Lee Hamilton

Update on the "arsenic-based life" controversy

2012-01-31T14:35:00.002-05:00

The Scientist: 'Arsenic-based Life Challenged Again'

Here comes another one

2012-01-30T10:47:00.001-05:00

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Asteroid to make closest approach since 1975

via PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories on 1/30/12

On Tuesday, January 31, asteroid 433 Eros will come closer to Earth than it has in 37 years, traveling across the night sky in the constellations Leo, Sextans and Hydra. At its closest pass of 16.6 million miles (26.7 million km) the relatively bright 21-mile (34-km) -wide asteroid will be visible with even modest backyard telescopes, approaching magnitude 8, possibly even 7. It hasn't come this close since 1975, and won't do so again until 2056!

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Detecting hidden or obscure networks

2012-01-30T10:38:00.001-05:00

This is interesting because of what it can potentially reveal about networks and associations we never knew existed.

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Harnessing the predictive power of virtual communities

via EurekAlert! - Breaking News on 1/29/12

Scientists have created a new algorithm to detect virtual communities, designed to match the needs of real-life social, biological or information networks detection better than with current attempts. The results of this study by Lovro ubelj and his colleague Marko Bajec from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia have just been published in EPJ B.

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Resurrecting the mammoth

2012-01-30T00:34:00.001-05:00

The odds of success seem to be long, but one can always hope. The earth may yet yield more whole DNA samples to work with down the road.

The mammoth experiment

"With scientists attempting to resurrect the woolly mammoth within the next five years, it's time to get familiar with this formidable prehistoric pachyderm..."

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On the feasibility of a Moon base

2012-01-29T10:02:00.000-05:00

The NYT: 'For a Moon Colony, Technology Is the Easy Part'

Close call

2012-01-28T09:33:00.003-05:00

Apparently the Earth had the closest asteroid pass yet recorded yesterday. I don't recall seeing any note of it in my science/astronomy news feeds, but I may have simply missed it. In any case, the National Post covered the story: 'Asteroid 2012 BX34 makes one of the closest passes of Earth in recorded history'

..........................

UPDATED: Okay, it did get widespread coverage, I just wasn't paying attention. I guess it was a busy week. Geek.com , Space.com, BBC News

Film short: "Ex E.T."

2012-01-28T09:12:00.001-05:00

An animated film short by four students (Vimeo page here), via The Presurfer:

Ex ET from Benoit Bargeton on Vimeo.

New computer build

2012-01-27T11:45:00.003-05:00

Several months ago I posted about my plans to re-build my home p.c. I put off those plans and then subsequently decided to wait a little longer for the spring release of Intel’s new Ivy Bridge CPUs, which will succeed the current 2^nd-generation Sandy Bridge CPUs in the top spot. But waiting became a non-option earlier this week when my old system finally gave out (a fried motherboard and possibly cooked CPU), so I picked up my new components and assembled them on Wednesday.

The new system specs are: 2^nd-gen Sandy Bridge quad core i5 2500K 3.3 GHz on an Asus mico-ATX P8Z68-M Pro board with a nVidia GTX 560 Ti GPU (1GB DDR5) card by Gigabyte, and 8GB of RAM (1333 MHz , G.Skill Ripjaws X series). Windows 7 is installed on a 90GB Corsair SSD (6GBs/SATA3). There’s also an optical drive and a secondary 111GB HDD for storage. The power supply is a 520W Corsair modular PSU, which is close to the lower limit of wattage for a system of these specs. All this is housed within the same open-air Antec Skeleton chassis I was using before.

The assembly was the fastest and easiest part, although installing the operating system was a fairly rapid process too, given the high speed and responsiveness of the SSD. The SSD is completely silent, so the loudest components in the system are the optical drive (when in use) followed by the dual-fan GPU card (when running hot). The chassis fans, including the huge top fan, are virtually silent (the top fan only becomes noticeably audible when manually switched to its highest speed).

I’ve been playing the new Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG in HD resolution with all settings on high, and the system handles this easily. The GPU card’s cooling pipes get hot to the touch after a long stretch of steady game play, and the card’s twin fans run full-tilt, but there’s no indication that gaming on maximum settings is taxing the system. HD gaming is smooth, no frames are dropped, and everything is fully rendered.

Now that my desktop has been updated, I’ve been giving some thought to building a low-cost HTPC with a Blu-Ray drive. I’d like a form factor with a small footprint for the living room, possibly based on a mini-ITX board. I tend not to like the larger “stereo deck” clone chassis that I see, and prefer a form factor along the lines of the Mac Mini (which until recently I was using in the living room, connected to the television). Lian Li has some nice aluminium cube chassis that I like, in black, silver, and maybe even red. I’ll have to give some more thought to the specs, because even though it’s nice to have top-of-the-line components, it would be a bit of a waste for an HTPC. HD video capability, Blu-Ray support, and integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are standard on-board features of several mini-ITX boards I’ve spec’d, so going all-out on the hardware is unnecessary, and I'd like to get away with the smallest and most efficient power supply that I can.

