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Beware Onbilgi: They're Taking Our Posts From Here as Their Own

Beware Onbilgi: They're Taking Our Posts From Here as Their Own

Jul 02 2011 | comment(s)

I discovered several of my articles at http://onbilgi.com/ today, all of them lifted from here, all of them without my name as author, all of them without links back to here. Not only did I find my work, it looks like all the articles they have are taken from here. They've taken your posts, too.
A simulation of Joy Christian's two hemispheres Bell experiment

A simulation of Joy Christian's two hemispheres Bell experiment

Jul 02 2011 | comment(s)

A few years back I heard Joy Christian give a talk on his disproof of Bell's theorem, where he explained his idea for an experiment involving two hemispheres with a mass stuck on each.

To me it seemed obvious that the first thing to do with such an idea was to write a computer simulation of it.

It took me some time to get round to it, and I was rather distracted on the way looking into computer game engines, but it is finally finished, and can be seen at http://tachyos.org/bell/bell1.html.  

The result is unsurprising:


Blooming Botany (3A)

Blooming Botany (3A)

Jul 02 2011 | comment(s)

Botany: A Blooming History


And now we come to part three of this series

Widely Obvious: Obesity Spreads Socially

Widely Obvious: Obesity Spreads Socially

Jul 02 2011 | comment(s)

Joanna Dolgoff covers new research on how obesity spreads through social contact over at Huffington Post. I'm sure this comes as a huge surprise to those of us who have watched our waistlines spread along with the waistlines of our friends. Well, at least until we lose sight of our friends because they can no longer get out of their house and we can no longer get out of ours.

Anti-Civil Rights: Court Strikes Down State Effort To Be Color Blind In University Admissions

Anti-Civil Rights: Court Strikes Down State Effort To Be Color Blind In University Admissions

Jul 02 2011 | comment(s)

The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which bans race and gender considerations for college admissions and government hiring and contracting, has been struck down by an appeals court, meaning merit continues to take a back seat to artificial equality.
Science of Baseball - Bright Lights, Bad Hitting

Science of Baseball - Bright Lights, Bad Hitting

Jul 02 2011 | comment(s)

Maybe fantasy baseball scouting will start to list eye color along with which side players bat from and how their home park is configured - lighter-colored eyes, it seems, don't absorb light the way darker eyes do, and in a precisely game like baseball where milliseconds matter, the impact can be substantial.

The clarity of a player's vision, called visual acuity, is not the only important quality to track for baseball players. So is contrast sensitivity.  Dr. Keith Smithson, the team optometrist for the Washington Wizards, Washington Nationals and D.C. United, measures this in order to interpret "a ball player's ability to pick out a white target, a baseball, against different backgrounds."
Reconstructing A Catastrophe: The Minoan Eruption Of Santorini

Reconstructing A Catastrophe: The Minoan Eruption Of Santorini

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

A recent BBC docu-drama called 'Atlantis' recreated the last days of the Bronze Age civilisation on the island of Thera (now known as Santorini), that I've meant to blog about for a while now.  This program, along with a more traditional 'Timewatch' documentary, argued that the eruption in roughly 1600 B.C.
Memory Like Wine? Not So Much: New Study Simply Reaffirms

Memory Like Wine? Not So Much: New Study Simply Reaffirms

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

An article on Science 2.0 addresses a new study  on just how easy it is to create false memories. According to the article, researchers "show a unique pattern of brain activity when false memories are formed – one that hints at a surprising connection between our social selves and memory." The conclusion of the article is that "social reinforcement could act on the amygdala to persuade our brains to replace a strong memory with a false one." (video on study available here.)

Topical Index For The Sky By Day

Topical Index For The Sky By Day

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

Looking back at over 2 years of writing, this column has covered a lot of ground.  Here's a topical index as proof.
Xenotransplantation - Growing Pig Organs To Use In Humans

Xenotransplantation - Growing Pig Organs To Use In Humans

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

Growing human, perfectly matching organs inside a pig and then transplanting them into humans is not a new idea - it may revolutionize medicine - but a new discovery may also allow pig tissue to be transplanted directly into humans. The research in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology may lead to filling the short term lack of organs for human transplantation. 

Altering or overexpressing the human programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) molecule in the endothelial cells of pig arteries reduced the conditions that lead to rejection, it says. This strongly suggests that successful Xenotransplantation means humans could receive altered porcine organs with fewer complications.
Other Race Effect - Biological Clues To Why They All Look Alike

Other Race Effect - Biological Clues To Why They All Look Alike

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

We've all had an Asian person say, 'All you Americans look alike' - but they aren't being racist, there may be some biology at work.

