Whale Fall (after life of a whale) | Seeing Data. Public perceptions of NZ’s freshwater environment | Waiology. By Daniel Collins As much as Waiology is about conveying science to the public and fellow water professionals, it’s also valuable for us all to understand how New Zealanders perceive our freshwaters and freshwater management. Excellent insight into this is provided by a biennial report from Ken Hughey and colleagues at Lincoln University. The 2010 report covers the environment in general, but has given special treatment to freshwater. I’ll cover the results in two parts: the first on the state and knowledge of freshwaters; the second on freshwater management. The main conclusion is that Kiwis are more concerned about water than any other environmental issue. Most of the respondents believed the NZ’s environment and freshwaters were in a good or adequate state.
The confidence of the respondents was also interesting. It’s clear that we New Zealanders don’t know all that we could about our freshwaters, particularly about groundwater, wetlands and lowland streams. Sciblogs Events | SciBlogs.co.nz.
Siberia home to yeti, bigfoot enthusiasts insist | Environment. The vast Siberian tundra holds untold mysteries, from once-secret nuclear installations to alleged UFO crash sites. Now, a team of scientists say they are "95%" sure that Russia's wintry expanse is home to the mythical yeti, otherwise known as the abominable snowman. More than a dozen scientists and yeti enthusiasts flew in from Canada, Estonia, Sweden and the US to exchange findings with their Russian counterparts at a day-long conference in the town of Tashtagol, some 2,000 miles east of Moscow in the Kemerovo region. Locals there have reported an increase in sightings of a creature in recent years.
A two-day expedition to the region's Azassky cave and Karatag peak over the weekend "collected irrefutable evidence" of the yeti's existence there, the Kemerovo government claimed in a statement. "In one of the detected tracks, Russian scientist Anatoly Fokin noted several hairs that might belong to the yeti," it added. Quorum sensing makes flashing bacteria blink together. ISS Now Has Live Access to the Internet. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter The International Space Station orbiting Earth. Credit: NASA Talk about a truly ‘world-wide’ web!
As the astronauts aboard the International Space Station orbit Earth at 28,000 kph (17,500 mph) they now have the ultimate wireless connection and direct, live access to the internet. The station received a special software upgrade this week, called Crew Support LAN, which gives astronauts the ability to browse and use the Web. “Hello Twitterverse! Astronauts will be subject to the same computer use guidelines as government employees on Earth. This personal Web access takes advantage of existing communication links to and from the station and gives astronauts the ability to browse and use the Web. During periods when the station is actively communicating with the ground using high-speed Ku-band communications, the crew will have remote access to the Internet via a ground computer. Journey to the Exoplanets iPad app.
Students plot experiments for YouTube Space Lab. Teenagers around the world on Monday were invited to design experiments that will be conducted on the International Space Station and streamed for all to see on YouTube. The Google-owned video-sharing website and Chinese computer titan Lenovo worked with US, European, and Japanese agencies to launch YouTube Space Lab as a way to ignite passions for learning science.
"Google was founded by scientists, so inspiring the next generation of scientists is very important to us," said Zahaan Bharmal, the California Internet firm's head of marketing for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It was Bharmal's idea to have students think of cool experiments to try in the micro-gravity environment on the Space Station and then arrange for the most promising concepts to be tested there. "We are taking the two best experiments, packing them on a rocket and sending them to the International Space Station," Bharmal told AFP.
The YouTube Space Lab competition is open to students from 14 to 18 years of age. New twist on Brownian motion seen for the first time. An important aspect of Brownian motion predicted decades ago has been observed for the first time by researchers in Europe. The team has measured how micrometre-sized spheres interact with a surrounding fluid and have shown that the spheres "remember" their previous motion. Their experimental technique, the researchers claim, could be used as a biophysical sensor.
Famously explained by Albert Einstein in 1905, Brownian motion describes the erratic motion of a tiny particle in a fluid. It is caused by the many small "kicks" that the particle receives as a result of the thermal motion of the fluid. Initially, Einstein and other physicists believed these kicks to be independent of the motion of the particle and to be characterized by white noise. Remembering motion In the mid-20th century, however, physicists began to realize that when the densities of the particle and fluid are similar, the kicks are not completely random. Specialized trap. [Subject] Could Eat [Object] All Day. That’s What She Said.
Rolling speed harmonization: How Colorado fights congestion on I-70. Illustration by Rob Donnelly. There is no more common lament voiced by the American driver than of the one about the “idiot” in the “fast lane” who’s slowing down traffic. If everyone could just drive faster, the thinking goes—if we could only cull the weak gazelles in our furiously charging migration—we could stamp out congestion.
We equate speed in traffic with efficiency. In the U.K., the Tory government is currently advocating raising the speed limit on certain motorway sections to 80 MPH, anticipating a massive windfall in economic productivity and time saved. It’s speed as the health of the state! (Though not all projections are so rosy.) But one thing that tends to be lost on the individual driver, who through the proscenium of his windshield commands what he believes to be an empirically incontrovertible perspective on the ground truth of traffic, is that sometimes you have to go slower to go faster.
