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grrlscientist | July 25, 2009The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 2089 - 1193 - 1155 - 1055 - 897 out of 381 candidates registered. I am in second place, trying to recapture first place.
If you've already voted, then please encourage your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors to vote for the person whom you think would be best for this unique job: traveling to Antarctica for the month of February 2010 and writing about it for the public on a blog. Here is my 300-word essay; hopefully, you will agree that I am a very well-qualified candidate for this job opportunity. Voting ends at noon EDT 30…
sb admin | July 24, 2009Evidence continues to accumulate that talking on the phone while driving â even with a hands-free device â increases the risk of car crashes. We learned earlier this week that officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have been concerned about this problem for years, but declined to go public with research that would have demonstrated the need for legislative action or send a letter to the Transportation Secretary warning that state hands-free laws wouldnât solve the problem.
NHTSA materials related to cellphones and driving came to light thanks to the nonprofit groups…
pharyngula | July 24, 2009Tom Harkin is up to his usual tricks: he wants to expand the role of 'alternative therapies' by allowing them to be covered by insurance. The quacks are cheering him on, too — every naturopath, homeopath, acupuncturist, crystal healer, shaman, meditator, and iridologist wants their slice of that great big health insurance pie. It's a disgrace. Strangely, the insurance companies aren't complaining. This comment explains that, though.
Harvey Kaltsas, president emeritus of the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, said the country could save billions of dollars by shifting…
gregladen | July 24, 2009So a laptop with a half-unplugged memory chip is brought into a shop. The techie fixes it right way, and calls the owner to tell her that a new mother board is needed. In the mean time, he's looking through private photos on the hard drive.
That was one of several documented events chronicled in this piece from PC Pro.
grrlscientist | July 24, 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 a 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. To send your submissions to Scientia Pro Publica, either use this automated submission form or use the cute little widget on the right (sometimes that widget doesn't upload when the mother site is sick). Be sure to include the URL or "…
mspringer | July 24, 2009Far be it from a ScienceBlog to bloviate insufferably about current events, but I suppose I should weigh in on the whole Henry Louis Gates thing. I suppose this because I've had a very similar thing once happen to me. First Gates' story, then mine.
The accounts of Gates and the arresting officer vary on several points, and each paints the other in a very poor light. From the points of agreement we can reconstruct a minimal but probably accurate recounting of the events. Gates and his driver arrived at Gates' home. They could not easily get the door open either as a result of malfunction…
cortex | July 24, 2009Henry Markram, the director of the Blue Brain project, recently delivered a talk at TED that's gotten lots of press coverage. (It was the lead story on the BBC for a few hours...) Not surprisingly, all the coverage focused on the same stunningly ambitious claim, which is Markram's assertion that an artificial brain is "ten years away". I haven't heard the talk, so I don't know the context for the remark, but I did spend a few days with Markram a few years ago. The first thing to note about Markram is that he's incredibly brilliant and persuasive. I might be skeptical about the singularity,…
grrlscientist | July 23, 2009
There are still problems with this site. All my scheduled entries do not show up "below the jump" after they publish until I rebuild each one individually. So the scheduled mystery bird and the videos will taunt you but you will be unable to comment or read/view anything below the jump until I've found wireless at the airport and have been able to rebuild each and every scheduled blog entry .. unless the SB overlordz have gotten this issue fixed, but alas, I will be out of internet/email/blog contact for roughly 18 hours today, which means I cannot complain to hurry the process along. I…
grrlscientist | July 23, 2009The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 2037 - 1189 - 1141 - 983 - 884 out of 372 candidates registered. I am in second place, trying to recapture first place.
If you've already voted, then please encourage your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors to vote for the person whom you think would be best for this unique job: traveling to Antarctica for the month of February 2010 and writing about it for the public on a blog. Here is my 300-word essay; hopefully, you will agree that I am a very well-qualified candidate for this job opportunity. Voting ends at noon EDT 30…
gregladen | July 23, 2009According to the BBC, 17,000 mile cable has just been completed connecting South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique to Europe and Asia. I'm not quite sure how an undersea cable, which this is, connects landlocked Uganda to anything, but well, that's BBC African Geography for you.
gregladen | July 23, 2009Reports are now surfacing that the son of Osama Bin Laden was killed by a US Hellfire missile fired from a Predator Drone in Pakistan at an undisclosed date earlier in the year.
BBC
gregladen | July 23, 2009Who would think that men of the cloth or elected officials would be involved in graft?!?!?
NEWARK, N.J. - Three New Jersey mayors, two state lawmakers, a deputy mayor and five rabbis were among 44 people charged Thursday in a two-track corruption and international money-laundering probe, the U.S. Attorney's Office for New Jersey announced.
FBI and IRS agents arrested most of the suspects Thursday morning in what is being described as one of the biggest investigations of its kind in New Jersey history, according to NBC affiliate WNBC.
Details here
Remember Abscam?
This appears to be a…
mspringer | July 23, 2009Here's a neat little news article about humans glowing in the dark.
The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal.
Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.
We're all glowing all the time throughout the entire spectrum as per Planck's law. The…
gregladen | July 23, 2009Over the last week two vacuum leaks have been found in sectors 8-1 and 2-3 (Sector 7g is still holding). The leaks are similar to each other in position and therefore in likely cause. Unfortunately, these leaks are in already chilled down parts of the LHC and they will have to be warmed up to make repairs.
The delay will probably be a couple of weeks, so a planned (hoped for) October startup will now likely be mid November.
The details can all be found in this report.
gregladen | July 23, 2009Do we use nuclear power to get us past the current climate change crisis?
Fight it out here with Jonas Meckling.
grrlscientist | July 23, 2009
After much agony and angst, it seems that the yesterday's upgrade of the Scienceblogs' site code was successful. Comments and blog entries are publishing as they should and with little wait time, so it appears that this was successful, thanks to the wonderful IT Systems consultant, who was hired to solve our problems! If you experience any problems, please do post about them here and be sure to tell me which browser you were using (we are noticing differences based on which browser and which browser version being used), the time (EDT) that it happened, what you were trying to do and what…
cortex | July 23, 2009I've got a feature article in the latest Psychology Today on neuroaesthetics, the ambitious attempt to interpret art through the prism of neuroscience. Here's the beginning of the article:
Consider the flightless fluffs of brown otherwise known as herring gull chicks. When they're first born, these baby birds are entirely dependent on their mother for food. As a result, the chicks are born with a very powerful instinct: Whenever they see a bird beak, they frantically peck at it, begging for their favorite food: a regurgitated meal.
What's interesting is that this reflex can be manipulated.…
grrlscientist | July 23, 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 a 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. To send your submissions to Scientia Pro Publica, either use this automated submission form or use the cute little widget on the right (sometimes that widget doesn't upload when the mother site is sick). Be sure to include the URL or "…
grrlscientist | July 22, 2009The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 1983 - 1177 - 1135 - 840 - 788 out of 363 candidates registered. I am in second place, trying to recapture first place.
If you've already voted, then please encourage your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors to vote for the person whom you think would be best for this unique job: traveling to Antarctica for the month of February 2010 and writing about it for the public on a blog. Here is my 300-word essay; hopefully, you will agree that I am a very well-qualified candidate for this job opportunity. Voting ends at noon EDT 30…