More grist for the viral arms race metaphor

2012-01-26T18:03:00.001-05:00

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Researchers show how new viruses evolve, and in some cases, become deadly

via PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories on 1/26/12

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the current issue of Science, researchers at Michigan State University demonstrate how a new virus evolves, which sheds light on how easy it can be for diseases to gain dangerous mutations.

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Fresh crop of exoplanets confirmed by Kepler Mission

2012-01-26T17:47:00.001-05:00

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Kepler announces 11 planetary systems hosting 26 planets

via PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories on 1/26/12

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, its host star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.

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Virology as evolutionary arms race

2012-01-26T12:53:00.001-05:00

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Tracking the birth of an evolutionary arms race between HIV-like viruses and primate genomes

via EurekAlert! - Breaking News on 1/25/12

Using a combination of evolutionary biology and virology, scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have traced the birth of the ability of some HIV-related viruses to defeat a newly discovered cellular-defense system in primates.

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Opportunity keeps going

2012-01-25T10:29:00.001-05:00

Durable NASA rover beginning ninth year of Mars work

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Eight years after landing on Mars for what was planned as a three-month mission, NASA's enduring Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is working on what essentially became a new mission five months ago..."

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We're social animals, after all

2012-01-25T10:20:00.000-05:00

Medicalxpress.com: 'Being ignored hurts, even by a stranger'

Viking mass graves in Britain

2012-01-25T10:17:00.001-05:00

'Viking mass grave linked to elite killers of the medieval world'

Muzzling science in Canada

2012-01-23T22:47:00.001-05:00

From The Globe and Mail: Writers want Ottawa to let scientists 'speak for themselves'

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Strongest solar storm since 2005 hitting Earth

2012-01-23T22:42:00.001-05:00

From The Globe and Mail:
Strongest solar storm since 2005 hitting Earth

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The "philosophy of cosmology"

2012-01-22T11:21:00.001-05:00

I'm skeptical that this can be a field that is materially different from 'science communication' in all its varieties. Especially when the opening play of these cosmological philosophers is to glibly claim that scientists are uninformed and wrong. The Humanities have had a bad track record of (arguably) ruining their own disciplines and rendering them self-referential and irrelevant. I'm not sure that physics departments need campus carpetbaggers in search of a new lease on life importing their pet theories in order to supplement or enlighten what is already going on in the discipline, but I'm willing to listen and see.

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Can philosophy explain what happened before the Big Bang? [Quote Of The Day]

via io9 by Charlie Jane Anders on 1/21/12

Over at the Atlantic, there's a fascinating interview with Tim Maudlin, one of the founders of a new field, the philosophy of cosmology. He suggests that the mysteries of the universe, including what existed before the Big Bang, may be in part philosophical: More »

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Bear 71

2012-01-22T10:13:00.001-05:00

Here's an intriguing Canadian project supported by the National Film Board (NFB) that I stumbled upon while browsing 'The Presurfer' website:

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Bear 71

via The Presurfer by Gerard on 1/21/12

Bear 71 Live observes and records the intersection of humans, nature and technology in a live, Internet connected event. Questioning how we see the world through the lens of technology, this multi-user, interactive story blurs the line between the wild world and the wired one. And it involves an augmented reality app.

Vimeo link

(thanks Cora)

The Presurfer

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Tech, integrated multi-media, and new learning

2012-01-19T20:20:00.001-05:00

A very optimistic view of the impact that personal tech, integrated media and the internet can/will have on learning processes and knowledge acquisition, in the wake of Apple's latest innovation. I think the future looks bright, but I'd like to see more exploration of the effectiveness (and the neurology) of this kind of "new learning" before jumping in head first.

The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic)
1/19/12 6:35 PM
A brief history of textbooks, or, why Apple's "new textbook experience" is actually revolutionary theatln.tc/x54vfH

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The immolation of C/2011 N3 (SOHO)

2012-01-19T19:19:00.000-05:00

io9.com: 'The first footage of a comet smashing into the sun'

Mission over

2012-01-16T09:19:00.001-05:00

A commenter correctly points out the excessive media fascination with the demise of Phobus-Grunt (several posts back). I've noticed a touch of Schadenfreude in the English science press and blogosphere concerning the recent set-backs of the Russian space program, perhaps a reaction to the U.S.'s current reliance on Russia for access to the I.S.S. Add to that our perennial fascination with the possibility of random and/or exotic death (however unlikely) and whatever else you want to throw in the mix, and there you have a recipe for attention-grabbing headlines.

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Russian Mars probe meets inglorious end in Pacific

"Russia vowed Monday to expose the officials responsible for the failure of a Mars probe that the military said crashed into the Pacific Ocean after orbiting the Earth for more than two months..."
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Phobos-Grunt is on the way back down

2012-01-13T11:12:00.000-05:00

SPACE.com (@SPACEdotcom)
1/13/12 8:46 AM
Russian Mars Probe to Crash Soon, With World Watching bit.ly/ABVTON

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Big Data and the coming labour market

2012-01-12T19:11:00.001-05:00

This article may be overstating its case somewhat...

