jtotheizzoe:

explore-blog:

Dorion Sagan, son of Carl, on why, at a time of increasing fragmentation into different micro-disciplines, science require synthesis more than ever.

Sometimes we dig so far into our particular disciplines that we forget that it’s the synthesis of knowledge that fills in the colors of nature, not the splintering of it.

Fitting that a Sagan said so. 

ultranos:

deducecanoe:

stalkingbit:

fannishminded:

neoteotihuacan:

A few months back, a small twitter hashtag got kind of crazy - #overlyhonestmethods

Its a hashtag full of scientists admitting shortcuts in research, along with the daily face palms and annoyances of a scientific lifestyle. Science is hard, yo. 

I decided to steal some of the more popular tweets from the trending hashtag along with some random images of scientists from Google image search and combine them. This is the result. it works, I think. 

The full album can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/x77kL

This is terrifying and brilliant in how it illustrates all the way research can be skewed unintentionally. 

These made me laugh hysterically. My favorite is at the full album…

“Blood samples were spun at 1500rpm because the centrifuge made a scary noise at higher speeds.”

XD

I LOVE SCIENCE. 

…posting without comment…

(via dsudis)

ikenbot:

Albert Einstein, Civil Rights Activist

Here’s something you probably don’t know about Albert Einstein.

Image:Einstein with the children of Lincoln University Faculty, May 3, 1946

In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks. At Lincoln, Einstein gave a speech in which he called racism “a disease of white people,” and added, “I do not intend to be quiet about it.” He also received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.

The reason Einstein’s visit to Lincoln is not better known is that it was virtually ignored by the mainstream press, which regularly covered Einstein’s speeches and activities. (Only the black press gave extensive coverage to the event.) Nor is there mention of the Lincoln visit in any of the major Einstein biographies or archives.

In fact, many significant details are missing from the numerous studies of Einstein’s life and work, most of them having to do with Einstein’s opposition to racism and his relationships with African Americans.

That these omissions need to be recognized and corrected is the contention of Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, authors of “Einstein on Race and Racism” (Rutgers University Press, 2006). Jerome and Taylor spoke April 3 at an event sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. The event also featured remarks by Sylvester James Gates Jr., the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, University of Maryland.

According to Jerome and Taylor, Einstein’s statements at Lincoln were by no means an isolated case. Einstein, who was Jewish, was sensitized to racism by the years of Nazi-inspired threats and harassment he suffered during his tenure at the University of Berlin. Einstein was in the United States when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and, fearful that a return to Germany would place him in mortal danger, he decided to stay, accepting a position at the recently founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He became an American citizen in 1940.

But while Einstein may have been grateful to have found a safe haven, his gratitude did not prevent him from criticizing the ethical shortcomings of his new home.

“Einstein realized that African Americans in Princeton were treated like Jews in Germany,” said Taylor. “The town was strictly segregated. There was no high school that blacks could go to until the 1940s.”

Einstein’s response to the racism and segregation he found in Princeton (Paul Robeson, who was born in Princeton, called it “the northernmost town in the South”) was to cultivate relationships in the town’s African-American community. Jerome and Taylor interviewed members of that community who still remember the white-haired, disheveled figure of Einstein strolling through their streets, stopping to chat with the inhabitants, and handing out candy to local children.

One woman remembered that Einstein paid the college tuition of a young man from the community. Another said that he invited Marian Anderson to stay at his home when the singer was refused a room at the Nassau Inn.

Einstein met Paul Robeson when the famous singer and actor came to perform at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1935. The two found they had much in common. Both were concerned about the rise of fascism, and both gave their support to efforts to defend the democratically elected government of Spain against the fascist forces of Francisco Franco. Einstein and Robeson also worked together on the American Crusade to End Lynching, in response to an upsurge in racial murders as black soldiers returned home in the aftermath of World War II.

The 20-year friendship between Einstein and Robeson is another story that has not been told, Jerome said, but that omission may soon be rectified. A movie is in the works about the relationship, with Danny Glover slated to play Robeson and Ben Kingsley as Einstein.

Einstein continued to support progressive causes through the 1950s, when the pressure of anti-Communist witch hunts made it dangerous to do so. Another example of Einstein using his prestige to help a prominent African American occurred in 1951, when the 83-year-old W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the NAACP, was indicted by the federal government for failing to register as a “foreign agent” as a consequence of circulating the pro-Soviet Stockholm Peace Petition. Einstein offered to appear as a character witness for Du Bois, which convinced the judge to drop the case.

Gates, an African-American physicist who has appeared on the PBS show Nova, said that Einstein had been a hero of his since he learned about the theory of relativity as a teenager, but that he was unaware of Einstein’s ideas on civil rights until fairly recently.

Einstein’s approach to problems in physics was to begin by asking very simple, almost childlike questions, such as, “What would the world look like if I could drive along a beam of light?” Gates said.

“He must have developed his ideas about race through a similar process. He was capable of asking the question, ‘What would my life be like if I were black?’”

Gates said that thinking about Einstein’s involvement with civil rights has prompted him to speculate on the value of affirmative action and the goal of diversity it seeks to bring about. There are many instances in which the presence of strength and resilience in a system can be attributed to diversity.

