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Created: A Prosthetic Device For Decision-Making

Created: A Prosthetic Device For Decision-Making

Sep 14 2012 | comment(s)

Is your decision-making suspect?  Do you continually date strippers or bad boys who are 'getting their band together' and wish you could instead replace your own judgment with a prosthesis?

Maybe one day.  Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have created a prosthetic device which is capable of restoring decision-making due to reduced capacity due from brain disease or injury - in non-human primates, anyway.
Facial Morphology: Face Genes Identified

Facial Morphology: Face Genes Identified

Sep 13 2012 | comment(s)

Variation in facial shape is an easy way to explain phenotypes in humans to people who don't understand biology all that well. Monozygotic twins have almost identical faces and siblings usually have more similar faces than unrelated people, implying our facial morphology is under genetic regulation - but still little has been known about the genetic basis of normal human facial morphology. 
Beef Products Inc. Sues ABC News For $1.2 Billion Over Pink Slime

Beef Products Inc. Sues ABC News For $1.2 Billion Over Pink Slime

Sep 13 2012 | comment(s)

Beef Products Inc.(BPI) has had enough, it seems.  A lawsuit filed in a South Dakota state court 
 goes after ABC News, Inc. for defamation over its"pink slime" coverage, claiming the network damaged the company by misleading consumers into believing it is unhealthy and unsafe.

They are also going after ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer and the Departure of Agriculture microbiologist who coined the term "pink slime", claiming about 200 "false and misleading and defamatory" statements about their lean, finely textured beef.
Why A More Conservative Approach Would Fix Science Education

Why A More Conservative Approach Would Fix Science Education

Sep 13 2012 | comment(s)

In a recent ScienceDebate questionnaire response, speechwriters for Candidate Mitt Romney tried to distinguish themselves from speechwriters for President Obama on education(1), and then proceeded to say the exact same thing Candidate Obama said in 2008 about education - that the union system of protecting the teachers who have been around the longest rather than rewarding the ones who are the best is a big mistake.
 
Great News! Evolution Is Even More Interesting Than We Thought

Great News! Evolution Is Even More Interesting Than We Thought

Sep 13 2012 | comment(s)

Did you know evolution was 'in crisis?' Neither did I, but Jason Rosenhouse at Scienceblogs is on the case, this time debunking a somewhat sing-songy phrase by philosopher of science John Dupre.
Read Food Labels, Lose Weight

Read Food Labels, Lose Weight

Sep 13 2012 | comment(s)

Here is a diet plan that requires no special meal purchases or even exercise, it just requires a willingness to believe that correlation-causation arrows fly backwards.  People, especially women, who read food labels are thinner.

The results of surveys on the relationship between reading food labels and obesity indicated that the body mass index of those consumers who read the label is 1.49 points lower than those who don't read food labels when shopping for food. This translates as a reduction of almost 9 lbs. for an American woman 5 feet 3 inches tall weighing 163 lbs - already obese.
Open Letter To Bostrom And NASA's Richard Terrile: Evolution Wrong, Fossils Planted?

Open Letter To Bostrom And NASA's Richard Terrile: Evolution Wrong, Fossils Planted?

Sep 13 2012 | comment(s)

The idea that we are inside a simulation is true anyway (if we define “simulation” as being described as emergent from a computational substrate). Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford University’s 'Future of Humanity Institute', and others became famous with such more than 2000 years old ideas warmed up in fashionably modern lingo, see Simulation Hypothesis on Wikipedia.


The holographic universe: A “simulation” anyway!

Vegetarianism: The Future Of Food For Poor People

Vegetarianism: The Future Of Food For Poor People

Sep 12 2012 | comment(s)

What would the world look like with 7 billion people and no way to scientifically have created better ways of producing food?  

A lot of poor vegetarians, that's what.  And only rich people eating meat.

Organic food corporations love to claim that their process is 'sustainable'. Vegetarians love to claim that meat is both unethical and bad for the planet.  It makes them happy partners ... as long as science is ignored.

Project ENCODE

Project ENCODE

Sep 12 2012 | comment(s)

The publication of the complete human genome sequence in 2007 made the genetic code readily accessible to researchers and served as a platform for the countless advances in science,medicine, and sequencing technology which were to follow.

Following the completion of the human genome project, researchers set out to develop a comprehensive ‘map’ of which genes coded for which gene products, or proteins.This allowed researchers to track how a protein was affected when a gene sequence was altered and the resulting changes within the cell. Subsequently, a number of diseases and disorders were linked to changes-or mutations- within protein coding genes.

The Bones Of Richard III: A Win For Risky Research

The Bones Of Richard III: A Win For Risky Research

Sep 12 2012 | comment(s)

Never in a million years.

That was my first reaction to finding out that the University of Leicester (where I am based) was about to commence an archaeological dig to uncover the bones of Richard III.

But, a press conference this morning has showed be to be totally wrong - or at least, woefully pessimistic. Because, it seems that a team of archeaologists has uncovered some bones that are indeed very likely to have been Richard III's.
My interview at Festivaletteratura

My interview at Festivaletteratura

Sep 12 2012 | comment(s)

At this link you can find the video of an interview I gave for Festivaletteratura Mantova (the literature festival held last week). I discuss science outreach, the media, the discovery of the Higgs boson and its impact on laypersons, and a more technical issue about the origin of mass. Unfortunately the interview is longish and I do not know whether I'll find the stamina to produce a writeup in English for this site. We'll see...