The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail)
1/12/12 6:07 PM
The big data revolution's 'lovely' and 'lousy' jobs : tgam.ca/DP6z

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Weird Nature

2012-01-12T09:15:00.001-05:00

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This Cute Sea Snail Can Eat a Fish Three Times Its Size and Kill Humans [Video]

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 1/12/12

Watch this nice snail. It slowly moves across the ocean floor—lah-di-lah-di-lah!—until it finds a sleeping fish three times its size. Does it say hello, Mr. Fish, sorry to wake you up? No. It just opens its giant mouth and swallows it.

More »

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Peering backward toward the Big Bang

2012-01-10T12:22:00.001-05:00

PhysOrg Science News (@physorg_com)
1/10/12 12:09 PM
Hubble pinpoints furthest protocluster of galaxies ever seen tw.physorg.com/245419771

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Confirmed: Telomere length in early life is predictive of final lifespan

2012-01-10T10:33:00.001-05:00

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Telomere length in young zebra finches predicts lifespan

via PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories on 1/10/12

(PhysOrg.com) -- For hundreds, if not thousands of years scientists have been seeking clues to explain why we humans, and all other animals for that matter, age. But it's been only recently that some real clues have been found, and many of them center around telomeres, the caps that sit on the ends of chromosomes and prevent them from fraying. Now, in a new study by Pat Monaghan and colleagues at the University of Glasgow, it appears that at least with zebra finches, telomeres may serve as a predictor of longevity. In their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found that longer telomere length in the birds when they were young, pointed to a longer lifespan.

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Young, educated, underemployed...and radical

2012-01-10T10:08:00.001-05:00

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What happens to the young and educated without a job?

via PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories on 1/10/12

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study led by the University of Oxford is looking at how young educated people who are unemployed become politicized in different ways - either through violent struggle or as reformers working for a more equal society. The project is one of the first to compare in depth the experiences across different countries of the young who are educated and yet unemployed.

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Geologic events and mass extinctions

2012-01-09T20:53:00.001-05:00

Could Siberian volcanism have caused the Earth's largest extinction event?

"Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian geologic period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth's history. Although the cause of this event is a mystery, it has been speculated that the eruption of a large swath of volcanic rock in Russia called the Siberian Traps was a trigger for the extinction. New research from Carnegie's Linda Elkins-Tanton and her co-authors offers insight into how this volcanism could have contributed to drastic deterioration in the global environment of the period..."

read more

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Predatory flora

2012-01-09T20:52:00.001-05:00

First plant to use buried leaves to catch worms found

"A Brazilian carnivorous plant uses unique sticky subterranean leaves to grab and digest its prey.."

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It's not all that...

2012-01-09T20:31:00.001-05:00

A bit of historical perspective tosses cold water on overly-exuberant claims regarding the importance of social media in mobilizing reformist political protests in the Middle East.

Andrew Coyne (@acoyne)
1/9/12 8:20 PM
Twitter, YouTube and social media not major players in Arab Spring: Canadian ex-diplomat bit.ly/zV9e6e

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Trek vs. Wars (cont'd, cont'd...cont'd)

2012-01-09T20:21:00.001-05:00

Blastr (@blastr)
1/9/12 6:36 PM
Shatner rejects Takei's call for peace in that Trek vs. Wars feud bit.ly/w7cZ5n

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Crowdsourcing D&D's new lease on life

2012-01-09T19:46:00.001-05:00

I haven't played since I was 10 or 11 years old, and have not kept abreast of developments in the Dungeons & Dragons universe since then, but I can still get a little nostalgic thinking about it.

Blastr (@blastr)
1/9/12 5:56 PM
Dungeons & Dragons wants YOUR help rebooting its rulebook bit.ly/Aqa10d

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In the beginning...(or close to it)

2012-01-09T13:08:00.001-05:00

Technology Review (@techreview)
1/9/12 9:00 AM
First Map of Universe's Earliest Stars Unveiled techre.vu/AzdsUP

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NGC 1232

2012-01-08T21:31:00.001-05:00

Grand Spiral Galaxy NGC 1232

"Galaxies are fascinating not only for what is visible, but for what is invisible. Grand spiral galaxy NGC 1232, captured in detail by one of the new Very Large Telescopes, is a good example. The visible is dominated by millions of bright stars and dark dust, caught up in a gravitational swirl of spiral arms revolving about the center. Open clusters containing bright blue stars can be seen sprinkled along these spiral arms, while dark lanes of dense interstellar dust can be seen sprinkled between them. Less visible, but detectable, are billions of dim normal stars and vast tracts of interstellar gas, together wielding such high mass that they dominate the dynamics of the inner galaxy. Invisible are even greater amounts of matter in a form we don't yet know - pervasive dark matter needed to explain the motions of the visible in the outer galaxy."

credit.

NASA's new web portal for open source projects

2012-01-08T10:24:00.001-05:00

It can be found at: code.nasa.gov. From the website: Today we are launching code.nasa.gov, the latest member of the open NASA web family. Through this website, we will continue, unify, and expand NASA’s open source activities. The site will serve to surface existing projects, provide a forum for discussing projects and processes, and guide internal and external groups in open development, release, and contribution.

