Featured Articles

Combined Higgs Search Limits, Circa 2011

Combined Higgs Search Limits, Circa 2011

Jul 24 2011 | comment(s)

In the last few days I described in some detail (here and here) the six searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson just produced by CMS, the experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider to which I proudly belong.
Hiccups And Ever-Expanding Comfort Zones: Coping Adaptively

Hiccups And Ever-Expanding Comfort Zones: Coping Adaptively

Jul 24 2011 | comment(s)

You know how you'll be swimming along (metaphorically), going, well geez, things are going pretty well, knock on wood? And then, bamm! You say those words, even invoking superstitious protections, and you're hit with anecdotal evidence that you spoke too soon?

I'm just saying, it seemingly never fails to happen. Of course, that might be more to do with the reality that life is constantly on an up and down roller coaster ride of events and when we're in a high or in a low, it can be hard to see that it's been something else and will be again.
Ceci N'est Pas Un Calmar

Ceci N'est Pas Un Calmar

Jul 24 2011 | comment(s)

There's a giant ceramic squid in a New York art gallery.
Walking into the gallery, you encounter the 16-foot-long, beached creature, its opalescent, slick-looking flesh seeming to putrefy, lying in a puddle of its own ink. You expect its tentacles to quiver in a final death-throe.
Despite the distraction of seeing the singular form of "throe" for the first time in my life, that's still a pretty striking image.
From Big Bang To Cosmic Crackerpack

From Big Bang To Cosmic Crackerpack

Jul 24 2011 | comment(s)

Equations don't sell. Pop science editors tell us that each equation added to a book halves its sales figure. If this is true, Sir Roger Penrose's Cycles of Time, which was recently released in the US, and which I can testify sold at least one copy, would have sold by the billions if only the editor would have scrapped half of the equations.
Why The Space Shuttle Was A Failure

Why The Space Shuttle Was A Failure

Jul 24 2011 | comment(s)

Under 5 launches per year instead of the 65 launches per year NASA projected. $450 million per shuttle launch instead of $50 million NASA projected. A risk of catastrophic failure of 1 in 100 instead of the 1 in 100,000 NASA projected and an actual failure rate of 2 out of 135. The space shuttle era is over and it was an unquestioned failure. Finally, with its passing, at least a few science writers have stopped being science cheerleaders and are echoing what I have said for a decade plus - the shuttle was a glorified delivery truck that had no value at all in advancing science, and the money could have been used better on real science projects.
BIOTECHNOLOGICAL IMPROVEMENT OF NEEM

BIOTECHNOLOGICAL IMPROVEMENT OF NEEM

Jul 23 2011 | comment(s)

BIOTECHNOLOGICAL IMPROVEMENT OF NEEM Priyanka Srivastavaa, Mithilesh Singha and Rakhi Chaturvedi*a *aDepartment of Biotechnology Indian Institute of Technology- Guwahati Guwahati - 781039, Assam, India *Corresponding Author *Department of Biotechnology Indian Institute of Technology- Guwahati Guwahati - 781039, Assam, India Tel: +91-361-2582211 (off)/ 2584211 (res) Fax: +91-361- 2582249; 2690762 Email: rakhi_chaturvedi@iitg.ernet.in rakhi_chaturvedi@yahoo.co.uk 2 BIOTECHNOLOGICAL IMPROVEMENT OF NEEM ABSTRACT Azadirachta indica A. Juss or Neem (Meliaceae) is a versatile tropical, evergreen tree,which has attained worldwide prominence in recent years due to its therapeutic and insecticidal properties.
Biofortification

Biofortification

Jul 23 2011 | comment(s)

More than half of the world’s population, especially women and preschool children are victim of micronutrient malnutrition, primarily resulting from the consumption of diets with lower bio-available vitamins and mineral. The costs of these deficiencies in terms of lives lost and poor quality of life are shocking. To achieve the Millennium Development Goal of slashing-half the proportion of undernourished people by 2015, new technologies and approaches are needed to help address the problems. Plant breeders may tackle these problems by producing staple foods with improved bio-available minerals and vitamins, a process referred as “biofortification”.
Maybe We Need A Geopolitical Rumspringa

Maybe We Need A Geopolitical Rumspringa

Jul 23 2011 | comment(s)

Norway just had a tragedy - the kind of random violence that social scientists, who we all wish would take a holiday during horrific events, will try and find correlation and causation for, like he was right wing or he was left wing or he was angry about farm prices or a video game store didn't having something he wanted or even that he didn't get enough sex, once evolutionary psychologists dive in.
 
One More Higgs Search: H To Four Leptons

One More Higgs Search: H To Four Leptons

Jul 23 2011 | comment(s)

In my short summary of analyses recently published by CMS, yesterday I left out one which had not yet been released. It is the search for the "golden channel" of Higgs decay, the one which motivated the construction of detectors with large acceptance to energetic leptons: the decay to two Z bosons, with a subsequent decay of the Z's to two charged leptons each.
Exquisite Machines

Exquisite Machines

Jul 23 2011 | comment(s)

The synthesis of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and biology, pursued in fits and starts over the years by an eccentric cast of thinkers, has produced a few scientific red herrings, but the overall idea has expanded our biophysical horizons.  I'll summarize what I've come to understand about the development of biological thermodynamics and its implications, while trying to skirt the rabbit holes.
Theology of Molluscs?

