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Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

Dec 09 2011 | comment(s)

Here at Science 2.0, but also elsewhere, a tsunami of articles on the speeding neutrino issue continues to scream for your attention. Their titles often promise a lot of spectacle, yet the truth of the matter is that nothing more than an anomaly has been reported that still is awaiting independent confirmation. A confirmation by another team at a different location, and with distance and timing measurements different from these used at the Gran Sasso experiment.
E-Cigarette Bans? Legitimate, Or The Work Of Cultural Mullahs?

E-Cigarette Bans? Legitimate, Or The Work Of Cultural Mullahs?

Dec 08 2011 | comment(s)

At some point we need to either ban cigarettes or call off the fundamentalist ranting about smokers.  Yes, smoking is bad for you, everyone knows that by now, but having the state of California increase taxes on cigarette smokers - making the state government even more reliant on them - while they use some of that money for anti-smoking campaigns, which means the government now wants to kill the revenue source it is making itself more reliant on, is the kind of thing only...well... progressive government would do.
Bloggers Are A Little Less Under The Constitution?

Bloggers Are A Little Less Under The Constitution?

Dec 08 2011 | comment(s)

Bad news for bloggers; the courts love to protect journalists, even those shysters who use 'anonymous' sources that have directly led to the rash of modern journalists inventing even Pulitzer Prize-winning stories that were made from whole cloth - but bloggers are not under that umbrella.

Uber-progressive Oregon is, no surprise, not on the side of the little guy here and instead went with the most expensive attorney. U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez declared last week that a blogger does not get the same protection as a journalist and so can be sued for defamation.
Females Choose To Hang Out With Sexier Friends?

Females Choose To Hang Out With Sexier Friends?

Dec 08 2011 | comment(s)

A common belief among club-going men is that women choose less attractive friends to make themselves look better. See this clip from that important anthropological documentary "Hall Pass" for context:



Not so, says a group of scientists who have observed the opposite strategy in the Trinidadian guppy, a species of small freshwater fish  - instead, the uglier friends are choosing the prettier females to avoid unwanted male attention. 
Blame Game: When a Parent Kills and Autism is Involved in Some Way

Blame Game: When a Parent Kills and Autism is Involved in Some Way

Dec 08 2011 | comment(s)

More than a year ago, after yet another horrifying story about a parent killing her autistic child, I wrote a post on how scientific research shows that filicide is almost always accompanied by mental illness. 


Childhood Obesity And Parental Responsibility: Not As Easy As Some Would Have It

Childhood Obesity And Parental Responsibility: Not As Easy As Some Would Have It

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

Huffington Post has a piece up on whether parents of obese children are in denial. Of course, the comments are typical for Huff; there are the usual close-minded asses who assume that all obesity is a result of fat parents "sharing the misery" (as one commentator wrote).

Like most things in life, childhood obesity exists for multiple reasons, and judging these parents to be unloving or abusive misses the complex factors that combine to create obesity in individuals.
Chessboxing For Science

Chessboxing For Science

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

What does chessboxing have to do with science? Let me tell you a little story...
It all started last November with this tweet:




There was a Twitter conversation about politics, and I suggested the candidates decide a winner over a chessboxing match. I had heard about chessboxing a few years prior, but didn't give it much thought, other than marvel at how difficult and unlikely a combo sport it was. 
Morning-After Pill OTC For Youngest Girls Rejected

Morning-After Pill OTC For Youngest Girls Rejected

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

Teenagers 16 years old and younger would have been able to get the 'Morning-After' Pill, called Plan B One-Step, under new FDA guidelines. Currently, they can get it, it just requires a prescription and teenagers 17 years and older can get it freely.
Cambrian predator Anomalocaris - 16,000 lenses in a single eye

Cambrian predator Anomalocaris - 16,000 lenses in a single eye

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

Eye evolution is always interesting stuff, as I last discussed regarding Dr. Ivan Schwab's "Evolution's Witness".  

A new finding suggests that the compound eyes evolved right at the origin of this branch of the evolutionary tree, long before the sorts of hard exoskeletons we now consider typical of arthropods.
Cellebrite Doesn't Like WikiLeaks 'Spy Files' Claims

Cellebrite Doesn't Like WikiLeaks 'Spy Files' Claims

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

Cellebrite, a developer and manufacturer of mobile forensic solutions, has rejected claims in the recent WikiLeaks "Spy Files" exposé that it is among companies that develop and supply equipment to governments and dictators "to spy on their citizens via mobile devices and computers." 

