Bowling Ball and Feathers, in a vacuum chamber

What is there to say? Science Rocks.


Sorry about the hiatus.

There's more...

Obama at the National Academy of Sciences

(Photo: The Blue Marble; NASA photo ID #AS17-148-22726, by Gene Cernan, Roland Evans, Jack Schmitt)

Science can't answer every question, and indeed, it seems at times the more we plumb the mysteries of the physical world, the more humble we must be. Science cannot supplant our ethics or our values, our principles or our faith. But science can inform those things and help put those values -- these moral sentiments, that faith -- can put those things to work -- to feed a child, or to heal the sick, to be good stewards of this Earth.

President Obama spoke yesterday (2009.04.27) at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. While he highlighted several specific policies and budgetary priorities, I believe his most significant contribution was, as Woody Allen famously said, "just showing up".

We of the progressive left feel that science has been under attack in America for decades. From James Watt to Rush Limbaugh, the Republicants and their media allies/masters/attack dogs have routinely belittled science, bent science, or just dismissed science. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they derided those of us who believed in science as hopelessly "reality-based".

And now here comes Obama, who shows up at the National Academy and delivers a few thousand well-chosen words (and as Ben Fry says, "did our former President spill that many words for science during eight years in office?"), laying out a 3% of GDP target for R&D, establishing a new ARPA for energy, and talking about the necessity of basic research!

As portions of our reality-based world seem to spin out of control via potential pandemic, peak oil, species loss, ocean dead zones, and the seemingly endlessly accelerating consequences of climate change, it's nice to have someone on board who gets it.

There's more...

Say NO to Climate Change Deniers

Ok, Folks. We have a situation.

We have firmly helped put Drifty in the lead and sunk the Anchoress in the individual catagory but another problem is brewing at the Blog awards.

Pharyngula a blog written by PZ Myers is falling behind the climate denial blog "Watt's Up With That"

We need all the folks on this blog to make sure that Watt's doesn't win.

I realize that these weblog awards are kind of silly, but the bottom line is that if this climate change skeptic wins it will give some credibility to the nuttiest of the nutty on the right.

So once again.
GO VOTE. Polls close soon. Let's get this one done too.

There's more...

Obama: Weekly Address

High-resolution, mp4 format available here.

Weekly Address from the President-elect - December 17, 2008

It's the SCIENCE TEAM rollout.

Once again, he shoots, he scores.

These selections are all about competence.

Rock and fracking roll.

P.S. Check out the President-elect in high-resolution video. SUPER intense.

Change.gov - The Office of the President-elect

Remarks of President-Elect Barack Obama
Science Team Rollout Radio Address
Friday, December 17, 2008
Chicago, Illinois

Over the past few weeks, Vice President-Elect Biden and I have announced some of the leaders who will advise us as we seek to meet America's twenty-first century challenges, from strengthening our security, to rebuilding our economy, to preserving our planet for our children and grandchildren. Today, I am pleased to announce members of my science and technology team whose work will be critical to these efforts.

Whether it's the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create twenty-first century jobs -- today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It is time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology.

Right now, in labs, classrooms and companies across America, our leading minds are hard at work chasing the next big idea, on the cusp of breakthroughs that could revolutionize our lives. But history tells us that they cannot do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.

Because the truth is that promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States -- and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.

Dr. John Holdren has agreed to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. John is a professor and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, as well as President and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center. A physicist renowned for his work on climate and energy, he's received numerous honors and awards for his contributions and has been one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change. I look forward to his wise counsel in the years ahead.

John will also serve as a Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology -- or PCAST -- as will Dr. Harold Varmus and Dr. Eric Lander. Together, they will work to remake PCAST into a vigorous external advisory council that will shape my thinking on the scientific aspects of my policy priorities.

Dr. Varmus is no stranger to this work. He is not just a path-breaking scientist, having won a Nobel Prize for his research on the causes of cancer -- he also served as Director of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton Administration. I am grateful he has answered the call to serve once again.

Dr. Eric Lander is the Founding Director of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard and was one of the driving forces behind mapping the human genome -- one of the greatest scientific achievements in history. I know he will be a powerful voice in my Administration as we seek to find the causes and cures of our most devastating diseases.

Finally, Dr. Jane Lubchenco has accepted my nomination as the Administrator of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is devoted to conserving our marine and coastal resources and monitoring our weather. An internationally known environmental scientist and ecologist and former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Jane has advised the President and Congress on scientific matters, and I am confident she will provide passionate and dedicated leadership at NOAA.

Working with these leaders, we will seek to draw on the power of science to both meet our challenges across the globe and revitalize our economy here at home. And I'll be speaking more after the New Year about how my Administration will engage leaders in the technology community and harness technology and innovation to create jobs, enhance America's competitiveness and advance our national priorities.

I am confident that if we recommit ourselves to discovery; if we support science education to create the next generation of scientists and engineers right here in America; if we have the vision to believe and invest in things unseen, then we can lead the world into a new future of peace and prosperity.

Thank you.

What do you think about the President-elect's commitment to science?

What about the President-elect's science team so far?

What still needs to happen?

There's more...

More Reasons to Turn Off the TV

As I have shared before, I am not a fan of TV. I know there is some good stuff on the tube-- but frankly not enough to make up for even 10% of the societal ills that TV perpetuates. Seriously, even a great discovery channel show is not as good as going on outside yourself and going hiking somewhere in real nature. I often wonder how many new inventions and discoveries have not happened since the coming of TVs into every room and every part of our lives? People used to tinker, and play, and read, and talk. How many conversations have not happened as interesting people sat in a room together all over the world and said nothing as the flickering images have washed over them?

