Bill Hammack's Video & Audio on Engineering. Isaac Asimov on the Thrill of Lifelong Learning, Science vs. Religion, and the Role of Science Fiction in Advancing Society. By Maria Popova “It’s insulting to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being.” Isaac Asimov was an extraordinary mind and spirit — the author of more than 400 science and science fiction books and a tireless advocate of space exploration, he also took great joy in the humanities (and once annotated Lord Byron’s epic poem “Don Juan”), championed humanism over religion, and celebrated the human spirit itself (he even wrote young Carl Sagan fan mail).
Like many of the best science fiction writers, he was as exceptional at predicting the future as he was at illuminating some of the most timeless predicaments of the human condition. In a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers, found in Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas (public library) — the same remarkable tome that gave us philosopher Martha Nussbaum on how to live with our human fragility — Asimov explores several subjects that still stir enormous cultural concern and friction. Painting by Rowena Morrill. Creationism – Are We Winning The Battle and Losing The War?
One of the major ambitions of my life is to promote science and critical thinking, which I do under the related banners of scientific skepticism and science-based medicine. This is a huge endeavor, with many layers of complexity. For that reason it is tempting to keep one’s head down, focus on small manageable problems and goals, and not worry too much about the big picture.
Worrying about the big picture causes stress and anxiety. I have been doing this too long to keep my head down, however. I have to worry about the big picture: are we making progress, are we doing it right, how should we alter our strategy, is there anything we are missing? The answers to these questions are different for each topic we face. Over my life the defenders of science have won every major battle against creationism, in the form of major court battles, many at the supreme court level. Meanwhile creationism has become, if anything, more of an issue for the Republican party. Louisiana is the model for this. Scientists, not politicians, should set scientific priorities. When Chairman Lamar Smith said that America depends on taxpayer-financed research to fuel the scientific breakthroughs and innovations that have driven our economy for the last several decades, he was absolutely right (“If everything is a priority, nothing is”).
That’s what makes the rest of his justification of “America COMPETES”, H.R. 1806, so confusing. Instead of reinforcing America’s leadership across the sciences, the bill arbitrarily cuts funding for two of the NSF’s divisions – Geosciences and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. Americans rely on NSF’s preeminent scientists and well-respected peer review process to advance the grant proposals that hold the most promise, but H.R. 1806 declares Congress to be the ‘expert’ in what qualifies as scientific innovation, allowing them to pick winners and losers among scientific disciplines. Looking at the innovations that have come from research sponsored by those divisions doesn’t make his rationale any clearer.
SCIENCE - Physics & Physical Science. Science News Sources. Top Sites That Make Science Awesome. Posted by Elizabeth Harper on April 24, 2013 in Internet & Networking, Computers and Software, Family and Parenting, Kids, Guides & Reviews, Fab Websites :: 0 comments Though you may remember science class as dull, much has changed. The Internet has done the impossible and made science a lot more accessible, bringing scientists and science enthusiasts together to share and discuss the most interesting discoveries of the day. Online, you can find fascinating science news and explanations on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more if you know where to look—and it's all a lot more interesting than any high school science textbook. Here's the best of what's out there. Exploring space from you desktop NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APoD) Just like the title says, this NASA site provides a high-resolution space photo every day with a description written by a professional astronomer.
If you like what you see, there's an archive going back to 1995 full of wondrous images. StarTalk Radio Vi Hart. ScienceDirect.com | Search through over 11 million science, health, medical journal full text articles and books. Science isn't a democracy: debunking the strategies of science denialism.
2.4k Shares I’ve always considered all forms of denialism, whether it’s climate change, creationism or the latest antivaccine lunacy, to be based on the same type and quality of arguments. It is essentially holding a unsupported belief that either science is wrong or, worse yet, is a vast conspiracy to push false information onto innocent humans. One of the “tools” often used by science deniers is trying to convince the casual observer of a science democracy – that is, there is some kind of vote, and some number of “scientists” are opposed to the consensus. I’ve often joked that science deniers all get together at the World Denialist Society meetings and compare notes. They all use the same strategies, including the myth of the science democracy, which seriously doesn’t exist. Others have observed this convergence in denialist strategies.
