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At the Earth's Core
Some days ago the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program announced a new "record" of the scientific vessel "Chikyu" (Japanese for "earth") - the at time deepest (scientific) borehole with 2.300 meters...
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Neil Gaiman: "Make good art"
Watch this video. Watch it now. It goes alongside that of the late Steve Jobs talking at Stanford but this time it is Neil Gaiman. And this time it is at Philadelphia University of Arts in 2012....
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About okra
Yesterday's trip to our local farmer's market held no real surprises: peppers were rebounding, tomatoes, except maybe cherry tomatoes, were shot, fall crops were coming into season, and people had a...
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British Health Minister believes in magic water
Well, this is one way to save money on health care. The new British Minister of Health, Jeremy Hunt, is a firm believer in homeopathy, which treats disease using magic water solutions that contain -...
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Pricing conundrum
Before I went to Riva del Garda for this year's AMLaP, I picked up a travel guide on my Kindle. (If only such things had existed the years I backpacked in Eurasia. My strongest memories are of how...
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2012 Nobel Prizes
Predicting the Nobel Prizes gets easier every year ((I said predicting, not getting your predictions right) since there’s very little you can add in the previous year’s list, although there are a few...
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Subliminal Placebo: You Didn't See It, but It's Working
The latest additions to the placebo effect family might be the rudest. First there was placebo, which uses your body's own tools to make you feel better after you try a treatment you imagine will help...
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No ornamental sweet potatoes!
OK, this is seriously annoying. Every year for years now TPP has liberated some ornamental sweet potatoes from one of many planters on campus to use for a laboratory specimen on starchy staples. And...
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Titles in evolutionary biology
These are the new papers for the last couple of weeks that I would like to read but will probably never get to. Gone are the days of the polymaths already, and now this! Systematic underestimation of...
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Habemus papers (about the new boson)
posted by @ulaulaman thanks to @tanzmax @spimpompam #Higgs #boson #newboson #LHC #CMS #ATLAS #CERN Finally Physics Letters B published the two papers by ATLAS and CMS about the discovery of the new...
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Biotechnology. Misunderstood.
David Kroll, veteran science blogger, educator and Director of Science Communications at the NC Museum of Natural History is having a hard time convincing someone of the importance of biotechnology...
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When did moralising gods emerge?
Looking at societies cross the world, you're stuck by the enormous variety of mystical beliefs out there - to the point where, infamously, even trying to come up with a definition of religion that...
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Multilayer interference iridescence or shiny!
Wow! Those are some shiny fruits! Quite a few shiny, colorful things actually lack pigments and their apparent color is due to iridescence, the way then bend and reflect light. Supposedly these...
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What would surprise you?
How often do you go "shiiiiiiiiiiit, so that's how it is!?!" What would really shock you? "FUCK! I never thought that would be the case..." Probably not that often. But those moments are so great, and...
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In serach of the ETs with the distributed computing
published by @ulaulaman about #SETI #astronomy #distributed_computing One of the most intriguing question of the mankind is if we are alone in the universe, if in a some little part of the cosmos it...
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Stabbing kids with needles: malpractice, or just a very bad idea?
Yesterday's Washington Post featured a terribly researched article titled "Kids and needles is sometimes a good match: Acupuncture can help with pain." Imagine: a one-year-old boy arrives at an...
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Strange thing to do - justify your own replacement
My colleagues, a few of my colleagues at least, have noticed that TPPs retirement from academic servitude in a couple of years will leave a pretty large gap in organismal botany; it'd be gutted...
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The invisible universe
posted by @ulaulaman about #x-ray #astronomy #riccardogiacconi #universe #exhibition #milano Today will be open in Milano an exhibition about the x-ray astronomy in order to celebrate the discover of...
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Sex Makes Everything Less Disgusting
Our biological drive to do it conflicts pretty directly with our biological drive not to get involved with other people's bodily fluids. How do we ignore the obvious grossness of sex for long enough...
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Cost of chocolate
The time-honored, although not honorable, practice is to get someone hooked on an addictive substance by basically giving it to them free, and then once the addiction hook is set, reel them in and...
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