There have been lots of studies on the bad aspects of the boob-tube. But this is a new one and it is pretty darn troubling.

Even if young children aren't watching the TV, it may be distracting them from their play and depriving them of developing critical attention skills, a new study says.

When children aged 3 and younger played in a room with a television on that was tuned to adult programming, they played for about 5 percent less time than when there was no background TV. More importantly, when there was no background TV, the children's play was more focused with longer play episodes, the study found.

"Background TV is a disruptive and distracting influence. Our evidence is that TV keeps the children from sustaining their attention at a time when developmentally, they're beginning to organize their attention skills and sequencing behaviors," said study senior author Daniel Anderson, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children 2 years old and younger be exposed to no screen time. For older children, the AAP suggests limiting screen time -- including TV, video games and computer use -- to one to two hours a day of active viewing time.-By Serena Gordon

Message to moms and dads everywhere-- Don't be afraid to use that off button! For now at least, TVs still come with that option.

There's more...

Sunday Evening...

I give you:

Whale farts...

Scientists have photographed a giant gas bubble emanating from a whale, suggesting that flatulence is just as common for ocean mammals as it is for humans and many other terrestrial animals.

The picture, released last week by scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) in Tasmania, was taken by the captain of a U.S. research ship the Nathaniel B. Palmer, while on expedition between Marguerite Bay and Palmer Station, Antarctica.

"The picture is of an Antarctic minke whale taken from the bow of a ship," said AAD principal research scientist Dr Nick Gales. "The white bits in the photo are pieces of ice-floe, the stream of pinky colour behind the whale is a faecal plume - a.k.a. "poo" - the large circle in the water is indeed the physical eruption of the whale's flatulence." abc.net.au

Now back to some serious blogging...

There's more...

John McCain: Older than Carbon Dating

It was pointed out to me, by our own Tokyo Terri, that carbon dating was developed in 1949, by a team led by Willard Libby. John McCain was already a teenager when Libby and his team did their Nobel prize winning work. Ageist?-- I think not.

There's more...

Science Rocks

I love Science Videos

Here, science teacher Robert Krampf walks us through that great question -- if you were stranded on a desert island and your glasses were broken, what would you do?

I've actually thought about this, as in, if there was an extinction event such as avian influenza, and my glasses were broken, what would I do? (Yes, I know... 1 out of 4 or 1 out of 3 people in the world dead, and I'm worried about my glasses. What can I say. Just trying to keep my kids alive here, alright?)

But now, thanks to this great kid-perfect science site, I know what to do! Whew... I was really worried there for a moment.

Oh wait, no, I wasn't. But still... Great site!

Plus, he encourages your kids to play with fire, always a plus! Seriously. Check it out. Recommended.

h/t Boing Boing.

There's more...

Nurture, Not Nature

Want Spatial Ability? Shoot 'Em Up!

Biology is destiny. Err... not so fast there sparky.

The stitch has always been, biology is destiny. Men have better spatial awareness of general landmarks because we big men, we hunt lion, bring home food. Women are better at spotting where food is located as they gather grub, watch little-uns, tend fire.

Turns out, not so much.

It you've been paying attention to sports records, you already know women at the margins of most sports continue to come closer and closer to the men's game. So much so that the graphs all seem to cross about 20-30 years from now, in damn near every sport. In other words, the rate of increase in the women's game is faster than the rate of increase in the men's game. So much that if this keeps up, everyone's going to equal out -- at least at the world-class margin -- about 20 to 30 years from now.

Better food, better training and coaching, body mechanics, medicine and even drugs, all these play a part. But it also turns out some of what we've thought was true -- the story we've been told and told ourselves about those long days as early humans on the African savannah, which after all, "sounded right" -- may just not match up with science after all.

In other words, the science we had may have justified what we wanted to find.

The Economist

Some sex differences that look biological are really cultural

Writing in Psychological Science, a team led by Ian Spence of the University of Toronto describes a test performed on people's ability to spot unusual objects that appear in their field of vision. The test asked people to identify an “odd man out” object in a briefly displayed field of two dozen otherwise identical objects. Men had a 68% success rate. Women had a 55% success rate.

Had they left it at that, Dr Spence and his colleagues might have concluded that they had uncovered yet another evolved difference between the sexes and moved on. However, they did not leave it at that. Instead, they asked some of their volunteers to spend ten hours playing an action-packed, shoot-'em-up video game, called “Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault”. As a control, other volunteers were asked to play a decidedly non-action-packed puzzle game, called “Ballance”, for a similar time. Both sets were then asked to do the odd-man-out test again.

Among the Ballancers, there was no change in the ability to pick out the unusual. Among those who had played “Medal of Honour”, both sexes improved their performances.

The improvement in the women was greater than the improvement in the men—so much so that there was no longer a significant difference between the two. Moreover, that absence of difference was long-lived. When the volunteers were tested again after five months, both the improvement and the lack of difference between the sexes remained. Though it is too early to be sure, it looks likely that the change in spatial acuity—and the abolition of any sex difference in that acuity—induced by playing “Medal of Honour” is permanent.

And you thought playing violent computer games was useless.

Want to rapidly improve your spatial abilities? Play Halo 3 and other first person shooters.

The underlying biology matters, but we know how to train super-athletes. Next time someone tells you it's nature, not nurture...

Jump over him and kick his ass.

Hat tip Boing Boing

There's more...