bushwells | November 15, 2007I am pleased to welcome a guest bonobo to the Refuge. You might recall Professor Doctor Eye as the model for this fine motivational poster:
Dr. Eye is a physicist on the faculty of a university in a certain European Union country where something smells rotten and it ain't Havarti. Maybe it's a cheesy Danish gone bad. His hobbies include hobnobbing with hadrons and channeling Grendel. Without further adieu, Dr. Eye rants about science in television, a favorite subject here at the Refuge.
Recently, I have developed a somewhat less than healthy habit. Yes. CSI reruns. From Horatio…
bushwells | November 13, 2007Salon has jumped on the bandwagon that acknowledges the two year anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decision on the teaching of intelligent design as equal to the theory of evolution. In the The evolution of creationism, Gordy Slack writes that intelligent design adherents continue to find avenues to attack the teaching of evolution and, well, good science.
Gordy is a little late to the party, but nonetheless here are excerpts of his article below the fold. The full article is available va Salon Premium or whatever genuflection a casual user must perform to get…
bushwells | November 12, 2007On many occasions, I have made apparent my predilection for viewing some of the worst crap televised. Ever. I land on it like a fly on fresh feces (and not just monkey feces), so this past weekend was no exception when a friend turned me on to America's Most Smartest Model, one of the plethora of reality TV shows that litter the airwaves, or cable lines as the case may be. This one is broadcast on VH1. Apparently, it's a hit among the science-geeks of my friend's Boston biotech crowd.
The models, seven men and seven women, are not only judged for their Derek Zoolanderish qualities, but are…
bushwells | November 6, 2007Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
One of my favorite sites, Technovelgy: Where Science Meets Fiction, entertained in 2005 with Mouse With Human Brain May Live. (If you're not accustomed to seeing nude mice with xenografts, be cautioned when you open this link).
Excerpted from the article:
Now, Stanford University has given famed researcher Irving Weissman permission to create a mouse-human hybrid. The intent is to inject human brain cells into the brains of developing mice to see what happens. The National Academy of Sciences will unveil guidelines on chimera and stem cell research this…
jfiore | November 5, 2007Electronic Engineering Times has released their annual salary survey. Among 1600 respondents, median income including benefits for electrical and electronic engineers in North American now sits at $108,800. That's about 4% higher than last year. Two thirds declared themselves satisfied with both their career and employer. In sub-areas, the big winners are in engineering management and marketing at $133.9k and $123.9k. Component/chip design came in at $115.k, R&D at $111.1k, and Internet services at $110k. Further down, software design came in at $106.9k and system design at $100.9k.…
jfiore | November 3, 200725 year-old Ryan Hall won the Olympic Trials Marathon this morning in New York City with a trials record time of 2:09:02. This was a special multi-lap course around Central Park, not the same route as will be taken for Sunday's NYC Marathon. Hall looked fluid and at ease the entire race, breaking away from the lead pack around 18 miles in. Dathan Ritzenhein was second in 2:11:07 and in third, Brian Sell in 2:11:40. Favorite and 2004 silver medalist Meb Keflezighi finished a few places back while heavyweights Alan Culpepper and Abdi Abdirahman both DNFed. While the top three make the 2008…
jfiore | November 1, 2007In previous installments in the DIY NME series, I've looked at the application of symmetrical motor patterns using the drum kit. For this entry, the approach is a little different and says something about "handedness" as well. A few months ago I rearranged my semi-symmetrical drum kit into what I call the super symmetrical kit. The original semi-sym kit offered a centered hi-hat and three toms on each side, decreasing in pitch from front-center to rear. The remaining cymbals were arranged in a more-or-less typical configuration for a right-hander (ride to the right, crashes arrayed as desired…
bushwells | October 29, 2007This latest news item courtesy of New Scientist a.k.a. the London tabloid of science journalism (1), is worthy of Bora's (Blog Around the Clock) Friday Weird Sex Blogging but what the heck - there's nothing more uplifting that a four-headed phallus on a Monday afternoon.
As noted in the article, Exhibitionist spiny anteater reveals bizarre penis, spiny anteaters (Tachyglossus aculeatus) ejaculate through only one half of their penis. This mechanism is similar to that of reptiles. Zoologists have wondered if monotremes might ejaculate via the same technique. Since the fine details of spiny…
bushwells | October 24, 2007Gakked from Technovelgy:
Here is a new cell phone that sports a replaceable scented strip on its body. Although it doesn't transmit odors to the recipient of a phone call, it's not a far cry from Fred Pohl's joymaker, a fictional form of PDA described in The Age of the Pussyfoot:
The remote-access computer transponder called the "joymaker" is your most valuable single possession in your new life. If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your…
bushwells | October 23, 2007I'll hop on the sea cucumbers bandwagon along with Sheril of The Intersection, Coturnix on Blog Around the Clock, and Benny of Zooillogix (be sure to check out the boffo cartoon in Benny's article).
