Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

Kai, just wanted to say, I enjoy your new "format" for this thread, a summary in your own words, plus a littlebit of opinion.

Thanks. I like it better too. 

[Kai]

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090819/full/news.2009.844.html RELATIVITY. Also, speculation about gravity waves.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/819/1 I really wish geneticists would get some standard sensical naming system for genes. SNORKEL1 and SNORKEL2, srsly? Also, drowning rice saved from watery death.

http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55896/ Oh FOR FUCKS SAKE! Article is about how antioxidants possibly beneficial for preventing cancer may actually accelerate cancerous growth. Course, its The Scientist, how much can I really trust it?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125069735467643373.html SWIIIIIIIIINEEEEEEEEFLUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. Enough said.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/820/1 Makes me see Scooby Doo in a whole other light.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-runner-side21-2009aug21,0,3926576.story NEWSFLASH: SEX AND GENDER NOT SO CLEAR CUT. Some individuals not surprised. More at 10.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/08/20/mercury_in_fish_widespread_new_study_shows/ I believe this; coal fire powerplants spew mercury particulate over most of the global surface, AND it occurs naturally. The trick is limiting the type of fish you eat depending on your level of health; eating fish more basal on the food chain is better than eating lots of tuna, because predators have higher concentrations due to biomagnification.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8210645.stm A whole new group of organisms discovered from the deep ocean. This discovery is so new I can't even find any information on where these bioluminecent "bomber worms" might belong phylogenetically. Very very cool.

[Kai]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/science/earth/21ancient.html?_r=1&ref=science Damn coastal humans the reason there aren't any awesome giant sloths around today, paper says.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090820-cleaner-fish.html Why cleaner fish don't get eaten.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458,00.html A long time article about the food industry, food economics, and healthy eating

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090819-pterosaur-runway-tracks-dinosaurs.html Fossil footprints of a landing pterosaur found. Very cool. Cue pterodactyl handler.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081601835.html Wisconsin and Minnesota playing catch with neutrino beams.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090816-killer-spices-sustainable.html We've known this for thousands of years, but it bears repeating.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/08/17/nanotechnology_coming_soon_to_a_product_you_use/ NANOTECH.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bal-te.hs.sleep18aug18,0,7087025.story Oh great.  As if the expectation of glaucoma isn't bad enough.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8205864.stm Methane from the sea bed possibly positive feedback of climate change.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6799723.ece HOLY SHIT. No, srsly, holy. shit.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-comet18-2009aug18,0,7605775.story The more evidence we gather on how common the components of life actually are, the more we realize that life is probably everywhere in the universe it could possibly survive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazine/16Bruce-t.html Don't know if you've heard of this guy Cain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11naming.html This pertains directly to my research and Systematics in general. Taxonomy specialists are in decline, but people in general world wide from all cultures have a deep set need to name the living things around them, and there seems to be a pattern to this. Part of the reason our culture is in decline in this respect is the separateness we place between ourselves and the living world I think. Makes me want to go out right now and learn the names of everything.

[Kai]

A quote from that final article:

No wonder so few of us can really see what is out there. Even when scads of insistent wildlife appear with a flourish right in front of us, and there is such life always — hawks migrating over the parking lot, great colorful moths banging up against the window at night — we barely seem to notice. We are so disconnected from the living world that we can live in the midst of a mass extinction, of the rapid invasion everywhere of new and noxious species, entirely unaware that anything is happening. Happily, changing all this turns out to be easy. Just find an organism, any organism, small, large, gaudy, subtle — anywhere, and they are everywhere — and get a sense of it, its shape, color, size, feel, smell, sound. Give a nod to Professor Franclemont and meditate, luxuriate in its beetle-ness, its daffodility. Then find a name for it. Learn science's name, one of countless folk names, or make up your own. To do so is to change everything, including yourself. Because once you start noticing organisms, once you have a name for particular beasts, birds and flowers, you can't help seeing life and the order in it, just where it has always been, all around you.

