Science
bioephemera | April 5, 2010
The new blog Kingdom of the Blind documents an ongoing collaboration between embroiderer/artist Melody Lord and neuroscientist Adam Hamlin. The title is from Jim Endersby's book A Guinea Pig's History of Biology: "Science is the kingdom of the blind: there are no sighted - or even one-eyed - people, because we have no way of looking directly at reality to assess what it is like."
On the blog, Adam Hamlin occasionally posts about his work with the cholinergic cells impacted by Alzheimer's disease, while Melody shares her inspirations from the lab, and the challenges of finding the right…
awild | April 5, 2010[a guest post by myrmecologist Andrea Lucky]
Andrea & her intrepid field team in New Guinea
It was a dark and stormy night...
...actually, it was a dark and stormy morning. The dawn of the 7th day of ceaseless frigid rain to be precise, and I was reminiscing about the grand old days one week before when the sun emerged and for a glorious 10 minutes it was warm enough to splash some water on my arms, legs and neck and wipe away the accumulated grime that is synonymous with field work. I wondered if that lovely burst of sunshine would ever come again (no, it wouldn't), and every time I…
drorzel | April 5, 2010Not a full Obsessive Update (because not much happened over the weekend, when we took SteelyKid to my parents' place for Easter), but a quick reminder to folks in the Ithaca, NY area: I'll be giving the physics colloquium at Cornell this afternoon at 4pm. If you're in the area, and want to hear me talk about communicating science and the use of blogs, it's at 4pm in the Schwartz Auditorium in Rockefeller Hall.
It's going to be a long day-- I have a class at 9:15, then I'm driving to Ithaca. SteelyKid stayed with Grandma and Grandpa (day care is closed today and tomorrow), so I'll be going…
grrlscientist | April 5, 2010tags: gorilla, death, mortality, science, humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, Onion News Network, ONN, streaming video
Tulane University researchers have successfully taught a captive gorilla that he will die one day. The gorilla, named Quigley, is now able to experience the crippling fear of impending death previously only accessible to humans.
grrlscientist | April 4, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) publishes tomorrow and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! If you haven't sent your essays in yet, or if you've read other people's science essays that you thought were especially good, please send those URLs to Scientia immediately so they can be included in tomorrow's edition.
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and…
grrlscientist | April 4, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My piles of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…
grrlscientist | April 3, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish on Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the…
drorzel | April 2, 2010I forgot to schedule a blog post to remind people to tune in to my appearance on WAMC's "The Roundtable" yesterday morning, talking about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. If you missed it, and have fourteen minutes to kill, they have the segment on their audio archive now.
It went well, and I had fun. I was really flattered when somebody at work asked if I'd gotten the questions in advance-- actually, I only got into the studio about three minutes before the interview started. Nice to see that a real radio studio looks pretty much like what you see on tv and in movies, only smaller, as is…
grrlscientist | April 1, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than two weeks away and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in…
oracknows | April 1, 2010I was wrong.
I know it doesn't happen that often, but I'm forced to admit it. I was wrong. I predicted that Simon Singh would likely lose his appeal against an astonishing illiberal ruling on his libel case by Sir David Eady. Singh, as you may recall, is the British science writer who wrote a now infamous article about chiropractic, in particular, Singh labeled claims that chiropractic could treat colic, sleeping and feeding problems, ear infections, asthma, and prolonged crying as "bogus." Specifically, he wrote that the British Chiropractic Association "happily promotes bogus therapies."…
awild | April 1, 2010
Myrmicocrypta camargoi Sosa-Calvo & Schultz 2010
Brazil
The world's ant fauna continues to yield new treasures. Myrmicocrypta camargoi, described in a new paper by Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo & Ted Schultz, is the largest species in this fungus-growing genus.
source: Sosa-Calvo, J., Schultz, T.R. 2010. Three Remarkable New Fungus-Growing Ant Species of the Genus Myrmicocrypta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), with a Reassessment of the Characters That Define the Genus and Its Position within the Attini. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 103(2):181-195.
doi: 10.1603/AN09108
artwork by…
ddobbs | April 1, 2010
After I wrote in my Atlantic article about getting my serotonin transporter gene assayed (which revealed that I carry that gene's apparently more plastic short-short form), I started getting a lot of email â several a week â from readers asking how to have their SERT gene tested. This led to an interesting hunt.
