Life is just a theory

New Male Terminates Monkey Pregnancies

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:19:29 -0500

Scientific American 60 Second Science:

Female gelada monkeys spontaneously abort 80 percent of pregnancies by a displaced male when a new male succeeds him. Sophie Bushwick reports

crownedrose: Psiloceras planorbis (Ammonite Fossil)...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:53:42 -0500

crownedrose:

Psiloceras planorbis (Ammonite Fossil) (by cobalt123)

Text from photographer: ’A large and wondrous fossil specimen, seen in the booth for Chris Moore at the Arizona Mineral & Fossil Show in Tucson, Arizona. This capture was in available light inside a vendor booth at the Ramada Ltd. I’ve never seen such fossils and certainly never knew that the ammonites I have collected for years had their earliest ancestor in these. The ammonites evolved into squid and mollusks. The identification labels these as “Lower Lias, Lower Jurassic”. The slabs were found in Somerset, England in shale. The colors are natural and there is only a bit of varnish to protect the nacre which is iridescent and glows.’

Critical Wit #48 – Meet Beatrice the Biologist!

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:28:02 -0500

Critical Wit #48 – Meet Beatrice the Biologist!:

Katie McKissick is a “former high school biology teacher who simply loves to talk, write, and read about science.” She’s also the author and illustrator of “Beatrice the Biologist,” a fun, informative website about science. In this episode, guest host Sophie Bushwick chats with Katie about her unique way of describing science through blogging and illustrating. And they discuss one of the more popularly read Beatrice the Biologist articles, “Biology Doesn’t Support Gay Marriage Bans” and how it spun off into a conversation about olives.

instituteofphysics: NASA practising the MoonWalk, 1963-1968

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:07:31 -0500

instituteofphysics:

NASA practising the MoonWalk, 1963-1968

Image of an atom’s shadow, courtesy of Ben Norton /...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:40:27 -0500

Image of an atom’s shadow, courtesy of Ben Norton / Griffith University

Using a special lens, Griffith University Ph.D candidate Ben Norton can capture extremely high-resolution images of a frozen atom - only about a degree above absolute zero - in an ultra-high vacuum, held steady by carefully controlled electric fields.

Via PhysOrg

When you mix hydrogen peroxide with sodium iodide, you get...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:36:16 -0500

When you mix hydrogen peroxide with sodium iodide, you get billows and billows of invisible oxygen gas. Ah, but you can make that gas visible with dish soap, creating…elephant toothpaste? (Just don’t try this one at home, kids—what you can’t see is how much heat the reaction produces, which can cause burns.)

Video and info via io9. Check out their “Ten amazing (and occasionally explosive) chemical reactions” for more fun chemistry, or browse the Periodic Table of Videos on Youtube.

Photo courtesy of AP Photo/HO, the Institute of Cell Biophysics...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:53:37 -0500

Photo courtesy of AP Photo/HO, the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The material that created this little flower is 30,000 years old, and was rescued from extinction by an unlikely savior: a long-since-dead squirrel. During the last Ice Age, a squirrel hid fruit in its burrow, and that burrow remained locked in Siberian permafrost until Russian scientists recovered its contents. They used those contents to resurrect this Sylene stenophylla plant, making it the oldest plant to be regenerated. Not only that, but the revived plant is also fertile, as demonstrated by its flowers and its production of seeds.

Via PhysOrg

What are the chances it was hidden by this little guy?

fuckyeahfluiddynamics: A little polymer goes a long way when it...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:33:55 -0500

fuckyeahfluiddynamics:

A little polymer goes a long way when it comes to changing a fluid’s behavior. Normally, a falling jet of fluid will develop waviness and be driven by surface tension and the Plateau-Rayleigh instability to break up into a stream of droplets. We see this at our water faucets all the time. But when traces of a polymer are dissolved in water, the behavior is much different. The viscoelasticity of the polymer chains creates a force that opposes the thinning effects caused by surface tension. So, instead of thinning to the point of breaking into droplets, a drop is able to climb back up the jet until it reaches a critical mass where it reverses direction, accelerates downward due to gravity and eventually breaks off the jet. Then the whole process begins again with a new terminal drop. (Video credit: C. Clasen et al)

jtotheizzoe: There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viruses in the world’s...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:09:07 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viruses in the world’s oceans.

Stretched end-to-end, they would reach 10,000,000 light years.

