Featured Articles

Wikipedia’s Women Woes

Wikipedia’s Women Woes

Jul 16 2012 | comment(s)

Last year I wrote about somewhat silly claims that Wikipedia must be sexist because it had poor female representation. Wikipedia is an open, voluntary community, I argued, some people are just not going to do it.
Wheat That Needs No Fertilizer - Gates Foundation Bets Big On GMOs

Wheat That Needs No Fertilizer - Gates Foundation Bets Big On GMOs

Jul 16 2012 | comment(s)

New work at the John Innes Centre in Norwich is hoped to benefit African farmers who cannot afford fertilizer.

Fertilizer is essential, it has made it possible to feed billions, but it brings pollution and farmers in poor countries who can't afford seed and lots of fertilizer might be able to afford seed that needs no chemicals to turn into food.
Unilateral Dermatoheliosis - 28 Years Of Photoaging Due To Sun Exposure

Unilateral Dermatoheliosis - 28 Years Of Photoaging Due To Sun Exposure

Jul 16 2012 | comment(s)

Think too much of ol' Sol won't age you prematurely?

Here's an unintentional science experiment on the effects of sun exposure.  It's like a before and after picture, except it's the same face. 

A 69-year-old man showed a 25-year history of gradual, asymptomatic thickening and wrinkling of the skin on the left side of his face, the authors in NEJM write.  The circumstances were about three decades of truck driving where one side of his face got a lot more sun exposure. 
20,000 Year Old Pottery Discovered In Chinese Cave

20,000 Year Old Pottery Discovered In Chinese Cave

Jul 16 2012 | comment(s)

The date for domesticated kitchenware has just gotten pushed back. 

While it was believed that pottery dated back to 10,000 years ago, when humans changed from being hunter-gathers to farmers, the new archaeological findings push pottery well into the last Ice Age.  Archeology may have brought a new anthropology puzzle, like why in Asia pottery is so far out of sync with agriculture.

The fragments were discovered in the Xianrendong cave in south China's Jiangxi province. The team was able to determine the sediments in the cave were accumulated gradually, without disruption that might have altered the time sequence, so their radiocarbon dating is accurate, they believe.
Eugenics - Coming To A Rich Country Near You

Eugenics - Coming To A Rich Country Near You

Jul 16 2012 | comment(s)

Eugenics, the darling of elite, educated progressives 100 years ago in their quest to create Utopia, has been out of favor since those crazy Germans took it too far in the late 1930s, but there is one sound reason it found favor; why wouldn't we eliminate serious diseases beforehand instead of treating them after? 
Food Fear, Food Labels, And My Two Cents

Food Fear, Food Labels, And My Two Cents

Jul 15 2012 | comment(s)

If you want to scare somebody, convince them that there is a remote chance of danger in their food, water or medicine. Even if there is no evidence to back up the claim, people respond strongly to such information, causing them to abandon safe foods for alternatives. Today this fear factor is being played to influence food policy and politics, as activists realize they can change consumption with distortions of truth and perpetuation of food phobias and food anxiety. Because it works like a charm.

The Red Scare of 1976
Love Thy Neighbor Applies, Even When There's Money At Stake

Love Thy Neighbor Applies, Even When There's Money At Stake

Jul 15 2012 | comment(s)

Most people do not want war in their backyard.  In geopolitics, people claim to love their neighbor but they still prepare to fight; Switzerland, the home of neutrality, still has hundreds of forts built into their mountains and young men are required to own a gun(1). 
Figuring Out The Mind Of The Psychopath - Or Not

Figuring Out The Mind Of The Psychopath - Or Not

Jul 15 2012 | comment(s)

Are psychopaths made in a certain way and unable to change?

Perhaps, says Aina Gullhaugen, a psychologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, but there is a discrepancy between the formal characteristics of psychopathy and what she has experienced in meeting psychopaths - which is kind of like saying Stalin was not a psychopath if she had met him and he seemed different than what the DSM describes.
Blind Man’s Cane Sees DNA Double Helix

Blind Man’s Cane Sees DNA Double Helix

Jul 14 2012 | comment(s)

This is an almost verbatim copy of a press release from the London Centre for nanotechnology.

When Watson, Crick and Wilkins discovered the DNA double helix nearly sixty years ago, they based their structure on an X-ray diffraction image (courtesy of Franklin) averaged over millions of DNA molecules (derived from squid sperm, I understand). Though the double helix has become iconic for our molecular-scale understanding of life, thus far no-one has ever “seen” the double helix of an individual double-stranded DNA in its natural environment, i.e, salty water.
Uncanny Valley: Creepiness Gets Some Neuroscience

Uncanny Valley: Creepiness Gets Some Neuroscience

Jul 14 2012 | comment(s)

Why do clowns freak us out?  And why are robots cute until they look too much like people, and then then they creep us out?