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NASA goes open source with code portal for agency projects

via Engadget by Terrence O'Brien on 1/8/12

NASA is consolidating it efforts in open source software and offering the world an easier way to peruse its projects by launching code.nasa.gov. The current version offers a simple directory of open-sourced projects being developed by the agency and points of contacts for each (along with details and a download link, of course). There are two more phases of development planned -- first is to roll out a forum system, then an ambitious full-fledged platform for tracking, hosting and planning the various pieces of software created by the government's space agency. Check out the source for more details.

NASA goes open source with code portal for agency projects originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Jan 2012 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Verge | NASA | Email this | Comments

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Film short: MutantLand

2012-01-08T09:29:00.000-05:00

Via SF Signal:

MutantLand from Tippett Studio on Vimeo.

"A Tippett Studio Original ProductionCreated and Directed by Phil Tippett Story: As the sun goes down in the dark and terrifying place that is Mutant Land, the creatures roaming this world are on the ultimate search for food.Winner, Best Short Film: British Horror Film Festival A Night of Horror International Film Festival (Australia) Australia Effects & Animation Festival...

Happy 70th birthday Stephen Hawking

2012-01-08T09:04:00.001-05:00

Stephen Hawking celebrates 70th birthday

"British scientist Stephen Hawking celebrated his 70th birthday Sunday, an age many experts never expected the motor neurone disease sufferer to reach..."

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Tolkien's non-Nobel

2012-01-06T15:59:00.001-05:00

Blastr (@blastr)
1/6/12 10:45 AM
Classified docs reveal why Tolkien failed to win '61 Nobel Prize bit.ly/zkCv2L

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Another SF zine closes shop

2012-01-06T15:51:00.001-05:00

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Zahir Closing

via SF Site News by Steven H Silver on 1/6/12

Editor Sheryl Tempchin says that Zahir, a quarterly magazine of speculative fiction founded in 2003, has ceased publication. Between 2003 and 2009, Zahir published twenty issues, with another eight issues published on-line after print production ceased. The magazines archives will stay available on-line despite the closure.
For more information…

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First primate chimeras created

2012-01-06T09:16:00.001-05:00

KurzweilAINews (@KurzweilAINews)
1/6/12 8:51 AM
World's first primate chimeric offspring: Newly published research by scientists at Oregon Health & Science Univ... bit.ly/yiqEl0

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Why even exoplanet gas giants could harbour life

2012-01-06T08:57:00.001-05:00

Wanted: Habitable moons

"As the Kepler space telescope continues to search for potentially habitable planets, it also may reveal moons that could host life. Three new simulations will help astronomers identify rocky satellites that could hold water on their surface, if the parent planet circles close enough to its sun..."

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BSG in 4 minutes

2012-01-05T11:29:00.001-05:00

The story arc of Battlestar Galactica (reboot version) summarized as a retro early-'90s computer RPG...

Found: first exoplanets of 2012

2012-01-05T10:46:00.001-05:00

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Astronomers have discovered the first four exoplanets of 2012 [Space]

"2011 was a great year in the search for exoplanets, and it looks like 2012 is shaping up to be pretty fruitful, as well. Yesterday morning, just four days into the new year, astronomers announced the discovery of four massive new alien worlds, each one orbiting a star of its own..."

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Contrary to heterosexist stereotyping...

2012-01-05T10:39:00.001-05:00

io9 (@io9)
1/5/12 9:22 AM
The CDC wants you to know that anal sex has gotten really popular among heterosexuals io9.com/5873230/

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Trial Hep C vaccine promising

2012-01-05T08:41:00.001-05:00

PhysOrg Science News (@physorg_com)
1/5/12 5:07 AM
First trial of a new hepatitis C vaccine shows promise tw.medicalxpress.com/244962470

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Phobos-Grunt probe now visible to the naked eye

2012-01-04T20:48:00.000-05:00

From Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy:

"Phobos-Grunt is visible to the naked eye as a bright star if it happens to pass overhead. Astronomer Thierry Legault, an expert in nabbing incredible images of objects in orbit (and no stranger to this blog!), traveled to Nice, France to observe it, and (as usual) got great video of it:"

Earth's extremophile microbes hint at life on Mars

2012-01-04T20:35:00.001-05:00

Bacteria Survive in Cold, Dry, Mars-like Conditions By Living Off Iron | 80beats

Image courtesy of NASA

"To eke out even the barest subsistence on Mars, a living thing would have to adapt to a formidable set of environmental challenges: an arid, often extremely cold landscape with miniscule amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere and no organic matter to eat. During a recent foray into a similarly inhospitable part of our own planet, scientists have discovered several species of bacteria that hint at what life on Mars, if it exists, might look like. These microbes survive on minerals in the surrounding rocks..."

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Gender (sex) and personality

2012-01-04T17:20:00.001-05:00

The sample size used here is huge:

EurekAlert! (@EurekAlertAAAS)
1/4/12 5:00 PM
Men and women have major #personality differences : eurekalert.org/e/4bpv

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Phobos-Grunt headed for mid-Jan re-entry

2012-01-04T08:31:00.001-05:00

Stranded Mars probe could fall to Earth in 11 days: report

"Fragments of Russia's stranded Mars probe Phobos-Grunt could fall to Earth on January 15, the spokesman of Russia's military space forces told Russian news agencies on Wednesday..."

