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pharyngula | November 13, 2007Check out Deltoid for a set of refutations of common global warming denialist arguments. Then you can whine on that blog. (this thread is at 1146 comments right now—I think the blog is full, time to move on.)
petnoyer | November 13, 2007
What do hyperbolic crochet and coral reef organisms have in common? They both evolved to maximize surface area within a limited volume. So, naturally, a crafty and talented group of mathematicians at the Institute for Figuring who are concerned about the effects of global warming would want to knit a Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef for the Chicago Cultural Center.
Go there to see crocheted sea slugs and cephalopods, a hyperbolic brain coral, and other fantastic things, like a plastic reef, and a lesson in hyperbolic crochet taxonomy.
Hyperbolic crochet is an unexpected outgrowth of hyperbolic…
cortex | November 13, 2007Sorry about the radio silence - it's been a hectic few days on tour. But I've had a really great time talking about science and art with everybody. If you're a citizen of Seattle, I'll be at Town Hall tonight...
In other news, I thought it's worth linking to the latest study on ADHD, which imaged the brains of thousands of children diagnosed with the disorder:
Researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health and McGill University, using imaging techniques, found that the brains of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder developed normally but more slowly in some areas…
mixingmemory | November 12, 2007Oh Dear God! See the The Neurocritic, or Thomas at BRAINETHICS, or better still, look away and pretend this never happened.
gregladen | November 12, 2007New Fossils, Ancient Candy, and Cute Owls
Md. Scientists Monitor Saw-Whet Owls from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- The high-pitched, staccato mating call of a northern saw-whet owl pierces the night and lures birds into a gossamer net that researchers have strung along the Appalachian Trail.
[...]
Rare great ape fossil challenges evolutionary theory: study from PhysOrg.com
Archaeologists have discovered the ancient jawbone of what appears to be a new species of ape that was very close to the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans, a study released Monday said.
[...]
CentrAm…
jlynch | November 12, 2007
I blogged about this way back in 2003 when I had a blog on LiveJournal (yeah, I know), but I want to share it with my (now larger) readership. It’s my favorite scientific paper ever:
On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass facade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an 'Attempted Rape Flight’…
blue_expo | November 12, 2007As I wrote about before, my semester lab project for neurobiology has to do with regeneration. The idea is to damage the spinal cord and observe wonderful regeneration. This proposal was based on some articles I read about regeneration of zebrafish hearts, fins, tails, etc. Unfortunately I haven't had much luck so far.
Last week, armed with an exacto knife, I performed my first round of spinal cord butchering on fifteen zebrafish that were only a few days old. The zebrafish are captured with a glass pipet and then immobilized using auger that's just warm enough to be in liquid phase.…
lua yar | November 12, 2007In preparation for my trip to the Caribbean next semester, I spent this weekend taking a class to learn how to SCUBA dive. My class and I learned all about the necessary equipment, what to do in emergency situations, and how to stay safe while SCUBA diving. We also learned about the physics of pressure, volume and density, so that we could better understand what happens when you descend into the deep. This inevitably led to a conversation about Nitrogen narcosis.
Nitrogen narcosis, or "rapture of the deep", is a condition in which the symptoms resemble those due to intoxication by alcohol.…
gregladen | November 10, 2007Are you aware of Kaguya (Selene)?
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA) launched "KAGUYA (SELENE)" by the H-IIA Launch Vehicle at 10:31:01 a.m. on September 14, 2007 (JST) from Tanegashima Space Center. The major objectives of the "KAGUYA" mission are to obtain scientific data of the lunar origin and evolution and to develop the technology for the future lunar exploration. "KAGUYA" consists of a main orbiting satellite at about 100km altitude and two small satellites (Relay Satellite and VRAD Satellite) in polar orbit. The orbiters will carry instruments for scientific investigation…
moleculeoftheday | November 9, 2007I hadn't heard of this one before today: Mutagen X.
Mutagen X is apparently a byproduct of water chlorination, which isn't so surprising - chloroform (CHCl3) can occur in chlorinated water. This MX stuff is much worse, apparently. Anyone know the immediate source of the carbon?
grrlscientist | November 9, 2007tags: comet holmes, night sky, astronomy
Comet Holmes rises in the northeastern sky above Coyote Canyon in Anza Borrego Desert State Park, California. It's visible to the naked eye and better seen with binoculars. Discovered in the late 19th Century, Holmes has become dramatically brighter in the past 2 weeks.
