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gregladen | October 20, 2009How the Perception of an Intact Body Can Go Awry
Twin Cities Skeptics and Minneapolis Skeptics present: "Phantom limbs, alien hand syndrome, the rubber hand illusion...How the Perception of an Intact Body Can Go Awry..."
Details here.
gregladen | October 20, 2009
I took this photograph not using a telephoto lens, and not using angry bees for protection. But there was a 5 meter high electrified concrete and steel fence.
But for how long? Consider this report on PhysOrg:
Elephants’ fear of angry bees could help to protect them from PhysOrg.com
At a time when encroaching human development in former wildlife areas has compressed African elephants into ever smaller home ranges and increased levels of human-elephant conflict, a study in the October 9th issue of Current Biology suggests that strategically placed beehives might offer a low-tech elephant…
gregladen | October 20, 2009I've heard it does. I just put Lizzie's disk drive in my freezer. What is going to happen next?
gregladen | October 20, 2009Read this essay by Mike, and watch the following video. There will be a quiz.
gregladen | October 20, 2009I do make the absolute best pumpkin pie, which I am reminded of because of this recipe for Spicy Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie. There is a very large extended family with whom we have had Thanksgiving for the last few years and they have come to rely on my pies. But since Offspring is expected to be borned within a few days of Thanksgiving this year, they should make a backup plan.
cortex | October 20, 2009Via Felix Salmon comes this amusing anecdote about Robert Parker's blind tasting of 2005 Bordeaux, which he has declared the best vintage since 1982. Parker has previously rated all of these wines, and even given them exact point scores, so his public blind taste test was an interesting natural experiment: would Parker's new scores correlate with his 2007 scores? How many of these wines would he be able to identify?
The answers were humbling. (In Parker's defense, these wines are still very young and very tannic.) Parker confused merlot-based Bordeaux with cabernet-heavy blends; his favorite…
gregladen | October 19, 2009I never really drank seltzer, or as we would say in NY, seltzah. The one morning I found myself waking up in a house full of sleeping people and we had all been partying heavily the night before, and I had some kind of extra-special hangover, the kind you only get if you've been ....
... well, never mind, I'm not sure about the statue of limitations.
Anyway, I wandered down to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, pulled out a quart bottle of Canada Dry Seltzah water, opened it, and downed it in about three draughts. For the next several years, setlzah was my drink, and I never looked…
gregladen | October 19, 2009Listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the world's toughest bacterium," Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand extreme temperatures and drought conditions, lack of nutrients and a thousand times more radiation than a human being.
A new study by Cornell researchers reveals that nitric oxide -- a gas molecule used in many metabolic processes in animals and a pollutant in the atmosphere that leads to smog -- plays a key role in D. radiodurans' recovery when exposed to ultraviolet radiation (UV).
The study, appearing online Oct. 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,…
jjacquet | October 19, 2009I have decided to add a new category on greenwashing. It's so prolific, we simply must have some displayed here on Guilty Planet. I am in favor of companies doing the right thing and I imagine that Nature's Path is up there as earth-friendly business models go. But I am worried about the proliferation of messaging without meaning.
grrlscientist | October 19, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published at Genetic Interference. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 14th edition. The author of Genetic Interference is speaking at the American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting and is planning to "live blog" that conference as well, despite the fact it's in Hawai'i, so be sure to poke around on his blog to find those essays.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a…
zooillogix | October 19, 2009One of the world's few flightless parrots, the Kakapo is endemic to New Zealand and is notable for having parrot sex with this guy's head.
This is basically Benny's dream date. Thanks to reader Heather H. for sending along.
gregladen | October 19, 2009I've been checking in on people's happiness quotients, and I have many things to report. Mostly good, so if you are looking for trouble or just feeling misanthropic, don't go below the fold.
Let me start with my friend elle (that is her secret code name). She has been living on the South Pole since the "beginning" of "winter" last year, almost a year ago. That has been quite an adventure and I'm sure over the long term she will be very happy to have done it. But at the moment I think she really really really wants to fly north. As soon as possible. Well, as best as I can reconstruct…
mspringer | October 19, 2009There's a question that gets posed toward the beginning of intro physics classes to gauge the students' understanding of acceleration. If you fire a bullet horizontally while at the same instant dropping a bullet from the same height, which hits the ground first?
The point is to think clearly about the equation describing accelerated motion. The equation is this:
The bold letters represent vectors. Lower case r is position, a is acceleration, v is velocity. The vectors with 0 subscripted represent the starting values, so v0 is the initial velocity and r0 is the initial position.
But the…
grrlscientist | October 18, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is almost here once more and it is still seeking submissions for tomorrow's edition of this blog carnival! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written blog essays to the host?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The…
grrlscientist | October 17, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Have you read an especially good essay about science, nature or medicine lately? If so, why not share it with the world by submitting the URL for this essay to a blog carnival designed to share excellent writing with others? You don't need to be the author of an essay to submit it for consideration, and this is one way that blog carnivals grow in size and influence: by sharing with others.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival…
gregladen | October 17, 2009Dogs:
Cats:
Bonus Cat (below the fold because it also involves mean humans):
And no, I can't explain that.
And now, from the famous Animal Face off series, Wolf vs. Cougar Remix...
(original wolf vs. cougar is here, embedding disallowed)
This is what is wrong with science education in America!!!!