Amen.

[Kai]

Headlines, The Science

August 26, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/health/26flu.html?_r=1 White House advisory panel shot down by CDCP over the panic inducing numbers in their report on H1N1.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/aug/24/us-sci-multitasking-mayhem-082409/?science&zIndex=154553 Report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows college students score poorly while multitasking. No surprise there; multitasking should be called fast switching, because its not really doing many things at once but multiple things in rapid succession. People do best when single tasking under great focus.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-08-23-dialysis_N.htm Issues with kidney dialysis treatment and data suggesting that more frequent dialysis at home leads to lower mortality overall.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-climate-trial25-2009aug25,0,901567.story More bullshit bureaucratic/corporate nonsense invasion into scientific discussion, this time with climatology.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/25/MN1619D3HH.DTL&type=science#ixzz0PD29LROk American Heart Association publishes on the high refined sugar content of American diets, with tips on how to cut down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/science/25tier.html Study by Kochanska et al published this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology investigates the social reasons for the development of guilt, and benefits and detriments thereof.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/08/24/cambridge_firms_green_energy_source_fuels_speculation/ Joule Biotechnologies with secret living....green goo. Will power cars in the future. Srsly, they say it consumes CO2 and photons and spits out ethanol and they're trying to tell me that the green goo isn't some sort of alga? Possible it could be very tiny vascular plants....theres a duckweed, Wolffia, that looks like a green mass when not viewed up close; happens to be the world's smallest flowering plant, tiny little green beads.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6808427.ece There's all kinds of reasons for Colony Collapse Disorder in honeybees, there's Veroa Mite, and Small Hive Beetles, and virii, and pesticides. Trying to ascribe it to a single phenomenon is stretching things. Apiaries have been in decline for over 50 years now, this isn't recent or anything.

http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/25/when-the-internet-breaks-who-ya-gonna-call/ Internet security and the like. I really don't understand these issues very well, nor the history behind them. From what I know, the internet isn't this thing but rather a network of computers. Maybe we need to stop talk about "THE Internet" and talk about internets in general, ie networks between computers.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/46658/title/Extrasolar_planets_at_full_tilt Exosolar planets often are seen spinning contrary directions to rotation (like venus does), suggesting interplanetary impacts and crowded star systems. Speculation is that our star system's large planetary impacts occured early on, which allowed for life to continue more or less uninterrupted (the few hiccups include the P-T and K-T extinctions, probably cometary in origin).

[Kai]

Headlines, The Science

Previous Excerpts

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8213884.stm More speculation on the climate change apocalypse.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327220.300-mystery-of-the-missing-minigalaxies.html .....Orrrrrrrrrrrrrr the supermassive black hole at the center of Galaxias is more supermassive than we previously thought. SRsly, do we need to just start making up physics whenever faced with some odd observation?

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/aug/24/us-acid-oceans-alaska-082409/?science&zIndex=154346 Ocean acidification in Alaskan waters. My hypothesis: Chinese coal.

http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/adhd/630300.html People are abusing ADHD medications; who didn't see this coming? Not I.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/science/25fossil.html Dr. Rona of Rutgers University provides evidence that the weird creatures he's finding in the Mid Atlantic ridge vents are Paleodictyon nodosum, the living fossil with the longest static morphology, since Cambrian times (500 mya).

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55850/ On protein folding, and post-translational processing of proteins by enzymes and RNA. Stuff I'm learning about right now, actually.

[Kai]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/23/AR2009082302489.html How the Gecko got its Grip, and other not so just so stories. Just had to post it since the researcher is at a university in Upstate SC, which is where I happen to be at the moment. Plus, its just cool.

