A new species of sea urchin has
A new species of sea urchin has been discovered on eBay. For once, that name seems to make sense.
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kottke.org posts about science
Yesterday, almost 30 years after it was launched,
Yesterday, almost 30 years after it was launched, the Voyager spacecraft crossed the 100 AU boundry, meaning it is 100 times farther from the Sun than the Earth is. The article is worth a read. (via sb)
Carl Zimmer on the origin of whales,
Carl Zimmer on the origin of whales, baleen and non. “Baleen whales evolved baleen long after splitting off from other whales. Their baleen-free ancestors apparently thrived as leopard-seal-like hunters for millions of years.”
The AAAS, the organisation which publishes Science
The AAAS, the organisation which publishes Science magazine, has produced a book called The Evolution Dialogues. “Meant specifically for use in Christian adult education programs, it offers a concise description of the natural world, as explained by evolution, and the Christian response, both in Charles Darwin’s time and in contemporary America.” (thx, mike)
Public acceptance of evolution is relatively low
Public acceptance of evolution is relatively low in the US and is getting lower. “American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist.”
Update: Here’s a graph of the results. Yikes.
Satellites measuring the earth’s gravity from orbit
Satellites measuring the earth’s gravity from orbit detected a change in gravity from the massive earthquake that caused the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. “The gravity at the earth’s surface decreased by as much as about 0.0000015 percent, meaning that a 150-pound person would experience a weight loss of about one-25,000th of an ounce.”
The Biology of B-Movie Monsters, or why
The Biology of B-Movie Monsters, or why you just can’t scale living things up (a la King Kong) or down (like in Fantastic Voyage) without consequence. One key problem: with a theoretical 20 foot tall human, mass increases much faster than bone strength and at some point, his skeleton wouldn’t be able to support the weight.
Three of the world’s longest-running scientific experiments,
Three of the world’s longest-running scientific experiments, including an electric bell that’s been ringing since 1840 and a self-winding barometrically powered clock.
Update: Another long-running experiment: “Researchers at Michigan State University are growing and examining seedlings that have sprouted from seeds buried 120 years ago on campus. They’ve been doing this roughly every five years since 1879, when William Beal, a professor of botany at what then was Michigan Agricultural College, buried them in anticipation of learning how long seeds can remain viable.” (thx, susan)
Update: There are several “long now” experiments at Rothamsted Research involving soil and fertilizer. (via kircher)
Study: hungry men prefer heavier women than
Study: hungry men prefer heavier women than men who are full. Presumably, if you’re hungry, you’re more likely to be attracted to someone who looks like they might know where some food is.
Researchers: “attractive parents are 26% more likely to
Researchers: “attractive parents are 26% more likely to have a daughter than a son as their first child”. Although I’m not sure that, as the article later says, that the Pitt-Jolie and Witherspoon-Phillippe daughters “lend weight to the theory”.
Recent studies show that family income level
Recent studies show that family income level affects the IQ of children. “The average I.Q. of children from well-to-do parents who were placed with families from the same social stratum was 119.6. But when such infants were adopted by poor families, their average I.Q. was 107.5 — 12 points lower.”
Researchers in Israel and Illinois say they’ve
Researchers in Israel and Illinois say they’ve found a second code in DNA, one that deals with the positioning of proteins. Palimpsest anyone?
A star is “on the brink” of
A star is “on the brink” of going type 1a supernova, something modern scientists have never witnessed. BTW, when you’re dealing with stars, “on the brink” could refer to a period of time up to 100,000 years from now. Oh, and if you’re the type of person who likes to be a smart ass in the back of the room, you’ll note that since the star is nearly 2000 light years away, we may have already missed it. Nerd.
World Jump Day is tomorrow. “Join us
World Jump Day is tomorrow. “Join us in the attempt to drive Planet Earth into a new orbit.”
On the heels of two books critical
On the heels of two books critical of string theory, a look at the string theory backlash.
Hiroshi Tanaka demonstrated his “fast aging” technique
Hiroshi Tanaka demonstrated his “fast aging” technique for wine at the Taste3 conference. I tasted some of the “after” wine and it was better and smoother than the “before” wine. A promising technique, especially for cheaper wines and spirits.
The proof is in the underpants: global
The proof is in the underpants: global warming is real. (via eyeteeth)
Interesting tour/visualization imagining 10 dimensions. (thx, james)
Interesting tour/visualization imagining 10 dimensions. (thx, james)
The Big Here
Kevin Kelly on an intriguing concept called The Big Here:
You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels interconnect. What do you know about the dynamics of this larger system around you? Most of us are ignorant of this matrix. But it is the biggest interactive game there is. Hacking it is both fun and vital.
Accompanying his post is a 30-question (plus 5 bonus questions) quiz that determines how closely you’re connected to the place in which you live. Taking the quiz as he suggests (without Googling) and then researching the actual answers using the recommendations left by previous quiz takers is a useful, humbling, and instructive exercise.
Even though I live in Manhattan, a place where so much of the surroundings are unnatural and the inhabitants are effectively disconnected from nature, I decided to tackle the quiz and expected to do poorly. And so I did. Here are my results, with commentary. (There are some spoilers below, so if you don’t want to be swayed in your answers, take the quiz first, then come back.)
Answered correctly
1) Point north.
