Archive for October, 2009
Saturday, October 31st, 2009 The popular hypothesis is that Neanderthals ruled Northern Europe until Homo Sapiens showed up 40k years ago and drove them out over the next 10k years, but new fossils reveal that, before Homo Sapiens arrived, the Neanderthals drove two other hominid species out themselves.
Precursor to Homo Sapiens that Vanished
Credit: Mauricio Anton
With the evidence appearing to show that Neanderthals were smart, had culture, cave paintings, and tool use, the reason humans beat them out appears to be dumb luck, as environmental changes, a warmer world and less vegetation, favored homo sapiens’ Olympic runners over Neanderthals’ stocky wrestlers.
Serving oversized portions, getting into television, and being fat yourself are just a few ways to make your friends fat.
Research on gamers who played the game Doom, which monitored their EEG activity, found that players who dreamt about Doom got better at the game than those who dreamt about other subjects or not at all.
It was previously assumed that sperm whales ate giant squids from the sucker-mark scars left on the whales from the fight, but now, for the first time, we have photographic evidence of a sperm whale consuming one of these monsters of the dark depths.
Sperm Whale Catches Giant Squid
Credit: Tony Wu
People who live in individualistic cultures, like America and Western Europe, where a “Me First” attitude is more prevalent, have higher rates of depression than cultures built on collectivism.
Britain’s top drug adviser has been fired for saying marijuana, ecstasy, and LCD are less dangerous than alcohol, and siding with other scientists in protesting tougher marijuana laws in the UK.
Slideshow of fantastic images from the refurbished Hubble.
Most distant object in universe:
Posted in Science Etcetera | No Comments »
Friday, October 30th, 2009 A gamma-ray burst from a star 3.1 billion light-years away and died 630 million years after the Big Bang is now the most distant object observed by telescopes in the cosmos.
GRB 090423 gamma-ray burst
Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler
40 years ago the first message was sent across the Internet, which was two computers connected on ARPANET over 600 miles apart. The message was “lo”, the first two letters of “login”, which was the complete message, cut off after the system crashed before the rest could transfer.
A new World Health Organization report finds 15 million deaths a year are premature and preventable and the average global life expectancy would increase by 5 years if underweight children, unprotected sex, alcohol abuse, unsafe water, and high blood pressure were alleviated.
Americans could save 10 percent on their energy bills if they washed with cold water and used clothes lines, but bans on clothes lines across the country prevent exercising this option.
Gay men prefer masculine faces, while straight men prefer feminine faces, which makes the similar in their preference for dimorphism, while women are more complex, preferring different facial types depending on ovulation, contraception use, perception of their personal attractiveness, and sex drive.
masculinized (right) and feminized (left) versions of a male face
Credit: Aaron Glassenberg
Researchers have turned embryonic stem cells into germ cells, the cells that produce eggs and sperm, an innovation that will allow scientists to study the early stages of human development.
Who owns the rights to inventions developed within Universities, the inventor or the University? There’s a lot of money riding on the answer.
We carve pumpkins for Halloween because turnips weren’t introduced to the new world when we came over from Europe, where the holiday was inherited from the Pagan Samhain.
de Broglie Bohm Schrodinger’s cat:
Posted in Science Etcetera | No Comments »
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 Two gamma-ray photons traveling 7.3 billion years across the Universe, one photon possessing a million times more energy than the other, reached the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope within nine-tenths of a second of one another, further proving Einstein’s general Theory of Relativity, but leaving physicists no closer to a unified theory of everything.
Racing Gamma-Ray Photons
Credit: NASA/Sonoma State University/Aurore Simonnet
Congress has passed a resolution establishing a Computer Science Education week in December around the birthdate of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, computer genius extraordinaire.
Red wine with red meat and white wine with fish is the rule, and now science reveals that the iron in red wine causes the fishy aftertaste when paired with seafood (HT Carolyn).
A new paper out of Georgetown University argues that America needs less STEM students and more STEM jobs and that incentives to produce more students by the Federal government are going to drive down wages, which will reduce incentives for good students to go into STEM fields (HT Clint).
A newly discovered pliosaur is the largest yet at 16 meters.
Pliosaur
The sea-level rise in North Carolina has been three-times higher in the last century than in the last five centuries.
A man dying in a coma’s brain hemorage produced a ghostly image on MRI in a way the interviewer for the story calls “poetic.”