They weigh as much as 75,000,000 blue whales.

(random facts from UBC’s Curtis Suttle @ #AAAS Vancouver 2012)

…wow…

In Seeds We Trust Because science won’t save us if biodiversity...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:01:35 -0500

In Seeds We Trust

Because science won’t save us if biodiversity fails, a global effort is underway to collect and cache the genetic resources contained in seeds.

By now you’ve probably heard about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. While it was under construction, and then as it opened in February 2008, the media couldn’t get enough of the “Doomsday” seed bank. We learned that the bomb-proof concrete bunker was encased in permafrost, 130 meters-deep inside the sandstone of a Norwegian mountain. It would store copies of seeds currently housed in the more than 1,400 gene banks worldwide, so that should calamity strike any of those gene banks, Svalbard’s seeds would save the collections—and thus humanity—from the jaws of famine.

Maybe it was the nickname “Doomsday” vault. Or maybe it was the remote location, north of the Arctic Circle where no trees grow. Whatever the reason, people have tended to associate Svalbard with some catastrophic scenario—one unlucky summer when locusts tear across the Midwest, an airborne fungus rains over Africa, and China’s soybeans succumb to asteroid strike or nuclear war. But Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and intellectual father of the Svalbard Seed Vault, believes that apocalypse has already crept on us. “By the end of the century, average temperatures during growing seasons in many regions will probably be higher than the very hottest temperatures now,” he says, citing a recent paper in Science. “By 2030, we could see a 30 percent drop in maize production in Southern Africa; 2030 is only two crop generations away. We’re not talking about some time in the distant future when we all expect to be dead. We certainly can’t wake up in 2029 and decide to do something.” The millions of seed samples in gene banks worldwide will be invaluable for plant geneticists and breeders looking for new traits to develop the crops of 2030, Fowler says.

Those national and international banks, however, are vulnerable to floods, fires, earthquakes, and other natural hazards, as well as war and civil strife. Surprisingly, the most pervasive danger is plain old poor maintenance. “Conditions are pretty dismal in many of these places,” said Fowler. “Most seed banks simply don’t have the resources or manpower to maintain their stocks.” Once a sample falls below an 85 percent germination rate, the genes within those seeds are in danger of being lost forever. Fowler estimates that 50 percent of the world’s seed stores currently fail the test.

Article / Slideshow

Maintaining Plant Biodiversity: Polar Bear Edition

gastornis: The Colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) is...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:49:08 -0500

gastornis:

The Colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) is an extremely large cephalopod, known to reach lengths of up to 14m. Not to be confused with its smaller cousin, the giant squid, the colossal squid differs in its larger size, wider mantle, and the relatively short arms contain both hooks and suckers.

Because of its elusive nature, fully-grown specimens of colossal squids are exceedingly difficult to study in the wild, so many features of them remain under-studied. It may be the largest known invertebrate.

VIDEO: A Tornado On The Sun by Andrew...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:22:45 -0500

VIDEO: A Tornado On The Sun

by Andrew Prince

Credit: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a tornado on the surface of the sun. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory posted this stunning video, which shows the sun’s plasma sliding and spinning around in the star’s magnetic fields for 30 hours earlier this month.

Terry Kucera, a solar physicist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told Fox News that the tornado might be as large as the Earth itself and have gusts up to 300,000 miles per hour. By comparison, the strongest tornadoes on earth, F5 storms, clock wind speeds at a relatively paltry (though incredibly destructive) 300 mph.

The sun is an extremely active star, regularly spitting radiation and atomic particles into space. This space weather has direct impacts here on Earth, like forcing the rerouting of planes and lighting up the auroras.

Our friends at the 13.7 blog dive into how solar weather works, and if you’re looking for some more stellar images of the sun, head over to the Solar Dynamic Observatory’s Pick of the Week.

Pretty…

crookedindifference: Stirling Engines Stirling engines are...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:30:45 -0500

crookedindifference:

Stirling Engines

Stirling engines are unique heat engines because their theoretical efficiency is nearly equal to their theoretical maximum efficiency, known as the Carnot Cycle efficiency. Stirling engines are powered by the expansion of a gas when heated, followed by the compression of the gas when cooled. The Stirling engine contains a fixed amount of gas that is transferred back and forth between a “cold” end (often room temperature) and a “hot” end (often heated by a kerosene or alcohol burner). The “displacer piston” moves the gas between the two ends and the “power piston” changes the internal volume as the gas expands and contracts.