Easy with Manhattan’s grid, although you have to remember that the avenues don’t run directly N/S.
3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.
Comes from upstate NY via various aqueducts and tunnels. I’ve seen parts of the old Croton Aqueduct in northern Manhattan.
5) How many feet above sea level are you?
I guessed 30 feet, Google Earth says it’s 36 feet.
9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?
A somewhat complicated question — by previous tribe, does it mean the English, the Dutch, the Indians, or the printing company that owned the building I currently live in? — but I basically know how all of those groups lived, more or less.
11) From what direction do storms generally come?
18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?
The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan wouldn’t be possible without all that bedrock underneath.
19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)?
180 days. (180 is in the ballpark, but it’s probably a little more given the proximity to the ocean.)
22) Where does the pollution in your air come from?
Cars.
31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?
Passenger pigeons?
Partial credit
2) What time is sunset today?
Within 15 minutes of the actual time.
7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?
Across the river to New Jersey. (Locate your watershed.) I don’t know enough detail to draw it.
8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?
I guessed bedrock, but Manhattan’s bedrock comes to the surface near midtown and points north of there, not further south where I live.
13) How many people live in your watershed?
10 million. (Actual answer is 9.1 million.)
15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?
20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?
Pigeons, hawks, falcons, ducks, sparrows. Ducks migrate. (Turns out that falcons and hawks migrate too.)
21) What was the total rainfall here last year?
50 inches. Average is ~48 inches and last years precip was ~56 inches.
24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?
Glaciers
32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude?
Portland, OR; Rome, Tokyo.
Correctness unknown
10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.
Are there plants still native to Greenwich Village? Marijuana? We grow tomatoes in our apartment, does that count?
17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water?
500 feet? (Now that I think about it, it’s probably a lot less.)
34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here.
East coast of Japan? East coasts of southern Africa or South America?
Absolutely wrong / no clue
4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?
6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?
12) Where does your garbage go?
On the curb?
14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?
16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?
23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today?
25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.
I’m assuming Williamsburg hipster, Chelsea queer, and PR flack are not the answers they’re looking for here.
26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable?
27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated?
28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?
29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it?
30) How many days till the moon is full?
Turns out it was just full.
33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago?
——-
I answered 9/35 correctly and 9/35 for partial credit. I wonder if I would have done any better if I still lived in rural Wisconsin.
Update: Matt Jones is interested in building a Big Here Tricorder:
What I immediately imagined was the extension of this quiz into the fabric of the near-future mobile and it’s sensors - location (GPS, CellID), orientation (accelerometers or other tilt sensors), light (camera), heat (Nokia 5140’s have thermometers…), signal strength, local interactions with other devices (Bluetooth, uPnP, NFC/RFID) and of course, a connection to the net.
The near-future mobile could become a ‘tricorder’ for the Big Here - a daemon that challenges or channels your actions in accordance and harmony to the systems immediately around you and the ripples they raise at larger scales.
It could be possible (but probably with some help from my friends) to rapidly-prototype a Big Here Tricorder using s60 python, a bluetooth GPS module, some of these scripts, some judicious scraping of open GIS data and perhaps a map-service API or two.
Physicist Lawrence Krauss sums up his thoughts
Physicist Lawrence Krauss sums up his thoughts from a small conference he organized on the topic of gravity. “There appears to be energy of empty space that isn’t zero! This flies in the face of all conventional wisdom in theoretical particle physics. It is the most profound shift in thinking, perhaps the most profound puzzle, in the latter half of the 20th century.”
Vincent van Gogh painted turbulence quite accurately.
Vincent van Gogh painted turbulence quite accurately. Mexican scientists “have found that the Dutch artist’s works have a pattern of light and dark that closely follows the deep mathematical structure of turbulent flow”.
The Blue People of Troublesome Creek. Due
The Blue People of Troublesome Creek. Due to a rare blood disorder, “four of the seven Fugate children were born with bright blue skin that lasted their entire lives.” “Over the years, the Fugates interbred repeatedly. Blue people proliferated.” (More here….scroll for the Science article.)
List of the top 5 most popular blogs
List of the top 5 most popular blogs written by scientists. Here’s the top 50 and a list of popular science blogs written by non-scientists. What’s clear is that the blog reading public doesn’t care that much for science…more people probably read Engadget than all of the top 50 science blogs combined.
Unobserved people paid almost three times as
Unobserved people paid almost three times as much to the “honesty box” when watched by a photocopied face than in the absence of the face. See also What the Bagel Man Saw by Freakonomists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt. I wonder if the smiley face on milk cartons deters people from drinking straight from the carton?
Update: Spiegel Online has a story with a graph depicting the results of different sets of eyes…sexy eyes did the worst while serious eyes looking straight ahead performed the best. (thx, roland)
Interview with writer Sam Harris on “why
Interview with writer Sam Harris on “why religion must end”. “People have morally identified with a subset of humanity rather than with humanity as a whole.”
Natural deselection
Tom Coates recently checked out the Royal College of Art Summer Show in London and ran across this project by Tim Simpson:
…three plants compete to reach the light that feeds and nourishes them. The first one to succeed survives. The other two are automatically cut down in their prime.
First plant to grow close to the proximity sensors wins. A simple and elegant idea.
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