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The Range of Lotus
For today's post, I'll be focusing on the lotus. And having said that, how many of you instantly thought of something like this: To which I can only say: you should be ashamed of yourself. That is not...
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Day light savings time & gardening
There seems to be more grousing about daylight savings time than usual, and considering how many time pieces these days automatically reset themselves, it's hard to figure out why, but the general...
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Elementary; The Science of the Perfect Murder
It was television that inspired me to devise the perfect murder. Not for the usual reasons relating to scientific inaccuracy. This isn’t about watching a CSI unbalance a centrifuge, contaminate a...
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Bats, like Batman, Thrive in a Post-Apocalyptic Environment
Without plagues, earthquakes, and unhinged criminal masterminds, the residents of Gotham might never need to put up the bat signal. Real bats, of course, are less concerned with responding to...
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Drug development: Teaching old pills new tricks
Exploding research costs and falling sales: there seems to be no cure for the pharma industry’s two big afflictions. But it may have found a way to both cut costs and open up new markets: repurposing...
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The war on science™
According to Science Left Behind (book review), there's a war on science, and it isn't raged by conservatives alone. Progressives are also ideologues who refuse to listen to the science - it's just...
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Don't ever do this
Books are big complex things, the more so because smaller presses require the author to basically do everything. Three parts all have to agree with each other: the text, the figures, and the figure...
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Field work looms
Our field research season begins as soon as the first shoots appear. So now a lot of planning has to be done to get all of our ducks in a row so you do the right things in the right order in our usual...
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A very brief story of the Pi
posted by @ulaulaman about #PiDay #Archimedes #SrinivasaRamanujan and other mathematical curiosities Warped by Mike Cavna via Bamdad's Math Comics As you know, the $\pi$ is defined as the ratio of the...
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Why People on Cell Phones Are the Worst
If it were urgent, maybe we could be more forgiving. But the subject of that phone call one table away at Starbucks never seems to be vital. A bathroom renovation, maybe. Or a phrase-by-phrase...
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Everything in this journal is wrong
Moxibustion at work. In real science, we agonize over every detail. When we publish a paper, we strive to get everything just right. We qualify our findings, always allowing for the possibility that...
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Fly-wheel bicycle
Funny, TPP first read the title of this article as "fly-weight bicycle", which sort of makes sense, but the real topic, fly-wheel bicycle makes great engineering sense too. The principle of a...
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Tapas Saturday Shopping
It's a rather bleak looking Saturday, not a good day for outdoor work, and this is probably a good thing because the indoors need policing prior to having our dinner group arrive. Tonight's menu is...
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Marine biology: Flea market
A newly discovered virus may be the most abundant organism on the planet What is the commonest living thing on Earth? Until now, those in the know would probably have answered Pelagibacter ubique, the...
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ALMA in Search of Our Cosmic Origins
ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is the most complex and ambitious astronomical observatory ever completed. And it is officially completed. Last week the telescope array was...
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Newton's Alchemy and early Geochemistry
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is today remembered for his contributions to optics, mechanics and gravity, but as a typical polymath of his time he was also interested in alchemy. And through his...
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St. Patrick's Day botanical question
This could be someone having their fun with a jocular, easy-going academic botanist because it's sort of a bit too much of a coincidence for this to arrive in my email box on March 17th. A "curious...
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Late Spring 2013
Data is the stuff that keeps you from disremembering things wrongly. This morning Mrs. Phactor says, "It seems like a late spring." Actually, it's not so late except in comparison to the truly...
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Iconic religious images affect the attitudes of Protestants, but not Catholics.
The Christian God comes in different flavours. Most notably, while it's sometimes portrayed as a benevolent, forgiving entity, at other times the imagery is of a vengeful, retributive god. We already...
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