Air in the engine is cyclically heated (by an alcohol burner) and expands to push the power piston (shown in blue) to the right. As the power piston moves to the right, the yellow linkage forces the loose-fitting, red “piston” (on the left half of the machine) to displace air to the cooler side of the engine. The air on the cool side loses heat to the outside world and contracts, pulling the blue piston to the left. The air is again displaced, sending it back to the hotter region of the engine, and the cycle repeats.

The Stirling engine cycle can also be used “in reverse”, to convert rotating motion into a temperature differential (and thus provide refrigeration).

Of all branches of physics, thermodynamics is probably the one that benefits the most from illustrations.

14-billion-years-later: Soap Films and the Minimal SurfaceOne...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:24:27 -0500

14-billion-years-later:

Soap Films and the Minimal Surface

One subject of particular interest to me is soap films, while they hold wonder for children they’re also amazing in scientific terms. The shape and structure of a soap films is determined by what configuration minimizes surface area, this is why bubbles are round. However other interesting shapes known as minimal surfaces arise such as the catenoid and helicoid. The catenoid is the shape formed by rotating a caternary around it’s axis of symmetry, the catenary in turn is the shape formed by a hanging chain. The helicoid is a minimal surface that can be formed from a catenoid without any deformation or stretching. Both of these shapes (along with the plane) have zero mean curvature and also minimize surface area and as such are energetically favorable shapes for soap films (with boundaries) to exist in.

Image: 1, 2, 3, 4

I want to make one of these…

jtotheizzoe: I, DNA NANOBOT When you think of powerful weapons...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:37:33 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

I, DNA NANOBOT

When you think of powerful weapons to fight cancer, origami is not your first thing you think of. But we’re not talking about paper cranes. We are talking about folding DNA to deliver cancer drugs right where they’re needed.

Remember DNA origami from last year? It’s not just whimsical shapes and nanometer-scale smiley faces. Biophysicists from Harvard have designed carefully-folded DNA barrels that can bind payloads on the inside (like drugs) and attach to cancer cell-specific targeting molecules (called aptamers) on the outside.

The nano bots then target their specific cancer type, springing open to deliver their killer drug cargo. It’s a “smart drug” of sorts. By designing different aptamer molecules to direct the bots to various targets, cancer drugs can be delivered very specifically, without many of the side effects of general chemotherapy.

(via Nature News, video and image from Wyss Institute)

This is such an interesting idea for cancer treatment! And of course, it’s also incredibly cool!

By Keith Veronese at @io9 Dive into murky water, thrust your...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:25:55 -0500

By Keith Veronese at @io9

Dive into murky water, thrust your hand into a hole, and return to the surface with with an octopus. Octopus wrestling sounds like a horribly rude form of aquatic home invasion. But let’s time travel back to the Pacific Northwest circa 1960, when this was a popular spectator sport.
…Octopus wrestling isn’t so much wrestling per se– it’s more akin to sticking your hand into a dark cavern and ripping an octopus out.

This sounds pretty awesome for the humans. Not so much for the octopi.

jtotheizzoe: The Cranial Network Your neurons have been social...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:32:48 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

The Cranial Network

Your neurons have been social networking since long before Zuckerberg.

LIKE.

(via Scientific American, By Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham)

"Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience..."

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:27:54 -0500

“Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences - “which is the mostest? which is the leastest?” They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.”

-

R. Buckminster Fuller, American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International (1895-1983)

good: It’s Time to Bust the Myth That Girls Don’t Like...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:25:23 -0500

good:

It’s Time to Bust the Myth That Girls Don’t Like Science

Research shows that girls are interested in STEM fields, but aren’t given information about the opportunities. If schools focus their efforts on ensuring that girls are informed about STEM opportunities, the number of women becoming computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians is sure to soar.

Read it on GOOD→

Huygens’ comparison of Saturn’s size with that of Earth...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:45:59 -0500

Huygens’ comparison of Saturn’s size with that of Earth (Tellus) and the Moon (Luna).

Also, an alphabet primer for people who don’t care about the proper alphabetical order. Or about missing half the letters.

Huygens, by the way, is Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician and astronomer, and the first theoretical physicist. Among other things, he thought light was a wave and that we would find life on Earth-like planets. And while only one of those ideas has been vindicated so far, what’s certain is that he could rock a lace-and-wig combo.