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grrlscientist | August 19, 2008Another blog carnival for you to enjoy;
Gene Genie, issue #34, summertime and the blogging is easy. This blog carnival focuses mainly on the human genome and the genetics of human disease.
cortex | August 19, 2008I had an article this weekend in the Washington Post looking at the recent spate of "age defiance" - Dara Torres, Madonna, John McCain, etc. - and some recent neuroscience research:
A s a 27-year old science writer who still gets carded at bars, I often find discussions of the aging process pleasantly abstract. I'm more likely to use Clearasil than anti-wrinkle cream. But the spectacle of Torres's competing and McCain's campaigning has rekindled an important scientific debate about the inevitability of the aging process and what even young and middle-aged people can do to blunt the adverse…
gregladen | August 19, 2008
Carnival of the Green
Carnival of the Mobilists #137
Carnival of Genealogy, 54th Edition
In honor of this blog's Olympic Boycott: a buddhist carnival - 9th edition, part 1
All Things Eco Blog Carnival Volume Thirteen
The Military History Carnival
New and Exciting in PLoS Biology
Encephalon 52: Q&A
mspringer | August 19, 2008This is more technology than strictly physical science, but I'm professionally interested in laser physics. My own area is mainly attosecond pulses at modest average power, still, the applications of broader laser technology are always instructive.
Boeing has been working on laser weapons technology for a while now. I've written about it before, mainly from the perspective of battlefield anti-missile and anti-mortar defense. Anti-personnel use is possible but generally impractical. A bullet is just as effective and several orders of magnitude cheaper. There's possible advantages with…
kevin z | August 18, 2008Now EVERY dolphin is going to be tail-walking on the water. Remember the moonwalk phenomenon in the 80s?? Yeah, you thought that was bad? Well, just think how bad it will be when all the dolphin's start tail-walking? Great job sea world...
BBC Reports "Wild Dolphins Tail-Walk on Water":
"A wild dolphin is apparently teaching other members of her group to walk on their tails, a behaviour usually seen only after training in captivity.
The tail-walking group lives along the south Australian coast near Adelaide.
One of them spent a short time after illness in a dolphinarium 20 years ago and may…
gregladen | August 18, 2008Physicist Freeman Dyson suggests that we start looking for life on the moons of Jupiter and out past Neptune, in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. He talks about what such life would be like -- and how we might find it.
With Freeman Dyson's astonishing forecasts for the future, it's hard to tell where science ends and science fiction begins. But far from being a wild-eyed visionary, Dyson is a clear and sober ...
gregladen | August 18, 2008
A landlocked polar bear, too close for comfort, forced a crew of five Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) scientists to evacuate a remote camp in northern Alaska. The scientists were studying the impacts of climate change on Arctic shorelines.
Typically at this time of year, polar bears spend their days hunting seals on sea ice, but recent warming has caused the ice to recede miles from shore. In fact, the bears have been trapped on land in Arctic Alaska all spring and summer, unable to swim out to sea ice. Their condition is unknown.
"It is ironic that our efforts to understand how…
pharyngula | August 18, 2008We all regret the loss of Blue Collar Scientist to cancer a short while ago. Now we have an account of his last few days — he died dignified and living well to the last moment, on a visit to Down and Westminster Abbey.
cortex | August 18, 2008John McCain remarked last week that the hostilities in Georgia marked the "first serious crisis" since the end of the Cold War. His surrogates on the news shows have expanded on that position, as they repeat the talking point about how the world is so dangerous and full of evil.
This strategy shouldn't be surprising: in recent elections, the Republican party has consistently emphasized national security threats and subtly tried to stoke the fear of voters. Remember this Bush ad, which ran during the closing weeks of the 2004 election? After criticizing Kerry for voting against increased…
grrlscientist | August 18, 2008Here's a few blog carnivals for you to read;
Carnival of Children's Literature, the Beach Edition. This is all about cool new children's literature that's available (or soon will be).
Observations on Life blog carnival, 17 August edition. This is a large blog carnival and contains a huge variety of topics to read bout, too. Unfortunately, this blog carnival will be on hiatus until next year, and perhaps forever.
cortex | August 18, 2008The paperback version of my first book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, is now shipping from Amazon. Needless to say, everyone should buy the book in triplicate. I'd apologize for the self-promotion, but isn't blogging just one big orgy of self-promotion?
nisbetmc | August 18, 2008
My brother Drew and cousin Jeff fishing Lady Evelyn Lake in Northern Ontario. A magical place with glassy smooth waters full of Walleye, Northern Pike, and Small Mouth Bass.
mspringer | August 18, 2008
This is Liao Hui, not doing any work. He did work to get the weight over his head, but despite the tremendous force he's applying to this 348 kilogram [Update: Thanks to commenter Ducklike for correcting this to 158 kg] weight he's not doing any work in this picture. The weight is stationary.
Work in physics is a term of art meaning force through a distance. The reason for that definition of work is that this definition coincides perfectly with the energy transferred in the process. Work results in a change in energy. When Liao Hui did work to move the weight to its highest position,…
cortex | August 18, 2008My latest article for the Boston Globe Ideas section looks at some recent criticisms of fMRI, at least when it's misused:
The brain scan image - a silhouette of the skull, highlighted with bright splotches of primary color - has also become a staple of popular culture, a symbol of how scientific advances are changing the way we think about ourselves. For the first time in human history, the black box of the mind has been flung wide open, allowing researchers to search for the cortical source for every flickering thought. The expensive scanners can even decode the hidden urges of the…
petnoyer | August 18, 2008Last year around this time, DSN reported on a Corpus Christi Caller-Times story documenting that 135 sea turtle nests were located in 8,895 hours of surveys over 73,632 miles of Texas beaches. Of these, 128 nests were Kemp's ridleys (Lepidochelys kempii), six nests were loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta), and one nest was from a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas).
This was remarkable at the time because it was a record for Kemp's ridley turtles, who were hard hit by shrimp trawlers, which ensnare and drown the turtles with their large, fast moving nets. Escape hatches, called Turtle…
gregladen | August 17, 2008I find it interesting (not that I'm watching the Olympics or anything) that a) the Olympics can have totally different rules for a game than other forms of the sport and b) that the rules change from time to time. This is interesting because whenever I propose changes in sports rules, say to my in laws who are all sports fanatics, they scoff at me. Like the other day, I said "why not give the pitchers only three balls instead of four?" ... thinking this may make the game more interesting. Or, "Why not let the fielders tackle the runner if necessary ... but then give the base runner blockers…
pzminion | August 17, 2008MAJeff here.
LisaJ's Danio's (hangover error) posts about Usher Disease (I and II), as well as my own syllabus preparation for the upcoming semester, have gotten me thinking about issues of intersexuality. In particular, her noting of the geographic issues related to the prevalence of various forms of Usher disease reminded me of the concentration of five-alpha-reductase deficiency in parts of Turkey, Papua New Guinea and the Dominican Republic.
Some folks are probably asking, "What is this intersexuality thing?" Basically, it's a range sexual development disorders in which people's bodies…