certainly do know by now because this is a repost!)
Darwinius masillae, aka Ida
Ida comes from fossil deposits in Germany, and was originally excavated in two different parts by private collectors, and only recently rejoined and recognized for the amazing fossil it is. This is considered to be a new genus, and is named Darwinius masillae
...holotype skeleton in right lateral view...
Ida is a 47 million year old adapid primate of outstanding, unprecedented state…
grrlscientist | May 28, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the…
gregladen | May 27, 2010Do male geniuses outnumber female geniuses? Yes, of course, if you define geniuses in such a way that they do. See commentary here and here about this topic.
On a related note, here is a post that is closely related: The interrelationship between bias in biology and bias in education: High Cotton by Naomi Baker
pharyngula | May 27, 2010This is good news! After the outrage over a prior policy statement, the AAP has revised and clarified their position on female genital mutilation:
The American Academy of Pediatrics has rescinded a controversial policy statement raising the idea that doctors in some communities should be able to substitute demands for female genital cutting with a harmless clitoral "pricking" procedure.
"We retracted the policy because it is important that the world health community understands the AAP is totally opposed to all forms of female genital cutting, both here in the U.S. and anywhere else in the…
rallain | May 27, 2010
You should check this out - its free. This is a very creative take on some of the ideas of physics. Think of it as physics meets Dr. Seuss, but with more detailed art work. Created by James Dunbar, it is quite fun to read. Of course, there are some things that are always exactly correct - but that is true of everything, right?
BANG! The book website (sorry, I forgot the link earlier).
gregladen | May 27, 2010Think of penguins as ocean sentinels, says Dee Boersma -- they're on the frontlines of sea change. Sharing stories of penguin life and culture, she suggests that we start listening to what penguins are telling us.
mspringer | May 27, 2010Before we get to the heart of yesterday's quiz, let me briefly define solid angle for those who may not be familiar with it. Regular angles are measured in degrees or radians, and solid angles are to angles as square meters are to meters. Solid angle is more or less angular area, and is measured in steradians (or sometimes square degrees). Here's one steradian, from Wikipedia. There are 4π steradians in a sphere:
Now let's take a look at the sun. Make yourself a square frame made with 1-meter sides. Fly down and stand on the surface of the sun (this is a thought experiment, after all), and…
gregladen | May 27, 2010Many years ago, a sudden event occurred that changed everything. Or at least, that is what we think now. But in truth, the event took longer than many today believe, and many of the specific details, the exact order of events, the actual meaning of each detail, are not fully understood. Indeed, in the process of describing this event today, we find considerable disagreement, or at least, it is clear that one person's version is different than another's. I'd be happy to give you my version of it. What qualifies me to do that? Well, for one thing, I was there when it happened...
I refer…
cwilcox | May 27, 2010Last year, 3 Quarks Daily had a science blogging contest that shelled out some nice cash to the Top Quark. Well, they're at it again!
You can now stop by and nominate your favorite posts by leaving a comment here. I know there's a lot of great writing going on here at Science Blogs, so look around and nominate something!
If you want to nominate something of mine (which, of course, you do), here are some of my suggestions (nominating more than once doesn't help in any way - so I'll make note of ones already nominated by others):
Evolution: The Curious Case of Dogs nominated!
Evolution:…
cortex | May 26, 2010In the last few months, the globalized world has endured two very different crises. First, there was the ash cloud over Europe, which paralyzed air travel for millions of passengers. Then, there is the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, which continues to spew somewhere between 5000 and 60,000 barrels of crude into the ocean every day.
While these disasters have nothing in common, our response has been plagued by the same fundamental problem. In both instances, officials settled on an early version of events - the ash cloud posed a severe danger to plane engines, and the oil well wasn't…
gregladen | May 26, 2010is at the Prancing Papio (= Dancing Baboon) at THIS LINK HERE. click it. enjoy.
gregladen | May 26, 2010Today, many biotechnology blogs focus on genomics (especially personal genomics) and the business side of biotech. The blogs listed below are produced by professors, students as well as law firms and researchers. One other focus in these top 50 biotechnology blogs is bioinformatics, represented in both in molecular biology as well as in databases, algorithms, computational and statistical techniques and theory.
Hey, I'm on the list!
Anyway, check it out, this is a blogroll's blogroll.
Which reminds me, my blog roll needs fixing up. It's been months. I'll get to that, I'll get to that.
gregladen | May 26, 2010According to a study just coming out in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, "variations in emotional intelligence--the ability to identify and manage emotions of one's self and others--are associated with orgasmic frequency during intercourse and masturbation."
In short, the study found:
Emotional intelligence was not associated with ... age and years of education, nor did we find a significant association between emotional intelligence and potential risk factors for [female orgasmic disorder] FOD such as age, body mass index, physical or sexual abuse, or menopause. We found emotional…
gregladen | May 26, 2010Or, on the other hand, this may be a good thing:
You know about the [ooh.. something spooky just happened. tell you later] Adolph Hitler video memes, where conversation about pretty much anything (the new iPod, the latest ballgame, whatever) is superimposed over german dialog from Downfall (the 2004 film) giving Hitler and his last remaining bunker-bound Nazi-symps funny dialog.
Here, for reference, is the original in German:
Well, apparently, the era Hitlering our discourse has gone the way of the Dodo and the Third Reich:
On Tuesday, the clips on YouTube, many of which had been watched
by…
mspringer | May 26, 2010Pop quiz! The picture below is a solar power facility wherein light from the sun is collected by mirrors and focused onto the top of a collecting tower. Fluid within the tower is heated by this light and the hot fluid is used to generate power. We won't care about that in this quiz though; we're just assuming that all the energy goes into heating the tower until its own radiant heat output is equal to that coming in from the mirrors.
Here's the quiz setup. There's nothing stopping you from adding as many mirrors as you want to this installation - for the purposes of this question you can put…