Kids taking medications for severe psychiatric problems gain substantial weight and have increased levels of LDL cholesterol in their blood.
Piano stairs – TheFunTheory.com (HT Emily):
Posted in Science Etcetera | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 NG has a sampling of some of the 850 underground animals found in Australia.
Phreatomerus latipes
Credit: Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, University of Adelaide
Mother Jones has a timeline of Climate Change science and politics extending back to 1800, when CO2 concentrations were 38 percent lower than today.
Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize for economics for her work investigating the Tragedy of the Commons, clarifying how small groups of local people can manage the commons better than distant bureaucracies.
Unpredictable genetic engineering: A study of cucurbita gourd plants that received a modified gene for resistance to a virus from neighboring GM crops found that when the gourd plants grew resistant to the virus, they also grew appetizing to cucumber beetles that devoured the healthy transgenetic cucurbita.
Out in the middle of nowhere, the Virgin Galactic Spaceport will either be a fantastic tourist attraction or a $200-million flop, but right now it’s a great big field still being cleared.
Terminal Hangar Concept, Spaceport America
Credit: Spaceport America Conceptual Images URS/Foster + Partners
Despite internet rumors and the book Superfreakanomics statisticians reviewing the data assure us the world is still warming, with the decade ending in December being the warmest since record-keeping began 130 years ago.
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers, which are extremely popular right now, are also extremely effective at preventing the spread of flu.
University of Alabama researchers have identified the blue crab molt-inhibiting hormone receptor, which, if they are correct, could be manipulated to have the crabs molt year-round, improving the crab industry’s output.
Supermodels Strip For Climate Change:
Posted in Science Etcetera | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 Researchers have discovered a fly that lived 100 million years ago that had a horn topped by three eyes on its head preserved in amber.
Unicorn Fly
Credit: George Poinar
Mantis shrimp can see 10 times as many colors as humans and can see circular polarized light (CPL), which no other creature can see, and these remarkable eyes are now inspiring possible innovations in high-definition media.
Hwang Woo-suk has been convicted of embezzling research funds and illegally buying human eggs for his fraudulent research where he claimed to have cloned a human. He was spared jail time, but is on a form of parole for three years.
Amputees who experience “phantom limbs” were asked to visualize moving the missing limb in impossible ways, and most reported feeling the missing limb accomplishing the impossible.
Tapejara wellnhoferi was a pterosaur whose wings and head crest allowed it to sail in water like a boat.
Tapejara wellnhoferi
Credit: Sankar Chaterjee
Robotics, Galaxy-hunting, and molecular data storage are just a few of PopSci’s profiles of ten geniuses whose innovations could have a significant impact on the world.
Palms flourished in the Antarctic 50 million years ago, which is surprising not only because it means temperatures did not dip below freezing then, but also because the palms would have to survive five months of darkness every year.
The more pain a person appears to experience under torture, the guiltier we perceive them to be.
On October 8th, an asteroid exploded over Indonesia with the force of three atomic bombs, and not one telescope saw it coming.
Posted in Science Etcetera | No Comments »
Monday, October 26th, 2009 4,300 demonstrators all around the world came out for the number 350 on Saturday, demonstrating in efforts to curtail global carbon emissions at 350 parts per million (PPM).
Global 350 Actions Flickrset
Credit:
350.org
The prospects for saving the world’s coral reefs are now so dismal that researchers are making plans to freeze samples from them so future generations will have specimens to study.
A blue whale recently washed up on the beaches of Fort Bragg, apparent victim of a collision with a boat, and will be left in place so researchers can study its pre-collision health and provide students a learning experience.
With NASA’s budget being curbed, it’s time for commercial spaceflight to get into the game trucking supplies to the ISS and tourists into space.
Researchers at Berkeley have created the first hyperlens for sound waves which will allow for more detailed imaging in ultrasound and other applications.
acoustic hyperlens is fashioned from 36 brass fins arranged in the shape of a hand-held fan
The tospeak gene is key in the development of the larynx, and was discovered after researching a family in Australia with an inherited speaking disorder.
Suzanne Somers’ new book advocates avoiding chemotherapy and using nutritional cures for cancer instead, but her arguments are mostly anecdotal and she has no medical training.
Just three months of physical activity improved the elasticity of arteries in adults aged 65 to 83 with type 2 diabetes.
Subjects in a room with the scent of a cleaner like Windex acted more ethically than those in a control room without scent:
Posted in Science Etcetera | No Comments »
Saturday, October 24th, 2009 Check out some fantastic simulations of turbulence from the University of Minnesota Laboratory of Computational Science and Engineering.
