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jtoney | June 29, 2011Chris Wallace Asking Michele Bachmann if she is a flake. Fox News Sunday.
"I've worked in serious scholarship..." Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Really?
I am no fan of personal attacks on politicians. In the case of Rep. Michele Bachmann, her own words are, sadly, fulfilling the same function. During the recent Fox news interview with Chris Wallace, for which Mr. Wallace apologized for using the term "flake," Rep. Bachmann defended herself by focusing on her age, years of her marriage, and involvement in "serious scholarship" among other items.
The latter statement got my interest. Unfortunately…
jtoney | June 23, 2011This is a guest post by Prof. Robin Landa, Distinguished Professor, Robert Busch School of Design at Kean University and author of "Advertising by Design: Generating and Designing Creative Ideas Across Media."
Natural movement is a matter of survival for animals. We rely heavily on natural movement to go about our daily lives--whether it is to reach up to place a suitcase in an overhead compartment on an airplane, take a walk, run for a bus, or bend down to retrieve an object. However, few of us, other than dancers and athletes, execute our movements thoughtfully, with more than a nod to…
jtoney | June 16, 2011I have been writing recently about the role of science in advertising as the "new glam." A Yoplait television ad brings a new dimension to this discussion. Is it possible for TV ads to deliver subliminal potentially harmful messages, whether intentional or not?
Ads are everywhere, of course, in all forms of media. The market research firm Yankelovich estimates that we are exposed to, incredibly, up to 5,000 ads per day!
Below is the commercial that sparked considerable controversy from a health advocacy group:
According to the National Eating Disorders Association:
"The language in this…
sciencepunk | June 15, 2011The Smithsonian has a cool post on wingless ants that have learned how to glide through the forest canopy using their outstretched legs. If knocked from their treetop nest, Cephalotes atratus avoid falling to the ground by steering themselves, tail first, back toward the tree. Yes, not only can these ants glide, they do it backwards.
Full details over at the Smithsonian Science blog.
jtoney | June 14, 2011What constitutes consciousness? How do you define a person? These are deep philosophical questions that I cannot answer, but MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow took them on - prompted, surprisingly, by one of my recent blogs "Growing a Brain in a Dish."
My earlier blog was more focused on my enthusiasm of the discovery that researchers could grow brain cells on a petri dish that were connected both physically and by electrical and chemical signals. I'll let The Maddow Blog explain, as it is more clear than my earlier post and then goes on to the deeper questions - and so I was "…
jtoney | June 6, 2011British teenage students have re-discovered a classical physical phenomenon, the Leidenfrost effect that could someday help ships glide through oceans more efficiently.
I'll let these 16 year old students explain it:
One day in Physics class we accidentally discovered you could get beautiful standing wave patterns on a drop of water on a very hot plate. This film gives an introduction to the wonderful Leidenfrost Effect.
The film was made by 16 students (aged around 16) - only three appear in the film, but everyone helped, as did their physics teacher. You can watch the video here.
Below I…
drorzel | June 5, 2011Why no blogging today? Among other reasons, because we went to the playground with SteelyKid. And this:
is a whole lot more fun than the Internet.
jtoney | June 4, 2011"An explosive power the size of a Hiroshima bomb - once a week."
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Like most Americans, I would love to be able to drive without having to fill up with increasingly expensive gas - costly not only to our wallets, but to the environment and to geopolitics. Why not switch to a hybrid vehicle or even better, an electrical vehicle? Wouldn't an electrical vehicle offer a better, cleaner approach?
I imagine parking my new electrical vehicle in the garage, plugging it in overnight to recharge for a new day, unfettered by gas and oil, sleeping soundly. If only it could be so…
jtoney | May 24, 2011The Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust.
I've been exploring the use of rap and pop culture to teach science and mathematics, ranging from Lupe Fiasco to Linkin Park, but that topic is for another day. But anyone interested in evolution, whether student or teacher, could find this "Evolution Rap" a refreshing approach.
Bottom line: learning should always be this fun.
Lyrics:
"Yo, yo, the Origin of Species
Ain't no feces, dawg, believe me..."
And that's all I could think of
So then I thought, this needs to be re-written
By looking at the similarities in…
jtoney | May 20, 2011
Online social media played a major role in the 2008 Presidential election and is already looming large in the early stages of the 2012 Presidential bid. Newt Gingrich made a dramatic statement recently about Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal:
"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate," he said when asked about Ryan's proposal.
Such a provocative statement created a media firestorm, begging for a press release from Mr.…
jtoney | May 18, 2011
Maybe it's just me, but I see beauty in this. Scientists at the University of Manchester have created high resolution images of a 49 million year old spider encapsulated in fossilized amber resin using X-ray computed tomography, typically used in medical imaging.