The answer…is that creationists and climate change deniers have a lot in common — most especially in their assertions about science itself. Project Seeks to Build Map of Human Brain. The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for . The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.
Scientists with the highest hopes for the project also see it as a way to develop the technology essential to understanding diseases like and , as well as to find new therapies for a variety of mental illnesses. Moreover, the project holds the potential of paving the way for advances in artificial intelligence. Photo “Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy — every dollar,” he said. How Skeptics Can Break the Cycle of False Beliefs. In Tyler Hamilton's 2012 book The Secret Race (written with Daniel Coyle), the cyclist exposes the most sophisticated doping program in the history of sports, orchestrated by Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner now stripped of his titles after a thorough investigation by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Hamilton shows how such an elaborate system was maintained through the “omertà rule”—the code of silence that leads one to believe everyone else believes doping is the norm—and reinforced by the threat of punishment for speaking out or not complying.
The broader psychological principle at work here is “pluralistic ignorance,” in which individual members of a group do not believe something but mistakenly believe everyone else in the group believes it. When no one speaks up, it produces a “spiral of silence” that can lead to everything from binge drinking and hooking up to witch hunts and deadly ideologies. A 1998 study by Christine M. Schroeder and Deborah A. NASA releases video of hellish plasma ‘rain storm’ on surface of the sun. Waterlogged meteorite may answer 3 questions about life on Mars. It’s likely one of the most important discoveries in recent years and astronomers are just beginning to understand the potential findings from a rare Martian meteorite recovered in Western Morocco.
Astronomers say the Mars meteorite — dubbed “Black Beauty” — is unlike any of the Martian meteorites yet discovered on Earth, according to a report published online Thursday by the journal Science. The meteorite contains the highest concentration of water ever recorded and it is generating a large amount of excitement within the astronomy community. The stunning discovery has raised more questions than it has answered, including questions about whether the presence of water in a 2.5-billion-year meteorite raises the prospect of discovering past life on the Red Planet.
While it is likely to take years before we have any definitive answers, here are three questions it just may answer: Did Mars once have flowing water? If so, when? How did Mars come to be, geologically speaking? Www.culturalcognition.net - home. Broadcast Yourself. Press Release. Geneva, 4 July 2012. At a seminar held at CERN1 today as a curtain raiser to the year’s major particle physics conference, ICHEP2012 in Melbourne, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest preliminary results in the search for the long sought Higgs particle. Both experiments observe a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV. “We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”
"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. The results presented today are labelled preliminary. The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Recommended: Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum.
Ecco, 2012 In 2006 Alaskan senator Ted Stevens described the Internet as a “series of tubes,” a quip that earned the octogenarian widespread mockery. But as Blum notes in his charming look at the physical infrastructure that underlies the Web, Stevens wasn’t all that wrong. Bits sail through a worldwide network of fiber-optic cables and come together in junctions where Internet providers connect their pipes to the networks of others. Blum’s transcontinental journey exposes some of the important issues confronting the Internet, such as the occasional disconnect between the interests of the corporations who control the physical pipes and the good of the network as a whole.
“If you believe the Internet is magic,” he writes, “then it’s hard to grasp its physical reality.” Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution by Rebecca Stott. Prize Fight: The Race and the Rivalry to Be the First in Science by Morton Meyers. The Essence Of Science Explained In 63 Seconds : Krulwich Wonders... Here it is, in a nutshell: The logic of science boiled down to one, essential idea. It comes from Richard Feynman, one of the great scientists of the 20th century, who wrote it on the blackboard during a class at Cornell in 1964.
Think about what he's saying. Science is our way of describing — as best we can — how the world works. The world, it is presumed, works perfectly well without us. Our thinking about it makes no important difference. It is out there, being the world. The world knows. This view is based on an almost sacred belief that the ways of the world are unshakeable, ordered by laws that have no moods, no variance, that what's "Out There" has no mind. Thanks to Maria Popova and her blog "Brainpickings" for noticing the Feynman moment. "View with a Grain of Sand" from View with a Grain of Sand, by Wisława Szymborska. Study finds that analytical thinking reduces religious belief. By Muriel KaneFriday, April 27, 2012 21:48 EDT A study carried out by psychologists at the University of British Columbia has concluded that tests which promote analytical thinking simultaneously reduce the level of religious belief in skeptics and devout believers alike.
