Lind J (1753) « The James Lind Library. English Edition gifted by author provenance French Edition.
Residual expertise – or why scientists are amateurs at most of science. Editor's note: I have been unsuccessfully attempting to finish a book I started 3 years ago about how and why everyone should get pumped about reading and understanding scientific papers.
I've adapted part of one of the chapters into this blogpost. It is pretty raw but hopefully gets the idea across. An episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart featured physicist Lisa Randall, an incredible physicist and noted scientific communicator, as the invited guest. Near the end of the interview, Stewart asked Randall why, with all the scientific progress we have made, that we have been unable to move away from fossil fuel-based engines. The question led to the exchange: Medline trend: automated yearly statistics of PubMed results for any query. ArXiv.org e-Print archive. Geneticists eye the potential of arXiv. The preprint server arXiv.org is perhaps best known as the preserve of theoretical physicists and astrophysicists.
But 2008 saw an influx of submissions of unpublished manuscripts, or preprints, by condensed-matter physicists who wanted to stake claims to the fast-moving subject of iron-based superconductors called pnictides. Now the life sciences may be on the cusp of their own ‘pnictide moment’, with population geneticists leading the charge. Source:arXiv.org In the past month, leading research groups have posted to arXiv high-profile papers on the genetic history of southern Africans 1 and Europeans 2 .
Other prominent population geneticists have submitted methods-based papers to the server, which is hosted by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The Disappearing Universe — Starts With A Bang! “I realise now that I wanted to disappear.
Move Over, Physicists. While it was once the domain of physicists, the pre-publication server arXiv.org is being slowly co-opted by researchers in the life sciences — particularly population geneticists, says News' Ewen Callaway.
"In the past month, leading research groups have posted to arXiv high-profile papers on the genetic history of southern Africans and Europeans," Callaway says. Chauvet Cave. Drawings of horses from Chauvet Cave The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in the Ardèche department of southern France is a cave that contains some of the earliest known cave paintings, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life.[1] It is located near the commune of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc on a limestone cliff above the former bed of the Ardèche River, in the Gorges de l'Ardèche. Discovered on December 18, 1994, it is considered one of the most significant prehistoric art sites. Gægist bak við Vetrarbrautina. No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning.
(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once. The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin. Hvatinn til fræðslu. Tvær ungar vísindakonur eyða nú mestum hluta frítíma síns í að halda úti nýrri vefsíðu sem sérhæfir sig í vísindafréttum.
Vísindavefurinn. Peptides.pdf. Seqinr.pdf. Greinar Alberts Einstein á íslensku. Reproducibility: Six red flags for suspect work : Nature. Frontiers in Neuroscience. Disputes in the cavern. If Ignatius Loyola been a child of the late 20th century, it is quite likely that he would have chosen palaeoanthropology as a career rather than theology, seeing as he was so predisposed to casuistry.
Skeptics On The .Net. Quack company litigates against its critics. Published: Oct. 11, 2012, 10:36 a.m., Last updated: Oct. 17, 2012, 2:28 p.m.
Solal Technologies is a company that sells and promotes untested remedies for a range of serious illnesses. It has made misleading claims that its products help treat AIDS, cancer, heart disease and depression. Several organisations and individuals have exposed these claims in the interests of public health. An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces. By Joe Romm on October 14, 2012 at 12:30 pm "An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces" Humanity’s Choice (via M.I.T.): Inaction (“No Policy”) eliminates most of the uncertainty about whether future warming will be catastrophic.
Aggressive emissions reductions greatly improves humanity’s chances. A Comprehensive Survey of Retracted Articles from the Scholarly Literature. Background The number of retracted scholarly articles has risen precipitously in recent years. Past surveys of the retracted literature each limited their scope to articles in PubMed, though many retracted articles are not indexed in PubMed. To understand the scope and characteristics of retracted articles across the full spectrum of scholarly disciplines, we surveyed 42 of the largest bibliographic databases for major scholarly fields and publisher websites to identify retracted articles.
This study examines various trends among them. Results. Hematopoietic stem cells. It is all in the blood: the multifaceted co... [Exp Diabetes Res. 2012. Getting to the Root of Aging. Blockade of Pachytene piRNA Biogenesis Reveals a Novel Requirement for Maintaining Post-Meiotic Germline Genome Integrity. Abstract Piwi-interacting RNAs are a diverse class of small non-coding RNAs implicated in the silencing of transposable elements and the safeguarding of genome integrity. In mammals, male germ cells express two genetically and developmentally distinct populations of piRNAs at the pre-pachytene and pachytene stages of meiosis, respectively. Pre-pachytene piRNAs are mostly derived from retrotransposons and required for their silencing. In contrast, pachytene piRNAs originate from ~3,000 genomic clusters, and their biogenesis and function remain enigmatic.
Here, we report that conditional inactivation of the putative RNA helicase MOV10L1 in mouse spermatocytes produces a specific loss of pachytene piRNAs, significant accumulation of pachytene piRNA precursor transcripts, and unusual polar conglomeration of Piwi proteins with mitochondria. Author Summary Small non-coding RNAs play critical roles during development and in disease. Figures. Class of RNA molecules protects germ cells from damage. Passing one's genes on to the next generation is a mark of evolutionary success. So it makes sense that the body would work to ensure that the genes the next generation inherits are exact replicas of the originals. New research by biologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine has now identified one way the body does exactly that. Hvað hafið þið á móti eigindlegum rannsóknum? « Eva Hauksdóttir.
Í félagsvísindum eru til tveir flokkar rannsókna, megindlegar rannsóknir og eigindlegar. Í umræðu um aðferðafræði kynjafræðinga ber á því viðhorfi að eigindlegar rannsóknaraðferðir komi í staðinn fyrir eða séu jafnvel betri en megindlegar rannsóknir og því sé fráleitt að tala um að kynjafræðirannsóknir standist ekki vísindalegar kröfur. Tesla Triumphs: Electric Car Bests the Rest. Since America’s love affair with cars really got rolling after World War II, nothing but a gasoline-burning internal combustion engine would do. Until now. The gearheads at Motor Trend have named the Tesla Model S the car of the year for 2013—the first time an all-electric vehicle has ever won the honor. “The turning point will be when electric cars become the best product, and that’s the key for mass adoption,” argued Tesla founder Elon Musk at an event to announce the award November 12.
The Model S “is just the best car.” That’s quite an achievement given that Tesla had to learn how to make a car from scratch, starting as a company in 2003 and then, in 2008, offering its first all-electric sports car known as the Roadster. The key to all electric cars, and the Model S is no exception, is the battery. A bumpy road, riddled with glitches in the cars themselves, led to this modest success. Molecular Analysis Supports Controversial Claim for Dinosaur Cells. Do fossils of dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, contain soft tissues? Image: ScottRobertAnselmo, via Wikimedia Commons RALEIGH—Twenty years ago, paleontologist Mary Schweitzer made an astonishing discovery.
Peering through a microscope at a slice of dinosaur bone, she spotted what looked for all the world like red blood cells. It seemed utterly impossible—organic remains were not supposed to survive the fossilization process—but test after test indicated that the spherical structures were indeed red blood cells from a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex. In the years that followed, she and her colleagues discovered other apparent soft tissues, including what seem to be blood vessels and feather fibers. Richard Feynman and Pseudoscience. Poor but Smart. Nanotechnology.