Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.

1. In an overhyped analysis certain to make biologists want to reach for their pistols, it has been declared that women are evolving to be more beautiful:

"Evolution has led to women, but not men, getting progressively beautiful, according to scientists" it reads.

Individualism is the political philosophy or ideology that emphasizes independence and self-reliance. Individualists advance the idea of realizing one's goals and desires, while opposing most external interference upon those objectives, by society, or any outside agency.

Collectivism is a term used to describe any perspective that stresses human interdependence and the importance of a collective or group, rather than the importance of separate individuals. In this view, the emphasis is on community and society, and priority is given to group goals over individual goals.

Besides the usual share of random readers who google something and get directed here by mere chance (to be read: by the sheer amount of valuable information I have posted here), this blog is read by an interesting mix of particle physicists, students, experts in other fields of Physics, and Science amateurs -plus a small number of science reporters looking for news.

Of course I love each and every one of my faithful readers like good teachers love their pupils, but among the varied crowd, the readers which I am most happy to host here are students and amateurs, because they provide me with true motivation for spending my time writing popularization articles. Without them, many of my posts would lose their meaning.

Computer trends are interesting to follow^[1]; they keep changing, and, as with clothing, the chic trends this year soon become passé, replaced by newer ones. It often seems that it’s really the words that change, while the actual trends continue pretty much intact.

A new study in Nature offers an explanation for the origin of dwarf spheroidal galaxies, one of the current puzzles in our understanding of galaxy formation.

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies are small and very faint, containing few stars relative to their total mass. They appear to be made mostly of dark matter - a mysterious substance detectable only by its gravitational influence, which outweighs normal matter by a factor of five to one in the universe as a whole.

Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics were immortalized in the short story "Runaround" in 1942.   In it he formalized the rules that all positronic robots must obey.

Two engineers think Asimov's laws need an update.

Scientists have been thinking increasingly about whether or not animals in the ocean might play a role in larger-scale ocean mixing, says John Dabiri, a Caltech bioengineer. Ocean mixing is the process by which various layers of water interact with one another to distribute heat, nutrients and gasses throughout the oceans.

"The perspective we usually take is how the ocean--by its currents, temperature, and chemistry--is affecting animals," says Dabiri, who, along with graduate student Kakani Katija, discovered the new mechanism.

The number of large-diameter trees that Yosemite National Park is famous far are on the decline, and warmer temperatures appear to be the culprit.

Their number have declined 24 percent in the park between the 1930s and 1990s. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932 to the most recent records from 1988.

The number of large-diameter trees that Yosemite National Park is famous far are on the decline, and warmer temperatures appear to be the culprit.

Their number have declined 24 percent in the park between the 1930s and 1990s. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932 to the most recent records from 1988.

Professor Wei Sha from Queen’s University Belfast’s School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering is concerned with the combat safety of vehicles that use titanium alloys.

Obviously the best way to remain safe is to actually not be at war but since bullets are flying and  terrorists are blowing themselves up, he has examined the damage tolerance of the popular material titanium.   The UK military based in Afghanistan currently use land rovers which have titanium alloys.   It is the first research of its kind to reveal the reasons behind the deformation and damage of titanium alloys under strong impact or fast applied force.