The subjects of the study were given problem-solving tasks, shown a picture of Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker,” and presented with a final questionnaires printed in a hard-to-read font. The questionnaire, which asked them to what extent they agreed with statements such as “I believe in God” or “I don’t really spend much time thinking about my religious beliefs,” revealed a diminished level of belief compared to control subjects who had been given non-analytical tasks to complete. Psychologists have long believed that humans rely on two different cognitive systems, one “intuitive” and the other “analytical,” and previous research has pointed to a link between intuitive thinking and religious belief. Muriel Kane. The Science Network: intersection of science and social policy. Amazingly stimulating discussions and talks from renowned scientist : socialscience.
Neurological support for Adam Smith's 'theories of morality' The part of the brain we use when engaging in egalitarian behavior may also be linked to a larger sense of morality, researchers have found. Their conclusions, which offer scientific support for Adam Smith's theories of morality, are based on experimental research published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, coming seven months after the start of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which has been aimed at addressing income inequality, was conducted by researchers from: New York University's Wilf Family Department of Politics; the University of Toronto; the University of California, San Diego; the University of California, Davis; and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
To explore this possibility, the researchers conducted an experiment in which individuals played a game to gauge brain activity in decision-making. Adam Smith, in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", expressed this perspective in his 18th-century essay. Particle accelerators' search for nature's hidden dimensions comes up empty. It sounds like something that should be reported at the Onion, but here I am to tell you that the people who run the CMS detector at the LHC have just released their most recent results. Apparently, if there are extra dimensions, they haven't been hiding anywhere the LHC can find them. To add to the misery of extra dimension hunters, the data from Fermilab's D0 collaboration has also been used to not find extra dimensions.
No, seriously—with the LHC performing so well, the folks at CMS have a huge amount of data. And although the Tevatron is no more, the data remains, and the D0 folk have not been afraid to use it. The two detector teams looked for the same signature of extra dimensions using the wave-like nature of particles. When a particle is confined in a box that has dimensions about the same size as its wavepacket, the reflections of the waves from the edges of the box will interfere. Neil deGrasse Tyson - We Stopped Dreaming. Redefining the Media. Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites. Lone science bloggers. Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence.
ScienceBlogs. Astronomy Magazine - Interactive Star Charts, Planets, Meteors, Comets, Telescopes. Bad Astronomy. Well now, this is an interesting discovery: astronomers have found what looks like a "super-Earth" – a planet more massive than Earth but still smaller than a gas giant – orbiting a nearby star at the right distance to have liquid water on it! Given that, it might – might – be Earthlike. This is pretty cool news. We’ve found planets like this before, but not very many! And it gets niftier: the planet has at least five siblings, all of which orbit its star closer than it does. Now let me be clear: this is a planet candidate; it has not yet been confirmed. The star is called HD 40307, and it’s a bit over 40 light years away (pretty close in galactic standards, but I wouldn’t want to walk there).
Massive planets tug on their star harder, so they’re easier to find this way. In this case, HD 40307 was originally observed a little while back by HARPS, and three planets were found. We don’t know how big the planet is, unfortunately. That’s exciting because of the prospect for life. Space, NASA Information & News | Outer Space Flight Videos & Pictures | Astronomy, Solar System Images. Universe Today — Space and astronomy news. ENGINEERING.com | The Engineer's Ultimate Resource Tool. Free Science Books and Journals | Sciyo.com. Eric Weisstein's World of Physics. PhysOrg.com - Science News, Technology, Physics, Nanotechnology, Space Science, Earth Science, Medicine.
Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology. Physicsworld.com. Nanotechnology Basics. Science and Technology News, Science Articles | Discover Magazine.
EurekAlert! - Science News. Science News. ScienceSeeker.