Featured Articles

Why Scientists Should Blog (Redux)

Why Scientists Should Blog (Redux)

Nov 25 2010 | comment(s)

Why scientists should blog is not a new topic to Science 2.0.   In a way, I think we pioneered science blogging(1) because, prior to us, the only science bloggers with any real audience mostly wrote about politics and religion and last year I chaired a panel on science outreach with two columnists here and Mike Eisen, co-founder of PLoS, and Eugenie Scott, founder of the National Center for Science Education and blogging was a key topic on how scientists should increase engagement.
Extraordinary Measures To Fight Cancer

Extraordinary Measures To Fight Cancer

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)

“Extraordinary measures” is a heart-wrenching movie about a parent’s quest to save the lives of two dying children with Pompe disease. Starring Brandon Fraser (John Crowley) as the venture capitalist fathering the two children, and Harrison Ford (Robert Stonehill) as the aloof researcher with the science to curing Pompe, the story beautifully illustrates the many difficulties and challenges behind transforming basic science into a usable drug. 
High cholesterol diet produces brain damage in rats

High cholesterol diet produces brain damage in rats

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)

Eating a high cholesterol diet is not going to harm your brain but eating a chronic high cholesterol diet can, according to researchers from the Laboratory of Psychiatry and Experimental Alzheimers Research at the Medical University Innsbruck in the journal Molecular Cellular Neuroscience.

Like many things, it can even be implicated in Alzheimer's.    
The impact of 9/11 on American character

The impact of 9/11 on American character

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)

Let's have some fun and pick apart a paper (try saying "pick apart a paper" 10 times fast!)

The question is, did the 9/11 terrorist attacks impact the character of Americans?  I mean that personally not just in political attitudes towards this or that.  It's a tough question to answer empirically.  

An Engineer and a soar point with Pterosaurs

An Engineer and a soar point with Pterosaurs

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)





Colin Palmer, an engineer engaged in research on the aerodynamics of pterosaurs at the University of Bristol, has shown that the creatures were predominantly adapted to slow speed flight; too slow and flexible to use, or survive in, the stormy winds of some oceans, such as the albatross does in the southern oceans

Pterosaur wings had variable geometry and that, combined with their slow flight enabled them to land very gently, reducing the chance of damage to their thin bones. This goes a long way to explaining how pterosaurs became the largest flying creatures ever known, with a wingspan up to 10m across.
Field Of View: Why The Same Face May Look Male Or Female

Field Of View: Why The Same Face May Look Male Or Female

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)

Neuroscientists have discovered that the brain sees some faces as male when they appear in one area of a person's field of view, but female when they appear in a different location, a finding which challenges the longstanding tenet of neuroscience that how the brain sees an object should not depend on where the object is located relative to the observer.

In the real world, the brain's inconsistency in assigning gender to faces isn't noticeable because there are so many other clues, like hair and clothing, but when people view computer-generated faces, stripped of all other gender-identifying features, a pattern of biases based on location of the face emerges.
Making A Personalized Colorectal Cancer Vaccine - From The Patient's Tumor

Making A Personalized Colorectal Cancer Vaccine - From The Patient's Tumor

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)

Researchers have hit on a new way to create a personalized vaccine - an immune response against their own tumors using the tumor itself. This dendritic cell (DC) vaccine was used after surgical resection of metastatic tumors to try to prevent the growth of additional metastases. 

Dendritic cells are critical to the human body's immune system, helping identify targets, or antigens, and then stimulating the immune system to react against those antigens. The new research grew dendritic cells from a sample of a patient's blood, mixed them with proteins from the patient's tumor, and then injected the mixture into the patient as a vaccine. The vaccine then stimulated an anti-tumor response from T-cells, a kind of white blood cell that protects the body from disease.
A Predictive Model For Coffee Ring Stains

A Predictive Model For Coffee Ring Stains

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)

We don't know about yours but this holiday season, the homes of most scientists will be awash with even more coffee than usual. And that means coffee ring stains.

With the volume of science done in coffee houses (like Newton, who ate his meals in one every day) you'd think that anything about coffee, including coffee rings left behind from spillage, would be studied to death.

Not really.   In 1997, Robert Deegan and colleagues showed that the coffee ring pattern was due to capillary flow induced by the differential evaporation rates across the drop (1) but since then little has been done.    Sometimes science is practical instead of informational and 'just use a coaster' is enough.
OGLE-LMC-CEP0227: Classical Cepheid Variables Mystery Solved?

OGLE-LMC-CEP0227: Classical Cepheid Variables Mystery Solved?

