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No Really, the World isn’t Ending
One of the many detrimental effects of poor science education is that people are far more susceptible to woo. This is being exhibited particularly strongly right now with the ZOMG2012 meme, wherein an uncomfortably large number of people are convinced that some moldy Babylonian god a hitherto-undetected planet that the Mayans knew about is going…
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Higgs Boson May be Killing its Own Grandfather
The troubled Large Hadron Collider is scheduled to start up again in December, nearly a year after a series of malfunctions shut it down. The LHC restart may again be plagued with malfunctions according to (as this NY Times article puts it) “a pair of otherwise distinguished physicists.” They hypothesize that the Higgs boson, which…
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Strike a Silly Blow for Science
On November 19, the dynamic duo of whackjobbery Kirk “if evolution is real why aren’t there crocoducks?” Cameron and Ray “the existence of god is proved by bananas” Comfort* will be distributing 50,000 free copies of Darwin’s Origin of Species to universities across the U.S. The catch, of course, is that a 50-page introduction (Warning:…
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Science Marches On
Surgery to create an artificial hymen and “restore” virginity has been around for a while now and is particularly popular in Japan. Now the Japanese have devised an even cheaper alternative: A $14.99 gadget which is inserted about 20 minutes before intercourse. It expands to create a “tight feeling” and releases a blood-like fluid. Traditional…
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The Bloggage of the Beagle
The Voyage of the Beagle site takes entries from Charles Darwin’s daily journal and posts them as blog entries, including pictures and maps. The day has passed delightfully. I have been wandering by myself in a Brazilian forest: amongst the multitude it is hard to say what set of objects is most striking; the general…
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DNA Sequencing Made Easy
Gene sequencing has been in the news a lot lately (in fact, an international team has just cracked the potato genome), and Ars Technica has posted the first of what they promise will be a series of articles on the basics of DNA sequencing. Link
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Cosmos Remixed
Lyrics: [Sagan] If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch You must first invent the universe Space is filled with a network of wormholes You might emerge somewhere else in space Some when-else in time The sky calls to us If we do not destroy ourselves We will one day venture to the…
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TMBG Science
They Might Be Giants, whose lyrics often reference science, have just released a new album for kids entitled Here Comes Science. You can preview the song “Science is Real” at Amazon*, and the music video for “I am a Paleontologist” is below: The album is also available on iTunes. (via Charlie’s Playhouse) *If you want…
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“Touchable” Holography
The University of Tokyo’s Shinoda Lab has come up with a way for holograms to provide tactile feedback. Wiimotes track hand motion and ultrasound creates the sensation of touch.
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Stem Cell Sutures
This is kind of brilliant. A team of biomedical undergrads at Johns Hopkins have built a machine which will weave a patient’s stem cells into surgical thread. When used as sutures, the thread delivers stem cells right to the injury, where they can help repair damage and reduce inflammation. They’re looking at it particularly for…