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The virtue of Lego

2012-01-04T07:30:00.001-05:00

Geek.com: 'The most awesome Lego machine you will ever see'

VFTS 102

2012-01-03T21:57:00.001-05:00

APOD: Fastest Rotating Star Found in Neighboring Galaxy

"This artist's concept pictures the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 100 times faster than our sun does. Centrifugal forces from this dizzying spin rate have flattened the star into an oblate shape and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet. The star may have "spun up" by accreting material from a binary companion star. The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova. The whirling star lies 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Image Credit NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)"

credit.

The controversy over Lego "for girls"

2012-01-03T09:15:00.000-05:00

The 2011 holiday shopping season seems to have been unusually fruitful for generating controversy over gender/sex stereotyping in children's consumer toys.

Gizmodo (@Gizmodo)
1/3/12 7:19 AM
Hey Anti-Lego feminists, Lego "for Girls" actually kicks ass gizmodo.com/5872578/hey-an…

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The new "soft power"

2011-12-29T08:53:00.001-05:00

Big Data is the new 'soft power' - something that political scientists and soft power advocates never saw coming (few in the public sector and academia did, to my knowledge).

KurzweilAINews (@KurzweilAINews)
12/29/11 5:12 AM
China racing to expand data center capacity: China is building dozens, maybe hundreds of large data centers and ... bit.ly/uVm2YS

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The science of learning

2011-12-29T08:47:00.001-05:00

With the usual caveat: humans aren't snails (or fish, or mice, or lemurs, etc.). But there's no reason the science behind this can't be extrapolated to human learning.

KurzweilAINews (@KurzweilAINews)
12/29/11 4:56 AM
Learning at a snail's pace to enhance memory: University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) ne... bit.ly/ubivUu

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More priestly drama at Church of the Nativity

2011-12-28T14:36:00.001-05:00

Another great example of Christian amity to live by:

Boing Boing (@BoingBoing)
12/28/11 2:12 PM
Priests fight with broomsticks at Church of the Nativity dlvr.it/12Y0J9

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On science themed body art

2011-12-28T09:48:00.001-05:00

Scientific American (@sciam)
12/28/11 6:01 AM
The Art of the Science Tattoo bit.ly/uPFBQb

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Speculating about an Earth with two moons

2011-12-28T08:59:00.001-05:00

What if the earth had two moons?

"The idea of an Earth with two moons has been a science fiction staple for decades. More recently, real possibilities of an Earth with two moon have popped up. The properties of the Moon's far side has many scientists thinking that another moon used to orbit the Earth before smashing in to the Moon and becoming part of its mass. Since 2006, astronomers have been tracking smaller secondary moons that our own Earth-Moon system captures; these metre-wide moons stay for a few months then leave..."

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The first global disease

2011-12-27T17:20:00.001-05:00

Case Closed? Columbus Introduced Syphilis to Europe

"In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but when he returned from 'cross the seas, did he bring with him a new disease?..."

[More]

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More on the math-&-gender debate

2011-12-26T09:37:00.001-05:00

A counter argument to the 'male variability' theory of math achievement between the genders. This doesn't discount it, but suggests the reality is more nuanced than, say, Lawrence Summers and Susan Pinker suggest. On a sidenote, it's refreshing to see Summers' comments accurately summarized. The 'male variability' curve has two extremes, even though the debate is preoccupied with the high-achieving side of it.

Scientific American (@sciam)
12/26/11 8:22 AM
Anything Boys Can Do... bit.ly/sPecfd

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Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T09:48:00.001-05:00

It's okay to be Takei...

2011-12-23T16:14:00.001-05:00

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George Takei's Greatest and Weirdest Moments [Video]

"It's official: George Takei owns the internet. This is the year that Takei's domination over our assorted cyberwebs became official and final. He's become our greatest meme generator and his mellifluous voice turned out to be perfect for summing up the state of the world circa 2011..."

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Naming exoplanets

2011-12-21T17:24:00.001-05:00

When it comes to naming newly discovered exoplanets, in my opinion it's probably best to stick with the culturally and politically neutral formula of star-plus-numerical-designation for now...

SPACE.com (@SPACEdotcom)
12/21/11 12:18 PM
Do Newfound Alien Planets Need Better Names? bit.ly/ttIZbo

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Nature's way

2011-12-21T15:17:00.000-05:00

This one definitely has the ick factor:

Science News (@physorg_com)
12/21/11 11:39 AM
French study suggests maggots may clean wounds faster than surgery tw.medicalxpress.com/243688101

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Vaccination policy: where science, politics and identity converge

2011-12-21T13:20:00.000-05:00

Girls-Only Vaccine Could Be Best Weapon Against HPV

"A new study argues that vaccinating boys against HPV isn't the best use of resources, since vaccinating more girls will actually lead to a greater reduction in overall infections. However, there are also political implications to consider..."

