posted on: 28 June 2007
“ Symptoms of mental retardation and autism have been reversed for the first time in laboratory mice.US scientists created mice that showed symptoms of Fragile X Syndrome - a leading cause of mental retardation and autism in humans. They then reversed symptoms of the condition by inhibiting the action of an enzyme in the brain.”
posted on: 24 April 2007
“ Today, if you wanted eco-friendly illumination, you would have solar panels generate power during the day to run your T8 fluorescent bulbs at night. But what if you could just store daylight itself and save it 'till later?”
posted on: 16 February 2007
“ Giant blisters containing water that rapidly expand and contract have been mapped beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Fed by a complex network of rivers, the subglacial reservoirs force the overlying ice to rise and fall. ”
posted on: 15 February 2007
“ Human-generated carbon dioxide has sunk down to a great depth in the North Atlantic Ocean, a new study has shown. The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the oceans store CO2 for longer than expected - good news for reducing the risk of climate change, but bad news for marine life in the deep sea.”
posted on: 14 February 2007
“ An annual contest for the best microphotographs of living (or once living) things.”
posted on: 14 February 2007
“ The new Spitzer Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City opened to the public on February 10. Visitors to its elaborate displays can explore the fossil and genomic findings that f orm the basis for the current thinking on how we became human.”
posted on: 23 January 2007
Two great posts on 3quarksdaily:
posted on: 22 January 2007
“ Psychologists are learning more about how colour builds language and language builds colour.”
posted on: 22 January 2007
“ Gerontologists consider the maximum lifespan for humans to be about 120 years. But with rising evidence for a genetic “death programme” which in principle could be amended, some researchers are starting to believe the limit could be extended.”
posted on: 21 January 2007
“ Dark energy does more than hurry along the expansion of the universe. It also has a stranglehold on the shape and spacing of galaxies”
posted on: 21 December 2006
“ The largest lizards in the world are capable of virgin births. Scientists report of two cases where female Komodo dragons have produced offspring without male contact. ”
posted on: 04 October 2006
“ It was hailed as a harbinger of global warming; it caused a glacial hit-and-run smash; it even terrorized a hapless group of penguins. And now, it has been revealed that the death of the world's most infamous modern-day iceberg was likewise worthy of a Hollywood film - it was broken up by a storm surge that swept the entire length of the Pacific Ocean.”
posted on: 23 September 2006
“ On 22 September 2006, Science Magazine and the National Science Foundation honor the creators of dazzling scientific images and animated presentations, in the fourth annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. This year's winners - in categories including photography, illustration, informational graphics, and multimedia - captured inner details of a child mummy, mathematical surfaces rendered as glass objects, the highest mountain on Earth, air traffic by night, cellular dynamics, and the vasculature of conjoined twins. We invite you to explore the contest's winning entries and honorable mentions in this special online slide show.”
posted on: 21 September 2006
“ The 3.3-million-year-old fossilised remains of a human-like child have been unearthed in Ethiopia's Dikika region. The female Australopithecus afarensis bones are from the same species as an adult skeleton found in 1974 which was nicknamed Lucy. ”
posted on: 16 September 2006
“ It is the biggest contributor to climate change. Now chemists are hoping to convert carbon dioxide into a useful fuel, with a little help from the sun. If they succeed, it will be possible to recycle the greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels.”
posted on: 11 September 2006
Flight waveform of the Common Sheathtail Bat
“ Animals swimming or flying at cruising speed use similar ratios of stroke frequency and amplitude to forward speed. For dolphins, sharks, and bony fish moving at their preferred cruising speed, the ratio of tail frequency and amplitude to forward speed is constrained to a narrow but efficient range of values.”
The Strouhal Number in Cruising Flight
Part of style.org, a series of experimental data graphics.