The brain works differently when memorizing the face of a person from one's own race, according to a study which used EEG recordings to measure brain activity and which may shed light on one of the most replicated psychology findings - that people are less likely to remember a face from a racial group different from their own.
Who Trusts In Government? People With A Lot To Lose

Who Trusts In Government? People With A Lot To Lose

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

If you pay a lot of taxes and get little to show for it, you don't have much trust in government, but if you are in a disaster-prone area, you have more confidence in government than most, say researchers in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
Health Care Reform Will Be Worse For Illegal Immigrants

Health Care Reform Will Be Worse For Illegal Immigrants

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

Here's a way to make the bloated costs of health care reform seem more palatable to opponents - it will knock 220,000 illegal immigrants out of the health care system just in California alone.

A new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research says up to 20 percent of all uninsured children in California are those of illegal immigrants, but even some who are here legally may not apply because of confusing rules in The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) , known colloquially, thanks to pundits like Bill Maher and detractors in the debate, as ObamaCare. 
Exercise In A Wine Bottle

Exercise In A Wine Bottle

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

Too lazy to exercise?  In a world full of concern about global warming and estrogen in rivers and anti-vaccine hippies trying to bring back polio, science has some good news for a change; even if you are sedentary, a glass of red wine may offset some of the effects just like exercise would.

A new study in the FASEB Journal suggests that resveratrol in red wine may prevent the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle, which is good news for couch potatoes and even astronauts. The report describes experiments in rats that simulated the weightlessness of spaceflight, during which the group fed resveratrol did not develop insulin resistance or a loss of bone mineral density, as did those who were not fed resveratrol. 
Blooming Botany (1B)

Blooming Botany (1B)

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

Botany: A Blooming History


And now we return to part one of this series

Belly Button Biology

Belly Button Biology

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

Our own body is covered with entire (albeit tiny) ecosystems. Incredible numbers of bacterial strains live in and on the human body. And the belly button seems to be a place extraordinarily rich in bacterial passengers. The Belly Button Biodiversity Project took samples from the navels of volunteers and went to work, performing DNA analysis on the bacteria that were found there.

(Source: Belly Button Biodiversity Project)

History Mysteries #1 - Who Shot The Tomatoes?

History Mysteries #1 - Who Shot The Tomatoes?

Jul 01 2011 | comment(s)

History Mysteries #1 - Who Shot The Tomatoes?
or
The Astonishment of a Sailor on Finding Buckshot in His Portion of Tomatoes.


Hidden in the details of the Jeannette Expedition one finds a factor in common with the Franklin Expedition: lead poisoning.


The Jeannette Expedition

"Zombie" Stars Explode, Revive, Then Suck Matter Out Of Other Stars

Jun 30 2011 | comment(s)

According to an astrophysicist at UC Santa Barbara, 'zombie' stars may be a way to measure dark energy.   Type Ia supernovae are stars that have been observed since 1054 A.D., when an exploding star formed the crab nebula, a supernova remnant.

Theoretical dark energy should make up about three-fourths of the universe, says Andy Howell, adjunct professor of physics at UCSB and staff scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT).
Plastic Found In 9 Percent Of 'Garbage Patch' Fish

Plastic Found In 9 Percent Of 'Garbage Patch' Fish

Jun 30 2011 | comment(s)

An article in Marine Ecology Progress Series found evidence of plastic waste in more than nine percent of the stomachs of fish collected during a recent voyage by graduate students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre - also known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch.".

Based on their evidence, authors Peter Davison and Rebecca Asch estimate that fish in the intermediate ocean depths of the North Pacific ingest plastic at a rate of roughly 12,000- to 24,000 tons per year.
More Snowfall At Airports? Airplanes Bring Their Own Climate Change

More Snowfall At Airports? Airplanes Bring Their Own Climate Change

Jun 30 2011 | comment(s)

As airplanes fly through clouds, they can punch holes through those with supercooled water, or water that has remained in liquid form below its freezing point and researchers are now saying this phenomenon can lead to increased snowfall around the world's major airports. 

The effect is similar to cloud seeding, which has been controversially used past to influence precipitation, but a new study in Science says that private and commercial flights have been drilling holes and canals through clouds all along, influencing the snow and rainfall below them.