Villa Åkarp: Sustainable Homes That Are Energy Positive

Villa Åkarp: Sustainable Homes That Are Energy Positive

Sep 12 2012 | comment(s)

There are LEED-certified buildings and there are zero-energy buildings. And then there’s Villa Åkarp outside of Malmo, Sweden — an energy-plus residential home. In other words, a home that produces more energy than it uses.

Since construction was completed on the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in 2009, it has raised the bar for what is possible in home construction. Villa Åkarp takes its design cues from the passive house, or Passivhaus, movement, a design program for creating super-insulated houses that rely on window orientation, thermal recovery and other elements for heating and cooling.

But Villa Åkarp ups the ante.
Understand Quantum Disprove Of Realism Wearing Cool Shades

Understand Quantum Disprove Of Realism Wearing Cool Shades

Sep 12 2012 | comment(s)

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) famously offers $1000000 to anyone who can demonstrate paranormal abilities.  Its has helped to stem the spread of pseudoscience.  The Quantum Randi Challenge is quite similar (although its main purpose for you personally is to teach you quantum mechanics intuitively):  The large reward it offers is instant fame.  Whoever overcomes the challenge would deserve a Nobel Prize in physics!  But the Quantum Randi Challenge does not depend on a foundation that is

Supercomputer Built From Lego Blocks And Raspberry Pi ARM Boxes

Supercomputer Built From Lego Blocks And Raspberry Pi ARM Boxes

Sep 12 2012 | comment(s)

How cheaply can you build a supercomputer?  A group from the University of Southampton just made one using 64 Raspberry Pi ARM GNU/Linux boxes ($25 each) and Lego blocks. The machine, named "Iridis-Pi" after the University's Iridis supercomputer, runs off a single 13 Amp mains socket and uses MPI (Message Passing Interface) to communicate between nodes using Ethernet.

The team was led by Professor Simon Cox and included Richard Boardman, Andy Everett, Steven Johnston, Gereon Kaiping, Neil O'Brien, Mark Scott and Oz Parchment.  Professor Cox's son, six-year-old James Cox, assisted with specialist support on Lego and system testing.
Citizen Scientist Finds World’s Smallest Fossil Footprints In Nova Scotia

Citizen Scientist Finds World’s Smallest Fossil Footprints In Nova Scotia

Sep 11 2012 | comment(s)

A set of fossil footprints in Joggins, Nova Scotia have been identified as the world’s smallest - among vertebrates to-date, anyway.

The footprints were found at Joggins Fossil Cliffs. A fossil specimen of the ichnogenus Batrachichnus salamandroides was collected by local amateur paleontologist Gloria Melanson, daughter of Don Reid, the famed Keeper of the Joggins Cliffs, while walking the Joggins beach. Joggins Fossil Cliffs is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"Sherman’s March against the misguided, idiotic, anti-science thinking that plagues too many progressives"

Sep 11 2012 | comment(s)

Science Left Behind is out tomorrow and there is no question it will be fighting an uphill battle in the science community.  Obviously a book that makes fun of anti-science progressives isn't going to be for progressives and it isn't for Republicans during election season, since Democrats get scant mention.
Why Quarks Come In Three Colours And Have Fractional Charge

Why Quarks Come In Three Colours And Have Fractional Charge

Sep 11 2012 | comment(s)

It sometimes happens that my comments in the threads of my own blog get long and detailed (do not take this as me boasting about anything - it is just a fact). When that happens, I reason that they deserve to be promoted to a post by themselves, because threads are read by way fewer readers, and some of them might thus lose some interesting bit.

Because of the above I am (re)posting the text below, which explains some "a priori" reasons why quarks come with fractional electric charges in multiples of one third, why the sum of charges of fermions in one family nullify, and why our universe chose to have quarks of three colours. Beware, some non-trivial concepts of quantum field theory are needed, but I will try to make this as painless as possible (but not more).
Western Scrub-Jays Eulogize Their Dead

Western Scrub-Jays Eulogize Their Dead

Sep 11 2012 | comment(s)

When Western scrub jays summon others to screech over the body of a dead jay, they come a'runnin', and those 'funerals' can last for up to half an hour.

But why? Western scrub jays live in breeding pairs and are not particularly social birds. “They’re really territorial and not at all friendly with other scrub-jays,”  said Teresa Iglesias, a U.C. Davis graduate student and co-author of a new study in Animal Behaviour. It turns out that death seems to signify danger, which opens up an even odder set of questions.
Science Of Sheryl Crow: Cell Phones Cause Cancer But Organic Food Prevents It

Science Of Sheryl Crow: Cell Phones Cause Cancer But Organic Food Prevents It

Sep 10 2012 | comment(s)

Progressives love to get celebrity endorsements for their beliefs, and for good reason; while the right is stuck with Clint Eastwood wandering around unintelligibly - and he disagrees with about half their platform - the other side's famous true believers are all thin and pretty and stay on message. No independent thinking like Dirty Harry and if you have a crackpot, anti-science belief, some left-wing celebrity does too.