Galaxy M51, now called the Whirlpool Galaxy, was discovered by Charles Messier in 1773 but its spiral structure was first found by William Parsons in 1845, using his huge (and wonderfully named) reflecting telescope called the Leviathan of Parsonstown. Today even small amateur telescopes can see that this galaxy is not isolated, but has a small companion, a dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 5195.
These two stellar systems are colliding and the spiral shape of M51 is due to the tidal forces unleashed during this process. At a distance of 23 millions of light-years, the apparent dimensions of M51 mean that that galaxy has to be quite similar to our own, yet somewhat smaller.
Each day the humans are confronted with a variety of pathogens. Most of them are fended off by our immune system.
For a successful infection, bacteria must deliver so-called virulence factors through a transport channel located in the bacterial membrane. Scientists from the Max Planck Society and the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing have shown how in some bacteria this transport channel is formed like a syringe, enabling them to inject virulence factors directly into the host cell - an important starting point for the development of new drugs that might interfere considerably earlier than antibiotics in the course of infection.
I think that there is an innate (somewhat mindblind) tendency to assume that other people think, feel, react the same way we do. Americans are often egocentric. We think that our way is the best way and assume that everyone wants to be like us. While it can be quite arrogant, when we are at our idealistic best, it is perhaps somewhat a quaint utopian dream.
BP, GIS and The Mysterious Vanishing Open Letter
Subject: BP control of GIS data
Regarding the loss of an open letter from the web, from whatever cause.
[EDIT]
June 15 2010 - 00:23 BST.
Important information has come to light which deserves prominence, hence this edit.
I can confirm that the letter was written by Andrew Stephens and Devon Humphrey.
I have been led to understand that the open letter was taken down
because some web sites were reading more into the letter than was clearly stated.
The letter has now been replaced with a note:
Today is a good day: I can rest in peace without working out my daily share of science popularization here, because I have something better to do, which will have a much more sizable positive effect for the diffusion of particle physics. In fact, I hold in my hands a brand new copy of Gian Francesco Giudice's book, "A Zeptospace Odyssey - A Journey into the Physics of the LHC". All I have to do is to explain to you why you really should buy, read, and give as a present this book to all your friends.
Gian Francesco Giudice
If you're thirsty and you drink, your brain feels pleasure. You feel this same pleasure, borne of satisfying a physical need, when someone you envy is brought low. We call this feeling schadenfreude, but researchers at the National Institute of Radiology in Japan call it dopamine release in the ventral striatum.
Perfidious Albion
Caution: unmitigated whimsy alert!
________________________________
Perfidious Albion
or
what our literary heritage might have been
if we had learned earlier in our history
to sue each other.
______________________________________
All rights hereinunder are hereby acknowledged by the author, printer and publisher ,
all relevant statutory fees are hereby certified to have been paid,
all necessary permissions and waivers have been sworn in the Royal Courts of Libel.
With 1949, we arrive at one of the big classics in the post-apocalyptic genre. George Stewart’s Earth Abides is epic in both scope and ambition, a bittersweet story that captures the immense scale on which nature operates, and which portrays the scientific achievements of human civilization as a minor ripple in nature’s broad course. It is a book focused on big themes: the reversibility of human history, the connection between technology and civilization, the impermanence of human achievements.
GPS will die, sending airplanes crashing and sinking boats. Cell phones will fail, stranding travelers and resulting in people in remote areas dying due to exposure. Worse of all, our TV may go out for a few hours.
These are some of the doomsday scenarios prophecied in the current "Chicken Little" coverage of space weather, as the sun ramps up towards Solar Maximum during the same decade that our society has become perilously dependent on advanced technology.
So where's the science? The science is standing behind Chicken Little, simultaneously crying "pay attention to us" and "stop overselling us, you media hacks!"
Finger Rafting
No, it's not a new sport. It's one of many ways in which ice consolidates.
In order to more fully understand what is happening to the Arctic climate we need to understand how sea ice is formed and consolidated, and how it is dispersed and melted.
There are very many ways in which two or more units of ice or freezing water can combine. Five come readily to mind: hail, snow, frost, freshwater ice, sea ice. Let's focus on ice formation in water.
