Category: Science

A friend has just sent me a link to a live video webcast of the Future of Science conference that is currenly going on in Venice. Today is devoted to the theme of "evolution of matter"; tomorrow is "evolution of life" and Saturday’s theme is "evolution of mind". Here’s the conference programme. Some good things. I particularly want to see Dan Dennett’s talk on Saturday.

Ben Goldacre, over at Bad Science, draws our attention to the latest incarnation of strobe lighting illuminating a fall of water droplets. I remember seeing an example of this forty years ago using ordinary lighting, but I think the UV LEDS and the fluorescent water is a nice modern touch.

Want to volunteer for some research being done into the nature of human moral judgement? Then take the Moral Sense Test. I’m intrigued, by the way, by that description on the web site that the testing is being done on human moral judgement. It makes me fantasise that someone in the next department is testing the moral judgment of non-humans…

Geoff Manaugh, over at BLDBLOG has an entry on Space Elevators. For more background on the science and construction, though, I refer you to the Wikipedia entry. Arthur C. Clarke wrote a novel around the building of a space elevator: The Fountains of Paradise. I wonder whether I shall live to see one actually being constructed?

It appears as though the Pope is about to embrace the pseudoscience that is Intelligent Design. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did. Rational thinking hardly seems to be a strong point with him.

Lyle Zapato uncovers another patent from the Twilight Zone: the Tachyon Transceiver. What makes this so unusual (apart from the fact that the device being patented looks like a serious case of woo-woo pseudoscience), is the inclusion of a letter, in the patent itself, from the inventor to his son. Charming, but completely barking at the same time…

The Poincaré Conjecture is one of Mathematics’ great challenges. Now, it looks as though it has been proved, mainly through the work of Grigory Perelman, a Russian Mathematician. Perelman has turned down an award for his proof. The world of mathematicians can be a strange one at times, full of eccentrics (almost invariably men). The New Yorker has published a really excellent article on the Poincaré Conjecture, and Perelman’s role in it. It also has a very rare interview with Perelman. Go and read the article to get a feel for the world of mathematics and mathematicians.

 

The obsessive quality reminds me very much of the short story by Charles Harness: The Chess Players, about a group of chess players who critique the abilities of one of their number, completely oblivious to the fact that he is, in fact, a pet rat. The only important thing, in their eyes, is whether he is any good as a chess player.

"This" is a recently-published scientific paper entitled: Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism. Ben Goldacre, over at the Bad Science blog draws our attention to it.

 

And no, apparently it is not a joke. The authors are deadly serious. They were also all born on the planet Zogg.

 

Sometimes, I despair. Ophelia has some relevant commentary over at ButterfliesAndWheels on the paper as well. If you then read the comments on her entry, it appears that there are some valid criticisms to be made about evidence-based medicine, but the bottom line is that this paper just doesn’t make them in any meaningful or readable way.

The results of a multi-year, multi-country survey on people’s attitudes on the topic of evolution have been published in Science Magazine. while the actual article is behind a pay-per-view wall, the results are analysed over at The Panda’s Thumb. Top of the list of the 34 countries surveyed is Iceland, where over 80% of the (extrapolated) population accept the theory of evolution. Bottom of the list is Turkey, where 50% of the population declare the theory to be false.

 

The good old US is next to the bottom; nearly 40% of its population believe evolution to be false. Depressing, but I’m not surprised. I am somewhat surprised, however, that my adopted country of The Netherlands only manages to come in at 12th place. I would have thought that it would be higher than that.

That’s the title that’s been given to this amazing image captured by a camera on the Cassini spacecraft.

The Angry Astronomer (Jon Voisey) has a useful post over at his blog that addresses some of the misconceptions that people have about the Big Bang. For example, despite the name, it was not an explosion – it was an expansion of space… It’s worth a read.

Ben Goldacre, over at his Bad Science blog, contrasts the scientific fakery of the Brainiac TV show (emphasis on show: it’s entertainment, not science, kids) with the genuine article in the form of Theodore Gray dropping a kilo and a half of pure sodium into his lake.

…or the Giant Flatulent Raccoon – take your pick. I am sometimes grateful for being in a backwater as far as the US mainstream is concerned. It means that I don’t have to be confronted with the evident idiocy that is known as Ann Coulter on a regular basis. I am far enough away that I can stare into a glass darkly and wonder at the hot gases that she emits.

 

Still, it helps when a rational being delves into the noxious depths and retrieves pearls of wisdom, casting illumination where formerly there was only a troll.  

Various parts of the media have picked up the story of Dr. Anthony Bogaert’s research today. In summary, it appears that the more biological older brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay. A typical report is that carried by the Guardian.

 

But I was slightly taken aback by the bit at the end of the story, where the Guardian reports a comment by David Puts of Michigan State University, where he is quoted as saying:

Erm, what’s this word "disrupt" doing here? The words "change" or "alter" I would feel perfectly comfortable with, but somehow the word "disrupt" brings in overtones that smack of a negative value judgement. Strange, really, looking at the photo of David Puts somehow makes me think that if he’s not a friend of Dorothy, he may well have a nodding acquaintance with her…

Quick – what is the colour of bilious vomit? Apparently 23 out of 41 mothers questioned in a recent study did not know that bilious vomit has a greenish colour. Even more disturbingly, neither did 12 out of 47 general practicioners (doctors).

 

I tell you, educational standards these days are not what they were when I was a boy…

 

(hat tip, once again to the indefagitble Improbable Research)

What? Um, just what I said: "the smell of Kylie’s breath". Just one of the many fragrances (others include the stench of dragon, football changing room and grannie’s kitchen) offered by Dale Air.

 

I know it sounds unreal, but apparently it’s all true…

 

(hat tip to Improbable Research)

…well, what, precisely? Philosopher Alex Byrne writes about consciousness in a lucid manner. Simply wonderful.

 

Hat tip to Mind Hacks for the link.

Apparently, this seemingly simple question doesn’t have easy answers. That’s what I conclude after reading a fascinating article by Kenneth Chang in the New York Times on the subject. I also learned that there are different forms of ice, characterised by different arrangements of the water molecules. Rather worryingly, scientists have so far discovered twelve forms, and it is suspected that there is at least one more form. I say worringly, because Ice Nine is the eponymous title of a doomsday story by Kurt Vonnegut (the story also goes under the title of Cat’s Cradle). Could Ice Nine be for real?

This study doesn’t really tell me anything that I hadn’t suspected already…