Archive for November, 2009
Monday, November 30th, 2009 The change did not pass to their offspring, but moving a single cell in the embryo of a Lymnaea stagnalis snail altered its handedness, causing it to spiral in the opposite direction the species normally grows.
Lymnaea stagnalis Altered Handedness by Moving a Single Cell
Credit: Kuroda lab
A short, challenging article in the Economist dealing with the growing trend of food waste in America, how, despite making economic sense, is offensive to many and may be connected to rising rates of obesity, as cheap food is also food easily throw away.
Despite passing through its first Senate committee, the Climate Change Bill will have to wait until Spring 2009 as it’s stuck behind Health Care in the Legislation.
Not often considered in environmentalism is the fact that conservationism conflicts with the livelihood of indigenous tribes, but a new form of conservationism in Gabon Africa enrolls the indigenous tribes in the effort to maintain the nation’s nature preserves.
Meiosis:
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Friday, November 27th, 2009 The shape of a hammerhead shark’s head, with the eyes spaced incredibly far apart, gives the fish extraordinary depth perception.
Hammerhead Shark
Credit: * cris *
Astronauts on shuttle Atlantis got a suprise turkey dinner on their flight home, apparently snuck onboard their flight by some generous members of the ISS.
While the mainstream media have been reporting uncritically about Rom Houben’s misdiagnosis as being in a coma while supposedly actually being conscious and trapped in his body for the last 23 years, scientists observing video of him believe his “conscious” communication to be a hoax as the claims supposedly being made by Houben are being directed by the hand of his nurse, similar to the way psychics get messages out of quiji boards.
Check out the images of the first particle collision in the LHC, which occurred on the 23rd of November.
Check out this collection of David Attenborough’s favorite moments on the BBC:
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Thursday, November 26th, 2009 The UK has launched a National Science Learning Centre to encourage STEM education via grants, conferences, and hands-on activities for students; however, as the editor of New Scientist, Roger Highfield, notes in his address to the House of Commons, more needs to be done on the political front for science advocacy and has launched The S Word blog to cover science policy in the UK.
National Science Learning Centre
Researchers at the University of California’s School of Medicine have found that keeping children too clean impairs the ability of their skin to heal, as the naturally-occurring bacteria on the skin’s surface provide lipoteichoic acid, which acts on skin cells to promote healing. This research further supports the “hygiene hypothesis“, which argues that children who live in sterile environments are more susceptible to allergies. The organization Parents Outloud works to educate parents on the dangers of “over-sanitizing” their children (among other things).
Very young children who ask “Why?” repeatedly are making an honest proactive attempt at learning about the world around them and they can tell when they are given a non-explanation response, making them more likely to ask a follow-up “Why?”
A thought-provoking perspective on why cable TV is so hard to kill despite being able to find almost everything it provides online. The author considers the fact that watching TV online is an active experience, that the web does not easily enable passive channel-surfing, and how the popular, collective viewing-experiences like the last episode of Seinfeld or the Superbowl have been replaced by smaller, niche-groups of fans around specific shows who try to recruit others into their shared media experience.
Pearl Jam, Do the Evolution:
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Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 Escolar is a type of deep-sea bottom-feeding fish served on sushi menus as “white tuna”, which has become popular as new fishing techniques allow fishermen to haul them in; however, the fish contains indigestible oils that can lead to anal seepage.
Top: Roudi’s Escolar
Bottom: Escolar + Coppa
Credit:
NOAA
Credit:
LookatLao
While the Wall Street Journal and Fox News are going batty overhyping the significance of the leaked Climate Scientist e-mails, Scientific American correctly points out that the science is still impeccable and that the e-mails reflect a frustration with the political opponents of the scientific consensus.
People who agree with President Obama’s political views choose photos of him with lighter skin, while those who disagree with him choose photos where his skin was darkened. Combined with the fact that the same effect did not translate to photos of John McCain, the study appears to demonstrate that racial bias is still with us even if we don’t know it.
Researchers have uncovered a molecular motor that navigates RNA strands powered by chemical energy. Video at the link.
Rebecca Goldstein’s book 36 Arguments for the Existence of God points out the flaws in every single one of them, all of which are summarized at the link.
Normally ants use pheromones to find their way out and back to the nest, but in the desert, the wind blows the scent away, so scientists attached stilts to each of the six legs of desert ants on their way home or clipped their legs short and found that the ants appear to count the number of steps they took out to figure out how far to walk back. Check it out:
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Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 With Ethiopia’s civil war stabilized, scientists are able to finally get a look at the Gelada Baboons with their exotic appearance, calls, and habit of climbing down to cliff ledges to sleep safely from nightly predators.
gelada baboon at the bronx zoo
Credit: killrbeez
President Obama gave an inspiring speech to kick off the Educate to Innovate campaign, a collaboration of government and private enterprise organizations encouraging STEM Education, which includes a $4 billion Race to the Top Fund where states compete for education grants and establishing a National Lab Day beginning May 2010. You can sign up to request support for your project, or offer yourself as an expert for projects in your area. I’ve signed up as a computer scientist to help out on projects in my locale.
The compressed air cars are actually electric cars since it takes electricity to compress the air that powers them.
