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Embryo Brains Can Wake Earlier Than Previously Thought

Embryo Brains Can Wake Earlier Than Previously Thought

May 04 2012 | comment(s)

A new imaging study shows the brains of embryonic chicks can 'wake' long before chicks are ready to hatch out of their eggs - but it took loud, meaningful sounds. Playing meaningless sounds wasn't enough to rouse their brains.

As modern medicine continues to push back the gestational age at which prematurely born infants can reliably survive, pediatricians have worried about the effects of stimulating brains that are still 'under construction'. It turns out that,like adult brains, embryo brains also have neural circuitry that monitors the environment to selectively wake the brain up during important events.
The Tiniest Squid Is Also The Winningest Squid

The Tiniest Squid Is Also The Winningest Squid

May 04 2012 | comment(s)

I love four things about this story.

First: there is an All England squid catching championship. Did you know that? I did not know that.

Second: the weather this year was so bad the competitors were almost completely skunked. Almost.

Third: This is the cutest trophy shot I have EVER SEEN.


Photo: Robin Howard/BNPS
Ron Paul, Libertarians And...Scientists?

Ron Paul, Libertarians And...Scientists?

May 03 2012 | comment(s)

A surprising number of scientists defy the 'liberal' stereotype and are more libertarian than they are given credit for (including by conservatives and liberals) - no surprise there, liberal and libertarian derive from the same root word for freedom and freedom is essential to quality science.

Writing on PolicyMic.com, Cameron English interviews RealClearScience editor Dr. Alex Berezow, who argues that scientists and Ron Paul have a lot in common.  Not a shock, Paul had a good showing among academics.  
Being An Unruly Kid May Be A Mental Disorder

Being An Unruly Kid May Be A Mental Disorder

May 03 2012 | comment(s)

It's been said that science fiction can sometimes turn into science fact.

In that same vein, it may be that stories from The Onion (More U.S. Children Being Diagnosed With Youthful Tendency Disorder) may one day become part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Find The Winning Move

Find The Winning Move

May 03 2012 | comment(s)

To the couple of positions I posted yesterday from the Chess Tournament I played this weekend, let me add one I played on round II, when I was white against Fausto Scali, the blind player. The position arose from the Advance variation of the French defense (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5), which however we reached with a transposed move-order (1.e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.e5). In the position below, black has just played an inaccuracy in an already slightly worse queenless middlegame:


Should You Read Science Press Releases Or Science Papers?

Should You Read Science Press Releases Or Science Papers?

May 03 2012 | comment(s)

We carry some press releases on Science 2.0 and of course that is what Science Codex in our sidebar is. It's been an intentional effort since the communications arm of Science 2.0 began in 2006. The first, and most important reason, for that is because we think the audience is smart and don't need journalists putting context to most stories. Our audience just wants to know first so if something looks interesting, it will hit this page on the minute the embargo lifts. Everything else is written by scientists or at least (mostly) knowledgeable people(1).
Business Clusters And The Transportation Squeeze

Business Clusters And The Transportation Squeeze

May 03 2012 | comment(s)

ST. HELENA, CA – It’s a fine Saturday, and the traffic lines up on Highway 29 as the day’s crop of tourists meander from vineyard to vineyard along the road that bisects Napa Valley. 

By year’s end, 4.5 million people will have passed through, sampling vintages from the state that grows 92% of the nation’s grapes and supplies 60% of its wine. More than 200 million cases of California wine are sold within the United States each year; a further 250 million find their homes abroad. California is the world’s fourth largest wine exporter, after Italy, France, and Spain.

And Napa Valley is at the heart of it all.
Ecoterrorists Plan Attack On Research Institute And Advertise The Date

Ecoterrorists Plan Attack On Research Institute And Advertise The Date

May 03 2012 | comment(s)

Anti-science hippies are getting bolder; not only will they announce what they plan to do, they will issue the time and date to meet to carry out their next attack. And ask for help from the public.

Take The Flour Back is planning a "mass action against genetically modified wheat" at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, on May 27th. This attack is over genetically modified food - and England in the birthplace of genetically modified anti-science hysteria so no surprise, but their boldness is.  Imagine if BP announced plans to attack a climate research group. It just wouldn't happen.
Is Our Time In Outer Space Finally At-Hand?

Is Our Time In Outer Space Finally At-Hand?

May 03 2012 | comment(s)

Last week it was asteroid mining, as Peter Diamandis and his partners showed us their bold new venture, Planetary Resources, aiming eventually to start harvesting trillions of dollars worth of materials that would then no longer have to be ripped out of Mother Earth.

Teaching Climate In The Classroom

Teaching Climate In The Classroom

May 02 2012 | comment(s)

The National Academies Press will roll out some new national science standards for K-12 educators and for the first time, those standards will include guidelines on teaching climate change.