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Life's molecular building blocks commonplace in the Solar system?

2011-12-21T12:48:00.001-05:00

SPACE.com (@SPACEdotcom)
12/21/11 9:12 AM
Surface of Pluto May Contain Organic Molecules bit.ly/u6qEs3

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Birds of a feather tweet together

2011-12-21T12:10:00.000-05:00

MIT research: Traditional social networks fueled Twitter's spread

"MIT researchers who studied the growth of the newly hatched Twitter from 2006 to 2009 say the site's growth in the United States actually relied primarily on media attention and traditional social networks based on geographic proximity and socioeconomic similarity. In other words, at least during those early years, birds of a feather flocked -- and tweeted -- together..."

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Mysterious Jupiter

2011-12-21T12:06:00.001-05:00

New calculations suggest Jupiter's core may be liquefying

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, may be causing its own core to liquefy, at least according to Hugh Wilson and colleague Burkhard Militzer of UC, Berkeley. They've come to this conclusion after making quantum mechanical calculations on the conditions that exist within the big planet. In a paper published on the preprint server arXiv, and submitted to Physical Review Letters, the two explain that because the gas giant has a relatively small core made of mostly iron, rock (partly magnesium oxide) and ice, and sits embedded in fluid hydrogen and helium all under great pressure from the planet's gravity (which has created very high temperatures (16,000 K)), there is a likelihood that the core is liquefying due to the heat and pressure exerted on the magnesium oxide..."

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More on DC Comics' sexist superhero reboot

2011-12-21T10:33:00.001-05:00

This time from University of Cambridge researcher Casey Brienza: 'It's a bird, it's a plane, it's super hero sexism'. Read the original article on the University of Cambridge website: 'Men of wonder: gender and American superhero comics'

Found: hot Earth-sized exoplanets

2011-12-20T23:45:00.001-05:00

PhysOrg Science News (@physorg_com)
12/20/11 1:26 PM
Kepler finds first earth-size planets beyond our solar system tw.physorg.com/243610019

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Eating less keeps the brain young

2011-12-19T16:38:00.001-05:00

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Eating less keeps the brain young

"Overeating may cause brain aging while eating less turns on a molecule that helps the brain stay young.A team of Italian researchers at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome have discovered that this molecule, called CREB1, is triggered by "caloric restriction" in the brain of mice. They found that CREB1 activates many genes linked to longevity and to the proper functioning of the brain..."

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Trailer: 'Wrath of the Titans'

2011-12-19T14:48:00.003-05:00

Note the remake of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams:

IBM's "Top 5 in 5"

2011-12-19T10:56:00.001-05:00

'IBM reveals five innovations that will change our lives in the next five years'

Found: Neanderthal architecture

2011-12-19T10:25:00.001-05:00

Physorg: 'Neanderthal home made of mammoth bones discovered in Ukraine'
"Up till recently, most researchers studying Neanderthals had assumed they were simple wanderers, hiding out in caves when the weather got bad. Now however, the discovery of the underpinnings of a house built by a group of Neanderthals, some 44,000 years ago, turns that thinking on its head. Discovered by a team of French archeologists from the Muséum National d'Histories Naturelle, in an area that had been under study since 1984, the home, as it were, was apparently based on mammoth bones. The team’s findings are to be published in the science journal Quaternary International..."

Astronomy tech helping to digitize Vatican manuscripts

2011-12-19T10:19:00.000-05:00

Physorg: 'Star images helping to save Vatican books'

"Founded in 1475 and one of the world’s oldest libraries, the Vatican Library houses tens of thousands of manuscripts and codices from before the invention of the printing press – some are 1800 years old.

In addition to making the contents more accessible, digitising will help to preserve the originals.“It’s very dangerous for the manuscripts every time someone touches them,” says Luciano Ammenti, Director of the Vatican’s Information Technology Center, spearheading the project.

He chose FITS because of its longevity and also because it is open source – not linked to any one company.

The format also lends itself to the fragile, ancient tomes in the Vatican’s collection. Pressed against a plate of glass, the old pages can be distorted, but scanner software developed for the project automatically calculates the different angles, resulting in an accurate, flat image.

The secret of the format is that the instructions needed to read and process the data are in a text header tacked on top of the data. In a century, when computers will presumably be very different, that means all the information needed to decode them is in the same files.

FITS can always be read without the need for conversion to another format, which could lose information or be incompatible with future systems."

Democracy needs ignorant people?

2011-12-18T10:49:00.001-05:00

Of course, people aren't fish, but intriguing nonetheless...

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Democracy needs ignorant people, says science [Psychology]

via io9 by Alasdair Wilkins on 12/18/11

You might think that democracies work best when people care and know about the key issues. But a new study argues that for a democracy to function at all, you need lots of ignorant people blindly siding with the majority. More »

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Occupy Wall Street hand signals

2011-12-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

Via 'Boing Boing':

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Occupy Wall Street hand signals, an illustrated guide by Ape Lad

via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin on 12/17/11

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'Jack the Giant Killer'

2011-12-17T06:12:00.001-05:00

All of a sudden, one wonders what took them so long to adapt this oldie to the big screen. Perhaps it needed the CGI revolution to occur first. The original Jack and the Beanstalk tale is starkly different from the sanitized version most people are familiar with today, so I'm curious how much of the tale's darker elements are going to be included in the film.