(published by 13pt)
posted on: 08 September 2006
“ Type genetic testing into a search engine and you'll see an array of paid adverts along the sides of the page, offering screening tests, DNA tests, paternity tests and genealogy tests. It's a thriving business. What's not as clear in the adverts is that the foundations of the business could best be called shallow.”
posted on: 27 August 2006
“ For the past two years, researchers have been hotly debating (and coming dangerously close to fighting over) whether the fossils of a diminutive hominin found in Indonesia are those of a previously unknown species. The publication this week of some long-standing doubts over the “hobbit” fossils show the debate is far from over.”
posted on: 17 August 2006
Nothomyrmecia macrops - Dinosaur Ant - South Australia
Beautiful pictures of insects on myrmecos (and also links to other similar web sites).
posted on: 13 August 2006
“ The low-frequency, seismic rumblings of volcanoes are being transformed into delicate musical scores in an effort to predict when they will erupt.”
“ Researchers in Italy have already created a concerto from the underground movements of Mount Etna on Sicily.”
posted on: 13 August 2006
I think that this debate is also an indication of the confusion most people live in. I don't believe that the problem, as far as the uninvolved with science common man is concerned, really is creationism or evolutionism but instead a need to be told what is “good” and what is “bad”. Most people that believe in a religious system also believe that moral standards are directly proportional to faith: religion makes people more compassionate. Which may be true to a certain extent (read: cross-national correlations of quantifiable societal health with popular religiosity) but it also means that helping someone else is done in the name of one's own God and, if the other person's God is a different one, soon trouble will arise. To be able to understand and accept other cultures and beliefs we must have an open mind and inform ourselves: lots of work. To just decide that “what I believe is right” solves most questions and unfortunately leaves very little room for learning. Religion in itself cannot make a human being better, each one of us has to work hard every moment of our lives to achieve that.
posted on: 31 July 2006
“ Phylotaxis (Phyllos - leaf, Taxis - order) is an exploration of the space where science meets culture. Its structure, derived from the Fibonacci Sequence and closely related to the Golden Ratio, is one of nature's most elegant. The Fibonacci Sequence is the set of numbers where each number is the sum of the previous two numbers. This simple sequence governs phenomena as diverse as the petal arrangement of roses, the breeding patterns of rabbits, and the shape of our galaxy.”
posted on: 25 July 2006
“ Ever since Marco Polo, explorers have told stories about strange sounds they have heard in the desert. It is known that these sounds are produced by sand dunes when they avalanche, but the exact mechanism behind the phenomenon has remained a mystery.”
Stéphane Douady 's web site and his article:
the song of the dunes as a self-synchronized instrument
posted on: 22 July 2006
On Nature:
posted on: 14 July 2006
Underwater Image Competition 2006
link to a shortlist of ten entries per each of the five categories
SERPENT's permanent gallery of images split into regions: image gallery
posted on: 14 July 2006
On Nature: Sun helps clean the sky
“ The cleaning agent responsible is the hydroxyl radical (denoted OH), which is created when ultraviolet radiation splits apart a molecule of ozone to produce oxygen atoms that subsequently react with water. The resulting hydroxyl radicals are highly active and quickly react with trace atmospheric gases, such as the pollutant carbon monoxide, which is rapidly turned into carbon dioxide.”
posted on: 08 July 2006
A list of the top 50 science blogs written by scientists:
A list of the top 5 science blogs written by non-scientists:
According to the Technorati rankings blogs written by scientists and non-scientists have the same range. As Kottke says “it's clear that the blog reading public doesn't care that much for science”.
posted on: 24 June 2006
On Nature: Hawking and Hertog rewrite history
"To understand the Universe we must start from the here and now"
posted on: 21 June 2006
Via Kottke.org: carbon dioxide glass
"..the work could even lead to new, less environmentally harmful ways to dispose of CO2"
posted on: 20 June 2006
The BBC's web site has a section dedicated to the human body and mind. Interesting tests and interactive articles.
posted on: 02 June 2006
posted on: 01 June 2006
On the BBC: Arctic's tropical past