Turbulence In Stars
Credit: Prof. Paul Woodward
Human beings are not as genetically diverse as might be expected due to genetic bottlenecks, such as crossing the Bering Straight into North America and just outside of Africa 50k years ago.
People who voted for John McCain had lower testosterone levels after losing the election in comparison to Obama voters, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective in keeping the community together.
The most accepted theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs has been the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, an asteroid impact for which there evidence all over the world, but now a new, larger crater discovered in Australia named Shiva, after the Hindu god, has become another suspect.
Alexander the Great wasn’t the first to settle in what would become Alexandria as archaeologists find artifacts of earlier civilizations there.s
Alexander Mosaic, House of the Faun, Pompeii, c. 80 B.C.
A 65-meter-wide hole in the Moon extends at least 80 meters down, and may lead to a larger cave carved out by molten lava and could serve as a shelter for future explorers.
The number of people who accept the scientific consensus on Global Warming is down to 57 percent from 77 percent three years ago despite the the ever-increasing scientific evidence supporting the theory.
The most distance galaxy cluster ever has been observed at 10.2 billion light years away.
Liquid Nitrogen Explosion
Posted in Science Etcetera | No Comments »
Friday, October 23rd, 2009 NOVA’s web-only series The Secret Lives of Scientists delves into what scientists do in their off-time, like play in a band called Harry and the Potters.
Harry and the Potters
Courtesy of Wikimedia
One of the more infuriating aspects of posting these links is the way the media overhypes things, like “Ida” the “OMG! Missing Link!” story, which was really an “OMG! Important Fossil!” story, because, when further studies dispute the initial claims, finding the “link” to really be a sibling species on another branch, the headlines become “Ida Missing Link-NOT! LOL!” when what the paper really means is that there is now a healthy science debate on over the fossil’s significance.
Chet Raymo has a short post on William of Ockham , of “Ockham’s Razor” fame, that includes a fantastic way to reply to someone when they quote Shakespeare’s, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The mystery of a third of all commercial honeybee colonies dying off since 2006 has had explanations like viruses, mites, and fungal infections, but, the obvious answer is that the bees are dying from the stress and inbreeding caused by industrial agriculture.
Check out the winners of the London Natural History Museum Nature Photography Contest.
Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photograph
Apparently an educational paradigm is “errorless learning,” teaching students the correct answer and then reinforcing that answer to prevent the wrong answer from taking hold, but research finds that allowing learners to get it wrong while challenging them is better than just giving them the answer.
DuoFertility is a system for helping a woman conceive that involves wearing a patch under the arm, which records her body temperature and predicts ovulation from the data gathered.
Andrew Revkin responds to Rush Limbaugh suggesting he drop dead for suggesting we even contemplate the possibility of curbing population growth through education and family planning as a means of combating global warming.
Science Is Fun Onboard ISS:
Posted in Science Etcetera | No Comments »
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 While skeptical of the premise at first, some follow-up reading I did on the book Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male seems to support the idea that average primitive human being from just a few centuries ago could easily beat our world records for running, jumping, and feats of strength.
Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male
As the barefoot running trend, which uses anecdotal evidence and evolutionary history to argue for its health benefits, grows in popularity, the science is trying to catch up and learn if it’s claims are true, but there’s also no scientific work done on the effects of running shoes on injuries either, so it’s amazing the things we fail to question.
Extreme opinions in American politics may be more overly-represented in our media because extremists are more willing to share their opinions.
Blue Morpho butterflies, Morpho peleides, have ears on their wings that vibrated differently when exposed to high and low pitched sounds.
An article that benefits from delving into the science behind how the reentry spaceship got its shape, which required overcoming the conventional wisdom of needle-nosed aircraft, which melted under the friction, to the bluntly-shaped capsules and parachutes we implemented nine years later.
Mercury space capsule during a 1959 wind tunnel test
Credit: NASA
A San Francisco law requiring food waste be put in a separate bin is a hit with residents and allows the food to be recycled as compost.
Blogging, Tweeting, and now, with a camera around your neck recording your every moment, you will soon be able to lifelog.
Parents who boss their children around instead of reasoning with them hurt their cognitive development, and the practice is more prevalent in certain cultures.
Gyrowheel by Gyrobike allows kids to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels:
Posted in Science Etcetera | 2 Comments »