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)

Classical Cepheid Variables, commonly called Cepheids, are unstable stars larger and much brighter than the Sun which expand and contract in a regular way, taking anything from a few days to months to complete the cycle and the time taken to brighten and grow fainter again is longer for stars that are more luminous and shorter for the dimmer ones.

This remarkably precise relationship makes the study of Cepheids one of the most effective ways to measure the distances to nearby galaxies and from there to map out the scale of the whole Universe.
Citizen Science and the Age of Knowledge Generosity

Citizen Science and the Age of Knowledge Generosity

Nov 24 2010 | comment(s)

On the eve of Thanksgiving, we tend to start our annual pondering about how we might give more to our friends and family, and maybe even to the world. Citizen scientists--whether they consciously realize it or not--are behaving in a uniquely giving mood with every bird they count, PC time they donate, comet they spot, or galaxy structure they visually identify (among so many more important activities!). The efforts of citizen scientists are a pure form of generosity through the free distribution of knowledge.

TSA Body Scanner Nonsense

TSA Body Scanner Nonsense

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

OK, I've had just about enough of the stupid statistics being put out by the FDA regarding full body scanners at airports. I'm not sure why everyone is behaving as if such a scan is a singular event in a year.  One hears about how such a small dose compares against the annual safe dosage and yet does it occur to no one that many people fly more than once per year?
Alan Turing's ArtificiaI Intelligence papers fail to sell

Alan Turing's ArtificiaI Intelligence papers fail to sell

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

As a young guy, one of the most fascinating aspects of World War II to me was the breaking of the Enigma Code.  

Codebreaker Alan Turing created the machine at Bletchley Park in 1939 and it truly swung the tide, allowing an English military inferior in every way to best the Nazi war machine time and again.   Recently, his papers, including his pioneering work on artificial intelligence and the foundations of the digital computer, were up for auction but failed to meet the minimum price at Christie's today - 300,000 British pounds.
Calculating Needed Thanksgiving Effort

Calculating Needed Thanksgiving Effort

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

Last week while baking muffins with my son's preschool class, I set fire to the school. Okay, technically I didn't set it on fire—it was only butter smoke from the tin that set off the alarm, necessitating the entire school of a couple hundred kids filing out to the basketball courts while the fire department arrived en mass.

Anyway, after the holiday break my wife will be back for Wednesday cooking and I don't imagine Thanksgiving will be NEARLY so exciting. Besides, Leif was line leader that day, and he was really, very proud to lead the class evacuation.

The Biggest And Smallest Satellites

The Biggest And Smallest Satellites

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

The Nov 22 launch of the heaviest satellite known has everyone a twitter.   A Delta IV Heavy booster out of Kennedy put up NROL-32, a "classified spy satellite cargo for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office".
Pezoporus Flaviventris - New Species Of Ground Parrot Discovered

Pezoporus Flaviventris - New Species Of Ground Parrot Discovered

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

It used to be that broader understanding of zoology meant intuitively that new species would be harder to find and so it followed that there would be fewer of them when found - that is the nature of rarity.

Now, because newer species are so rare, it is fashionable to label them nearly extinct even though they have just been discovered and so may not have been prolific any time in recent memory, or at all.  It can be a little numbing to the general audience. - when everything is rare, nothing is (see special snowflake).
The Business Of Science

The Business Of Science

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

I think there is something deeply wrong with our view of science. The word itself, Science (with a capital "S"), sits alongside other monoliths such as Religion, Art, Music, Literature, Politics and so forth that require constant defining just to ensure we're talking about the same thing. The problem with science is that we are taught a myth... and then complain when the myth is incommensurate with reality.
In Space And Climate Science, Agency Collaborations Don't Work Well

In Space And Climate Science, Agency Collaborations Don't Work Well

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

On paper, collaborations seem like a good idea because the costs for one agency or country are lower.  In reality, says a new analysis by the National Research Council, federal agencies should not partner in conducting space and earth science missions unless there is a truly compelling reason to do so and clear criteria are met in advance.
People Behave Badly When It's Easy

People Behave Badly When It's Easy

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

If you were a young person watching "The Empire Strikes Back" and saw Darth Vader clearly being more powerful than everyone else yet not being all that evil - and with Yoda telling Luke how much easier the 'dark side of the force' was, you may have wondered why more people didn't choose it.   Behaving badly required less effort and had no obvious repercussions; Han Solo was going to get the girl anyway and she turns out to be your sister.
Weiss Domains Shown For First Time In 3-D

Weiss Domains Shown For First Time In 3-D

Nov 23 2010 | comment(s)

Every magnetic material is divided into magnetic domains, called "Weiss domains" after physicist Pierre-Ernest Weiss, who predicted their existence theoretically more than a hundred years ago. In 1907, he recognized that the magnetic moments of atoms within a bounded domain are equally aligned.