It’s with some trepidation I dip my toes into this subject. But this recent report from the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, using data from NASA’s Terra satellite, shows why keeping a minimum of skepticism about anything you hear about what conditions on Earth will be like in 20, or 50, or 100 years is probably warranted. The problem is that predictions about future temperatures on Earth […]
Funny juxtaposition today in one of the sites I regularly watch. This article describes new research in a type of material that can capture and store gases, which is summarized as: Chemists report the “ultimate porosity of a nano material” and records for carbon dioxide storage capacity and porosity in an important class of materials known as MOFs [or metal-organic frameworks]. Porosity in materials is essential for capturing carbon dioxide. […]
Sur France 2, cette émission m’a bien eu! Je l’ai regardé le premier avril avec ma femme, et je l’ai dit, “je me demandais souvent si les éoliennes pourraient ralentir la rotation de la terre.” J’ai vraiment cru cette emission! Mais aujourd’hui je découvre qu’elle était un “poisson d’avril.” Heursement, je ne suis pas seul … regardez le 114 commentaires ici. Bien fait France 2! This report on France 2 […]
As a follow up to this post, the one of the study’s researchers published this commentary today. Among his conclusions: Liberals place a high value on individual autonomy and decision-making. Individuals are expected to internalize the norms of their culture and do the right thing on a case-by-case basis after thinking about it. This strategy can be highly successful but can also be costly in the time required for information […]
A fascinating article in last week’s Economist reported on a study by researchers at Binghamton University. They gave volunteers beepers to two groups thought to represent “conservative” and “liberal” camps, and every two hours asked the volunteers what they were doing and how they felt about it. (Unfortunately, like many university studies, they relied on a group that may not be reflective of the whole population — namely, teenagers. But […]
According to a story on Physorg.com, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have concluded that all blue-eyed people on the planet are descended from a single ancestor who lived six to ten thousand years ago. The ancestor was the first to have a genetic mutation that reduces the amount of melanin in the iris of the eye: “Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Professor Eiberg from the Department […]
A study released today suggests that exercise may slow the aging process at the molecular level. The study looked at the effect of exercise on telomeres (sequences of DNA) taken from blood samples of twins. Because telomeres shrink over time, they are thought to reflect the aging process. According to Scientific American, the telomeres of subjects who exercised the most (an average of 199 minutes weekly) were longer than those […]
Following up on this post about lap dancers, here’s yet another story in The Economist on the mysterious mechanisms of sexual attraction. It seems that there is a part of our DNA that is responsible for building a part of the immune system called the major histocompatability complex (MHC). In mice, MHC also has a role in sexual attractiveness — it changes odors (in the case of mice, the odor […]
I am fascinated with the notion that much of what drives our behavior results not from conscious decisions, but from “intuition” or subconscious perception. For this reason, one of my favorite scientific studies of last year was the simple, clever one reported in The Economist about fertile lap dancers. Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico looked at whether lap dancers who were in oestrus, and thus fertile, earned […]
What, you thought I was gone forever? Here is a fascinating article about why it is that most music — in a wide variety of cultures and places, including Western music — is based upon the familiar 12-tone system. According the article, "when the sounds of speech are looked at with a spectrum analyzer, the relationships between the various frequencies that a speaker uses to make vowel sounds correspond neatly […]