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Science news and technology updates from Scientific American
Brain Injury Rate 7 Times Greater among U.S. Prisoners
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
A car accident, a rough tackle, an unexpected tumble. The number of ways to bang up the brain are almost as numerous as the people who sustain these injuries. And only recently has it become clear just how damaging a seemingly minor knock can be. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is no longer just a condition acknowledged in military personnel or football players and other professional athletes. Each year some 1.7 million civilians will suffer an injury that disrupts the function of their brains, qualifying it as a TBI.
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Lies We Tell Ourselves: How Deception Leads to Self-Deception (preview)
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar , a skeptical Judas Iscariot questions with faux innocence (“Don’t you get me wrong/I only want to know”) the messiah’s deific nature: “Jesus Christ Superstar/Do you think you’re what they say you are?”
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My story from the ScienceOnline 2012 banquet.
Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:22:00 EST
This year at ScienceOnline , the conference banquet featured storytelling organized by The Monti , a North Carolina non-profit organization dedicated to building community by getting people to share their true stories with each other. Conference goers were asked to share stories on the theme of “connections” . The stories had to be true, and storytellers had to tell them without notes.
The seven stories told at the banquet provided a kaleidoscopic view of what “connections” might mean to a bunch of people involved in doing science, or teaching science, or communicating science, or trying to negotiate their own relationship with science in their personal and professional lives.
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Swept From Africa to the Amazon (preview)
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
The Bodele depression at the southern edge of the Sahara is a fearsome, forsaken place. Winds howl through the nearby Tebesti Mountains and Ennedi Plateau, picking up speed as they funnel into a parched wasteland nearly the size of California. Once there was a massive freshwater lake here. Now the lake is a shrunken puddle of its former self. Across most of the landscape, there is nothing.
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Orange Rinds May Help Rid Cows of E. Coli
Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
Name : Todd Callaway [More]
Willy Chyr's Neuroplastic Dreams - pop!
Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:06:00 EST
Willy Chyr is a fine artist and designer interested in emergent properties and systems: and he sometimes works in balloons.
I’ll be presenting an interview with Chyr here on Symbiartic soon; we met recently over coffee and from such fun, complicated work, Willy is refreshingly unpretentious and creatively versatile.
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Artists at the Science Conference: Of Course
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:28:00 EST
ScienceOnline2012 was my 4th time attending the rockstar unconference in North Carolina. For ScienceOnline09, I had approached Bora Zivkovic about attending, mentioning that I know I’m not a scientist or journalist. He leapt at the opportunity to have me, and asked if I could do an art+science session and a workshop on putting images on blogs. I was taken aback – I’d been blogging a couple of years then (coming up on year 5 now!) and had never met Bora in person, or even spoken via Skype. I asked if he was sure: how’d he know I’d be okay speaking in front of a room full of strangers?
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Spectacular Plumes of Dust Reach Across the World
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
We don't hear too much about natural dust, the kind that the winds loft from deserts and dry lakebeds into the air and carries for hundreds of kilometers, crossing oceans and continents, but we should. Plumes of dust connect the atmosphere, the oceans and the forests, and affect the most fundamental processes of life on our planet. Scientists believe that dust has profound and somewhat mysterious influences on atmospheric chemistry, solar heat exchange and nutrient supply to the oceans and rain forests. What those influences are, exactly, is the subject of much study and is still somewhat mysterious--the story of dust shows just how complex our natural world is, and how difficult it is to understand it. For more, see our February feature story, 'Swept From Africa to the Amazon '.
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Sunday Photoblogging: Overbaked Sunset
Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:56:00 EST
I don’t typically like such “overbaked,” overprocessed photos. [More]
Social Clicks: Sounds Associated with African Languages Are Common in English
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
Some Africans click, but English speakers don’t. That’s been the conventional wisdom about click sounds, which serve as regular consonants in Zulu and Xhosa and a few other African languages but which were presumed to just be used in English for encouraging a horse, imitating a kiss, or expressing emotions such as disapproval or amazement. But researchers have recently found that clicks are far more prevalent in the world’s lingua franca than had been thought.
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#SciAmBlogs - Science of Mysteries, Plan B, green cities, science-art, and more.
