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petnoyer | February 29, 2008
Do you ever get bored when you're scuba diving on a Caribbean shipwreck, and wish you had a Mermaid guide to show you around? Thanks to the fabulous new mer-suit technology from Otter Bay your wish may come true. Seashells not included. The video is one of a series from UWvideographer at YouTube.
Who knows why mermaids wear seashells, anyway? *
Answer below the fold.
*Because B shells are too small and D shells are too big....
bwaaaahahahahaha.
Happy Leap Day. What do you expect from a mermaid joke?
petnoyer | February 28, 2008
China has a knack for naming their exploration vehicles. They gave the world the Shenzhou (or "divine vessels") to reach outer space and the Taikonauts to fly them. Now China is planning an ocean exploration program 'equally important' to their space endeavours, including plans to build a sub-sea base station and a manned submersible capable of diving to 7000m by year 2010. So, how do you say "sea dragon" in Mandarin?
You can never have too many deep diving manned submersibles. Less than a dozen vessels I know of are capable of working beyond 1000m depth. Between the Chinese submersible,…
gregladen | February 28, 2008Thousands of sick and dying bats are being found in caves in New York, Vermont and Massachusetts. These are mostly Myotis lucifungus (the fairly common little brown bat) but at least three other species, including the endangered Myotis sodalis (Indiana bat) are affected as well.
But why?
So far, nobody knows. Bacteria, viruses and toxins have been tested for, and researchers thing an infectious disease of some kind is the most likely cause, but positive results remain elusive. according to Beth Buckles, assistant professor of biomedical sciences in Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine…
pharyngula | February 28, 2008The two most amusing explanations for why we have leap years that I've heard came from creationists:
Those scientists can't even measure the length of the year accurately! They have to keep fudging their numbers every few years to make everything add up, so why should I trust them?
We have leap years because the earth is slowing down in its orbit, which proves that the earth can't be old — a million years ago the earth would have been whirling around the sun so fast it would have flown out of orbit!
Phil's detailed explanation isn't quite as funny. My simple answer: the earth goes…
cortex | February 28, 2008Noam Scheiber has an article in TNR touting Obama's connections to behavioral economics. The article isn't particularly persuasive, since the only examples Scheiber can muster are Obama's 401(k) savings plan and his embrace of automatic tax returns. Neither plan is unique to Obama, and only the 401 (k) savings plan is really rooted in the findings of behavioral economics.
Nevertheless, it's interesting to see the fruits of psychological science enter the arena of public policy. One of the advantages of interdisciplinary fields like behavioral economics (or neuroeconomics, for that matter)…
sb admin | February 28, 2008I wrote last week about how the FDAâs mixup with Chinese factory names kept it from inspecting the Chinese facility producing the main ingredient for Baxterâs heparin; this problem came to light after the drug was implicated in four deaths. (To date, more than 400 adverse reactions have been reported.) Today, articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal explain what drug companies and the FDA are dealing with when they rely on Chinese production.
The NYTâs David Barboza and Walt Bogdanich get different answers about the supply chain of the factory that generated much of Baxterâs…
neurotopia | February 28, 2008Tomorrow is the last day to get your Alliance for Science Evolution Essay contest submissions done! You know you want a shot at some money for school books and some free, signed media materials. This year looks to be even better than last, so we look forward to reading what you have to say! Remember, the science teacher of the winning essay writer gets rewarded too, and deservedly so; our teachers work hard and deserve something back.
grrlscientist | February 28, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Writers from Across the Blogosphere
The February issue of Writers Across the Blogosphere is now available for you to read. This is probably the largest blog carnival that I contribute to, and it's likely the largest blog carnival out there, too -- and it celebrates good writing! And since having a high quality blog is all about writing well, how can you miss this one?
cortex | February 28, 2008A cool new PNAS paper from the Koch lab:
In their experiment, the researchers presented six volunteers with four types of ambiguous stimuli. The volunteers viewed or listened to the stimuli and pressed a key on a keyboard when a perceptual shift occurred. At the same time, infrared eye-tracking software measured the diameter of the subjects' pupils.
The scientists found a significant increase in the diameter of the pupil at the instant preceding the perceptual switch. The pupil, which is about 2 mm wide in bright light, dilated by as much as 1 mm at that moment--a change that, in theory,…
cortex | February 28, 2008Ronald Bailey looks at the data and concludes that having children doesn't make us happy:
"Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact," reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Daniel Gilbert. In addition, the more children a person has the less happy they are. According to Gilbert, researchers have found that people derive more satisfaction from eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television than taking care of their kids. "Indeed,…
grrlscientist | February 27, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Horse Lovers' Blog Carnival
I had no idea that the Horse Lovers' Blog Carnival was still being published, but they just published their February issue of this blog carnival, so go over there to read what they've collected this past ... period of time.
pharyngula | February 27, 2008But perhaps some of our Korean readers will appreciate it. All I know is that I was interviewed for an article on the Han/Warda paper, and that's my face in the Korean news.
