Blogs about: Science

If you’re reading these words, you can thank science. Today’s society is flush with examples of how the scientific method pays off, from that ordinary pain medicine sitting in your cabinet to the big ole internet to futuristic vehicles whiz down the highway. For science lovers, it’s a mystery why so many students have to be goaded, coaxed and pushed into studying it. Especially when their lives are surrounded by it (even M&Ms in a candy jar can become science).

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Beyond Brangelina: The Supreme Court Decides Myriad Genetics
Living the Whole

source Tomorrow marks one month since actress Angelina Jolie announced to the world that she had undergone a double mastectomy in response to test results indicating a heightened risk for contracting breast and ovarian cancers.  She carries the BRCA1 gene–a mutation that indicates an average 67 percent risk of contracting breast cancer.  In her announcement she bemoans, “It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live.  The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.”  And in a matter of hours, Angelina Jolie made the Myriad Genetics case famous. Myriad Genetics is a “molecular diagnostic company” based in Salt Lake City, Utah.  In the 1990s, Myriad discovered the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations that lead to significantly increased chances of breast and ovarian cancer

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Negative data
The Upturned Microscope

This is my contribution to the #negativeresults campaign. Go check it out on Twitter! LAZARUS now on Smashwords and Amazon Follow The Upturned Microscope on Twitter and Facebook

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bynbmynx

bynbmynx Barbie loves Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants Barbie Loves Paul Frank Bedroom Playset (Julius the Monkey) Barbie Loves Pop Culture: James Bond 007 Ken and Barbie Gift Set Barbie Loves Sponge Bob Barbie Loves SpongeBob SquarePants African-American Doll Barbie Lucille Ball (L.A. at Last) Barbie LUCY GETS A PARIS GOWN DOLL Episode 147 I Love Lucy – Collector Edition Timeless Treasures (2002) Barbie Luv Me 3 Playset: Ballerina Pandas Barbie Magic & Mystery Collection; Merlin and Morgan le Fay Doll Set Barbie Magic 8 Ball Barbie Magic Genie Bottle & CD-ROM Barbie Magic Jewel Playset w Swing (2001) Barbie Magical Mermaid – Kayla Barbie Magical MOTOR HOME Vehicle MOTORHOME Van Becomes HOME & SPORTS BUGGY CAR (1990) Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse BARBIE Mariposa Doll Barbie Mariposa DVD and Doll Gift Set Barbie Mariposa Magic Wings Mariposa Doll Barbie Mariposa Magic Wings Mar

Panel: It’s Important That Women Learn STEM Can Be Fun – US News and World Report
Central Oregon Coast NOW
Plutonium and an Announcement
The Apocrypha

Plutonium is element 94 and as such it has 94 protons in its nucleus. There are twenty known isotopes of plutonium with half-lifes ranging from 14 years (Pu-241) to 80 million years (Pu-244); there are no stable isotopes of plutonium, so it is only found naturally in trace amounts and most plutonium in use was created by human activity. The most obvious use of plutonium is in nuclear weapons, and the production of Pu-239 has made it the most abundant of the plutonium isotopes. The atomic bomb “Fat Man”, which was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 used 6.2kg of plutonium, and 1-4kg of plutonium is considered to be all that is needed to build a well-designed nuclear device. Nuclear fuel is also a viable use of plutonium, the space probes Cassini, Voyager and New Horizons all use a plutonium, probably Pu-238, fuel source. Finally, if you ever have the opportunity to eat plutonium, don’t. Particulate plutonium can enter the lungs, where it decays and could cause radiation poiso

Study: Lego Faces Getting Angrier, More Abusive, Drinking Heavily
Write Good!: The Blog
18 June 2013. RIA-Novosti Infographics. Orbital Zoo
Voices from Russia
In Which We Discover Time Travel While Simultaneously Disproving the Existence of Time and, Therefore, Proving that Men are Smarter than Women
MojoFiction
Tianhe-2, Chinese supercomputer named as world’s fastest
Rightways
Warmer is better for life …
pindanpost
The excellence of bird watching. (yes, excellence)
Mr. H
Ytbloe0e
ytbloe0e

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Science Happens In Places That Are Beautiful By Accident
Linux Info

Those spikey deals look pretty menacing. It wouldn’t be a bad guess to think that they’re abstract art meant to invoke a Medieval torture aesthetic. But that’s way off. The infinitely repeating barbs are part of the anechoic chambers at the Technical University of Denmark…. – http://linuxinfo.org/science-happens-in-places-that-are-beautiful-by-accident/

Christianity, Science, Church, and Society
Christian Science Society in Jamaica Plain

As always, we’re having a meeting this Wednesday evening, wherein we’ll have some readings from our pastor, some singing, and some sharing of testimonies of Christian Science.  Can’t wait to hear what you have to offer, and/or share with you  The service is at 687 Centre St. in JP, and starts at 7:35pm.  (If you want to phone in, the number is 1.605.475.4000 x636128.)  Also, some of us are (informally) having dinner beforehand @ Same Old Place, just up Centre St., at 6:30 pm – we’d love to have you join us!  We’ll be the smiley bunch.   PS: We could use a hand over the coming weeks – please contact us if you’d like to usher, sing, or read (the last requires membership in The Mother Church).

