Science Etcetera, Moonday 20080505

May 5th, 2008

Nature gets no credit: Fern Fronds and fiddle Heads. I also learned in the comments that fronds are edible!

Fern, a fiddle head, and a crozier
Photo by TGAW

The Y Chromosome is fatally flawed, argues an Oxford professor of genetics, and men will eventually go extinct. Fine, but I’m still not asking for directions (HT Clint).

Kav has a great response to Muslim scientists who want to replace GMT with Mecca Time.

Humans kiss, lie, can’t tickle ourselves, can’t find our keys, stress too much, and lot’s of other bizarre things. LiveScience has a roundup of why’s for all of them.

In Elizabeth City, we have a “Cycle and Save” program, which gives price breaks to consumers who agree to let the power company manage our air conditioning and water heater power usage to save energy. Smarter Electrical Grids everywhere could be saving us energy too.

The horse Eight Belles was put down after sustaining multiple injuries finishing second in the Kentucky Derby. Raising some complex ethical questions about the humane treatment of animals who, as the writer notes, have strong “competitive spirits.”

Does oestrogen fuel competitiveness in women the way testosterone fuels it in men?

Real life Iron Man, Cyberdyne’s (yes, named after the company in Terminator) Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) exosuit has numerous applications, including rehabilitation, assistance lifting heavy objects, and entertainment (cause it looks like something out of Tron). That was three sci-fi references in one bullet point!

Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL)

Proof that we can conserve energy simply by changing our habits: the capital of Alaska cut power-consumption by 40 percent.

Museum exhibition of impossible smells.

Disturbing corporate influence in science as Taser International successfully sues medical examiners for listing their product as the cause of death.

Take a tour of an Iranian Nuclear facility.

Ionian Enchantment-inducing computer-animated video of the Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS detector. It’s aptly scored with Holst’s Jupiter classical piece (HT Bad Astronomy):