 The WikiLeaks page referring to Cellebrite states, "The Spy Files (open) thousands of pages and other materials exposing the global mass surveillance industry."

Yet Another Problem With the Big Bang Hypothesis

Yet Another Problem With the Big Bang Hypothesis

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

New research  by Dr Ashok  K.  Singal suggests that the solar system is hurtling through space at a speed much higher than previously thought. The newly calculated speed might prove that the universe is not uniform on a large scale, as is portrayed by the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), thermal radiation emitted shortly after the Big Bang.
Waiting For December 13th

Waiting For December 13th

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

It is by now public that Rolf Heuer, the Director General of CERN, in announcing for December 13th two back-to-back talks of the CMS and ATLAS experiments on their Higgs search results with 2011 data, warned that the results might not be conclusive yet. Besides, nobody really could expect them to be, since the sensitivity expected by both ATLAS and CMS in the still not excluded region of the Higgs mass, with 5/fb of data per experiment and 7 TeV running conditions, ranges from 2 to 4 standard deviations in the rosiest circumstances.
Climate Change - As If We Care

Climate Change - As If We Care

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

Do we really care about climate change? Since we do very little to reduce or limit activities that we believe we know cause climate change one could argue that we - do - not - in - fact - care.

Come again?!

I can almost hear you say.

At a AGU Town Hall meeting in San Francisco last night a group of engaged scientists discussed "Directions in Climate Change Education and Communication"

In the AGU program this meeting was introduced the following way:
Get Your Own LHC Killer (BYOB)

Get Your Own LHC Killer (BYOB)

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

If on occasions you dream about owning the world's largest particle smasher, I have good news for you. The Superconducting Super Collider is for sale "at a significant discount". However, to stand a chance in beating the LHC in the race for the Higgs, you better act quickly. And uhh... did I tell you the sale is a 'BYOB' (bring your own beam) deal?
Spinops Sternbergorum - Horned Dinosaur Discovery 100 Years In The Making

Spinops Sternbergorum - Horned Dinosaur Discovery 100 Years In The Making

Dec 06 2011 | comment(s)

A new species of horned dinosaur, Spinops sternbergorum, was announced today by an international team of scientists nearly 100 years after the initial discovery of the fossil.
Last Gasp For The UNFCCC And Climate Change Negotiations?

Last Gasp For The UNFCCC And Climate Change Negotiations?

Dec 06 2011 | comment(s)

When rational people give up, all that is left are zealots - that means the conduct of some nations at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) could be a sign reasonable discussion of controlling emissions are out the window.

It has been hoped for years that a meaningful successor to the Kyoto agreement could be in reach soon but it's a little silly to have the world's top CO2 emitter exempt from CO2 emissions cutbacks - not to mention India, Brazil and Mexico, who are also exempt and don't want that to change, since they are much poorer than China and China remains exempt.
When Dreams Haunt: The Inevitability of Loss

When Dreams Haunt: The Inevitability of Loss

Dec 06 2011 | comment(s)

It's a wonder I haven't had these sorts of dreams sooner, when one thinks about it. I started volunteering with hospice in July, and I've had three patients that I volunteered with die in that time. I also call about a dozen different grieving families every week to check on them. I've been to more visitations and funerals in the last six months than I have in the last decade. I will, as a volunteer for hospice, deal with death regularly. And yet I know that I will still be insulated; the full-time staff of nurses, aides, chaplains, and social workers deal with it constantly. It is their livelihood to help people have a dignified and comfortable last few months (or even days).
Spinning the Interaction Story: Spin 1 (1 of 3)

Spinning the Interaction Story: Spin 1 (1 of 3)

Dec 06 2011 | comment(s)

So much action happens with with interaction term of a Lagrangian, it is easy for those not initiated into the refined arts of field theory to skip over issues. In this blog I will dive into the details of a vector current coupling which should indicate why a spin 1 field must be associated with the interaction. The next blog will follow a similar road for a set of symmetric rank 2 tensors that requires a spin 2 field. The final blog examines how charges attract or repel for either spin. Hopefully I will include critical caveats for these subjects. If not, the comments may have a pearl or two worth reading.

Where Am I?

Where Am I?

Dec 06 2011 | comment(s)

I looked at my watch after the English gentleman walked away. The half hour discussion had begun with my question, “Excuse me sir, could you please tell me about places to see in this town?” I had to stop this person and ask him because unlike anyone else my age, I lacked a 3G-enabled phone with maps. Liverpool had just started to feel the right place to walk around and explore.