http://ideonexus.com Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:00:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Bit Computer Literacy through Incentivized Learning Communities in Northeastern Carolina still reflect the ethnic divisions created before the Civil Rights era. The schools, while no longer segregated by official policy, were never integrated, meaning there is a "Black School" and a "White School" as my conversations with locals have revealed, and ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/02/08/delta-iota-phi-computer-literacy-program-an-experiment-in-bringing-lower-income-african-american-students-into-computer-science/ The latest, most detailed Hubble images of Pluto ever reveal a plutoid with a very dynamic surface that changes greatly with its seasons. Pluto in Detail Credit: NASA With President Obama's initiative to dispatch science envoy's to the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia, the British Government is also getting interested in the ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/02/08/science-charges-for-moonday-20100208/ When Henrietta Lacks went to the hospital in 1951 for cervical cancer, doctors took cell samples from her biopsy and made them available to researchers, those cells are still alive and in use today. Henrietta Lacks circa 1945–1950 Credit: Unknown Certain species of algae may be using quantumn coherence to get energy from ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/02/05/science-grandfalloons-for-venusday-20100205/ Hubble has photographed a fuzzy cloud of debris, which is the result of a 11,000mph collision between two asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars' and Jupiter's orbits. Asteroid Crash Credit: NASA The heat and pressure of a 1971 meteor impact in Finland created carbon crystals harder than diamonds out of graphite, discovered ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/02/04/science-shooting-stars-for-jupiterday-20100204/ Science-savvy people know that saving the spotted-owl was less about the spotted-owl, which was merely a "Charismatic Megafauna" endearing poster child for an entire unique ecosystem, including less-cuddly creatures like snakes and snails, but with trawlers wreaking their ecosystems, who will stand up for the grotesque-looking, inedible blobfish? Blobfish Credit: GreenPeace Free ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/02/03/science-thoughts-for-mercuryday-20100203/ Scientists are working on ways to share simulations created by supercomputers, allowing scientists in different locations play in the same simulated sandbox online. Simulation of a Condensing Universe Credit: Argonne National Laboratory Portland's Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building is being refurbished to include a vertical garden growing on one side of it, which ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/02/02/science-wonders-for-marsday-20100202/ At 350 years old, the British Royal Academy of Sciences has established a long, distinguished history that includes giants from Newton to Dawkins. Newton, Royal Academy of Arts, London Credit: skasuga President Obama's 2011 budget submitted to Congress today will propose abandoning NASA's return to the Moon, which was directed by the Bush ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/02/01/science-bits-and-bytes-for-moonday-20100201/ A study of Kenyan long distance runners found that those who ran barefoot landed on the ball of their foot, lessening the impact over runners who wore shoes and landed on the heel of their foot. Shoes Versus Barefoot Running Gait Credit: Benton et. al. I complained at the end of last year ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/01/29/science-trinkets-for-venusday-20100129/ Wilson A Bentley spent a lifetime photographing snowflakes with a microscope before his death of pneumonia in 1931, now his photos are going on sale in the United States, but the public domain photos are not available online, only through a CD Rom for purchase on a site that claims ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/01/28/science-enchantments-for-jupiterday-20100128/ NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) map of our solar system's heliosphere, the bubble of magnetism produced by our sun, revealed a ribbon of particles at the edge of our solar system, which has been identified as a reflection off a strong magnetic field produced by our galaxy's center. Heliosphere Credit: Adler Planetarium/Southwest ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/01/27/science-fancies-for-mercuryday-20100127/ The Sahara Forest Project seeks to build facilities in the desert that will produce biofuels, solar energy, and grow forests. Sahara Forest Project test facility Credit: Sahara Forest Project Frank Luntz, the publicists who came up with Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America," has advice for environmentalists seeking to battle Climate change: stop talking ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/01/26/science-baubbles-for-marsday-20100126/ For the past two weeks I have been on a quest. A quest in which I have invested over 20 hours, at the expense of doing much more productive things, like bathing and other basic hygiene tasks. My quest has been to find the science in Star Trek Online's (STO's) ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/01/25/star-trek-online-explore-strange-new-worlds-seek-out-new-life-and-new-civilizations-and-kill-them-looking-for-science-in-star-trek-online-beta/ With only 350 of them left in the world, bringing the number of whooping cranes in eastern North America from zero to 100 means leading their Winter migrations with an ultralight aircraft. Ultralight Leads Whooping Crane Migration Credit: Vic Micolucci WUFT-FRM While the NYT goes to a pay-wall system, science is going open-access ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/01/25/science-hiccups-for-moonday-20100125/ A great article covering Venus fly trap physiology, the irony of their producing flowers for insects to pollinate them, Carl Linnaeus' refusal to believe they existed, the threat posed to the rare plant from poachers, and an expedition to find some in their natural ecosystem, which consists of a "100-mile-long ... http://ideonexus.com/2010/01/22/science-tiddlywinks-for-venusday-20100122/