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cortex | May 20, 2009The Economist summarizes a new study looking at the link between living abroad and increased creativity:
Anecdotal evidence has long held that creativity in artists and writers can be associated with living in foreign parts. Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Gauguin, Samuel Beckett and others spent years dwelling abroad. Now a pair of psychologists has proved that there is indeed a link.
As they report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, William Maddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of…
jwilbanks | May 20, 2009This was in the comments from my blog post on Pfizer's semi-open innovation. I don't normally highlight comments like this, but sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due.
Why deal with Pfizer in the first place? Anything you might find they'll keep and you're SOL. We have a compound library that started from 1.4 million cmpds from Chemdiv, Chembridge, Maybridge and Tripos. I talked them into using our exclusion criteria (developed by my old buddies from Pharmacia - we all got Pfired when Pfizer took over Kazoo) and got rid of all the junk we didn't want (1 million). From there…
nisbetmc | May 20, 2009
Talk about "going broad" with a science communication strategy: If an open access journal article, a front page NY Times article, Good Morning America, and a two-hour History Channel documentary weren't enough, the "missing link" known as Ida now appears as today's logo at Google's search engine.
In the academic and professional fields of science communication, the story of Ida will be analyzed and debated for some time. At one level, as I explained yesterday, the innovative strategy and resources spent on popularizing this finding to a broader audience is exactly the type of method needed…
gregladen | May 19, 2009I know someone (never mind who) who used to tie herself to a chair while studying in order to not randomly get up and go do stuff. (Obviously, she could untie herself in case of emergency.)
Now, there's a new way to do that:
Parents struggling to get their kids to revise in the run-up to exams can now keep them at their desk using a ball and chain that only unlocks when they have studied for long enough.
Concerned mums and dads set the desired study time on the Study Ball and attach it to their child's ankle.
A red digital display counts down the "Study Time Left" and the device beeps…
jwilbanks | May 19, 2009I ran into Virginia Acha last week at the NESTA event in London, but she didn't tell me about this!
Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline notes that Pfizer is apparently allowing external companies to screen against their internal library.
But I'm told that Pfizer has been meeting with several other (mostly smaller) companies, offering their (entire?) compound library as a screening resource. As I understand it, you need to come to them with a reasonably formatted HTS assay, and there's a fee in the high hundreds of thousands to run the screen.
This isn't all the way towards open innovation. In a…
gregladen | May 19, 2009I have always preferred train travel over flying, when practical. I have no fear of flying, and when I do fly, I try to sit by the window because I love looking down at the lay of the land and the tiny cars on freeways. I am still a kid that way. I love to fly, but I would prefer a train...
Please check out You Are Now Free to Move About the Car, the latest post by Mike, at Quiche Moraine Dot Com
pharyngula | May 19, 2009Oprah asks so sweetly: What Should Jenny Do?
You've seen it all over the news...Jenny McCarthy, one of America's funniest and coolest moms and Harpo is giving her, her own show.
Here is where YOU come in.
What would you like to see featured on Jenny's show? What would you like for her to talk about? What are you and your friends buzzing about?
Any topics you'd like for her to tackle? Are there any questions that you have -- that you would love for her to answer?
If so -- we definitely want to hear from you!
Write to us and tell us exactly what you'd like to see Jenny do.
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Make sure to…
purepedantry | May 19, 2009Hi all! I wanted to take a moment say hello, and say how honored I am to join Sci and Evil here at Neurotopia. Some of you may know me as Jake Young formerly of the Pure Pedantry blog. Some of you, I may be writing to for the first time.
In either case, I am looking forward to talking about some fun neuroscience with all of you. Posting will be kind of sporadic because work is rough, but hopefully we will have a chance to really delve into neuroscience and medicine.
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A note about the pseudonym: yes, I know that you know who I am. Yes, I am comfortable with that being an…
pharyngula | May 19, 2009The National Organization for Marriage, that ridiculous group that came up with the ad that was so ripe for mockery, has a new one. It features little kids acting all confused that someone could have two daddies, or that god might have created Anna and Eve. And of course, it has a new slogan that will have you laughing: "Our kids will be taught a new way of thinking". Oh noes…we can't have our children learning anything new!
