“Siri” is the personal assistant application on the newest iPhone. Now it is not exactly news that Apple products are overpriced and of relatively low quality - do not drop the new iPhone; it is fragile. Apple aims for those who ‘are easily parted from their money’ (translation at Pocket English Idioms).

A lot of the ships fishing for squid off the Americas come from China, Korea, and Japan. If they're willing to cross the Pacific to feed their squid habit, you can bet they're not overlooking the resources in their own backyard. 

Squid fishing is a huge industry in Asia--and, as always, it's a bit tricky to divvy up the catch. 

Using a single-step process, researchers recently developed a technique to cause M13 phages to become building blocks for materials with a wide range of properties.

These benign viruses self-assembled into hierarchically organized thin-film structures, with complexity that ranged from simple ridges, to wavy, chiral strands, to truly sophisticated patterns of overlapping strings of material. Each film presented specific properties for bending light, and several films were capable of guiding the growth of cells into structures with precise physical orientations.

Just can't stand the thought of having another daughter, or even a first one?  People in Europe and the Middle East who can rationalize they want to "balance" their family or minimize the risk of certain genetic diseases have a new option: MicroSort preconception sex selection technology is now available in Cyprus at North Cyprus IVF Clinic - one of only three countries in the world where you can openly and legally get sperm sorting. 

The issue at hand: a student with Asperger's Syndrome feels the teacher withholds recess breaks at a whim; the teacher feels that withholding recess is reinforcing the consequences of the student's actions.  From their personal viewpoints, each of them is correct.  Clearly, there is bad communication or signaling going on here.

Note I use the shorthand 'Aspie' for 'someone with Asperger's syndrome', itself either a form of high-functioning autism, or a related pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), and the term 'neurotypical' to describe someone who does not have Asperger's.

On Rules Processing

I have a love/hate relationship with advertising. Ads are specifically designed to manipulate people, and I hate being manipulated. On the other hand, I love using free services that are supported by ads.

Science 2.0, as you may have noticed, runs ads, and I've got no problem with that. In fact, those ads make me anywhere from $3 to $10 a month--which isn't really enough to feed my ice cream habit, though it's a worthy contribution.

But the video ads were getting a little too intrusive, according to both my own experience and comments from you, dear readers. I mentioned this to Mr. Science 2.0 himself, and learned I could opt out of ads on my blog by forfeiting future accumulation of my ice cream allowance. Done and done! 

Low power electronics and devices for active, modern lifestyles is getting edgy; the research is on for stuff that is wearable, epidermal, implantable - heck, even edible.

Smart skin, created by MC10, is an example of an 'epidermal electronic system. It contains micro-circuitry like transistors, sensors, transmitters and receivers that can get wrinkled, are bendable and stretchable, just like real skin, but retains damage-free function of all components.

Mention "Mass Extinction" and most people will immediately think of the extinction that killed the dinosaurs.

To be fair, this was pretty big, as far as extinctions go. Not only did it kill all of the non-avian dinosaurs, it also finished off the ammonites, belemnites, all of the large swimming reptiles, and many, many others. It's almost like all mammals being killed today.

So yes, pretty big. The K-T extinction, as it's called, ranks among the top 5 greatest extinctions in Earth's paleozoic history.

But it's peanuts to the P-T extinction.

To put it in perspective, at the K-T extinction, about 60% of life on Earth died out. At the P-T extinction, it was about 95%. So it's fair to say that this was when the Earth nearly died.

False equivalence was the big deal two weeks ago, with political advocates Googling for evidence that there might be a Republican with a science Ph.D. (and then ostracizing any found, in the name of tolerance and diversity) and generally out to debunk the notion that the left might have its own kooks.