Clipmarks | kidora's 'science' clips

Research + Details = The Devil ?

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:34:30 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: This article really does not surprise me. I work in the research world and it's very hard to get people to do clean work. You can trust people with themselves only so far. After that you take your chances.
Unfortunately researches are often so focused on their own ideas that they sacrifice good methods for their own arrogance.
I will say that while sloppy methods are a problem I don't think that most published findings are wrong, maybe a little off, but not wrong. Of course this might depend on what field of research they are specifically talking about.

Clip Source: science.slashdot.org

"The Wall Street Journal has a sobering piece describing the research of medical scholar John Ioannidis, who showed that in many peer-reviewed research papers 'most published research findings are wrong.' The article continues: 'These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data analysis. [...] To root out mistakes, scientists rely on each other to be vigilant. Even so, findings too rarely are checked by others or independently replicated. Retractions, while more common, are still relatively infrequent. Findings that have been refuted can linger in the scientific literature for years to be cited unwittingly by other researchers, compounding the errors.'"

Tags: science, research, journals

How You Sleep Is Who You Are ?

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 03:04:30 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: Look at the rest of the article to see what percentage you fall under and what it might say about you. It's fun entertaining science folks

Clip Source: www.scribd.com

If you want an insight into somebody's true personality, then try to catch a glimpse of the way they sleep.

Scientists believe the position in which a person goes to sleep provides an important clue about the kind of person they are.

Professor Chris Idzikowski, director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service, has analysed six common sleeping positions - and found that each is linked to a particular personality type.

"We are all aware of our body language when we are awake but this is the first time we have been able to see what our subconscious posture says about us.

"What's interesting is that the profile behind the posture is often very different from what we would expect."

Tags: sleep, position, science

Amazing Close Up Views Of Tornados

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 03:12:47 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: This one is for my mom. She absolutely is terrified and fascinated by tornadoes she is absolutely going to love these photos. They are just fantastic. Mother Nature will never cease to be an amazing and awe inspiring joy to watch. While I will never feel anything but sympathy for the terror and destruction that these storms leave in their path from these photos I can see the reason why my mother is glued to the TV anytime live video of these monsters comes up.
Enjoy, I know my mom will

Clip Source: ahboon.net

Tags: tornados, photography, photos, science

Hey Don't Flush We May Need That Latter

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:17:52 GMT

clipped by: kidora

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Recycling urine may be the answer to a looming global shortage of phosphorus, an Australian researcher says.

And she says recycling the 500 litres of urine each person produces a year is the solution.

"Urine is the most concentrated source of phosphorus," she says. "At the moment we dilute that through our sewage system and send it out to the ocean.

"In the industrialised world we must start moving to a resource-recovery approach rather than the current waste-treatment approach."

Phosphorus is a key component in agricultural fertilisers and Mitchell says a lack of phosphorus would affect future soil quality and production.

But she blames a 'poo taboo' for the failure of Australian governments to move on the issue of recycling urine.

We are going to need sources of fertiliser ... and the most concentrated, readily accessible source of phosphorus is us."

Tags: phosphorus, chemicals, science

Disappearance of Bees Finally Solved ?

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:24:39 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: I really hope that this will start to clear up the mystery of the disappearing honeybees. They are an integral part of our harvest cycle and its really important we find out why the colonies are collapsing.

Clip Source: www.scienceagogo.com

The sudden disappearance of honeybees (colony collapse disorder) in many parts of the country might be related to pesticide exposure, says Washington State University entomologist Walter Sheppard. The pesticide is question has been used for the past ten years to combat parasitic mites that plague the bees.

The study should shed light on the potential role of pesticides in colony collapse by the end of the year. Given that honeybee pollinated crops are worth more than nine billion dollars a year to the American economy, there will no doubt be many farmers waiting on the results.

Tags: science, mystery, bees

Kindness Does Extend Beyond Us

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 05:30:23 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: Just an interesting little study about a debate that I am sure will not rest here.
I have worked with chimps in the past and I do not find it very surprising that chimps would be so giving to unrelated members of their species.
But as it usually is in science, what you feel is not always what you find. Let the debates continue.

Clip Source: www.nature.com

Humans are often thought of as the only truly altruistic species. We help others out — by giving blood, donating to the poor, or committing to recycling — for no immediate payoff, and often at a cost to ourselves.

But evidence is gathering that we might not be alone. Felix Warneken and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have shown that chimpanzees will do favours for unrelated chimps - even when they do not get rewarded for it.

Tags: science, discovery

Life Imitating Art, Reversing Fragile X Syndrome

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 04:01:53 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: How wonderful is this.
While this does not directly translate into a cure for fragile x it does give hope that future breakthroughs will leads us closer to a workable therapy for this disease.
Thumbs-up to the researchers at M.I.T.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

In a case of life imitating art, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) reported today that they had successfully reversed mental retardation in mice, just as scientists did in the classic 1966 novel Flowers for Algernon. In the book by Daniel Keyes, scientists use experimental surgery—first tested on a mouse named Algernon—to dramatically boost the intelligence of a mentally retarded janitor named Charlie Gordon. Now M.I.T. scientists report in Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences USA that they ameliorated brain damage in mice caused by a genetic disorder known as fragile X syndrome by blocking an enzyme involved in cellular development.