These guys are so inept, it's got me wondering whose side they're really on.
Oh, and for any kids who are actually confused, here's how to tell who your parents are.…
mspringer | May 19, 2009In some ways, a crowd at a stadium has two possible overall states. They can be a normal crowd, or they can do the wave. But first, some background:
A gas isn't usually too hard to model at the statistical level. Treat is as a large collection of free particles and you're pretty much set. For more accuracy you can take quantum effects such as the so-called second quantization into account, and you can model the interactions between atoms with an appropriate Hamiltonian and for all intents and purposes your model will be able to handle more or less any real-world situation with great…
cortex | May 19, 2009Robert Krulwich has a fascinating piece on NPR about the binding problem and the speed of nerve transmission. In essence, it takes a split-second longer for sensory signals to reach the brains of tall people, which means that their "now" is actually a little less timely. (This explains a lot about the NBA...)
Because for the taller person it takes a tenth of a second longer for the toe-touch to travel up the foot, the ankle, the calf, the thigh, the backbone to the brain, the brain waits that extra beat to announce a "NOW!" That tall person will live his sensory life on a teeny delay (at…
jwilbanks | May 18, 2009Open Knowledge Foundation have released a short guide to open data as part of the open data commons project.
I have my philosophical disagreements with OKF on some issues - and they with me! - but they're the kind of disagreements that come from people on the same side of the fence. We all want open data, and we want it now.
Moments like this are good to step back and focus on our agreements. We agree that data is a little weird, and that we need more research on how to best treat the law around the data. We agree that public sector information needs to be free - in fact, Rufus Pollock has…
gregladen | May 18, 2009Press release from NASA regarding Spirit, which has been stuck in the sand ...
NASA's rover project team is using the Spirit rover and other spacecraft at Mars to begin developing the best maneuvers for extracting Spirit from the soft Martian ground where it has become embedded.
A diagnostic test on May 16 provided favorable indications about Spirit's left middle wheel. The possibility of the wheel being jammed was one factor in the rover team's May 7 decision to temporarily suspend driving Spirit after that wheel stalled and other wheels had dug themselves about hub-deep into the soil.…
gregladen | May 18, 2009So it came to pass that Amanda seemed to be somewhat ill .... nausea, tired for no reason, that sort of thing. About the same time both of us started to rearrange the furniture a lot and we were both gathering small sticks and pieces of moss and putting them in the bottom of the closet. Then the local dogs and cats started to act strangely when we would come in and out of the house. Eventually, we decided to go to the doctor and see what was going on.
And it turns out...
.... That Amanda is Pregnant!
According to the shaman with the little round dial at the health clinic, the due date is…
gregladen | May 18, 2009I have an important announcement to make. I am going to make this announcement on facebook first, so if you are my facebook friend already go have a look.
sb admin | May 18, 2009Remember when California tried to set tighter limits on vehiclesâ CO2 emissions than what the federal government required? (They petitioned for a waiver to set their own pollution standards, which theyâre allowed to do under the Clean Air Act if they get federal permission.)
The Bush administration EPA kept insisting that the Clean Air Act didnât allow for regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant â until the Supreme Court told them that, yes, the Clean Air Act does authorize EPA to regulate these climate-damaging emissions. Then EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson went ahead and denied…
pharyngula | May 18, 2009Eugenie Scott has been named to the Scientific American 10, the top 10 people in the past year who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and accomplishment in guaranteeing that future technologies will be applied to the benefit of humanity". Everyone applaud now!
jwilbanks | May 18, 2009(note - I have edited this post to add in Rufus Pollock, who I left out primarily because I wasn't sure he would endorse the ideas in this post - Peter notes that he was not only at the meeting but essential, so I'm happy to add these edits!)
Peter Murray-Rust has posted some essential reading for anyone interested in open data in the sciences. He follows onto Cameron Neylon's post whose title I have quoted in my own title here.
Peter summarizes an informal summit meeting held lest week in the UK by a group of folks interested in open science and open data, including Rufus Pollock of the…