“In the natural world, for example, when a population is under the influence of a stressful environment, diversity ensures its survival,” Gates said.

On a cultural level, the global influence of American popular music might be attributed to the fact that it is an amalgam of musical traditions from Europe and Africa.

These examples have led him to conclude that “diversity actually matters, independent of the moral argument.” Gates said he believes “there is a science of diversity out there waiting for scholars to discover it.”

wildcat2030:

Even the Beatles would have had trouble recognizing their peppy song in the lullaby that Andrea Zalkin sang to the tiny, fragile baby clutched to her chest in the neonatal unit. But there was something unintentionally poignant in the title she chose for her son: “Eight Days a Week” is more time than can fit on the calendar. Ms. Zalkin’s baby, Hudson, born 13 weeks early, has had too little time.

As she sang, monitors showed Hudson’s heartbeat slowing and his oxygen saturation increasing. Effects like that were among the findings of a new study on the use of music as medicine.

Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City led the research, conducted in 11 hospitals, which found that live music can be beneficial to premature babies. In the study, music therapists helped parents transform their favorite tunes into lullabies.

The researchers concluded that live music, played or sung, helped to slow infants’ heartbeats, calm their breathing, improve sucking behaviors important for feeding, aid sleep and promote states of quiet alertness. Doctors and researchers say that by reducing stress and stabilizing vital signs, music can allow infants to devote more energy to normal development.

And while the effects may be subtle, small improvements can be significant. Premature births have increased since 1990, to nearly 500,000 a year, one of every nine children born in the United States.

The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, adds to growing research on music and preterm babies. Some hospitals find music as effective as, and safer than, sedating infants before procedures like heart sonograms and brain monitoring. Some neonatologists say babies receiving music therapy leave hospitals sooner, which can aid development and family bonding and save money. (via Live Music Soothes Premature Babies, a New Study Finds - NYTimes.com)

(via ikenbot)

theweekmagazine:

Since the 1980s, a hole in the ozone layer has loomed over Antarctica for three months of every year. During these months, the concentration of the ozone decreases, and harmful ultraviolet light, which causes sunburn and skin cancer, seeps through to the Earth’s surface. Environmentalists have long looked to the ozone hole as evidence of man’s negative impact on the atmosphere, but recent findings may ease their minds: Measurements indicate the hole in the ozone layer is the smallest it has been in 10 years, and could be completely gone within a few decades.

This would be kind of amazing!

sciencecenter:

Preach.

genannetics:

DNA imaged with electron microscope for the first time

It’s the most famous corkscrew in history. Now an electron microscope has captured the famous Watson-Crick double helix in all its glory.

This is an image of six or seven molecules of DNA wrapped around a core, taken with TEM (transmission electron microscopy).  The team of scientists that published these images in Nanostructures this month used the hydrophobic nature of DNA molecules to suspend and stretch them between silicon pillars.

May I just say, gosh, helix, your beautiful!

(via ikenbot)

motherjones:

Kate Sheppard reports:

It’s been two years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil on the Gulf of Mexico. In the midst of the disaster, BP and its contractors did everything they could to keep people from seeing the scale of the disaster. But new photos released Monday offer some new insight to just how grim the Gulf became for sea life.

You can see the rest here. (Warning: soul-crushingly sad.)

theweekmagazine:

On April 20, 2010, an explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 people and spilled at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Now, a new report from Al Jazeera says sea creatures are showing up with horrible mutations as a side effect of the spill.

Among the disturbing mutations: Shrimp with tumors on their heads; fish that lack eyes or are missing flaps over their gills; fish with oozing sores; crabs with holes in their shells; crabs that are missing claws and spikes, or are encased in soft shells instead of hard ones.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dr. Jim Cowan of Louisiana State University tells Al Jazeera. “The fishermen have never seen anything like this.” 

A controversial proposal would regulate sugar as a toxic substance, and not simply because it’s a calorie-rich enabler of obesity. Some researchers say it’s intrinsically dangerous, not unlike alcohol or tobacco, with unique properties that set off a hormonal cascade ending in higher risks of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

It’s not a scientifically certain proposition, though a growing body of research suggests it may very well be true, and the implications are thorny. Even people sympathetic to public health-based regulations may balk at treating pastries as cigarettes, as University of California, San Francisco nutritionists suggested in a Feb. 2 Nature paper.

But to anyone looking to artificial sweeteners as an alternative, as pastel-packaged reassurances that regulators won’t ever need to pry donuts from their cold, dead and pudgy hands, science offers only more uncertainty. Some studies even suggest that fake sugar may cause the same problems as real sugar.

“That’s the $64,000 question,” said Susan Swithers of the Ingestive Behavior Research Center at Purdue University. “There are several epidemiological studies showing increased risk of metabolic syndrome in coincidence with the consumption of diet sodas” — a rich source of sweeteners. “But how they should be interpreted is not really clear right now. Because they’re correlational studies, they don’t tell us what caused what.”

(emphasis mine)

I love post-hoc justification of my irrational hates. Fucking artificial sweeteners are the devil and I hates them, precious.