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:02:00 EST
- Jennifer Ouellette – The Science of Mysteries: Leave Us the Counterpoint
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Russian Scientists Poised to be First to Reach Ice-Buried Antarctic Lake
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST
At a tiny outpost in the middle of Antarctica, Russian scientists are poised to become the first humans to reach a massive liquid lake that has been cut off from the sunlit world for millennia, and may house uniquely adapted life forms that are new to science.
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If You Want Me to RSVP, Then You Need to Actually Invite Me
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:58:00 EST
I returned the RSVP card for a wedding earlier this week, and it made my think of this piece from the archives where I struggled with RSVPs for my sister-in-law’s bridal shower. Titled “RSVP A Cultural Construct?,” it examined the obligations that invitations carry. The following has been edited from its original posting for clarity and relevance, and presents a some new thoughts on the matter.
Responde s'il vous plait. | Photo by Ewan, 2009. | Click image for CC license and information.
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Science Explainer: The Physics of Football [Video]
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST
Slow-motion replays of deep passes have mesmerized fans of American football for decades. The impossibly long, steady arc of a well-thrown ball is a thing of beauty. In contrast, players sometimes refer to wobbly passes as ugly ducks, although just why isn't entirely clear, since ducks fly pretty well.
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Undergraduate Adventures with the Thermally Responsive Nanoparticles
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:02:00 EST
Last October I attended the National Women in Physics Conference at Lincoln Nebraska. For an undergraduate women in Physics this is an amazing conference that offers a great opportunity to network with other young physicists and learn about the research going on around the country. While at the conference, I met many great people who got me connected with the Scientific American blogs and ScienceOnline. I also presented a poster of my research on the Design and Characterization of Thermally Responsive Nanoparticles. I was fortunate enough to win one of the top poster prizes at the conference and the chance to write about my work in blog form.
I work with thermally responsive nanoparticles. That may sound a bit scary but it s not hard to break down those words and understand what I work with. These thermally responsive (responds to temperature change) particles are called Elastin-Like polypeptides (ELP). ELP s are a single chain of amino acids that bond together (Glycine, Valine, and Proline).
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Let's Ban Research That Makes the Bird-Flu Virus and Other Pathogens Deadlier
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:24:00 EST
In my classes, I often ask my students to wrestle with what I call damned-if-you-do-or-don’t dilemmas, which offer no easy solutions. Every choice would pose certain risks and violate one valued principle or another. We often must choose what we deem to be the “least bad” option, and hope things work out. Research involving the bird-flu virus H5N1 poses an especially knotty dilemma, in which scientists’ commitment to openness and to reducing humanity’s vulnerability to potential health threats collides with broader security concerns.
The H5N1 virus normally only infects humans who come into direct contact with infected birds; so far there have been no reported cases of airborne transmission among birds and humans. Of the 583 people known to have been infected with the virus, 344 have died as a result, a mortality rate of 59 percent. To be sure, many other infected people may have recovered without coming to the attention of medical authorities. But in comparison, the infamous flu pandemic of 1918, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide, had a mortality rate of two percent.
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Close Super Bowl Boosts Ad At End
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:43:08 EST
Advertisers will drop $3.5 million for a 30-second spot during Sunday’s Super Bowl. But to get the most bang for their buck, they might want to play their ad right after the game ends--not during it. Because if it's a close one, the time slot right after the final gun should have the most sway with viewers. So says a study in the Journal of Advertising . [ Colleen C. Bee and Robert Madrigal, It’s Not Whether You Win Or Lose, It’s How The Game Is Played: The Influence of Suspenseful Sports Programming on Advertising (forthcoming, no link yet)]
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Flame Dances Aboard Space Station
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:08 EST
Starting a fire on the International Space Station might not sound like such a good idea.
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Homeless Project Residents Drink Less If Booze Ban Is Lifted
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:30:00 EST
This Sunday, millions of Americans will sit down in front of their television or computer, crack open a few beers, and watch the Super Bowl. But if those viewers live in a housing project for the homeless, that booze could get them booted back out to the street. Many homeless housing projects have strict abstinence policies, and require residents to be completely sober. Permitting alcohol, many community organizers reason, would enable addictions and promote a downward spiral into continued drinking and declining health.
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MIND Reviews: The Righteous Mind
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion [More]
