Now on ScienceBlogs: A River Runs By It: Children growing up with science all around them
What We're Talking About Thursday, October 6, 2011
Recipients of the 2011 Nobel Prizes are being announced this week. The winners in medicine were honored for their work in immunology, as reported on Tomorrow's Table. One of them "discovered a new class of cell, known as dendritic cells, which are key activators of the adaptive immune system;" shockingly, he died a few days before the announcement. Pamela writes "it is unclear if his family will be able to share the prize because Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously." On Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel offers a lesson in Nobel Prize-winning physics, explaining how the winning researchers discovered that most of the universe is accelerating away from us. Ethan writes, "it's hard to argue that there's any discovery in physics over the last 15 years that's been more profound and deserving of this award." On Greg Laden's blog, we learn that the winner in Chemistry also overturned scientific consensus; while studying "a mixture of aluminum and manganese that had been rapidly cooled from molten to solid state," he observed 10-fold symmetry in the arrangement of the atoms and a pattern that did not repeat itself. Now crystallographers have a new term for the impossible. And on Confessions of a Science Librarian, John DuPuis complains about the annual prognostications of Thomson Reuters, a corporation who hints at "at least a little bit of a causal link between citation counts, or as they call it 'citation impact,' and winning the Nobel Prize." Confusing correlation with causation may be "a great way to promote their citation reporting and analysis products," but they still whiffed it in the categories of medicine, physics, and chemistry.
tomorrow's tableOctober 3, 2011
"In mammals, the groundwork for receptor discovery was laid as early as the 1890s, when heat-stable molecules of microbial origin were shown to induce fever and shock in the mammalian host. Foremost among the inducers was endotoxin (LPS), represented in most Gram-negative bacteria. Widely known for its ability to induce septic shock, LPS is perhaps the most powerful elicitor of inflammation known in mammals."
starts with a bang!October 4, 2011
"This result, when it first came out, was met with a great deal of skepticism, because it would mean that the Universe is full of not just matter (both baryonic and dark) and radiation, but a new type of energy intrinsic to spacetime itself! (This is now known by many names, including dark energy and a cosmological constant.)"
greg laden's blogOctober 5, 2011
"The matter that matters is now called 'Quasicrystal' in which the arrangement of atoms follows a definable mathematical pattern, but the pattern is not repeated. There are aspects of this patterning seen in the ancient concept of the 'Golden Mean' as well as in medieval Islamic mosaics."
confessions of a science librarianOctober 3, 2011
"Citation counts aren't what's important in science and aren't the best way to measure impact. The Alt-Metrics project and many other initiatives have sprung up over the last few years looking for better ways to measure scientific impact than merely using citations."
“It's been a great run here at ScienceBlogs, I've enjoyed my time here and it's been a great boon to my career, but Freethought Blogs has taken off beyond my wildest dreams and there's no point in dividing my output anymore.”
I'll be interviewing Don on the radio in the AM, then, later that day: Sunday, Oct. 9, 2011,...
(via National Geographic) (Also on FtB)...
It seems that octopuses are even smarter, and more fearless, than previously thought. It has been known for...
The Life Science Channel RSS FeedToday the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Daniel Shechtman for the discovery of quasicrystals - a...
If you want to know how stressed and busy I've been lately, you don't have to look any...
The finding for which this year's Chemistry Nobel was awarded earlier today was sufficiently unexpected and counter to...
The Physical Science Channel RSS FeedAs a result of our last posting on Fukushima, we had a discussion initiated by commenter Daedelus2u about...
Turns out that the weather conditions that helped make 2007 a record for low sea-ice extent didn't recur. And yet, 2011 came within a relative hair's breadth of setting a new record.
Series of substantial earthquakes in the Katla caldera, could be nothing could be sign of an impending...
The Environment Channel RSS FeedLook at this map, of a small part of the state of Minnesota: See the wide channel that...
Remember last summer's tornado in North Minneapolis? North is one of the more challenged neighborhoods in the region,...
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
For the 2nd year the opening day of Minnesota State Fair was designated as STEM Day. There were over 30 STEM organizations exhibiting at the Carousel Area. The St. Cloud State University (SCSU) exhibit concentrated on "Wind Power" as an alternative source of energy and promoting and spreading the word about the 2nd USA Science and Engineering Festival at three locations at the Fair.
The Education Channel RSS FeedDispatches from the Creation Wars
You'd think all the fundies would love Answers in Genesis, but apparently there are people who are so...
Dispatches from the Creation Wars
Before I was born, my dad turned down a chance to do graduate study at Harvard. He mentioned...
Dispatches from the Creation Wars
My friend and longtime Dispatches reader Vic Hutchinson, a retired biology professor at the University of Oklahoma, has...
The Politics Channel RSS FeedMonday's announcement for the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine should have been a happy occasion for my...
Revisiting two year old speculations about Steve Jobs' health in light of his death yesterday.
He's ba-ack. Has it really only been two weeks? A mere two weeks since everybody's favorite advocate of...
The Medicine & Health Channel RSS FeedOn Developing Intelligence, Chris Chatham shares a new study which demonstrates that performing new tasks actually reverses the...
Research in the Weizmann Neurobiology Department is bringing our noses into line with our other sensory organs.
Harvard Science in the News begins its fall lecture series this week with a talk on the interface...
The Brain & Behavior Channel RSS Feed"About twenty years ago Jobs and Wozniak, the founders of Apple, came up with the very strange...
He was 56, and just recently stepped down from his position at the helm of Apple....
I'm typing this on a Mac laptop. I heard about it while browsing the news on my iPad....
The Technology Channel RSS FeedConfessions of a Science Librarian
A real straggler of a list for your reading and collection development pleasure. Alex's Adventures in Numberland by...
Confessions of a Science Librarian
It's time for my annual post taking issue with Thomson Reuters (TR) Nobel Prize predictions. (2002, 2006, 2007a,...
Confessions of a Science Librarian
10 Reasons Why Your (EDU) Boss Should Tweet The digital scholar - which way to go? Facebook is...
The Information Science Channel RSS Feed"But I'm also talking about American businessmen doing what they were born to do. Make things. We've stopped...
I don't think my point quite got across the other day, so let me try phrasing this another...
National Geographic--new owners, new crummy policies.
The Jobs Channel RSS Feed
ERV 09.30.2011
ERV 08.06.2011
Tim Lambert 10.01.2011
Orac 10.04.2011
Orac 09.26.2011
we beasties 10.06.2011
respectful insolence 10.06.2011
thoughts from kansas 10.05.2011
sciencepunk 10.05.2011
greg laden's blog 10.05.2011
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Humanities & Soc. Sciences
Greg Laden's Blog
Here be Monsters
Did you know that the British scientific journal Nature publishes a section, called Futures, edited by Henry Gee,...
Uncertain Principles
Nobel Prize Betting Pool 2011
I have been sufficiently out of it that I didn't realize the Nobel Prizes were due to be...
Class M
Scientific literacy and climate concern: An inverse relationship?
"..the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones."
The Social Sciences Channel RSS Feed