A volcanic eruption 73,000 years ago that caused an “Instant Ice Age” lasting 1,800 years, deforested much of central India, and caused a bottleneck in human population, which may have almost driven us to extinction. You can see where this eruption occured on this interactive map of human migrations across the Earth.
Brian Malow, Science Comedian:
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Monday, November 23rd, 2009 Check out some entries for the Darwin 200 photo competition, which features Darwin-inspired photography.
Darwin 200 Photography Competition
Credit: Alastair Macfarlane
RealClimate makes an important point about the CRU hack that, far from confirming climate change skeptics’ ideas that there’s a conspiracy of scientists over-hyping the science to get more funding, there is instead a conspiracy of scientists who are working with very real and hard data who have a very low opinion of the skeptics.
ReCell is a spray on medical product that takes a stamp-sized portion of a patient’s skin to produce a page-sized worth of spray-on skin that’s going into medical trials soon.
Geckos lose their tails to escape predators, but when they do so, they are also losing a significant store of energy that makes them have less endurance until they regrow it.
Check out some awesome evolution graphitti (HT Clint).
Detail of Evolution Graphitti (click for complete image)
Smith’s cloud is a mass of hydrogen the mass of one million suns, an example of a dark-galaxy, that is colliding with our Milky Way galaxy
The Department of Homeland security has had to stop the deployment of a nuclear-material detectors due to a Helium-3 shortage which is required in their production.
Colorful mats of minerals found in Hawaiian lava caves are found to actually be microbe waste, which offer further insights on how to identify life on other planets in the solar system.
Highly Recommended Jeff Corwin on Future Earth- 100 Heartbeats:
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Saturday, November 21st, 2009 Invasive Asian Carp are just a few miles from Lake Michigan, where they have the potential to inflict damage on native species, but scientists and the Army Corp of Engineers haven’t given up the fight against them.
Removed from Galileo’s body in the 1700s and then lost, the two fingers and tooth from the astronomer’s corpse have been recovered, found at an auction in a wooden box.
Shifting blame onto others is socially contagious, spreading within an organization when witnessed by others.
Hundreds of private e-mails from British climate change researchers, which were hacked from a server, are fueling climate change skeptics due to apparent bias and dismissive tone toward skeptics (HT Clint).
While adult brains fall for the size illusion below, children’s brains apparently don’t.
Each orange circle on the right is 2 percent larger than the one on the left
Credit: M. Doherty
Shutdown in September of 2008, the LHC is warming up circulating particles around its tunnel in preparation for another shot at the big show.
Scientists have successfully stunned nematodes with ultraviolet light, which triggered a molecular switch in the worms to paralyze them.
The Google Chrome OS has been brought out for scrutiny and it is very Cloud-intensive, so much so that it won’t support installed programs and netbooks with it installed won’t have hard drives.
What is Google Chrome OS?
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Friday, November 20th, 2009 Three new species of ancient extinct crocodiles have been unveiled including a rodent-like rooter, a dog-like runner, and a saber-tooth dinosaur devourer.
Paleontologist Paul Sereno with Crocodile Finds
Credit: Mike Hettwer, National Geographic
IBM has engineered a parallel cortical simulator capable of simulating a brain with about 4.5 percent of the cerebral cortex, making it brainier than a cat.
Talented sportsmen are also better looking, suggesting a connection between physical prowess and attractiveness.
The constant browsing of mastodons and giant sloths maintained an open savannah in North America before they went extinct.
Check out the winners of the Olympus BioScape competition
Water Flea’s “Crown of Thorns”
Credit: Jan Michels
Playing sounds in association with information learned during waking activities and then replaying those sounds during a nap improved subjects’ capabilities to recall that information later.
Down syndrome could be reversed by boosting a neurotransmitter called noradrenalin (I was skeptical too, until I read the context provided by the article concerning the condition and how it gets worse with age).
NPR’s Wonderscope Challenge is a call for would-be filmmakers to craft something entertaining on a variety of science subjects.
WonderScope Challenge:
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Thursday, November 19th, 2009 The Mandelbulb is a three-dimensional rendering of the Mandelbrot set.
The Mandelbulb
Credit: Daniel White
An Economist online debate concerning Cloud Computing disagrees with the idea that the technology can’t entirely be trusted, but the results are not final yet.
Exercise grows neurons in the brains of rats, and experiment comparing the brains of rats that exercise versus those that don’t when exposed to stress finds these new cells buffer the effects of stress, leading to a calmer brain in a stressful situation.
An interesting counterpoint to the preconceptions behind the idea of “female viagra” that fail to take into account the complexity of the female sex drive and mischaracterize what a “normal sex drive” is for a woman.
ScienceWorksForUs.org is a website that provides a state-by-state breakdown of how science-funding from the stimulus funds is being spent, but it also makes the important point that this funding was not meant to be spent on immediate stimulus but secure America’s future as a world innovation leader.
scienceworksforus.org
While seeking success and status make young people happier, giving up this drive makes retiree’s happier.
The conservationist strategy of encouraging fishermen to take better-paying jobs on land to preserve reefs has backfired, as the more affluent jobs lead to more free time for fishing.
Caecilita iwokramae is a caecilian, a species of amphibian that resembles a worm, that lives on land but doesn’t have lungs.
Aquatic Caecilian Birth:
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