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First Trailer for Bryan Singer’s Jack The Giant Killer Will Crush Your Bones

via Tor.com Frontpage Partial - Blog and Story Content by Stubby the Rocket on 12/16/11

Read the full article

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Lego LOTR

2011-12-17T06:07:00.001-05:00

Why not?

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One Lego to Rule Them All

via Tor.com Frontpage Partial - Blog and Story Content by Stubby the Rocket on 12/16/11

"Today, Lego teased out an image from its forthcoming Lord of the Rings line. (Not to be confused with these fan-made Game of Thrones Lego minifigs.) Right now there's only the one image of Lego Frodo (and he looks pretty mad...), but Lego will undoubtedly be revealing more characters up to the summer 2012 release date posted on their site. The only question now is what does Lego Tom Bombadil look like?

Image above from Lego's site, which you can check out here."

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Deities and Demigods

2011-12-17T05:58:00.001-05:00

I remember being fascinated and inspired by the artwork of the original 'Deities and Demigods' manual as well as other tomes of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game. The original artist has now undertaken a project to recreate his original artwork, which was inadvertently destroyed in a filing snafu at TSR:

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Art of the Genre Review: Jeff Dee’s new Kickstarter

via Black Gate by Scott Taylor on 12/16/11

"Last month I was intrigued to see that former TSR artist Jeff Dee had started a project on Kickstarter to recreate his classic images from the Egyptian pantheon in Deities & Demigods. Now, first, I didn't really know anything about Kickstarter, but the more I looked at it the more interested I became..."

"This initial project was a smashing success, and you can view all of Jeff's new work on his DeviantArt page as well as order prints..."

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Big Data

2011-12-15T16:28:00.000-05:00

Tool detects patterns hidden in vast data sets

"Researchers from the Broad Institute and Harvard University have developed a tool that can tackle large data sets in a way that no other software program can. Part of a suite of statistical tools called MINE, it can tease out multiple patterns hidden in health information from around the globe, statistics amassed from a season of major league baseball, data on the changing bacterial landscape of the gut, and much more..."

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'Curiosity' already hard at work

2011-12-14T07:55:00.001-05:00

NASA Mars-bound rover begins research in space

(PhysOrg.com) -- "NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover has begun monitoring space radiation during its 8-month trip from Earth to Mars. The research will aid in planning for future human missions to the Red Planet..."

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"Rosa"

2011-12-13T09:59:00.001-05:00

The hauntingly beautiful indy science fiction film short by Jesus Orellana, Rosa, will be adapted into a feature length film: 'Beautiful sci-fi short lands its director a big-budget movie deal'. The film project now has its own website.

ROSA from Jesús Orellana on Vimeo.

Star Wars vs Star Trek (cont'd)

2011-12-13T09:41:00.000-05:00

George Takei leaps into the fray. For the record, I totally saw this coming...

Experimental camera films the speed of light

2011-12-13T09:22:00.000-05:00

Via Engadget: 'MIT builds camera that can capture at the speed of light (video)'. Original coverage at M.I.T. News.

Cassini to buzz Dione today, Titan tomorrow

2011-12-12T09:19:00.001-05:00

Cassini to make a double play

(PhysOrg.com) -- "In an action-packed day and a half, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be making its closest swoop over the surface of Saturn's moon Dione and scrutinizing the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon..."

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Newton hits the web

2011-12-12T08:50:00.001-05:00

Cambridge University puts Newton's papers online

(PhysOrg.com) -- "In a project that has long been overdue, Cambridge University, thanks to a hefty gift from the Polonsky Foundation (supporter of education and arts) and a grant from Britain's Joint Information Services Committee (JISC), has put some of Isaac Newton's original papers online for any and all to see. Of particular interest to most will be Newton's own annotated copy of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, considered by many to be one of the greatest published works by any scientist ever. For those looking for a little behind the scenes work, the University has also published Newton's so-called "Waste Book," a diary of sorts that Newton inherited from his step-father which he took along with him and used for jotting notes about such things as his ideas on calculus while away from school due to the Great Plague in 1665..."
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Another step towards quantum computers

2011-12-11T18:08:00.001-05:00

Multi-purpose photonic chip paves the way to programmable quantum processors

"The fundamental resource that drives a quantum computer is entanglementthe connection between two distant particles which Einstein famously called 'spooky action at a distance'. The Bristol researchers have, for the first time, shown that this remarkable phenomenon can be generated, manipulated and measured entirely on a tiny silica chip. They have also used the same chip to measure mixturean often unwanted effect from the environment, but a phenomenon which can now be controlled and used to characterize quantum circuits, as well as being of fundamental interest to physicists..."

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Art meets science on a skein of spider silk

2011-12-08T08:19:00.001-05:00

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Researchers link patterns seen in spider silk, melodies

via PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories on 12/8/11

Using a new mathematical methodology, researchers at MIT have created a scientifically rigorous analogy that shows the similarities between the physical structure of spider silk and the sonic structure of a melody, proving that the structure of each relates to its function in an equivalent way.