(click for larger image)
cmcclain | February 27, 2008Add another tremendously gargantuan fossil lizard to your list. "The Monster", which unfortunately was a predator, measured 50 feet putting it in contention for the largest Pliosuar. Jorn Hurum led the excavation of the monster last summer last summer on Norway's Arctic island of Spitsbergen. Pliosuars, unfortunately not magical, were the dominant marine predators during the Jurassic.
cortex | February 27, 2008Lots of attention has been paid to the latest review/meta-analysis demonstrating that popular antidepressant medications don't seem to be that much more effective than placebos. While this certainly isn't the first time someone has demonstrated that Prozac is only mildly more useful than a sugar pill (unless, that is, you fall into the "severely depressed" category), this review was noteworthy because it consisted mainly of previously unpublished studies done by the drug makers before the drugs were put on sale. As Time magazine notes, this allows the researchers to "avoid a bias that often…
cmcclain | February 27, 2008At Wired you can read about the saving of the 14-deck, 55,000 ton Cougar Ace carrying 4,700 new Mazdas. As water was being replaced in ballast tanks, a malfunction occurred preventing the starboard ballasts from refilling. What ensues is a dramatic 60 degree port list, a broken leg bone puncturing the skin, the arrival of a crew of salty dogs of Titan Salvage, and a beautiful illustration of geometry's importance. The story covers members of the crew that reads like the character list for Ocean's 11 (the original and better) or Armageddon. Make sure you watch the video on the first page.
cmcclain | February 27, 2008...maybe as retaliation for killing them off. The last estimate of 71 in 2007 compared to 63 in 2006, continues a four year increase. One of those 71 occurred not 5 minutes from my house. The latest in 2008
An Austrian tourist died on Monday after a shark attack in the waters between Fort Lauderdale and the Bahamas. Markus Groh was out on a shark-spotting trip with Scuba Adventures, which sails seven-day live-aboard cruises out of Riviera Beach, Florida. Unlike some tour operators, Scuba Adventures doesn't send its divers under in a cage.
From the dive community the reaction is mixed…
grrlscientist | February 27, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Carnival of Cities
Okay, this is what you've all been waiting for, the Carnival of Cities, where you can read about people's experiences with either visiting or living in various cities around the world. So without further ado, I will let you tuck in!
North America
Gudrun and his family went on a quick vacation to San Diego, California over the school break. He includes his perspectives on Sea World, the San Diego Zoo and Legoland as well as some hotel recommendations, should you wish to follow in his footsteps.
One of my fellow sciencebloggers, Sandra, sent in this…
petnoyer | February 26, 2008You are a giant swarm of Antarctic krill migrating daily from sunlit surface waters down to the 4500m in the abyss. Some portion of your population is bound to get hungry by the time you reach the bottom. Whattya gonna do? Wait for food to rain down from above?
Not according to a new article in Current Biology, that illustrates the behavior of Euphausia superba krill that dive into the sediment in deep-water, kick up particles, and scavenge a meal of fallen algae from the seafloor. Secondary production occurs within the benthic boundary layer, in this case, rather than raining down from…
grrlscientist | February 26, 2008Just a quick update. I am still dealing with the plumbing issues in my bathroom (still no water) and worse, the combination of mud and mold and mouse turds and cockroach dust have made my allergies and asthma flare up to the point where they are nearly impossible to deal with right now, even though I am taking every over-the-counter antihistamine that I can possibly get my hands on.
Not only that, but when I got home last night, I saw a mouse running around my apartment -- I suspect it entered through the hole in my bathroom wall since I haven't had any mice in months now.
Because the…
sb admin | February 26, 2008Todayâs front page story in USA Today is about a shortage of surgeons at U.S. hospitals, with a focus on rural areas; the shortage threatens the health of 54 million rural Americans, reports Robert Davis. Part of the problem is that medical schools held enrollment steady for too long, rather than increasing it to account for the fact that so many doctors will be retiring at the same time that aging Boomers are needing more care. But changes in U.S. healthcare have also played a role.
Med school loans spur a lot of medical students to choose a high-paying field and then go where the money…