Uncategorized
agelman | November 4, 2009I learned about this from Aleks's Twitter feed.
It's got a slider bar at the bottom that lets you move continuously from the scale of a coffee bean to the scale of a carbon atom. Beyond its inherent coolness, this display answers a question I asked last year:
When I took science in 9th grade, I remember being disturbed by a gap in the story. From one direction, we were told about atoms and subatomic particles and how they clustered into molecules. From the other, we were told about cells--single-celled animals and single human cells, then multicelled animals, then larger things such as…
gregladen | November 4, 2009
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | November 3, 2009The following video is NOT from a Home Depot. It is, however, from a Vodka warehouse. But this could happen anywhere with fork lifts. Well, OK, more likely when fork lifts and Vodka are mixed. Which just proves ....
EMBED-Bringing Down The Warehouse - Watch more free videos
You should always drink your Vodka straight!!!
hat tip: geekologie
gregladen | November 3, 2009
If you said "cat" you'd be partly right. If you said "naked lady kneeling on floor" you'd be closer.
This photograph may help explain:
This is the work of Craig Tracy, highlighted in The Telegraph, and who's web site is here.
hat tip eolake
pharyngula | November 3, 2009One of our own, the godless Minnesotan Stephanie Zvan, is going under the knife for removal of some cancerous tissue today. If you're a useless fool, you might think entreating an imaginary and fickle deity would be the appropriate thing to do, but no…we know that is futile and insulting. However, one thing that isn't pointless is to leave a few messages as members of a community of caring human beings that we're looking forward to her return. So go do something social and personal and life-affirming, ok?
dgmacarthur | November 3, 2009 My contribution to Genomics Law Report's superb "What ELSI is New" series is up now.
The gist of my argument: as we move into an era of large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies and the utility of genomic information grows, researchers will increasingly frequently be faced with the discovery of highly medically relevant information within their subjects' genomes. Yet under the consent procedures established for most modern genetic research projects the anonymised subjects would never have a chance to learn about this information.
As such, people will die from breast cancer and other…
cortex | November 3, 2009This is excellent news. Dan Delong will be back in the classroom today. I'm so relieved.
cortex | November 3, 2009Why are we so dishonest? Why do we bad things, even when we know we're doing something bad? Ever since Adam and Eve ate that apple, we've assumed that there is something inherently tempting about sin. If left to our own devices, we'd all turn into men at a Vegas bachelor party, indulging in sex, drugs and slot machines. We'd loot and pillage and lie. Immorality feels good, which is why it's so hard being moral.
Some people, of course, are made of stronger stuff, which is why they stay on the righteous path. Because they're better than us, they don't eat too much cake or cheat on their taxes…
gregladen | November 3, 2009If you read my blog, you know my friend Stephanie, who co-blogs with Mike Haubrich and me at Quiche Moraine, and who writes Almost Diamonds. Stephanie is undergoing surgery this morning, so I thought you'd like to go here and leave her a note.
What are the details of her surgery? Not my place to tell, really. Not because it's private or anything, but because we are both bloggers and it is against the blogger's code to live blog someone else while they are unconscious. I'm sure Stephanie will fill us in in time. I'll just say that this is relatively routine in the larger picture of things…
gregladen | November 2, 2009From a Yale press release:
Yale University researchers have detected the effects of natural selection among two generations of contemporary women and predict their descendents will be slightly shorter and chubbier, have lower cholesterol and blood pressure and have their first children earlier in life.
The predictions, which were made in the Oct. 19 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were based on an analysis of women who have participated in the famous Framingham Heart Study, that began in 1948. The results illustrate the medical value of evolutionary…
gregladen | November 2, 2009From the BBC:
Councillors in a rural town have staged a mass resignation after becoming tired of criticism from a blogger.
We could just leave it at that and know our power. Or we could look at the details more closely:
OK, 11 out of 15 council members of the town of Somerton, England resigned on Tuesday. Blogger Niall Connolly had made accusations on his blog that are a bit beyond me to describe, and the council members who walked out claim that it was this blogging that made them want to quit. The blogger, however, has a different take on it.
Mr Connolly rejected the idea that the…
agelman | November 2, 2009Really we need the data on babies born 30 years ago, but this is still pretty stunning:
Argentina: MatÃas, #3; Mateo, #13
Australia/New South Wales: Matthew, #21
Australia/Victoria: Matthew, #21
Austria: Matthias, #19
Belgium: Mathis, #9; Matteo, #22; Mathias, #23; Mathéo, #35; Mats, #89; Mathieu, #90; Matthias, #97
Brazil: Matheus, #4
Canada/Alberta: Matthew, #8
Canada/British Columbia: Matthew, #6
Canada/Ontario: Matthew, #2
Canada/Quebec: Mathis, #11; Mathieu, #35; Mathias, #47; Matthew, #76; Mathys, #78; Matis, #84
Canada/Saskatchewan: Matthew, #10
Chile: Matias, #4
Czech Republic: Matej…
cortex | November 2, 2009Michael Posner and Brenda Patoine make a neuroscientific case for arts education. They argue that teaching kids to make art has lasting cognitive benefits:
If there were a surefire way to improve your brain, would you try it? Judging by the abundance of products, programs and pills that claim to offer "cognitive enhancement," many people are lining up for just such quick brain fixes. Recent research offers a possibility with much better, science-based support: that focused training in any of the arts--such as music, dance or theater--strengthens the brain's attention system, which in turn can…
mspringer | November 2, 2009These days pretty much everyone knows that mass and energy are two sides of the same coin, as discovered by Einstein. In fact this is so well known that the average man on the street - knowing nothing at all of physics - would still recognize the expression even if he didn't know what it meant or how to use it:
E is energy, m is mass, c is the speed of light. As with all such formulas, you need to have properly matching units. You can't just use mass in pounds, e in British thermal units, and speed in furlongs per fortnight. But any properly consistent set of units will work; for…
grrlscientist | November 2, 2009
I receive a fair number of books to review each month, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog.
I should point out that (sadly!), my book reviewing days may be (possibly) ending soon because I will be relocating to Frankfurt, Germany in two weeks. According to my experiences, postage to Germany is at least three times what it is to anywhere in the USA, and I get an impressive headache when I read electronic…