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When science journalism gets histrionic...

2011-12-07T21:01:00.001-05:00

...strange notions result. I'm not sure what is more ridiculous - the argument itself or the coverage of it conflating research findings with editorial comment: 'Catholic Church Should Offer Nuns The Pill, Researchers Say'. Even taking the attention-seeking comment at face value, science has already demonstrated that oral contraceptives have devastating effects on both the environment and people, notwithstanding the benefits for users. So an honest commentary on the subject would have to at least attempt to weigh all these factors, and probably should demur from grandstanding and leave religious communities out of it.

Men and emotion

2011-12-07T08:44:00.001-05:00

Men have a stronger reaction to seeing other men's emotions compared with women's

(Medical Xpress) -- "Men have a stronger response to seeing other men show emotion than when women show emotion, according to new research from Queen Mary, University of London..."

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mtDNA evidence: Native American population halved immediately following Contact, but before Settlement

2011-12-06T12:39:00.001-05:00

The relatively short window of time (historically speaking) between Native Americans' first contact with European explorers and the beginning of settlement in North America by European migrants saw a sudden and precipitous drop in aboriginal populations - by as much as 50%. While historical accounts have always maintained that massive decimation of First Nations occurred following contact, analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) provides confirmation that a massive and non-localized die-off of North America's aboriginal population occurred roughly 500 years ago. This was followed by a resurgence in the surviving population; Native Americans today are more related to each other than were their pre-contact ancestors. The findings have significant implications for the the historical record of European colonization: "This means that the decline would have come about almost exclusively as a result of disease sweeping naturally through native communities, rather than from warfare, or mass slaughter as some have suggested and that stories of settlers using smallpox as a weapon may be exaggerated." Obviously, this interpretation of the findings has the potential to be highly controversial. However, the article acknowledges that further research is required before a precise timeline of events can be identified.

Read the full article here. Note an error in the final paragraph in which century is substituted for millennium.

Education and crime

2011-12-06T08:28:00.001-05:00

Another case of research affirming what we already knew. The subtext here is that there are very real reasons to be concerned about the system-wide "learning recession" that has struck boys and young men, notwithstanding the relative gains made by female learners and the legitimate and still-new emphasis on education of girls as a policy instrument for global socio-economic uplift.

Study finds increased education lowers crime

"New research from The CIBC Centre for Human Capital and Productivity at The University of Western Ontario shows that education, and related education-based initiatives, can reduce crime rates, improve health, lower mortality rates, and increase political participation..."
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A day in the life of Jupiter

2011-12-06T07:22:00.001-05:00

A high-res time-lapse film of Jupiter's 10-hour rotation captured by the one-meter telescope at the Pic du Midi Observator y in the French Pyrenees (credit).

full rotation of Jupiter from Jean-Luc Dauvergne on Vimeo.

Light echo

2011-12-04T22:09:00.001-05:00

NASA's Picture of the Day for December 4, 2011: 'Light Echoes from V838 Mon'

"For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this has never been seen before. It's true that supernovae and novae expel matter out into space. But while the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen here is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of Monoceros the unicorn. In this Hubble Space Telescope image from February 2004, the light echo is about six light years in diameter."

(credit)

Sean Quigley does 'Little Drummer Boy'

2011-12-04T10:13:00.001-05:00

CBC News: 'Winnipeg teen's Drummer Boy video a hit'

Found: H20 glaciers on Mars

2011-12-03T10:19:00.001-05:00

Analysis of images taken by ESA's Mars Express over time reveals the movement of massive water-ice glaciers in the Phlegra Montes mountain range of Mars: 'Mountains and buried ice on Mars'

End of the line for Phobos-Grunt mission

2011-12-02T16:55:00.001-05:00

ESA writes off Phobos-Grunt | Bad Astronomy

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Vesta in 3D

2011-12-02T12:26:00.001-05:00

From JPL (via Physorg):

"This 3-D video incorporates images from the framing camera instrument aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft from July to August 2011. The images were obtained as Dawn approached Vesta and circled the giant asteroid during the mission's survey orbit phase. Survey orbit took place at an altitude of about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers). To view this video in 3-D use red-green, or red-blue, glasses (left eye: red; right eye: green/blue)." Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Star Wars vs. Star Trek redux...

2011-12-01T18:35:00.001-05:00

The CBC: 'Geek war pits Star Wars vs. Star Trek'
Part 1: The Provocation

Part 2: Leia Reacts

Part 3: Kirk's Riposte

Study on the secular uses of organized religion

2011-12-01T13:54:00.001-05:00

Just a few caveats though: note the small sample size and the rarefied nature of the sample (i.e. scientists employed as faculty on university campuses).

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Some atheist scientists with children embrace religious traditions, according to new Rice research

via EurekAlert! - Breaking News on 11/30/11

Some atheist scientists with children embrace religious traditions for social and personal reasons, according to research from Rice University and the University at Buffalo -- the State University of New York.

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