Uncategorized
mspringer | April 29, 2009That Professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react - to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
- New York Times, January 30, 1929
Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere.…
mikethemadbiologist | April 29, 2009Courtesy of Skepchick:
If you are "more at risk" to have a deadly infectious virus, like you just got back from a pig-licking tour of Mexico* where you were repeatedly sneezed on, then you should see a real medical professional. Homeopaths do not necessarily have medical degrees and all they can do is give you sugar water and then maybe contract swine flu from you and then you can die in one another's arms, just like Romeo and Juliet only stupider, which is really saying something....
In the meantime, feel free to self-treat your deadly, human race-ending disease with a variety of other…
pharyngula | April 29, 2009I need details of this law against blasphemy. If "Begorrah!" and "Saints preserve us!" are outlawed, then Irish stereotypes will be utterly demolished. On the other hand, one Irish fellow I knew used the peculiar expression "fewkin'" as every other word…I presume charming references to sexual acts will not be regarded as blasphemous? Otherwise, the charm of the Irish vernacular will be lost to us forever.
Here is the only definition I've seen so far.
"Blasphemous matter" is defined as matter "that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby…
gregladen | April 29, 2009The Minnesota cases are not confirmed but health officials are saying they likely will be. There will be a press conference on this at 9:00 AM Wed.
A child in Texas has died of the flu.
Which brings us to the relative severity, or more exactly, the mortality rate. It has seemed to some a mystery that many have died in Mexico but not elsewhere. However, it is also thought that thousands were ill in Mexico (no reliable estimate exists). So dozens out of thousands have died in Mexico, and now one out of dozens in the US. There simply are not enough data to assess overall mortality and…
cortex | April 29, 2009Margaret Talbot has a thorough and thought-provoking article in the New Yorker on the potential pitfalls of "neuroenhancing drugs". At this point, enhancement essentially consists of taking uppers (Adderall, Ritalin, Provigil, etc.) to improve concentration and focus. These drugs might have fancy new brand names, but the underlying concept is as old as caffeine and nicotine, which work by tweaking our neurons (often through the activation of excitatory neurotransmitters or, as in the case of coffee, by inhibiting our inhibitory neurotransmitters). Furthermore, there is a lofty literary…
gregladen | April 29, 2009Seriously.
Dr. Sandra Porter of Discovering Biology in a Digital World provides evidence that "the California outbreak might be the same strain that caused an outbreak in 2007 at an Ohio country fair."
What a nice piece of research and blogging.
UPDATED: There is some interesting discussion on Sandy's blog about the validity and meaning of this finding, and Tara Smith has further discussion here.
I also want to be more specific about one thing: When I say the word "Source" of Swine Flu in the head line, I mean "phylogenetic source" ... the actual source of a person's case of swine flu…
sb admin | April 28, 2009The total number of confirmed US swine flu cases continues to rise: it's currently at 64, with 45 of those cases in New York City. This is something that CDC Acting Director Richard Besser told us to expect. Because samples from flu patients have to be sent to a lab for analysis, there's a lag between when someone with flulike symptoms shows up at a hospital or doctor's office and when we know whether that person has this particular strain of influenza A/H1N1.
Besser and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano are also stressing that the news will get worse, but that still won't mean…
gregladen | April 28, 2009When I contacted Steve Kelley's campaign director to arrange a meeting with Steve and Sophie Kelley, I suggested Tuesday. She responded that they had arranged their schedule to meet me on Wednesday. When I read her response, the part that I saw was, "They had arranged their schedule to meet with you at Pizza Nea, 306 Hennepin Ave..." The part that I missed was, "...Wednesday at 7."...
I hate when that happens... Read the rest here at Quiche Moraine.
mspringer | April 28, 2009Yes, it's Tuesday. Busy weekend, including a Relay for Life (you should find your local one and donate!). Today we'll get back on schedule a bit and make this one a rather more utilitarian than usual Sunday Function, playing into the last step we'll need in order to complete the Bose-Einstein condensation discussion.
In the course of our journey we will meet this somewhat alarming creature:
It's a function that takes two parameters: a more traditional variable z, and a number (lowercase Greek letter nu) denoting the particular subspecies of function g. The capital Greek letter gamma is…
neurotopia | April 27, 2009I think I hit the wrong thing when trying to install a rotating blogroll, so Neurotopia may look like base model Movable Type template for a while. My apologies...
dgmacarthur | April 27, 2009I usually try to maintain a fairly single-minded focus on genomics on this blog, but Alex Wild's current series of post on insect photography over at Photo Synthesis is simply stunning. Anyone interested in either photography or entomology - or simply appreciative of a beautiful image - should wander over and check them out.
