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Little Lotus Baby Blankets - NASA Space Suit Tech For Your Elite Cherub

Little Lotus Baby Blankets - NASA Space Suit Tech For Your Elite Cherub

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

New Little Lotus baby blankets, which are getting a Kickstarter campaign today, are advertised as a phase-change material designed by NASA contractors to constantly absorb and release heat.
What Just 5 Days Of Eating Fatty Food Does To Your Muscles

What Just 5 Days Of Eating Fatty Food Does To Your Muscles

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

A new study has found that after just five days of eating a high-fat diet, the way in which the body's muscle processes nutrients changes.

When food is eaten, the level of glucose in the blood rises. The body's muscle is a major clearinghouse for this glucose. It may break it down for energy, or it can store it for later use. Since muscle makes up about 30 percent of our body weight and it is such an important site for glucose metabolism, if normal metabolism is altered, it can have consequences on the rest of the body and can lead to health issues.
Why Protest Clean Multi-Cultural White-Collar Astronomy Jobs?

Why Protest Clean Multi-Cultural White-Collar Astronomy Jobs?

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

Having once lived in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, on occasion I would drive to those old gigantic relics of steel mills.

They were behemoths and so were the buildings that housed them. They looked like they could block out the sun. In John Ford's "The Quiet Man", a native of Ireland asked John Wayne's character what they feed men in Pittsburgh that makes them so big and Wayne replied, "Steel, and pig-iron furnaces so hot a man forgets his fear of hell". In the early 1950s it was a job for hard men.
The Journey to Presenting Relativization at the 2015 April APS Meeting. A Story of Quantum Gravity, and Airplanes.

The Journey to Presenting Relativization at the 2015 April APS Meeting. A Story of Quantum Gravity, and Airplanes.

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

On April 11th 2015 I delivered a presentation on the subject of Quantum Gravity in which I questioned the basic assumption that quantum is more fundamental than relativity.  Relativization is the name for the approach I propose.  In a nutshell let us try treating relativity as the more fundamental set of principles and make quantum field theory obey those.  The talk was well received.    There is still lots of work do on this and a lifetime to do it in, but the approach is now firmly not "crackpot".  Indeed as the money plot from my presentation shows this approach gets a very nice result for the behavior of black holes. 

The talk:
How To Make Boxing Safer

How To Make Boxing Safer

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

The tragic death recently of a young Queensland boxer raised the question of safety in the sport and whether boxing should be banned.

Claims that boxing is safer than a number of very popular and well-accepted sports warrant careful scrutiny as they often derive from overly simplistic analyses.

The risks associated with boxing should never be trivialized, but science and technology could possibly help to mitigate them.

OEH - Hormone Receptor That Allows Mosquitoes To Reproduce Found

OEH - Hormone Receptor That Allows Mosquitoes To Reproduce Found

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

 By identifying and comparing the sequences of more than 400 receptors in the genomes of two fruit flies and three mosquito species, entomologists have unlocked one of the hormonal mechanisms that allow mosquitoes to produce eggs. They identified a single gene for a receptor with an unknown function within the species distribution.  

'Warm Blob' In Pacific Ocean Linked To Weird Weather

'Warm Blob' In Pacific Ocean Linked To Weird Weather

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

The one common element in recent American weather has been its diversity. The West Coast has been drier than usual while the East Coast has had more snow. Fish are swimming into new waters and so hungry seals that don't follow them aare washing up on California beaches. 

A long-lived patch of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, is part of what's wreaking much of this mayhem, according to two papers Geophysical Research Letters. No, that warm blob was not caused by climate change, though it has many of the same effects for West Coast weather. 

Genetically Engineered Salmonella For Anti-cancer Therapy

Genetically Engineered Salmonella For Anti-cancer Therapy

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

On one side of the political spectrum in America and across a broader swath of Europe, science is controversial - especially genetic engineering. But genetic engineering has been done since humans first deduced they could shape the natural world, if anything it has gotten precise in a way that was never possible before.

Now it mean even help fight against cancer - and it may do so using Salmonella, more famous as a bacteria that lives in intestines.
Antibiotics Is To Politics As Oil Is To Water

Antibiotics Is To Politics As Oil Is To Water

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)


This week Hilary Clinton and Marco Rubio announced their candidacies for President of the United States. This puts them alongside Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and I’m not sure who else.

One thing all these candidates have in common is that not one of them has mentioned antibiotics – at least as far as I know. Do any of you know anything different?

So here we are. Antibiotic resistance is killing a minimum of 23,000 Americans every year according to the CDC. (I think that is a gross underestimate of reality.) The FDA just published a study showing large increase in antibiotic use on US farms – but they don’t know how or why the antibiotics are used.
Electric Car Batteries Down To Around $7,500, Maybe Be Down To $5,000 In 5 Years

Electric Car Batteries Down To Around $7,500, Maybe Be Down To $5,000 In 5 Years

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

The cost of batteries is one of the major hurdles standing in the way of widespread use of electric cars and household solar batteries. By storing surplus energy, batteries allow households to reduce power bought from the electricity grid. Unfortunately, batteries have so far been prohibitively expensive.

But research published recently in Nature Climate Change Letters shows battery pack costs may in some cases be as low as US$300 per kilowatt-hour today, and could reach US$200 by 2020. This cost development is notably cheaper and faster decreasing than I and many others expected.