Good luck with that.  As No Child Left Behind showed, positive results and the welfare of kids will not matter in a political fight - any attempts to create an education standard and accountability are going to flop unless education unions buy into it and any attempts to create a science standard for climate education will flop unless teachers do.  And a lot of them don't.
Activists Greenmail The People Of Malibu

Activists Greenmail The People Of Malibu

May 02 2012 | comment(s)

Did an environmental issue disappear because activist groups got a check?  It would seem so.  The Natural Resources Defenses Council and Santa Monica Baykeeper sued the city of Malibu in 2008 for 'groundwater' pollution.

The settlement they reached?  Malibu has to 'fix' 17 drains, easy enough to rationalize since water can pick up garbage as it falls due to that nature thing that happens  - but then they also have to donate $750,000 to the two groups that filed the lawsuit.  How is that helping the environment?  It isn't, but it keeps those environmental corporations in business so they can hire more lawyers to raise more money.
A Personal Victory

A Personal Victory

May 02 2012 | comment(s)

Chess is a game, a sport, and a very radical way to test one's concentration and discipline in pure thought. Besides liking it as a game (a precondition to enjoy the other benefits), I also enjoy immensely the demands that a chess game puts on your brain's functioning; and this is brought to the extreme during a chess tournament, where you are also subject to pressure from competition factors extraneous to the 64 squares where the battles develop.
Fluoride Safe? Don't Swallow, says fluoride expert

Fluoride Safe? Don't Swallow, says fluoride expert

May 02 2012 | comment(s)

“What really determines whether fluoride is safe, is the amount that is swallowed,” says Amid I. Ismail, BDS, MPH, MBA, DrPH, and Dean, Temple University, School of Dentistry in Dear Doctor Magazine. (1)
 
Poison In Ground Water Posing Health Threats

Poison In Ground Water Posing Health Threats

May 02 2012 | comment(s)

I wrote some time back of bad quality water causing soil damage. Hinduatan Times (02.05.2012 confirms the same with findings placed at highest level.

Ground water pockets in 158 out of 639 districts have gone saline. I may add at this point that as we go deeper in drilling in soil crusts we encounter exposed rocks which add salinity and heavy metals to ground water. Moreover, in Nagaur district of Rajasthan two wells dug at close distances of 100 m can show good or bad quality water.

In 267 districts, ground water contains excess of fluoride, in 385 nitrates. 53 districts show arsenic and 63 districts contain heavy metals such as lead , chromium and cadmium. East Delhi water contains chromium.
Lincoln Was An Atheist

Lincoln Was An Atheist

May 02 2012 | comment(s)

Unless he gets hit by a bus, Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee and be given the opportunity to lose in the election this fall.
Should Science Subsidize Basket Weaving?

Should Science Subsidize Basket Weaving?

May 01 2012 | comment(s)

Two decades after colleges got politicians to declare a college education a 'right' (fuzzy correlation/causation statistics showing a college education meant higher lifetime earnings made that part easy), schools that have put up lots of new buildings and had the culture turn on them due to bits of high-profile chicanery like charging $89,000 for a two-year program in "environmental journalism", are fighting back the same way government fights back when they overspend and the public doesn't want to pay more in taxes to cover it; they start trotting out high-profile sacrificial lambs.
NDRC Hydrologist Comments On Pavillion, Wyoming Well Contamination

NDRC Hydrologist Comments On Pavillion, Wyoming Well Contamination

May 01 2012 | comment(s)

The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wyoming Outdoor Council, Sierra Club and the Oil and Gas Accountability Project commissioned hydrologist Dr. Tom Myers to review the EPA’s draft statement on well contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, and are submitting his work to the EPA as technical comments. 

The EPA draft is available for public comment through October 2012 and then the data and conclusions will undergo the peer-review process with a panel of independent scientists.
Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore:

Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore: "The only good Kraut is a dead Kraut"

May 01 2012 | comment(s)

Are there any Nazis still left living? If so, British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore is not a fan.

To mark the 55th anniversary of his astronomy TV show "The Sky At Night", Moore let an interviewer know what he really thinks about Britain's old enemy (and, ironically, the heritage of their current monarch), decades after his fiancée was killed by a Nazi bomb.
Samarium-146 Half-Life 30 Percent Shorter So How Long Did It Take Our Solar System To Form?

Samarium-146 Half-Life 30 Percent Shorter So How Long Did It Take Our Solar System To Form?

May 01 2012 | comment(s)

Our solar system is believed to be around 4.5 billion years old, but it's difficult to know how long it actually took to form.  

The reason is, basically, our 'clocks'.  

Establishing chronologies of past events or determining ages of objects require having clocks that 'tick' at different paces - nuclear clocks used for dating are based on the rate of decay of an atomic nucleus expressed by a half-life, which is the time it takes for half of a number of nuclei to decay, a property of each nuclear species. Radiocarbon dating is the most famous. It was invented in Chicago in the late 1940s and can date artifacts back to prehistoric times because the half-life of radiocarbon (carbon-14) is a few thousand years. 
RETRACTED: It's a bug of general relativity

RETRACTED: It's a bug of general relativity

May 01 2012 | comment(s)

[Retracted: In this blog I hope to get to a well known issue in general relativity, namely that gravitational energy needs to be defined for a spacetime volume instead of at a point.]  The [new] goal is to sketch the Riemann curvature tensor...