It's our old friend the Uncanny Valley and it basically postulates that the more realistic something gets to a human likeness, the more repulsive it is.  I don't mean like realistic special effects as in "Wrath Of The Titans" - that giant, flaming lava hand of Chronos looks cool - but rather likeness when it comes to humanoids, be they zombies or robots.  
Bio-fuels and Climate Change Mitigation

Bio-fuels and Climate Change Mitigation

Jul 14 2012 | comment(s)

Global climate change has stimulated efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Photosynthetic organisms use solar energy to generate reducing equivalents and incorporate atmospheric CO2 into organic molecules. Cellular phenotype is a manifestation of gene expression levels, metabolic demand, resource availability, and cellular stresses. The variation in raw material for production of biofuels ranges from hydrocarbon yielding plants, non-edible and edible oil yielding plant, corn ,sugarcane to lingo-cellulosic waste to algal biofuels.  Currently, cellulosic biofuels and algal biodiesels   are prominent biological approaches to sequeste rand convert CO2.
The Quote of the Week: Harrison Prosper, Why We Want To Be Sure

The Quote of the Week: Harrison Prosper, Why We Want To Be Sure

Jul 13 2012 | comment(s)

"Given that the search for the Higgs took some 45 years, tens of thousands of scientists and engineers, billions of dollars, not to mention numerous divorces, huge amounts of sleep deprivation, tens of thousands of bad airline meals, etc., etc., we want to be sure as is humanly possible that this is real."

 Harrison Prosper, Kirby W. Kemper Professor of Physics, Florida State University
3 Reasons We Can Stop Spending $5 Billion To Recruit Scientists

3 Reasons We Can Stop Spending $5 Billion To Recruit Scientists

Jul 13 2012 | comment(s)

Sometimes Science 2.0 has to swim against the stream. The stream, in this case, has been the long-standing irrational belief that America 'needs' more scientists.
Teaching Inorganic Nomenclature(Part 2) to Non-Chemistry Majors: The 5-Step, 5-Cycle Teaching Model

Teaching Inorganic Nomenclature(Part 2) to Non-Chemistry Majors: The 5-Step, 5-Cycle Teaching Model

Jul 13 2012 | comment(s)

According to Grossman and Loeb (2010),“the variation in teacher preparation pathways can propel understanding of how best to prepare teachers.” (p.22). Using this premise, I was able to synthesize the different pathways of actual teaching deliveries by the teachers who are teaching chemistry topics for engineering programs.

Kissing In Amsterdam

Kissing In Amsterdam

Jul 13 2012 | comment(s)

“…what happens if a person who prefers to kiss with the head turned to the right attempts to kiss a person who prefers to kiss with the head turned to the left.“?

This potentially awkward social situation is the subject of a new scientific analysis from researchers at the MOVE Research Institute based at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.

GT3D: Eye Controller May Let Amputees Play Video Games With Their Eyes

GT3D: Eye Controller May Let Amputees Play Video Games With Their Eyes

Jul 13 2012 | comment(s)

If the millions of people suffering who have Multiple Sclerosis or muscular dystrophy could have one wish, it probably wouldn't be that they could use play video games - but until cures can be found, using a computer might make it a little better.  costs less than £40.
Tony Smith: My Two Bets With TD

Tony Smith: My Two Bets With TD

Jul 12 2012 | comment(s)

As I explained yesterday, I am in the process of receiving payment for a few bets on possible discoveries at the LHC. Two such bets were on between me and Tony Smith, a long time reader of this blog and a lawyer with deep interest in particle physics (and a few interesting ideas). Tony now concedes them. These are for a total of $200 and a bottle of Strega (an italian liquor); the latter has been agreed to be turned into a bottle of good wine, much closer to my taste. I will post here a picture of the wine as I get it; in the meantime, Tony agreed to write something to describe the heart of the matter to readers of this blog. So the text below is from him.

LEARNING FROM LOSING
 
Peer Review: The Nuts And Bolts

Peer Review: The Nuts And Bolts

Jul 12 2012 | comment(s)

Sense About Science, the British charitable trust that tries to educate the community on the correct handling of scientific claims, and to "work in partnership with scientific bodies, research publishers, policy makers, the public and the media, to change public discussions about science and evidence", has produced today a very interesting booklet on peer review.
Terror Tactics By The Left

Terror Tactics By The Left

Jul 12 2012 | comment(s)

It's no secret that an alarming number of left-wing people hate science - and scientists.  But why do far-left anarchists really hate science, enough to get violent about it? And why don't the right do anything more than be Freedom of Information Act pests?

Sure, more people on the right than on the left deny evolution, but they aren't shooting evolutionary biologists, we just have to be embarrassed that fringe sectarian zealots in backwater counties try to teach children how God planted fossils as some sort of faith-based head fake. There is no physical danger.

But science is deadly if you get a left-wing group after you.
Higgs or not Higgs, that is the matter!

Higgs or not Higgs, that is the matter!

Jul 12 2012 | comment(s)

Has LHC observed "the" Higgs boson or do we have to deal with something more exotic? After the seminar held on July the 4th at Cern, many online newspapers have published titles reporting the "discovery" of the Higgs boson, better the "god particle", but there are questions whether it is or not the Higgs boson or if we are dealing with a more exotic particle belonging to an unknown physics.