Science: April 2008 Archive Page

T. rex shared more of its genetic makeup with ostriches and chickens than with living reptiles, like alligators. On this basis, the research team has redrawn the family tree of major vertebrate groups, assigning the dinosaur a new place in evolutionary relationships.

Similar molecular tests on tissues from the extinct mastodon confirmed its close genetic link to the elephant, as had been suspected from skeletal affinities.

"Our results at the genetic level basically agree with what has been seen in skeletal data," John M. Asara of Harvard said in a telephone interview. "There is more than a 90 percent probability that the grouping of T. rex with living birds is real."

With Elementeo, we inject fun into education!

Welcome to the Elementeo game!  In this action-packed game, two or more players wage a chemical war with just one goal in mind - destroy their opponent's electrons to zero!  Armed with their arsenal of elements, compounds, and nuclear reactions, these young chemists strive to create, combat, and conquer the world!

As the commanding general of your army, your job is to move, attack, and strategize with your elements and compounds.  The primary goal is to destroy the most number of your opponent's electrons by the end of the game. 

This army is made up of Element Cards, Compound Cards, and Alchemy Cards. Your element cards range from the powerful creatures like Carbon Conqueror and Sodium Dragon to ones with the mythical powers such as Oxygen Life-Giver and Gold Maharaja!

You also have powerful compounds that you can make during your battles from Salt and Water to Sulfuric acid and Polyvinyl Chloride.   But the game doesn't stop there -- there are also Alchemy Cards like Nuclear Fusion, Slippery Base, and Electron Exchange that you can use to double up the action, excitement, and battle!

Can you hear that roar?  Your army is calling... An epic chemical battle is about to start.  Go ahead, launch your attacks.  

Create. Combat. Conquer!™

The difference between math and the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such. Everyone understands that poets, painters, and musicians create works of art, and are expressing themselves in word, image, and sound. In fact, our society is rather generous when it comes to creative expression; architects, chefs, and even television directors are considered to be working artists. So why not mathematicians?

Part of the problem is that nobody has the faintest idea what it is that mathematicians do. The common perception seems to be that mathematicians are somehow connected with science-- perhaps they help the scientists with their formulas, or feed big numbers into computers for some reason or other. There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the "poetic dreamers" and the "rational thinkers" most people would place mathematicians in the latter category.

Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.