Fun With A Dobson

Fun With A Dobson

Apr 14 2015 | comment(s)

It is galaxy season in the northern hemisphere, with Ursa Mayor at the zenith during the night and the Virgo cluster as high as it gets. And if you have ever put your eye on the eyepiece of a large telescope aimed at a far galaxy, you will agree it is quite an experience: you get to see light that traveled for tens or even hundreds of millions of years before reaching your pupil, crossing sizable portions of the universe to make a quite improbable rendez-vous with your photoreceptors. 
Women Overwhemingly Preferred In Academic Science Jobs

Women Overwhemingly Preferred In Academic Science Jobs

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)

Is there still bias in academic science? There is definitely unequal representation in some areas. The social sciences, for example, is 70 percent women while physics is 70 percent men, but there is no evidence that either gender is being blocked out.

Instead, there is second order sociological claims of stereotype threat, with the NSF funding games like Gender Bias Bingo, but there is little evidence that there is still bias - instead, studies for years have shown that women have been over-represented in hiring. The numbers remain unequal because academics get tenure, and people are working longer than ever, so men still have more jobs - but when new jobs open up, women have been more likely to get them.
Methane Storms And Titan's Dune Direction Mystery

Methane Storms And Titan's Dune Direction Mystery

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)


Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is one of the most Earthlike places in the solar system. 

It has a thick, hazy atmosphere and surface rivers, mountains, lakes and dunes, which is why the Cassini-Huygens is studying it. But sometimes new data bring new mysteries, such as the seemingly wind-created sand dunes spotted by Cassini near the moon's equator, and the contrary winds just above.
Electrolyte Supplements, Salt Pills, Don't Help Endurance Athletes

Electrolyte Supplements, Salt Pills, Don't Help Endurance Athletes

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)


It's become a popular idea among endurance athletes that salt consumption during competition will help, but a new study finds no evidence that is true.

A small kernel of truth is involved in the belief, the authors write in the the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine - that there are sodium losses due to sweat during exercise and our bodies function on a principle of thermoregulation - but then some endurance athletes have taken that to believe they should consume large quantities of salt or other electrolyte supplements containing sodium during training and competition to improve performance. 
Neanderthals Didn't Have Them - So Why Did Human Chins Evolve?

Neanderthals Didn't Have Them - So Why Did Human Chins Evolve?

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)

When you look at a primate or neanderthal skull and compare it to modern humans, it is immediately noticeable that we have a feature they are missing.

In fact, it's missing from all other species: A chin.

Why do we? A new study finds that our chins didn't come from mechanical forces such as chewing, but instead results from an evolutionary adaptation involving face size and shape, possibly linked to changes in hormone levels as we became more societally domesticated. If true, it would settle a debate that's gone on for more than a century, and anthropology would have solved it rather than biology.
4 Mechanisms That Make Our Skin So Resistant To Tearing

4 Mechanisms That Make Our Skin So Resistant To Tearing

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)

Skin is remarkably resistant to tearing and a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory now have shown why.

Using powerful X-ray beams and electron microscopy, researchers made the first direct observations of the micro-scale mechanisms that allow skin to resist tearing. They identified four specific mechanisms in collagen, the main structural protein in skin tissue, that act together to diminish the effects of stress: rotation, straightening, stretching, and sliding. Researchers say they hope to replicate these mechanisms in synthetic materials to provide increased strength and in better resistance to tearing.
Snowball Earth, Even In The Tropics

Snowball Earth, Even In The Tropics

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)


New details of a nightmare period on Earth with surface conditions as frigid as present-day central Antarctica at the equator have been revealed thanks to the publication of a study of ancient glacier water.

The research, by an international team led by Daniel Herwartz, is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and shows that even tropical regions were once covered in snow and ice.

CRISPR Shows How A Bacterial Cell Can Recognize Its Own DNA

CRISPR Shows How A Bacterial Cell Can Recognize Its Own DNA

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)

Bacteria have an immune system to fight off invasive viruses called phages, and like any immune system, from single-celled to human, the first challenge of the bacterial immune system is to detect the difference between “foreign” and “self.”

Since all living things are made of DNA and proteins, how do viruses and bacteria recognize their own? 

“In most environments, phages are around ten times more abundant than bacteria. And, like all viruses, phages use the host cell’s replication machinery to make copies of themselves,” says Prof. Rotem Sorek of the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Molecular Genetics. “And they are constantly evolving new ways to do this. So bacteria need a very active immune system to survive.”
Wine Labels Should Include Production Methods And Added Chemicals

Wine Labels Should Include Production Methods And Added Chemicals

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)


While mandatory labels for organic or genetically modified foods have been regarded by the public as unnecessary bureaucracy, a group of analysts are calling for just that when it comes to wine.

Production methods and added chemicals can affect the color and taste and should be noted, the authors of a new study write. Dr. Heli Sirén and colleagues from the University of Helsinki analyzed the chemical profiles of eight Pinot Noir wines from different regions in the USA, France, New Zealand and Chile and they found that each wine had a different profile, affected by the processes used to make it.
New Methane Source Discovered In Arctic Ocean

New Methane Source Discovered In Arctic Ocean

Apr 13 2015 | comment(s)

Methane is a greenhouse gas with more warming impact than carbon dioxide but also fortunately a much shorter life in the atmosphere.

Due to the popularity of much cleaner natural gas, which has caused CO2 emissions to drop, there are concerns about methane but the big source is nature herself - decomposition of organic material, a complex process involving bacteria and microbes, is a big culprit.