It was a hard question to answer. I couldn't just tell people to do what I did, for a psychiatric researcher/MD I'd known for years, who specializes in depression and serotonin, had done mine as a sort of favor to science and journalism. That researcher also stood by, had I needed…
oracknows | April 1, 2010One of the most persistent and prevalent examples of a modern myth that will not die is the story of Area 51. So ingrained in our culture has it become that nearly everyone (at least in the U.S.) knows what you are talking about when you refer to it. It's been featured in movies as diverse as Independence Day (one of my favorite big budget, brain-meltingly silly end-of-the-world movies about alien invasion) and, of course, Area 51. Forests of trees have been slain in order to publish books on the subject, and cable TV channels serve up near constant stream of documentaries either about Area…
catdynamics | March 31, 2010Second fissure has opened up northwest of the original on Fimmvörðuháls, east of Eyjafjallajökull.
This is NOT towards Katla.
Geologists on site saw the fissure open as it happened. As of this evening it is still growing, with 7 centers of eruption.
Þórsmörk has been closed, lave should flow north towards it.
Hikers on the northside were evacuated by helicopter.
RUV initial report with webcam photo (icelandic)
webcam link
you can see it even in the dark.
Better live view from the south
both from mila.is
double your pleasure
Original fissure has a spectacular lava fall, currently there is…
awild | March 31, 2010
Leptomyrmex darlingtoni, Australia
A big day for ant evolution! The Ant Tree of Life research group (AToL) has published their dolichoderine phylogeny in the journal Systematic Biology.
Dolichoderines are one of the big ant subfamilies, comprising just under ten percent of the world's ant species. These are dominant, conspicuous ants noted for having ditched the heavy ancestral ant sting and armor in favor of speed, agility, and refined chemical weaponry. Most dolichoderines live in large colonies with extensive trail networks, and they fuel their frenetic lifestyle through copious…
drorzel | March 31, 2010If you scroll way down the list of this year's Goldwater Scholarship winners, you'll find:
Peter John Bonventre
Institution: Union College
Major(s): Physics/Mathematics
Career Goal: Ph.D. in Mathematics or Physics. Conduct research and teach at the university level.
Pete's one of our junior physics majors. He's done summer work on both nuclear physics and condensed matter physics, and is a work-study student in the department. So, we're obviously thrilled to see him win. Congratulations, Pete!
There's a Goldwater Foundation press release here, with more information and statistics about the…
drorzel | March 31, 2010Physics Central is having a contest:
Do you love lasers? Ever wanted to unravel the mystery of the stimulated emission? Then the LaserFest video contest is for you. Take any laser you want and use it to somehow express a physics concept. Shine, lase, bounce and wave your way into physics history.
The winner will receive a trophy lovingly made by APS staff from some of our favorite laser toys as well as $1,000 cash. All entries must be received by May 16th at midnight.
If you know how to make videos for YouTube, and know something about physics, here's your chance at (Internet) fame and (…
grrlscientist | March 31, 2010tags: education, public outreach, SciCafe, science cafe, AMNH, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, streaming video
Who: Kristin Baldwin, Assistant Professor at Scripps Research's Department of Cell Biology
What: free public presentation, "The Future of Stem Cells"
When: Wednesday, 7 April at 700pm
Where: Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, American Museum of Natural History, Enter at the 81st Street (Rose Center) [directions and maps]
Cost: FREE, and there is a cash bar too! (must be 21+ with ID)
What if your cells could be engineered to grow your own replacement organs? Glimpse the…
oracknows | March 31, 2010Last month, in response to some truly despicable activities by animal rights zealots, I wrote a series of posts about how animal rights activists target even researchers' children and appear to fetishize violence. This simply continued a string of posts that I've done over the years, the longest (and, in my not-so-humble-opinion, the best) deconstructs a lot of the bad scientific arguments used by animal rights activists to claim that animal research is useless, or nearly so, as well as other arguments made by extremists. One of the key points emphasized in these responses is that, regardless…
grrlscientist | March 30, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than two weeks away and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in…