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carlyo | January 10, 2013--Known as the “Lady of the Cells” for her Nobel Prize-winning discovery of NGF (nerve growth factor) which helped unlock mysteries of both normal and abnormal growth of nerve cells in the body
--Died recently in Italy at age 103
Even up to her final days of life, Rita Levi-Montalcini -- the internationally-known biologist and neurologist who was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1986 for the discovery of NGF (nerve growth factor) -- remained engaged as a scientist. She died December 31, 2012 in Rome, Italy at age 103. Early in her long and compelling scientific…
hrynyshyn | January 10, 2013The pseudoskeptical argument goes something like this: the last decade hasn't been significantly warmer than the previous decade, so global warming has stopped. And because the causes of anthropogenic climate change have not stopped, the link between fossil fuel combustion and global warming is therefore broken. This is, of course, complete nonsense.
The video above from the good people at Skeptical Science should be widely disseminated. I have little to add, other than to emphasize we always have to take the long and truly global view, one that takes into account that most of the Earth's…
gregladen | January 10, 2013We shall not be moved. ..."
Fifty five of us jammed in a bus designed to hold fourty people plus a driver, rolling down Highway 90 from Upstate New York to Chicago. As a teenager (just turned 15), I was thrilled to be going to Chicago to attend the Fight Back Conference, a thinly disguised Communist Party meeting. I was going, in part for Keith, the young African American kid (about 12 years old) who was shot in the back by a state trooper just under a year earlier. Keith was driving a mo-ped down the toll road, on the shoulder, where he shouldn't have been. It appears that he did not…
jrosenhouse | January 9, 2013In this post, from last year, I mentioned that I regard Victor Hugo's Les Miserables as the finest novel ever written. I also think the musical version actually captures the spirit of the novel pretty well, far better than any of the non-musical film adaptations that have appeared over the years.
You can imagine, then, my excitement at the release of the movie version of the musical. I saw it last week. Short review: Good enough that I plan on seeing it again in the theater, but not quite the knock-your-scoks-off excellent that I wanted.
There are two big weaknesses that are hard to…
carlyo | January 9, 2013--The key scientist who helped NASA plan and identify the Moon landing location for Apollo 11
--Currently is a leading expert in the study of deserts and how to find and sustain water in such environments in the Arab world
Two years before America's historic Apollo 11 moon landing mission was officially confirmed, NASA turned to a talented young geologist to help it plan and identify the best touch down location for the spacecraft that would land the first humans on the lunar surface. That scientist was 26 year-old Egyptian-born Farouk El-Baz who had recently completed his Ph.D. in geology…
gregladen | January 9, 2013The Best Argument to Eliminate the Tenure System comes from Atlantic University, Florida, where Professor James Tracy has asserted that the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut either did not happen or were staged. Asking if the deaths, if they happened, were part of a training session, he further asks "Was this to a certain degree constructed? ... Was this a drill?" Read the story of the crackpot professor here.
Rush Limbaugh's latest accomplishment:
The StopRush Project has announced that over 2,200 sponsors have pulled ads from Limbaugh's show, via documented messages/statements. Many…
carlyo | January 8, 2013--Considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees
--Her research of primates has led the way to giving us valuable insight into our closest relatives in the animal kingdom
At the age of 78, famed British primatology researcher Jane Goodall still maintains a hectic schedule. She is said to be on the road more than 300 days per year. At any given time, she could be on any continent. On any given day, she could be speaking to a group of students, meeting with government officials to discuss animal conservation issues, sitting before television cameras being interviewed, or meeting with…
jrosenhouse | January 8, 2013Yesterday's mail brought the new issue of “Prayer News,” the newsletter of Creation Ministries International. (What can I say? I'm on several creationist mailing lists. At least it arrived along with the new issue of Free Inquiry to dilute the effect.) The lead article is called “Why Don't They Get It?” by Scott Gillis, and opens as follows:
Most readers, at some time, have probably asked this question. “When the evidence supporting the biblical Creation and Flood account is presented in a clear and convincing manner, why is it summarily denied and dismissed by evolutionists?” In short,…
gregladen | January 8, 2013Alfred Russel Wallace was born on this day in 1823 (he died in 1913). You know of him as the other guy who invented a theory of Natural Selection which was very like Darwin's; they published the theory together. He also spent considerable time traveling around on boats in the tropics, like Darwin did, and collected one or two items that made it back to to various museums.