Pardon Me; Your Bias is Showing 2
Ask Me How It Happened

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.” ― Michael Crichton In the previous post I got all worked up over a news article claiming that eating red meat raises the risk of developing diabetes. I may still be slightly worked up, so you might want to go have some chocolate and get back to me tomorrow. The article was biased from the outset, was not a real “study” at all, relied on notoriously inaccurate data and ignored important variables altogether. Not to mention that no hypothesis was formed for the purpose of testing and truth-finding. No, we skipped that inconvenient step completely and just jumped to calling it a full-fledged theory and telling everyone how to eat based upon it. But really,

Day 311. Getting mythical
Science for Life. 365

Driving home around an hour ago, I heard Ian Henschke on ABC Radio 891 state the following: In a moment, kooky science with Dr Karl. I got grumpy. Why is there a perception that science needs to be kooky, crazy, whacky in order to be of interest? Excuse me for boasting, but I think this blog is a good example that it doesn’t have to be this way.  Occasionally I’m a little nuts, but it’s not my over-riding tone. Brain Pickings, The Scicurious Brain, All in the Mind, RadioLab all come to mind as other examples. And while we’re at it, what other mythical beliefs are out there about science communication? I addressed another one this past week: ‘scientists don’t want to talk to people about their work‘. How about ‘oh, why do we bother, people aren’t really that interested in science’. Or ‘if we could just make them see the facts, they’d love it too’. Consider ‘scientists should just be left alone to do rese

SCINEMA 2013 Festival
Inspiring Australia Queensland

SCINEMA on SouthBank will play 19 to 21 July at The Edge, State Library of QLD. Sessions are currently being finalised and will be announced 3 May 2013. SCINEMA travelling festival will play at a venue near you – watch this space for more information or subscribe to our mailing list here. Click here to see the list of winning films from our 2012 festival competition If you work for a school, public library, government office, town hall, art gallery, museum or public space, we would love to hear from you – SCINEMA is free for all venues. Grab a copy of our venue application form. We hope to see you at one of our sessions! The SCINEMA team For more information about SCINEMA 2013, visit http://www.csiro.au/scinema/program/index.html Click here to read about the amazing trip to Australia’s space observatory facilities Kristian Lang – the winner of our 2009 Best Student Short Film prize – took as part of his SCINEMA prize.

On My Bookshelf: Weird Life
Catholic Sensibility

David Toomey’s smart and sassy book, Weird Life is a quite enjoyable read. I was paging through it about the same time I was reading The Hydrogen Sonata. Fascinating contrast. I’ll get to that. The author takes the reader through a natural progression. We start with a recent history of biology, chiefly the recent discoveries of life in most unexpected places. Then chemistry blends into an exploration of the basic definition of life. Then Dr Toomey goes off-planet and looks at places in the solar system as well as between the stars. From there, we’re launched into the realms of speculation. What could weird life be like? Will we even notice it when we see it? How have respected scientists pushed into SETI, (the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence)? Dr Toomey wraps up his book with a foray into fiction. There are a lot of weird aliens in science fiction, and he covers just a sliver of them. The reader ends up in the realm of physics, and how changes in the basic l

Why I’m frustrated with the atheist monument situation
eppur si muove physics

So there’s a new atheist monument that is going to be displayed in a small town in Florida, and believe it or not, there is a lot of drama surrounding it. Personally, I really don’t care that an atheist monument is being built. I’m not offended, impressed, excited, annoyed… you get the idea. I guess if I had to describe how I felt about this particular situation, I would say I’m frustrated. I’m not frustrated with the monument itself, but with the entire situation leading up to it. The atheist monument will be built near a monument of the Ten Commandments. Let’s stop right there – personally I was kind of wondering why there is a monument of the Ten Commandments in the first place. I am a Christian, and while I am certainly not offended by a public display of the Ten Commandments, I don’t really think it is necessary. I don’t think such a monument would lead people to faith in Christ. I realize that is probably not the goal of the monument, but my point is that I don’t thin

Scientists say new study shows pig health hurt by GMO feed
Go to News!

By Carey Gillam (Reuters) – Pigs fed a diet of only genetically modified grain showed markedly higher stomach inflammation than pigs who dined on conventional feed, according to a new study by a team of Australian scientists and U.S. researchers. The study adds to an intensifying public debate over the impact of genetically modified crops, which are widely used by U.S. and Latin American farmers and in many other countries around the world. … via Science News Headlines – Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-study-shows-pig-health-hurt-gmo-feed-200427377.html