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grrlscientist | June 16, 2009I have been rather violently ill these past few days due to, I assume, food poisoning. Today, I am shaking and weak but that horrific headache and my desire to cling to the porcelain throne are gone. But I am left wondering; was this the bread I bought as a treat in the bulk bin at the grocery story? Or that beautiful apple that tasted especially good?
Anyway, I am back at the library today, using their free wireless and catching up on some things that should have been done by now, such as sending out a piece of writing to be published in the National Finch and Softbill Society's magazine (…
mspringer | June 16, 2009I was doing some swimming today, and when I got out of the pool and dried off the first thing I did was to get some ice water to cool down a bit. Good stuff, there's not much that's as satisfying as cold water to a thirsty person on a hot day.
Ice water is at or about 0 degrees Celsius, and my insides have to hold themselves quite closely to the classical Fahrenheit value of 98.6, which is 37 Celsius. If my body were a perfectly insulated system with no way to generate heat internally, my body would warm the water up and the water would cool my body down until they reaches a equilibrium…
cortex | June 16, 2009There's a new full-length podcast out from the world's finest science radio show. It's on "Stochasticity," which is a great word because 1) it sounds really fancy but is actually a rather simple idea 2) it's an essential concept when it comes to understanding lots of different stuff, from neural oscillations to quantum physics.
I make an appearance on the episode to help explain what was happening inside the mind of Ann Klinestiver, a high-school English teacher who developed a severe gambling addiction after taking a dopamine agonist. (I also tell this story in my book, but it's much better…
gregladen | June 15, 2009This visual representation of the inside of a Linux Kernel build clearly had an image of Jesus Christ hidden in it.
(There is some context here.)
gregladen | June 15, 2009[On June 19th] we'll be talking about Astronomy with popular author and super-blogger Phil Plait!
And, as usual, we have a lot of questions.
Like, why is Pluto now not a planet? What's NASA up to lately? And what's the deal with the Hubble Telescope? How do we know we really landed on the moon? Is it likely that the world will be destroyed by asteroids, comets, black holes, or supernovae?
Ooh! Like in the Star Trek movie! When Spock is mind-melding with Kirk? He talks about a supernova that "threatened the galaxy"! Can that happen?
Um... the supernova part, not the mind meld.
Ask away on the…
gregladen | June 15, 2009is now available here, at Mauka to Makai. It is a great edition, plus the Mauka to Makai site itself is worth a look for a number of reasons. So go there.
Then, later, when you have a chance, go here and submit a post for the next Scientia Pro Publica, which will be hosted HERE at this blog. This one, here, the one you are reading right now. Use this handy dandy submission form.
email your submissions here
Thank you very much.
grrlscientist | June 15, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Please forgive me for taking so long to notify you of this (I have been quite ill), but the most recent edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) has been published at Mauka to Makai. 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 host for the upcoming…
purepedantry | June 15, 2009So Notorious has been a neuroscience student for a long, long time now, and he was cleaning out the (metaphorical in his case) attic the other day and realized he has a lot of extra notes lying around collecting dust. In what will no doubt be a vain attempt to not just toss them, he has decided to write some of this stuff down as an extended primer to the basics of neuroscience.
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So here goes. The basic of the very basic: what types of cells is make up the brain? What do those cells do?
There are four types of cells that compose the brain -- that is aside from the cells that…
gregladen | June 15, 2009Imagine my surprise when I try to print a document, and nothing comes out of the printer. The printer isn't claiming it's processing the document - and in one instance, while waiting for my document, I saw the printer fire up and spit out someone else's document. On these occasions, if I go back to my desk and flip back to the Office application that was trying to print, only then does the document print. In fact, I can see Word finally display the status message "Printing page 1 of ..." at the bottom of the window.
Read the rest of the horror story here at Linux in Exile.
My own worst…
mspringer | June 15, 2009Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler notes that the NAS is starting to look into the possibility of geoengineering to roll back human changes in the climate. For those of you who haven't heard, geoengineering is the process of deliberately changing the climate to compensate for the effects of greenhouse gases.
There's no shortage of reasons it might not work. The most obvious is that climate is not fully understood as it is, and so massive alterations may have unintended consequences and make things worse. Especially if the methods of geoengineering result in permanent changes,…
sb admin | June 15, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
One of the premier and earliest flu bloggers and co-founder of Flu Wiki, DemFromCT is also a doctor. Not a young doctor, either, although somewhat younger than I am (most people seem to be, these days). In our young professional days, the American Medical Association was a real political power. When it spoke, politicians listened. Hell, everyone listened. Now? Well, who cares? Dem has a really excellent post up at DailyKos looking at the AMA's opposition to the "public option" in the Obama health care plan. I'm not so crazy about a public option…
grrlscientist | June 15, 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.
Froth!: The Science of Beer by Mark Denny (Johns Hopkins University Press; 2009). Review Copy.
Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land by Nina Burleigh (NYC: Collins; 2008). Review Copy.
Evolution and Ethics by Thomas Henry Huxley (Princeton University Press; 2009). Review Copy.…
cortex | June 15, 2009Tom Vanderbilt has a fascinating article on the infrastructure of data centers, those server farms that make Google, Facebook and World of Warcraft possible. Every keystroke on the internet (including this one) relies on shuttling electrons back and forth in a remote air-conditioned industrial hangar. These are the highway ribbons of the future, the grid that's so essential we don't even notice it.
The article also mentions the energy costs required to run such server farms, which has real scientific implications. As size of data sets continues to rapidly increase, one significant hurdle is…
pharyngula | June 14, 2009In an awesome development, I have been chatting with Mr. Deity (which, by the way, makes me officially a prophet. I'm working on letting my beard grow long now), and he has offered to answer almost any questions you might have. What would you ask an omniscient, omnipotent being? Leave your questions in the comments, I'll pass them on, and then I'll stroll down from the mountain with the answers chiseled on digital stone tablets.
I don't want to catch any of you frolicking with golden calves while I'm getting the words of the Lord now, you hear?
And keep in mind that I'll only pass along the…
grrlscientist | June 13, 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 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. 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…
gregladen | June 13, 2009Atheists Talk #0074, Sunday June 14, 2009
Is there a direct correlation between atheism and liberalism? Why do so many atheists lean towards the left of the political spectrum? Many of our past shows have focused on the Conservative Christian influence over American politics, but does that necessarily mean that one needs to oppose their views in all areas? Politics, philosophy and atheism are the topic for today's show. Our guest is Massimo Pigliucci, who contacted us following our interview with Sunsara Taylor, because he wanted to address a few of the points she had made in regards to…