If the still image doesn't convince you, I invite you to watch this stunning video revealing 3D images of the little beast.
I wonder if this evidence would give those believing the world was created 6,000 years ago pause. Probably not.
See press release here.
Original citation:
Dunlop, J. A., Penney, D., Dalüge, N., Jäger, P.,…
drorzel | May 17, 2011Well, on video over the web, anyway... If you look at the Featured Videos on the National Geographic Channel web page, or, hopefully, in the embedded video below:
You'll see a short video clip of a program about quantum physics, that includes me and Emmy among the experts on camera. I'm pretty psyched, though I'm not sure what Alan Guth and Lawrence Krauss will think about sharing the bill with my dog...
This is from a show, tentatively titled "Parallel Universes," which is why I went to Buffalo back in October. Most of the scenes in that clip were shot in the abandoned railway station in…
jtoney | May 13, 2011
May 12 was a glorious day for our graduates, some 2,730 students celebrating the completion of their undergraduate education. Our Commencement Speaker John Legend, a Grammy Award Winner, shared an important message in both speech and in song: equal access to quality education is a right, not a privilege.
Mr. Legend acknowledged the recent brouhaha highlighted on FOX news about rapper Common, with whom he has performed. Common was recently invited to the White House to participate in a Poetry Jam, generating push back due to offensive lyrics in some of his songs. For example:
...the New…
jtoney | May 11, 2011
This is a story of two fetching women, one known for glitz and vacuous socializing, one known for serious news commentary and for reinventing the television morning news show format. Yes, as my title reveals, they are Paris Hilton and Mika Brzezinski whose paths crossed unwittingly, emblematic of American female beauty and brains.
I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Brzezinski last night, as she was the Commencement speaker for our Graduate College. She shared with our graduates, predominantly women, the challenges of equality in the workplace - equal pay for equal work - detailed in her…
esiegel | May 6, 2011"God does not play dice with the Universe." -Einstein
"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." -Neils Bohr (disputed, but awesome)
Einstein, the brilliant mind behind general relativity and the concept of "spacetime," is making the news again this week. As you all know, gravity isn't some mysterious invisible force traveling across space, it comes about because energy itself -- most commonly in the form of mass -- distorts the very fabric of space.
Image credit: GNU user Johnstone and NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
Of course, wrapping your head around this can prove quite difficult. Space, as we…
drorzel | April 30, 2011SteelyKid and Kate are down in Boston this weekend, which has given me time to get some work done around the house, and go to some restaurants that they don't like. It's left me a little deprived of cute, though. So, as a counter to that, some cute video of SteelyKid riding her "motorcycle" (her term) down the small hill by Grandma and Grandpa's:
(She can just barely reach the pedals, but can't use them very effectively, so she just scoots it along with her feet, and picks them up once she gets going. The abrupt stop at the end of this was in order to demand another jellybean from Grandma.)
cagapakis | April 25, 2011Two videos that Patrick Boyle and I made were selected for the Bio:Fiction Film Festival! One of the prizes is an online audience award, and you can watch and rate all of the films! It's such an honor to be part of this festival and to be showing our work next to that of so many amazing artists, scientists, and filmmakers, and we would be super thrilled if you voted for us!
Here are our videos! First, the world premiere of Compound 74, a fictional documentary about a possible future of synthetic drug design through synthetic biology:
And second, the commercial we made for Ginkgo BioWorks--…
cagapakis | April 22, 2011Beautiful video imagining the future of augmented, prosthetic sight, by Superflux for the Human+ exhibition:
Song of the Machine from Superflux on Vimeo.
You can read more about the science behind retinal prosthetics in a great article in the Guardian by one of the project collaborators, Dr. Patrick Degenaar.
cagapakis | April 20, 2011Symbiosis is everywhere. From the Greek for "living with," symbiosis is simply a close association between two different species in nature. These relationships can be mutualistic, parasitic, or somewhere in between. Bacterial symbionts live inside bodies, like the bacteria that help us and other animals digest our food, and they live inside cells, like the bacteria that live in plant roots and provide their hosts with nitrogen. They can be metabolic, hygienic, or photosynthetic; ectosymbiotic, on the host surface, or endosymbiotic, inside the host's cells. Back in the 1860's biologists…
jtoney | April 8, 2011
I had the pleasure of meeting recreational mathemusician (think about the implications) Vi Hart today at the "Thinking Creatively" conference on our campus. Watch this brilliant video (shown during her seminar) and learn mathematics like never before.
Vi's audience included not only design students and professionals, but a cohort of students preparing to become mathematics teachers. Her work is a beautiful example of bridging art, play, music and mathematics and, yes, pedagogy - the study of teaching and learning and how to connect with students. You can follow her videos here.
Bravo,…