Content tagged science
Blog Entries
Battling UV in southern Chile: “On a typical day here this month, the solar stoplight was set at orange, the second highest of four levels, and … gulfstream/992
Article by Bjorn Lomborg summarising his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. The book argues that: (1) the threat to the environment isn't as … gulfstream/669
Isn’t science wonderful? Imagine explaining this to someone from another planet: to test a theory about how things move (Einstein’s theory … gulfstream/1405
Audio of Malcolm Gladwell’s Feb 21st talk on a possible prodigies/late bloomers dichotomy. (This reminds me: in A Mathematician’s Apology, G.H. Hardy … gulfstream/2007
Wikipedia, I love you. Also, one inventor so killed was a Thomas Midgley, Jr., who managed to invent both leaded petrol and CFCs. (Although the effects … gulfstream/2642
One the first use of anesthetic in an operating room, and the the moral and medical environment of the time: “Before 1846, the vast majority of religious … gulfstream/2623
Some nice visualisations of various stochastic phenomena, produced with Processing. e.g. Benford’s Law, the output of pseudo random number generators. gulfstream/2618
Yet another theory of what made humans successful: fire—because eating cooked food is more efficient way to consume it, and the behaviours surrounding … gulfstream/2615
Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air: very educational and informative (free) book by David MacKay (Cambridge professor of physics) on how we can reduce … gulfstream/2611
The bottom of an article on the first Australian-designed car to achieve a five-star safety rating has an interesting crash timeline: 1ms “car’s door … gulfstream/2588
Nice step-by-step views of the components of the Internation Space Station in chronological order. gulfstream/2571
Really gripping: 999 (i.e. emergency services) transcripts. “All right, well done. How old is your mum?” “Um, I don’t know. She’s just like … gulfstream/2557
The Cambridge college Corpus Christi is getting a fancy new clock in the form of a monster that devours time, with many features inspired by the 18th C. … gulfstream/2526
Unusual response from Stephen Hawking, in response to a question about whether he thought he’d get a Nobel Prize: “If the LHC were to produce little … gulfstream/2512
“Assortment of sculptures based on graphs and charts.” e.g. Consumer Confidence, 2006-07, brass, wood. gulfstream/2497
Quotes Collected
It may also be urged ... that the equalization of risks which science was expected to bring would be in the long run salutary; that a civilian's life … fortune
But Mr. Mankoff says it is possible to organize cartoons not just chronologically but taxonomically, in relation to four vectors: caption, image and two … fortune
delicious
http://xkcd.com/681_large/
Visualising the gravitational force of the planets of the solar system.
Why Wine Ratings Are Badly Flawed - WSJ.com
"The judges' wine ratings typically varied by ±4 points on a standard ratings scale running from 80 to 100. A wine rated 91 on one tasting would often be rated an 87 or 95 on the next. Some of the judges did much worse, and only about one in 10 regularly rated the same wine within a range of ±2 points."
How Grandmas May Give Kids an Evolutionary Edge | Newsweek Voices - Sharon Begley | Newsweek.com
Paternal grandmothers do no share any genetic material with grandsons, and so "In six of the seven societies, having a paternal grandmother nearby improved the survival of granddaughters (50 percent X-relatedness) by up to 4.5-fold, but for some unknown reason decreased the survival of grandsons (zero percent) by 8 to 29 percent."
Well - The Human Body Is Built for Distance - NYTimes.com
Another article following the "humans evolved to run fast, over long periods of time" theme.
Books of The Times - ‘Catching Fire’ by Richard Wrangham - Humans, the Cooking Apes - Review - NYTimes.com
"Apes began to morph into humans, and the species Homo erectus emerged some two million years ago, Mr. Wrangham argues, for one fundamental reason: We learned to tame fire and heat our food. “Cooked food does many familiar things,” he observes. “It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated aspect: cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.”"
David MacKay: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air: Contents
great book on the numbers behind climate change, and what we can do to get energy in the future.
13 things that science cannot explain
eurytopy stenotopy - Google Search
how well (or not) is an organism adapted to its habitat?
NASA presentation
Presentation on why NASA should exist
Born To Run
humans are/might be better at running long distances than any other animal on the planet
The Frontal Cortex : The Anatomy of Basketball Expertise
Cooking For Eggheads
it's temperature that's important, not time
Walruses - Animals - Natalie Angier - Science - New York Times
How does one gallon produce 19 pounds of carbon dioxide? - By Daniel Engber - Slate Magazine
engines convert petrol/gas into gas at a rate of about 1:3 by mass
HeLa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
immortal cell line used in medical research
Gregg Easterbrook: Greatest Living American Ignored - Media on The Huffington Post
Tennis, pressure and the gender wage-gap | vox (beta) - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from Europe's leading economists
seems somewhat dubious but i might want to find this again
Wayne Gretzky-Style 'Field Sense' May Be Teachable
Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Magazine
LRB | Terry Eagleton : Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching
"Such is Dawkins’s unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith ..."
The Loom : Homo floresiensis: Two Years Out
Aerospaceweb.org | Ask Us - Missile Control Systems
Guardian Unlimited | Life | Deep thinkers
Stranger Fruit: Go USA! We're #2 .... kind of ...
The Space Review: "Spirit of the Lone Eagle": an audacious program for a manned Mars landing
AOL Money & Finance: WSJ.com - The Journal Report: The Case Against Vitamins
Who Can Name the Bigger Number?
Quantum interrogation | Cosmic Variance
New Scientist SPACE - Features - 13 things that do not make sense
125th Anniversary Issue: Science Online Special Feature
Contents | Science and Creationism: A View from the NationalAcademy of Sciences, Second Edition
Telegraph | News | Leading scientific journals 'are censoring debate on global warming'