[Kai]

http://www.jsonline.com/features/health/54642152.html Skin cells changed to the same tissue that makes up the retina of your eye. I'm starting to see why fundies hate stem cell research; the future of medicine undermines their need for a personal god whom they can pray to for help.

http://www.startribune.com/nation/55043997.html?elr=KArks:DCiUMEaPc:UiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU Speculation on embryonic transgenics in humans. Thinking this feels a bit too much like eugenics. Mitochondrial eugenics at that.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/46715/title/Vitamin_D_may_be_heart_protective Personally, I think its more that people who spend lots of time outside getting a healthy dose of sunlight also tend to excercise well, have good body weight, and eat reasonably, whereas people who don't get enough sun are probably sitting on their asses all the time and eating shitty food, leading to a shitty body. How could they know anyway? <150 individuals is way too small a sample size to be meaningful.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary Depression as a problem solving adaptation rather than a disease or disorder. I find this interesting. It does seem that people with higher intelligence tend to become depressed more often than their counterparts. First circuit anxiety and fear tends to paralyze and get in the way of this though. Read the article, might be interesting for you.

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tm/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14299348 The glue of the sandcastle worm, a marine Annelida, to be researched as a bone fracture adhesive for its special properties. THIS IS DAMN COOL. Also, the article mentions caddisfly larvae. :3

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112111657 See, the problem with forensics techniques is that they AREN'T a science. The development of techniques is a science. The primary work into sociology and biology are sciences. Doing forensics work is art, skill and technology, and as always with technology, the expectation is for it to be foolproof. Scientists understand it's not and cannot ever be foolproof. There will be mistakes, which is why there needs to be checking and rechecking. This is no reason to discount forensics, a set of useful tools, just because mistakes won't ever be made.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090826-iridescent-fossil-feather.html Showing once again that amazing detail can be preserved as stone under the right conditions.

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14301951 So basically, just more misogyny. Great. It's not sexist if its hormonal! I mean, hormones have absolutely nothing to do with sex. Ever. Also, in this case we need to get some more low testosterone women in the banks, maybe then they'll stop taking STUPID RISKS. FFS.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gravitational-wave-ligo RELATIVITY. Also, gravity waves.

[LMNO]

Kai, I am really digging your commentary on these.

[Kai]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_NASA_MOON?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Good. There's no reason to send people to the moon. All they're gonna do is play golf again.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6811264.ece Cool, but I honestly like real trees better. Just something irresistably natural about them, can't quite put my finger on it. Its almost as if they've been around for 500 million years....

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090826-impossible-planet-wasp-shouldnt-exist.html Want to see an exoplanet fall into a star? We may get to.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/26/AR2009082603549.html Concerns about medical radiation imaging.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8224279.stm New dinosaur species from down under. Sauropods seem like they were pretty diverse in their era, many species, large body size. We really don't have anything group that would compare today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/technology/27compute.html Concern over worldwide control of computers remotely via virus vectors over internet.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/aug/28/1n28anti002250-scientists-may-have-new-tool-bacter/?science&zIndex=156667 Possible new antibiotic based on inhibition of nicotinate mononucleotide adenyltransferase in bacteria.

[Kai]

Kai, I am really digging your commentary on these.

Thanks. I really like writing them.

I hope people start posting articles here with their own commentary too.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090826-impossible-planet-wasp-shouldnt-exist.html Want to see an exoplanet fall into a star? We may get to.

Depends.  How many primates are on it?

[Kai]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090826-impossible-planet-wasp-shouldnt-exist.html Want to see an exoplanet fall into a star? We may get to.

Depends.  How many primates are on it?

Well, if anything is possible, than there should be some measurable probability that there are say, several billion primates on that planet, and since our lord Jesus Christ makes the improbable happen, then there are DEFINITELY that many primates on that planet. In fact, I bet we can set up some sort of device to capture their screams as the planet tumbles into the star's corona.

[LMNO]

TURN THE HUBBLE INTO A MICROPHONE!

[Kai]

TURN THE HUBBLE INTO A MICROPHONE!

NASA won't even go up to repair the cameras anymore, and you expect a new device up there?







Fine....we'll send it to committee.