Welcome to “rolling speed harmonization.” Reactive Oxygen Species Driven Angiogenesis by Inorganic Nanorods - Nano Letters. Department of Chemical Biology, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Uppal Road, Tarnaka, Hyderabad 500607, AP, India ‡Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, §Department of Anesthesiology and Molecular Pharmacology, and Department of Biomedical Engineering, 200 First Street S.W., Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Foundation, Rochester, Minnesota 55905, United States Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States Department of Chemical Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan 426-791, Republic of Korea Developmental Biology Division, Developmental Vascular Biology Program, Medical College of Wisconsin and Children’s Research Institute, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53226, United States Author Present Address Prescient Life Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Conflict of Interest Statement Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research has filed a patent (Patent Application No. Wired Petri Dish Gives Real-Time Updates. A new prototype petri dish can create an image of what’s growing on it and send that information to a laptop, all from inside an incubator. The prototype, dubbed the ePetri, was created from Lego blocks and a cell-phone image sensor, and uses light from a Google Android smart phone. “Normally, one leaves the cells in an incubator and just checks up on them from time to time,” says Michael Elowitz, a professor of biology at Caltech, who coauthored the paper. “With ePetri, it’s like getting continuous tweets from the cells rather than an occasional postcard.” A sample is placed on top of a small image-sensor chip, which uses an Android phone’s LED screen as a light source. The resolution is similar to a traditional microscope—fine enough to see the contents of cell nuclei, says senior author Changhuei Yang, professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at Caltech.
Peering into cells while they stay in the incubator has a number of benefits. IAS Complaint Part 1: Thimerosal in Your Vaccine? No. | Skepticon. As promised here is the first of the articles that I deal with in the formal complaint I made to the Charities Commission regarding the misinformation spread by the anti-vaccine charity IAS. So, with out further ado (what is ado anyway?) Here is the link to the offending piece and my rebuttal: Thimerosal in your Vaccine? Posted September 13, 2010 This post on the IAS website (made up of basically an uninformed question about the harmfulness of ethyl mercury and a video) insinuates that Ethyl Mercury (also known under the trade name Thimerosal)1 is both harmful in the amount contained in vaccines and, by extension, that New Zealand vaccines contain this substance and should therefore be viewed with suspicion.
The first thing to note is that the Thimerosal post is irrelevant to New Zealand populations as Thimerosal is not present in any of the vaccines used in New Zealand2. The post includes a link to the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for Ethyl Mercury as support for this claim3. And 2. IAS Complaint Part 2: Gardasil Horrors – Horrific Reasoning | Skepticon. Continuing my series of extracts from the IAS charity complaint. This one focuses on the Gardasil vaccine and the paranoia that has arisen around it.
I have included a link to the article but for convenience I have reproduced here the parts that I refer to in the complaint. Gardasil Horrors Posted April 6, 2011 First, the very title of this entry is calculated to be sensationalist and to undermine trust in a vaccine that has so far had an exemplary safety record1. The post is copied from the proceedings of an FDA advisory committee and is not representative of the full content of the meeting2. The submission starts out by alleging that the Gardasil vaccine causes vitamin deficiencies in the girls who receive it, specifically niacin. [Quote] “…I presented information last September against the vaccine at a similar FDA meeting when you were considering extending the vaccine to boys and older women.
The data for worldwide events was searched, a total of 44 events were found. Footnotes: 1. 2. IAS Complaint Part 3: Vaccine ingredients – Not so bad really | Skepticon. Next up in our voyage of crank discovery, via extracts from my IAS charity complaint, is a breakdown of simplistic reasoning around vaccine ingredients. Again, I have reproduced elements of the original article here for your convenience.
The following example was posted as a look at vaccine ingredients in two parts. I will not be so lenient – Both in one for you. Vaccine Ingredients – Part 1 posted May 6, 2011 This post contains a number of misunderstandings and falsehoods both explicitly stated and implied. The post lists the type of cell culture lines that viruses are cultivated in in order to create vaccines and then implies that the cells from these cultures are still found in the final vaccine product that is injected, including the emotive claim that we are injecting aborted foetal tissue into our children with the vaccine.
This is incorrect. [Quote] “…formaldehyde (an embalming fluid). This dose insensitivity of the anti-vaccine rhetoric is recurrent and important. Footnotes: 1. 2. IAS Complaint Part 4: Anti-Vaccine Impact in New zealand | Skepticon. Finally in the series of extracts from my IAS Charity complaint, I give a brief look at the impact of anti-vaccine information in New Zealand. I also bring together information from other parts of the complaint that have not been covered in the extracts so far. Impact of Anti-Vaccinationist Misinformation in New Zealand Maintaining a high level of vaccine coverage is important for reducing the probability of disease outbreaks and to limit the spread of disease in the community.
Diseases (often) spread due to contact between infected and uninfected individuals. If the uninfected individual has partial protection from the disease due to immunisation then the disease will spread with more difficulty. Herd immunity does rest on several assumptions, one of which is that immunised individuals are spread evenly throughout the population. New Zealand has struggled to reach recommended vaccination levels in the past with the coverage rate in 2005 being only 77% at two years of age1. Conclusion 2. Monkey quotes. I’m a fan of short, whitty, clever or erudite aphorisms. (Well, as long as they’re not too clichéd!) Ben Goldacre called out on twitter for quotes to put on their speaking tour poster: @bengoldacre Twitter compo: which quotation about science will go on our @SLSingh @profbriancox @robinince tour poster?
Tweet #monkeyquote free tickets Below is a selection of those offered – for the full list, use the #monkeyquote hastag on twitter. Don’t forget to select ‘All’ to see all the tweets, rather than just the top ones. (And what list would be complete without a Terry Pratchett quotes?) @StaticKing “I’d rather be a rising ape than a fallen angel” – Terry Pratchett @Darwins_cat “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it” – Albert Einstein @Fijian_Scion “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” – Feynman @terryday34 Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known” @JamieBGall Anything by Kelvin.
Share your own favourites in the comments. Peter Gluckman is introducing a blog.