Theology of Molluscs?

Jul 23 2011 | comment(s)

Molluscs are Marvellous! — as regular readers of “Squid-a-Day” will know.

The recent presentation there of Celebrate Squid Babies brought to mind the following, from Darwin’s notebooks:

How far grander than idea from cramped imagination … that since the time of the Silurian, he has made a long succession of vile Molluscous animals — How beneath the dignity of him,  …. whom it has been declared "he said let there be light&there was light."

That has prompted some theological thoughts, but first a zoological one.
PLANT TISSUE CULTURE AND APPLIED PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY

PLANT TISSUE CULTURE AND APPLIED PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY

Jul 23 2011 | comment(s)

PLANT TISSUE CULTURE AND APPLIED PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY A Kumar and S Roy Plant biotechnology, especially genetic transformation, represents one of powerful tools for the improvement of various important crops through introduction of foreign genes into the plant genome. The present book aims at bringing out concise account of applications of plant biotechnology and role of plant tissue culture in it. The book has 4 sections. The first section deals with recent developments in use of Agrobacterium mediated gene transfer in some of the recalcitrant plant species like Mulberry, Oil palm, Cork oak and Neem using plant tissue culture. Two candidate genes have the potential to control plant height from the oil palm ESTs database.
Nantes, France in October 2011 for Astronomy Congress Anyone?

Nantes, France in October 2011 for Astronomy Congress Anyone?

Jul 23 2011 | comment(s)

Today I received the news release that the first joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Sciences (EPSC-DPS) of the American Astronomical Society 2011 will be held October 2 to 7 in Nantes, France, at La Cité Internationale des Congrès Nantes Métropole.

This program, which will cover diverse planetary topics, is being organized and supported by the European Geosciences Union and the Université de Nantes. Over 1700 abstracts for presentations have been submitted, so far.
Arctic Ice July 2011 - Update

Arctic Ice July 2011 - Update

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

Arctic Ice July 2011 - Update

Are we headed for another 2007 style crash ?

In my Arctic Ice March 2011 - Update #1,  I gave these figures for September minimum -
an extent below 4 million km2 is highly probable.
an extent below 3 million km2 is entirely possible if Arctic weather continues to follow the overall trends of the last decade.
In April I revised that, based on some projections from IARC - IJIS figures to -
I project an end of season extent range between 3.9 million km2 and 4.5 million km2.
15 Organic Foods That Are An Even Bigger Scam Than Most Organic Foods

15 Organic Foods That Are An Even Bigger Scam Than Most Organic Foods

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

Finally, someone outside science has caught on to this 'organic food is better' nonsense.   It isn't nutritionally any different, it isn't structurally any different, it is just marketing - they pay a fee and fill out paperwork.  Small farmers that actually are completely 'organic' in their methods, with no pesticides (including organic ones that will kill you just the same, like strychnine and ricin) can't actually afford the fee to be labeled organic.
APM 08279+5255 - The Largest Water Mass In The Universe (So Far)

APM 08279+5255 - The Largest Water Mass In The Universe (So Far)

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

Astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe in a quasar called APM 08279+5255 - enough water to fill Earth's oceans more than 100 trillion times.

The distant quasar is one of the most powerful known objects in the universe and has an energy output of 1,000 trillion suns, about 65,000 times that of our Milky Way galaxy. The power of APM 08279+5255 comes from matter spiraling into the quasar's central supermassive black hole, estimated at some 20 billion times the mass of our sun. 
1799: Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster And The First Global Warming Debate

1799: Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster And The First Global Warming Debate

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

As I wrote in Like Freedom? Thank A Scientist - How Science Made America Possible, during the meetings of the the Continental Congress during independence discussions, Thomas Jefferson noted the temperature on four separate occasions.  Jefferson, like many others present, was a citizen scientist long before there was government funding for it.   The same climate of liberalism (liberals, not busybody progressives, as I have stated too many times to count) that makes science flourish made democracy possible.
The Scientific Method

The Scientific Method

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

The Scientific Method


    While I was working hard on my translation of the memoire of the illustrious Ignaz Venetz, I found that the need to indulge in some hermeneutic and other studies had me nicely side-tracked on more than one occasion.   In order to know what an author meant by his words of 1821, one must see how those words were used by his or her contemporaries.
Worm Versus Meatball

Worm Versus Meatball

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

Antonio Carusone, describing himself as "a little obsessed with finding vintage design materials", has a look at NASA Graphic designs, circa 1970s.  Specifically, he hunted up this 1976 NASA Graphics Standards Manual.  Amidst the glories of clean modern design is the famous NASA 'worm' logo, which in 1992 was replaced by the somewhat controversial NASA 'meatball'.
Five New Higgs Searches By CMS!

Five New Higgs Searches By CMS!

Jul 22 2011 | comment(s)

An orgy of new results has started. Let me just show a few of them concerning Higgs searches in CMS - I am on vacation after all, and I have little time left to comment these interesting new papers and plots after all the sunbathing and restaurants.

Let us start with the Higgs search in the diphoton decay mode by CMS (paper here). With 1.09 inverse femtobarns of data, CMS has a pretty good reach even to this very rare decay mode of the Higgs boson. Let me remind you that only a handful every thousand Higgs particles decay into two photons, in the most favourable circumstances.