“Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth.|The perspective is truly awe-inspiring. This is a terrific mission and we are very busy doing science round the clock.|Just getting a moment to type e-mail is precious so this will be short, and distributed to many who I know and love.|I have seen some incredible sights: lightning spreading…
“Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) members in Nacogdoches, Texas, have been assisting local emergency management officials and NASA to locate and catalog debris from the Columbia shuttle.” —Texas Amateurs Aid in Shuttle Debris Recovery, CataloguingNat’l Assoc. for Amataur Radio) My wife and I were married in Dallas and honeymooned in south Texas, which included visits…
“Leonardo figured things out by looking at them, thinking about them and taking them apart. That compulsion to tinker has led many modern hackers to claim Leonardo retroactively as one of their own.” —Da Vinci: The Pith Behind the ManWired) Nice backgrounder for the Da Vinci exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“It might seem like a stretch to compare scientists to, say, African Americans and Latinos, who have historically been targets of often viciously stereotypical portrayals in film and on TV. But Weber thinks the media has a blind spot when it comes to scientists.” Jason Silverman —Film Scientists Not All Mad, BadWired)
“About one-fourth of university-based medical researchers receive funding from drug companies — ties that sometimes distort study results, according to a review done by two researchers with industry connections of their own.” —Review finds Pervasive Medical Research-Industry TiesAssociated Press) Ohmigosh ohmigosh oh…my…gosh! Scientific research isn’t completely objective? Scientists aren’t lofty supreme beings of pure intellect,…
“Three-dimensional tubes of living tissue have been printed using modified desktop printers filled with suspensions of cells instead of ink. The work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire organs.” Charles Choi —Ink-jet Printing Creates Tubes of Living Tissue New Scientist)
“Doctors had never seen such injuries. It almost didn’t matter that he had a broken clavicle, pelvis, tailbone and ribs. They were stunned to learn of the injury to his neck that technically ripped off his head.” —Doctors Reattach Teen’s Head after Car WreckABC News) While this makes interesting reading, the article seems to be…
On 18th January 1903 Marconi sent a wireless transatlantic message from U.S. President Theordore Roosevelt to England’s Edward VII: “In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph of scientific research and ingenuity which has been achieved in perfecting the system of wireless telegraphy, I extend on behalf of the American People most cordial greetings and good…
“Almost all the varieties of banana grown today are cuttings – clones, in effect – of naturally mutant wild bananas discovered by early farmers as much as 10,000 years ago. The rare mutation caused wild bananas to grow sterile, without seeds. Those ancient farmers took cuttings of the mutants, then cuttings of the cuttings.” James…
Cranky avant-garde novelist Kurt Vonnegut on George W. Bush: “He’s in the same business I’m in. He’s telling stories. It turns out this is the simplest of all stories to tell. I mean, I want to hold attention when I write something. What he wants to be is interesting. And revenge is interesting. I’ve said…
“[T]he promise of a pill for every ill remains, as it always will, unfulfilled. Anyone who had read his Shakespeare would not have been surprised by this disappointment. When Macbeth asks a physician: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the…
“A serious literary magazine published by a hospital? Sounds unlikely. But the Bellevue Literary Review, published by the New York University department of medicine at Bellevue Hospital, is drawing on a long literary heritage. Bellevue has nursed William Burroughs, Eugene O’Neill and many other close-to-the-edge writers and artists. Danielle Ofri, the review’s editor-in-chief and a…
Women in Bangladesh who fold their saris filter out more of the disease-carrying organisms that cause cholera than the women who filter through unfolded cloths, or who don’t filter at all. While folding saris to make eight layers filters out almost all of the harmful organisms, this method means that women gathering water had to…
“The main conclusion by DCSD [Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty] finds that my book is ‘clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice’ because of systematically biased selection of data and arguments. But since the DCSD has neglected to take their position on the technical scientific disputes their conclusions are completely unfounded. The DCSD…
“The speed of gravity has been measured for the first time. The landmark experiment shows that it travels at the speed of light, meaning that Einstein’s general theory of relativity has passed another test with flying colours.” Hazel Muir —First Speed of Gravity Measurement Revealed New Scientist)
Bjorn Lomborg – the director of Denmark’s Environmental Assessment Institute and a leading would-be debunker of mainstream scientific opinion on issues like global warming and overuse of natural resources – has been found guilty by a Danish government committee of ‘scientific dishonesty’. —Paul Brown —Anti-green Author Dishonest, Says Scientific Panel (Guardian) This is the peer-review process…
“Clonaid, linked with a group that believes life on Earth was originally cloned by aliens, said two women had given birth to babies it had cloned. It at first said it would present DNA evidence but has delayed doing so.” —A Name for Clone Babies: ‘Hoax’ Wired) More news from the department of “duh”: the…
“By processing information sent from physiological sensors the human counterpart wears, the Vanderbilt robot can detect when its master is having a bad day and approach with the query: ‘I sense that you are anxious. Is there anything I can do to help?’” —Feeling Blue? This Robot Knows It.Wired) The story includes an amusing opposing…
Anthropologists have long looted the gravesites of native peoples in the name of science — and profit. But the recent trend to return those remains for reburial is not always welcomed by the cultures involved. “Far from being led by Native communities, the trend towards repatriation is driven by intellectuals on the cultural left, and…
“We love these programmes not only because they show us how curious the products of evolution are, but also because they remove us to a parallel planet, the Garden of Eden before the sixth day of creation, when God went and messed it up by making man…. Today, conservation officials in Kenya often concede that…