Image: Don Bartletti (Los Angeles Times).
I just learned about the amazing Comet Homes, which has unexpectedly brightened more than one million times literally overnight, its appearance changing from that of a normal comet with a tail into a brilliant, tailless puffball in the night…
cortex | November 9, 2007It's good to have Gladwell back. I've missed his writing these last few months. (To learn about his next book, check out Kottke.) His article this week was on the (pseudo)science that is criminal profiling:
In the case of Derrick Todd Lee, the Baton Rouge serial killer, the F.B.I. profile described the offender as a white male blue-collar worker, between twenty-five and thirty-five years old, who "wants to be seen as someone who is attractive and appealing to women." The profile went on, "However, his level of sophistication in interacting with women, especially women who are above him in the…
gregladen | November 9, 2007Chinese made toys, now under recall, contain a substance that metabolizes into gamma hydroxy butyrate, the "date rape" drug. There is apparently enough of the substance to actually drug kids who ingest the toys.
A young boy in the U.S. state of Arkansas is believed to be the latest child to fall ill after ingesting a popular, Chinese-made toy containing a chemical that turns into a powerful "date rape" drug when eaten.
Shelby Esses said Thursday that her 20-month-old son Jacob fell and went limp after getting into his older sister's Aqua Dots set, which was recalled Wednesday by the…
cmcclain | November 9, 2007An upcoming episode (Nov. 14) of History Channel's Monsterquest will supposedly show the largest squid ever caught on video. A squid researcher with film crew in tow filmed a squid estimated to be between 50-100 feet long at 1,000 feet in the Sea of Cortez. How did they get the video? They strapped a small camera to another large squid, the Humboldt (I would love to see the logistics of that), and released it back to the deep. You can see the teaser video for the episode here. And before you ask...yes you will have to sit through the entire episode to see the 15 seconds of video.
blue_expo | November 9, 2007Synesthesia is going to be the discussion topic for our upcoming neuroslam in two weeks. Synesthesia is the rare ability of a select few individuals to see numbers as colors or as in the article that I'm preparing to discuss (Hubbard 1996), experience varying degrees of light and dark as melodic intervals. The observed pattern is that individuals experience lower pitches or descending melodic intervals in correlation with darker stimuli and higher pitches or ascending melodic intervals in correlation with lighter stimuli. The important detail about synesthesia is that individuals…
gregladen | November 9, 2007How do you avoid having sex with your close relatives? Well, not you, specifically, but how is it done generally, or perhaps among mammals in particular?
One obvious way would be to use a part of the genome that seems to evolve rapidly, and that would be able to distinguish between even moderately closely related individuals. For instance, the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) is big, diverse, and changes rapidly. If two potential mates could somehow compare their MHC's, they could estimate their degree of relatedness, and thus avoid inbreeding.
An article just out in Current Biology…
cmcclain | November 9, 2007This just on the wire from ETC...
In a shot across the bows of geoengineering companies, the London Convention (the International Maritime Organization body that oversees dumping of wastes at sea) today unanimously endorsed a scientific statement of concern on ocean fertilisation and declared its intention to develop international regulations to oversee the controversial activities. It further advised states that such large-scale schemes are "currently not justified."
This is a smart move by the LC allowing for substantial assessment before large-scale 'trials' are conducted in biodiversity…
goodmath | November 9, 2007 This dish is one of my own creations. It's inspired by reading
Ming Tsai's cookbooks, and seeing how he combines things. But as far as I
know, he doesn't do anything like this.
You really need catfish for this. I've tried it with other fish, but
it just doesn't work as well. Catfish has a unique flavor and texture which
is particularly well-suited to this.
There are three parts to this: the soy glaze, the dashi sauce, and the fish.
Ingredients
Soy Glaze
1 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
Dashi sauce
1 large leaf of dried konbu seaweed
1 large handful of dried shredded japanese…
cmcclain | November 8, 2007
It's the muppet show!
It's time to play the music.
Its time to light the lights.
It's time to meet the muppets
On the Muppet Show tonight!