Tags: science, research

Natalie Portman, Neuroscientist

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:49:47 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: How many actors do you know take a break from acting and peruse this kind of alternative job?
This is great to actually see an actor using their brain. How wonderful !
Cheers to you Natalie.
If you click on this link you can get a copy of the paper Ms. Portman is on at the bottom of the page.

Clip Source: www.mindhacks.com

Natalie Portman is best known for her roles in Hollywood movies like Star Wars, Cold Mountain and V for Vendetta. What is less known is that she was co-author of a scientific paper on the neuroscience of child development. This is about her research.

Portman, whose real name is Natalie Hershlag, left acting to pursue a psychology degree at Harvard during 2000.

While there she was employed as a research assistant in Prof Stephen Kosslyn's neuropsychology lab where she got involved in a study investigating the link between frontal lobe development and visual knowledge in infants.

Tags: natalie-portman, neuroscience, science, development, children

Ancient Protection From HIV Became Our Downfall

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:53:34 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: This article is very interesting. I suggest reading the whole article for more in depth information.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Early humans successfully fended off a virus that infected chimpanzees by evolving a protein capable of neutralizing it, according to a new study. But what goes around comes around, evolutionarily speaking: Four million years later, the same protein seems to have left us more vulnerable than other primates to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

"humans are susceptible to HIV today because of a response to something else we had in the past."

Tags: hiv, science, medicine, virus, evolution

If You Say It Enough Times You Can Fool All The People

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:01:59 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: Ahhh, the power of blogs. Keep on repeating yourself, someone out there will start to believe you.

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

A fascinating study has just found that hearing one person's opinion repeated is almost as effective as hearing several different people's opinions.

Repeated exposure to one person's viewpoint can have almost as much influence as exposure to shared opinions from multiple people. This finding shows that hearing an opinion multiple times increases the recipient's sense of familiarity and in some cases gives a listener a false sense that an opinion is more widespread then it actually is.

The researchers had over a thousand student volunteers read statements that were supposed to represent opinions of members of a group. In some cases, they read statements attributed to three different people, but in other cases, the identical statements were attributed to a single person. In both cases, the students believed that the statements represented the opinion of the entire group more frequently compared to when they read one statement attributed to a single individual.

Tags: science, psychology, study

Can Your Plants Recognize You?

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:58:58 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: Plants have a secret social life.
Apparently they can tell their siblings from plants not related to them, and in doing so compete against unrelated plants.
Wow, and I thought the neighborhood cats were interesting.

Clip Source: www.nature.com

Plants have already been shown to compete with others — of their own kind or of another species — when sharing space. For example, they sometimes choose to invest more energy in sprouting roots when they have nearby competition for water and nutrients.

Now, Susan Dudley and Amanda File of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, have shown that plants grown alongside unrelated neighbours are more competitive than those growing with their siblings — ploughing more energy into growing roots when their neighbours don't share their genetic stock.

Plants 'know' more about their environment than they are often given credit for: they can sense the presence of neighbouring plants through changes in water or nutrients available to them or through chemical cues in the soil, and can adjust their own growth accordingly. "That plants have a secret social life is something well known to plant ecologists," says Dudley.

Tags: plants, nature, science, cognition

Must See, Kid Rapping About Physics

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:40:49 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: This is just great.
If more kids could get this interested in science and learning so much could change in this country.
Not to mention that this just freaken cool

Clip Source: blog.sciam.com

More Young M.C. than Sugar Hill Gang, this physicist's delight should provide a few chuckles:

Physics G (who is actually named Greg Courville) can be a little thin on the descriptions (aside from a shout out to Stephen Wolfram): plasma physics are pretty neat? But that's a quibble. You gotta admire his breadth and his willingness to move the crowd.

As much as I admire the work, I suspect the Department of Energy will be asking about his nuclear fusion project long before Kanye West will be busting down his door.

Tags: physics, rapping, science, entertainment, music, video

The God Particle Finally Found ?

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:42:05 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: Read more about the God Particle on wired.com.
Exciting stuff.

Clip Source: www.wired.com

For weeks, the physics world has been buzzing with rumors juicier -- at least in context -- than any Washington scandal: Researchers at Fermilab's Tevatron particle collider may have made one of the biggest scientific discoveries in decades, just months before a new European facility supplanted their position at the top of the field.

According to the rumors, researchers may have experimental results compatible with the discovery of a long-sought particle called the Higgs boson, sometimes dubbed the "God particle," which is widely regarded as giving all other particles mass. Depending on the details, this could be a Nobel-level discovery, and could lead to a reexamination of much of today's physics.

Nevertheless, the blog-spread buzz is polarizing the physics community. The tension, and the ongoing silence from researchers in the know, says much about a field on the brink of changes that will shape research for decades to come.

Tags: god particle, physics, blogging, wired, science