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kevin z | May 22, 2008AP stock photo.
Rex Dalton reports in the latest issue of Nature:
"Humpback whale numbers in the northern Pacific Ocean have ballooned to nearly 20,000, the largest population seen since the majestic mammals were hunted nearly to extinction half a century ago.
The number of humpbacks hit an all-time low of 1,400 or even lower by 1966, when their hunting was banned internationally. The new census, from one of the largest whale studies ever undertaken, shows that the animals have rebounded much better than expected.[...]
The three-year study, called SPLASH (Structure of Populations, Levels of…
gregladen | May 22, 2008It is on this day, May 22nd, 1825 that the HMS Beagle left Plymouth England on its infamous First Voyage. The Beagle was built at the Woolwich Dockyard (launched 11 May 1820) named after the breed of dog. The Beagle was the first ship to sail under the newly constructed London Bridge. However, as there was no great need for this ship in service, she lay moored in storage until this first voyage some five years after being finished.
The Beagle
The first voyage was rather interesting, as you probably know:
First, she underwent a major operation that converted her from a brig to a barque…
petnoyer | May 21, 2008Did you ever look at Google's digital Earth model and notice something missing? Like 70% of Earth's topography, for instance? The seafloor shown there is a kind of "shadow topography". It's satellite derived. Fortunately for us, everything in Google Earth with an elevation less than zero is about to get some sweeet emotion.
As it stands, Google Earth's ocean is a blended product of Landsat imagery and a state-of-the-art bathymetry model that is, well, sooo last century.
Deep water features in Google Earth are a satellite-derived reflection of 1) sea surface topography, 2) Earth's gravity,…
sb admin | May 21, 2008For our readers in the DC area, there are two upcoming events featuring David Michaels speaking about Doubt is Their Product: How Industryâs Assault on Science Threatens Your Health:
Center for American Progress reading
Wednesday, May 28, 12:30 â 1:30pm
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
(You need to RSVP for this one, and theyâll serve a light lunch at noon)
Politics & Prose reading
Saturday, June 7, 6pm
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
kevin z | May 21, 2008Nature News reports in the latest issue:
The chief of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has called for the creation of a National Climate Service to manage and disseminate information about global warming.
Like the National Weather Service, the service would fall within NOAA and be a repository for federal research that would be accessible to agencies and the public alike. NOAA administrator Conrad Lautenbacher says that having a central scientific organization to collate this information could help to depoliticize climate research. The service would not have any…
cortex | May 21, 2008Joan Acocella has an interesting article on the science of hangovers:
Hangovers also have an emotional component. Kingsley Amis, who was, in his own words, one of the foremost drunks of his time, and who wrote three books on drinking, described this phenomenon as "the metaphysical hangover": "When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. . . . You have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at…
cortex | May 21, 2008Iceland, apparently, is the happiest country on earth:
Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the world in which to live. There has to be something wrong with this equation. Put those three factors together - loads of children, broken homes, absent mothers - and what you have, surely, is a recipe for misery and social chaos. But no. Iceland, the block of sub-Arctic lava to which these statistics apply, tops the latest table of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index…
cortex | May 21, 2008There are lots of ways to combine science and art. Some of them are more problematic than others:
One of the strangest exhibits at the opening of "Design and the Elastic Mind," the very strange show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that explores the territory where design meets science, was a teeny coat made out of living mouse stem cells. The "victimless leather" was kept alive in an incubator with nutrients, unsettlingly alive. Until recently, that is.
Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the museum, had to kill the coat. "It was growing too much," she said in an interview from a…
esiegel | May 21, 2008We know, more or less how supernovae work. We've seen them just hours after they first go off through telescopes and satellites. The Crab Nebula, also known as M1, was a supernova that went off nearly 1,000 years ago in our own galaxy, for example, and we can simulate pretty well that it formed like this:
But this is totally new: a paper is coming out in the journal Nature tomorrow (the 22nd of May), where they've caught a star exploding red-handed!
First things first; here's a quicktime movie of the explosion. Let's put up some screenshots of the Blue Giant star before the explosion:
Here'…
cortex | May 21, 2008In case you find yourself in Pasadena, CA tomorrow evening, and want to hear me prattle on about art, science, veal stock and Stravinsky, I'll be speaking at the Art Center College of Design at 7:30.
grrlscientist | May 21, 2008tags: Snow, Aldo, Kate DiCamillo, poetry
"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful implanted in the human soul."
-- Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
I received so many poetry suggestions from you that I decided to continue to publish poetry on my site once per week for you to enjoy. One of my SB colleagues, John Lynch, posts a poem every Friday (here's his poetry archives), so -- because I don't want to conflict with John's poem of the week -- I will post a poem…
pharyngula | May 21, 2008A few months ago, Laura King was riding a bus in Argentina with some nerd named Jeff Buckley, and they started talking about some weirdly amusing little blog called "Pharyngula", which led to a long discussion of evolution, which led to a relationship*, which led to her now-boyfriend asking me to send her birthday greetings over the internet while she's spending her special day working at a field station.
So…Happy Birthday, Laura King! May your every year make you smarter and wiser, and may you continue to contribute to human knowledge.
This brings back memories. Growing up in the Puget…
kevin z | May 20, 2008National Geographic Explorer and oceanographer Robert Ballard makes a case for serious exploration and mapping. Video is 18 min. long and recorded in February 2008 in Monterey, California. Dr. Ballard has been criticized on a few points (like favoring archeology over biology, *sniff*), but overall, outside the Titanic, this is what he's famous for... an energetic and inspiring talk with several good points and facts.
Hat tip to Michael Barton, FCD for the link.
kevin z | May 20, 2008
On April 24, 1895, Nova Scotian Joshua Slocum set sail from Boston harbor on Spray, an 11 meter long sloop. He was the first to solo circumnavigate all 74,000 kilometers (46,000 miles) of the globe, accomplished without the use of stellar navigation by dead reckoning. Slocum's name continues to inspire and can be seen adorning ships and ferries, monuments and memorials and even a new underwater glider.
With the potential to travel 2000 meters depth over a distance of 40,000 kilometers, the Slocum Glider developed by the Webb Research Corporation is the new bloodhound of the sea, an…
cortex | May 20, 2008There's something a little scary to me about TMS. (I should note, though, that my fear is irrational: the technology is now extremely safe. Seizures are a very, very rare side-effect of TMS. Unless, that is, you already have a brain lesion.) But this video shows just how easy it is to short-circuit a particular brain function. I particularly liked the elegant dissociation between speech and singing:
petnoyer | May 20, 2008If you'd have fought like a man, you needn't hang like a dog- Anne Bonny
Anne Bonny is one of two famous lady pirates from the Caribbean. She was born of a lawyer and his maid in Ireland, was disowned by her father, and married a sailor who stole her away to the Caribbean. He was a fink. Anne left him for the handsome pirate "Calico" Jack Rackham, with whom she fought aboard the Revenge, and to whom she delivered the above quotation while awaiting execution, ... all by the age of twenty.
As a pirate, Anne Bonny fought in men's clothing, was an expert with pistol and cutlass, called fearless…
esiegel | May 20, 2008Some of you who've been following astronomy for awhile might remember this report, where a group of astronomers reported finding a giant "void" in the Universe.
What is a void? Well, galaxies are distributed pretty randomly, but because of gravity, they cluster together. A small example is our local group which looks like this,
and a larger example is the Virgo cluster, which is about 1,000 times as massive as our local group, and looks like this:
Well, a void is the opposite of a cluster, where you have a large volume of space that's simply empty of galaxies and matter. This press release…
cortex | May 20, 2008Johann Hari decides to take Provigil (aka viagra for the brain) and reports back on the results:
I sat down and took one 200mg tablet with a glass of water. Then I pottered about the flat for an hour, listening to music and tidying up, before sitting down on the settee. I picked up a book about quantum physics and super-string theory I have been meaning to read for ages, for a column I'm thinking of writing. It had been hanging over me, daring me to read it. Five hours later, I realised I had hit the last page. I looked up. It was getting dark outside. I was hungry. I hadn't noticed anything…
petnoyer | May 20, 2008Deep coral biologists like myself are continually looking to shallow reefs for applicable paradigms. A new online seminar on coral reef futures sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies provides about 100 examples in a set of FREE online lectures given by a parade of stars like Terry Hughes, John Pandolfi, and Bob Steneck. It's like a dream course in reef ecology from the comfort of your own home. The only thing lacking is a printable diploma!
Topics covered by the online seminars include:
* The latest science on coral bleaching
* The rising plague of coral…