Alex's rotation on Photo Synthesis may soon be coming to an end, but you can then follow him back to his usual home, Myrmecos.
Here's a classic example of Alex's work:
Subscribe to Genetic Future.
grrlscientist | April 27, 2009The latest blog carnivals that have been published recently for you to read;
Book Review Carnival, 26 April edition. This blog carnival focuses on book reviews, as its name suggests. It's amazing to see the number and variety of book reviews out there!
Everything Worth Reading, 26 April 2009. This blog carnival is a blog-writer's newsfeed.
All Things Eco, #48. This blog carnival focuses on ecology and the environment.
nisbetmc | April 27, 2009Next week I am excited to be participating in a unique conference organized by the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies. The Institute is bringing together top scientists, journalists, policy experts, and communication researchers to focus on "Effective Communication of Science in Environmental Controversies" with a series of symposia articles to be produced based on the presentations. Headliners include the NY Times' Andrew Revkin and Nature columnist David Goldston.
At the conference I will be presenting on new models for science and environmental journalism, a topic very much top of mind…
sb admin | April 27, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
Usually "What did you expect?" is a rhetorical question, but we have a more serious point to make. Let's start with the familiar and move on to the less familiar. Many of you are coming here to find the latest news about swine flu. It's an imprecise term that covers two different things: what has happened that is new, in the sense of surprising and we didn't already know it would happen; and what is the current situation. Overnight (in the US) Europe (Spain) registered its first confirmed case. That's additional data but not surprising. We know this…
cortex | April 27, 2009Here's a fascinating new study demonstrating that it's good to get exposed to multiple languages even as a preverbal infant:
Children exposed to bilingual input typically learn 2 languages without obvious difficulties. However, it is unclear how preverbal infants cope with the inconsistent input and how bilingualism affects early development. In 3 eye-tracking studies we show that 7-month-old infants, raised with 2 languages from birth, display improved cognitive control abilities compared with matched monolinguals. Whereas both monolinguals and bilinguals learned to respond to a speech or…
grrlscientist | April 26, 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) blog carnival is seeking your recently published blog entries (within the previous 60 days) about science, nature and medicine for inclusion in its upcoming edition on Monday, 4 May 2009. To send submissions to Scientia Pro Publica, either use this automated submission form or use the cute little widget on the right. Be sure to include the URL or "permalink", the essay title and, to make life easier for the host, a 2…
sb admin | April 26, 2009The U.S. government has declared a public health emergency over the swine flu. In a White House press briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano emphasized that this is analogous to the emergencies declared for the recent floods in Minnesota and North Dakota and for the inauguration - it allows resources to be freed up to deal with the anticipated challenges. The U.S. has 50 million treatment courses of antivirals stockpiled, and will release 25% of those for use by the states, with priority given to states in which cases of this swine flu subtype have been confirmed.
So far,…
sb admin | April 26, 2009A new strain of swine flu has been confirmed in 18 deaths in Mexico, and is suspected as the cause of another 63 deaths (for a total of 81) and 1,324 illnesses. Yesterday, 5,289 people showed up at health centers in Mexico's Federal District (which includes Mexico City) with respiratory symptoms.
CDC reports that 11 cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) have been confirmed in the US (7 in California, 2 in Texas, and 2 in Kansas). These cases have been mild. Additional potential cases have been reported in New York among students who recently visited Mexico.
Swine flu is fairly common, but it's…
cortex | April 26, 2009My latest article for the Boston Globe Ideas section is now online. This piece was inspired by my brand new beautiful nephew, Jude Lehrer - may this blog post increase your Google presence!
What is it like to be a baby? For centuries, this question would have seemed absurd: behind that adorable facade was a mostly empty head. A baby, after all, is missing most of the capabilities that define the human mind, such as language and the ability to reason. Rene Descartes argued that the young child was entirely bound by sensation, hopelessly trapped in the confusing rush of the here and now. A…
gregladen | April 26, 2009A Swiss was fired when she was discovered to be using facebook at a time when she had claimed to be too ill to use a computer. She claims she was just checking her facebook account on her iPhone, and that the company had created a pseudonym on facebook, and that this pseudonym was monitoring her.
Details here.