One of the most awful tragedies of 19th century science happened to Wallace, when on July 12th, 1852, the ship he and his very important and interesting insect specimens, and notes, that he was taking back to the UK from…
mspringer | January 8, 2013I'm sitting in a hotel in Utah at the PQE 2013 conference. As I write this, the temperature is a rather brisk 19F. (For everyone else in the world, -7.2C) That's not cold at all to some of you, but some of you didn't grow up in south Louisiana.
Once a year they let us grad students out of the basement!
Either way, on the Kelvin scale the weather here is still a balmy 267 degrees above absolute zero.
Which is as cold as it gets, right? Right. As a result, I've seen a lot of hubbub online about a new result published in the journal Science: Negative Absolute Temperature for Motional Degrees…
jrosenhouse | January 7, 2013I am happy to report that my back is now completely healed up from its recent travails, and I can now sit in perfect comfort for arbitrarily long periods of time. So let's see if we can wake up this sleepy little blog...
My friend Dave Pruett, recently retired from a long and successful career right here in the JMU Math Department, seems determined to keep me in blog fodder for a while. He's recently been writing for HuffPo. We considered his first post here. Now he's back with a new entry. Jerry Coyne has already weighed in. Let's have a look of our own.
Dave is arguing for some sort…
jdupuis | January 5, 2013Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure.
Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year.
All the previous 2012 lists are here.
This post includes the following:
The Millions: Jami Attenberg, Geoff Dyer
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madnessby Susannah Cahalan
Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoirby Ellen Forney
The Social Conquest of Earthby Edward O. Wilson
The Making…
hrynyshyn | January 4, 2013Every now and then someone who ordinarily makes a fair amount of sense writes something that serves only to remind us that even the extraordinarily smart can be extraordinarily wrong. So it was with Sam Harris's defense of gun rights, The Riddle of the Gun.
First, Harris insists that "the correlation between guns and violence in the United States is far from straightforward." He doesn't really attempt to bolster that argument with relevant facts, though, and there there's little point in an all-too-easy exercise in debunking. In fact, that's not even his central thesis. No, that would be good…
mspringer | January 3, 2013Over the Christmas break I traveled to Louisiana to visit my family and to Georgia to visit my wife's family. In both cases (especially in the Georgia case!) the overarching theme was the consumption of delicious homemade food in quantities which were somewhere between preposterous and superhuman. I'm not the only one with this experience. The very first TV commercial I saw after the stroke of midnight at the dawn of this year was for a weight loss program. So was the second commercial.
"Eh," I used to scoff, "Calories in < calories out. Simple as that. It's basic thermodynamics." But…
carlyo | December 31, 2012--Known for developing the first highly accurate standardized test for the sexually transmitted infection, syphilis
--First black professor appointed at Harvard Medical School
Academically talented, William Hinton from the start wanted to be recognized for his achievements instead of his race. As a high school senior in 1909, he was offered a scholarship reserved for African American students, but instead of accepting it, he chose to compete for a scholarship that was open to all students. William ended up winning that scholarship two years in a row. He would go on to Harvard Medical School…
gregladen | December 30, 2012I made a "page" on this blog, HERE, pointing to posts that teachers might find interesting or useful. So far most of the items linked to relate to Creationism and that sort of thing, but I'll soon be adding subject area content posts as well.
If you are a teacher, have fun. If you know a teacher, please pass it on.
gregladen | December 30, 2012A colleague sent this to me, I'm passing it on to you. Looks important and interesting:
Wildfire, increasing with climate change, deposits increasing amounts of light-absorbing black carbon [soot] on the cryosphere [snow and ice], multiplying the existing heat-driven ice-reflectivity feedback [a.k.a. albedo feedback].
The relative importance of increasing wildfire [and changing industrial soot pollution] to cryospheric heating remains poorly known. Snow/ice cores down to the 2012 summer soot layer on Greenland input to new field and lab spectral and microscope technology in concert with…
carlyo | December 28, 2012--One of the nation's leading historical archaeologists
--Using forensics and other techniques, her digging excavations have shed light on a wide-range of historical events –from the life of Naval hero John Paul Jones to the Donner Party ( America's classic story of cannibalism)
From the time she went on her first archeological excavation at age 15, Julie Schablitsky has been enamored with digging (literally) for the truth – one artifact at a time. Julie's job as a historical archaeologist is to investigate questions whose answers seem lost to history. She first made a name for herself…