In that netherworld between undergrad and graduate school, I thought to become a marine natural products chemist. One of the faculty of my undergrad alma mater's organic chemistry department had a keen interest in compounds from marine critters and plants. To this end, he and his coterie of post-docs and grad students (at least those with scuba diving certifications) traveled to locales like the…
bushwells | October 23, 2007One of the more recent offerings in the pernicious practice of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising from Big Pharma is a tortoise and a hare hawking a smoking cessation med: Chantix. The drug, varenicline tartrate, has a dual action in that it acts as both a partial agonist (enhancing activity but not by too much) and antagonist (blocker) of the alpha2beta4 nicotinic acid acetylcholine receptors. These are ligand-gated ion channel receptors, a major class of receptors in the CNS which comprises the targets for many drugs. Here's an illustration of a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor,…
jfiore | October 20, 2007USA Track and Field, the governing body of the sport in the USA, is launching a study to determine the effectiveness of pre-run stretching on injury prevention. You can participate. From the USATF web site:
USATF is conducting a study to determine the effect of pre-run stretching on running injuries. The purpose of the study is to determine specifically if pre-run stretching of the three major leg muscle groups is beneficial for overall injury prevention or reduction. The study is not examining in-run or post-run stretching.
The stretches under study involve quadriceps, hamstrings, and…
jfiore | October 18, 2007Sometimes I can't seem to find just the right lab equipment I want for a particular experiment so I design it myself. Such was the case recently for a course I developed and teach entitled Science of Sound. This course is a natural science elective and deals with the physics of audio and acoustics. We start with a few very basic concepts such as harmonic motion. One of the laboratory experiments involves vibrating strings. I like this experiment because students can relate to it as most are at least familiar with guitars and other stringed instruments (the guitar players really like this one…
bushwells | October 15, 2007In the same spirit as OBJECTIVE: Ministries, I give you Telco Powered⢠Products.
New Patented Technology allows you to use Power from the Phone Company to operate everyday items that you have to use -even if the power is out.
The product line is truly amazing. I'm torn: should I order the Telco Powered⢠Fan Cooler (When the Air Conditioning is out, it gets HOT in the desert. Fill the bottle with cold water, and spray as needed!) or the Telco Powered⢠Vibrator:
There's a lot of stress when the power is out!
Use our soothing Vibrator to relax your muscles after dealing with this serious…
jfiore | October 13, 2007What happens when an end-of-times pastor meets a CNN bobble-head? One thing is for certain both science and rationality will be chucked out the window. John Hagee, head of a Texas mega-church had some truly crazy things to say on Glenn Beck's Friday evening show (October 12, 2007). You can get the complete transcript here. A few select outtakes can be found below the fold.
Hagee is one of that (fortunately) small number of Christians who seem both sure, and in a perverse way, delighted, that Armageddon is upon us. His proof is based solely on his interpretation of Revelations coupled with…
bushwells | October 12, 2007I have a hodge-podge of old National Lampoons stored away in the basement. Periodically, I scan a few selected items (articles by P.J. O'Rourke and Chris Miller, various cartoons) for digital posterity. All are highly irreverent and culturally insensitive, and yes, I hoot raucously at them. Among my favorite bits of the NatLampPoo are Son-o-God Comics. Here's the cover of the August 1973 edition and its inner leaf.
jfiore | October 11, 2007Recently I received emails from two associates regarding a "get rich quick" scheme. It's made the rounds before and quite frankly I was surprised to see it poke its ugly head up again. While these hoaxes are mildly irritating, it only takes a moment of thought to determine that they absolutely must be false. Why don't people think?
The premise of this particular scheme is that Bill Gates has teamed up with AOL to create a new email tracking system. It must be true, the message says, because the author heard it on Good Morning America. In essence, you forward the message to a bunch of people.…
bushwells | October 11, 2007One of my to-do tasks includes making some revisions to a standard operating procedure draft document for lab notebook policies for our division. I'm a member of an "executive lab notebook committee" or as I fondly like to call my assignment, the stinking albatross that hangs around my neck. The confluence of discovery scientists and attorneys is an uneasy one, and acting as an intermediary between the two factions can get pretty stinky in that dead-avian pendant way.
I have no one to blame but myself for landing in this role. I made the grievous error of telling my boss about my prior…
jfiore | October 8, 2007A previous post featured a short film about members of the Audiophile Club of Athens and the rather extreme sound systems their members have created. Some members spent in excess of $300,000 to build their systems. You may be wondering just what manner of gear that sort of money would buy, and would it really sound that much better than a more modest (yet still comparatively "high end") system of say, several thousand dollars. Before we go any further, let me state that in no way am I making fun of the way people spend their money. Heck, I've been known to drop some coinage on musical…
jfiore | October 8, 2007The Chicago Marathon has been the site of phenomenal performances, but Sunday's run produced perhaps the tightest men's finish ever. Video here.
Not to be outdone, the women's finish was equally eye-opening and presents a valuable lesson to anyone involved in competitive sport. Video here.
In spite of the flat, fast course, the times were comparatively slow due to the brutally warm and humid weather. Unfortunately, one runner died during the event.