ejohnson | October 26, 2009How do we remember, collect, and recognize faces, and do sex and race have any role in how we process and treat faces, and ultimately people? On Collective Imagination, Peter Tu writes about how researchers can use differing theories of facial recognition to further developments in digital security technologies, citing that "this knowledge captured from this domain is so ancient and convoluted that it may not readily yield the practical insights that we seek." Over on Cognitive Daily, Dave Munger discusses a study looking at how we process masculine versus feminine faces, reporting that "sex…
ejohnson | October 23, 2009
This week, the Oprah Winfrey Show aired an episode reporting on the quality of life in Denmark. Here, Oprah sat down with a group of Danish atheists and discussed the role of religion--as well as expansive access to healthcare and education--in an improved lifestyle. In somewhat of a surprise to non-religious viewers, Oprah seemed supportive of the concept of atheism, taking "one tiny step toward mainstreaming atheism," as PZ Myers reports on Pharyngula. Greg Laden took note of Oprah's coverage and reported on his blog that "Oprah seemed interested in [atheism], but also said that she just…
ejohnson | October 21, 2009On October 1, 2009 paleontologists announced the discovery of the oldest known primitive hominid fossil, Ardipithecus ramidus dubbed "Ardi," after 17 years of quietly studying its significance. Nearly a month after its grand unveiling to the media, biologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary anthropologists are still atwitter as scores of articles continue to be published around Ardi. ScienceBloggers are no exception this week, beginning with Razib Khan's compelling conversation on Ardi with John Hawks on Bloggingheads.tv, as seen on Gene Expression. On The Primate Diaries, Eric Michael…
ejohnson | October 19, 2009As SciWo explained to daughter Minnow last week in a video on Sciencewomen, lakes, ponds, oceans and other natural bodies of water are as ecologically important as they are beautiful. But the ecological health of many is severely compromised due to widespread pollution, global warming, ocean acidification and other factors. GrrlScientist shed light on the origins of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating island of plastic debris covering an area twice that of Texas that has amassed by way of natural currents. She also shared a video that shows cell and molecular biologists how to reduce…
ejohnson | October 19, 2009Last week, ScienceBloggers celebrated Earth Science Week with a flood of geocentric posts. This year's theme this was Understanding Climate, and was the basis for a whole host of events in the coming days. Tuesday was No Child Left Inside Day, dedicated to taking kids outside to learn and play. If you weren't able to take kids outside, Kim Hannula at All of My Faults Are Stress Related provided an alternative: Donate to the Geobloggers Giving Kids the Earth challenge on DonorsChoose.org. Anne at Highly Allochthonous hand selected five classroom projects for funding, and Anne and Chris will…
ejohnson | October 19, 2009
The world of X-ray photography is a very interesting place and surprises are often found in every image. X-rays are similar to Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) in the sense that the collected images are only black and white. To take these image I use a scientific X-ray machine at a local company. The source is much finer than a medical device and the exposure has to be taken on film since the large digital detectors have not yet come down in price. Here an antique alarm clock is X-rayed. The film is then scanned into a high resolution digital file that has to be meticulously hand…
ejohnson | October 13, 2009
This is how.
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This image was provided by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.
ejohnson | October 13, 2009Women's taste in men varies naturally with their menstrual cycle--during the more fertile period, they are more drawn to a square jawline, heavy brow, facial symmetry, and other signs of masculinity. But a new study by a team of British biologists shows that women taking birth control are not subject to the same cyclical preferences; because the hormones in the birth controll pill essentially trick the body into believing it is pregnant, women taking the pill consistently favor men with less masculine features, who in terms of evolutionary history tend to make more loyal and supportive long-…
ejohnson | October 12, 2009
Early Friday morning, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, collided with the Moon at a speed of 5,600 miles per hour, in hopes that debris stirred up by the impact would provide valuable data about how much water might be hidden in craters near the lunar poles. While the plume of debris did not rise high enough to be visible to hopeful observers watching through telescopes, NASA scientists were able to collect a wealth of non-visual data. When the analysis of the data is complete, it could help them to determine whether enough water is present to sustain lunar…
ejohnson | October 9, 2009
Photo by Ted Kinsman, as seen on Photo Synthesis.
Far from being a world of sterile white labs and colorless data, science offers some of the most spectacular imagery imaginable. Take the microscopic guppy embryo, a finalist in Nikon's 2009 Small World contest, which Frank Swain shares on SciencePunk. Or the punch-colored demonstration of Newton's law of inertia as a paintball collides with an egg yolk, shot by Photo Synthesis blogger Ted Kinsman. Or the Hubble-like photograph of the Milky Way captured by astrophotography hobbyist Rogelio Andreo, using earthbound digital cameras and…
ejohnson | October 8, 2009In the use of immunopharmacotherapy to treat drug abuse, antigenic molecules are hitched to molecules of the drug to stimulate a future immune response against the drug itself; as DrugMonkey reported this week, a recently published paper offers hopeful evidence that it could be a potentially effective treatment against cocaine addiction, though he cautioned, "It is quite obviously not a silver bullet solution at present. And when you think about it a bit, it never will be." Later on, DrugMonkey looked at another study that tracked the contents of street ecstasy to determine how much actual…
ejohnson | October 8, 2009What moves human beings to innovate measures of security? History will tell us that the most inventive and industrious times are fraught with warfare, uncertainty, and widespread fear. Greg Laden, a longtime ScienceBlogger, helps tackle this topic this month on the new Collective Imagination blog with Peter Tu, a systems design engineer who has developed algorithms for the FBI Automatic Fingerprint Identification System, and is the principle investigator for the ReFace Program at the Visualization and Computer Vision Group at the GE Global Research Center. Greg and Peter discuss the important…
ejohnson | October 6, 2009With high speed photography, I can use a high voltage spark to create a flash of only 1/1,000,000th of a second in duration. The problem is that there are not a lot of things that move this fast that such a flash is required to stop the motion. Bullets are such a subject requiring a very high speed flash system. Around the lab we jokingly call this "ludicrous speed". After photographing bullets hit just about every conceivable object it is time to move on to other subjects. In this case a paint ball is sent into the edge of a straight razor blade. The paint ball crosses two optical…
ejohnson | October 6, 2009Announcement of the 2009 Nobel Prize winners began Monday morning with the prize in Physiology or Medicine. The prize was shared between two American and one Australian-American researchers who identified a vital mechanism in genetic operations of cells--Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak. The trio was honored for their discovery of the protective relationship between telomeres and chromosomes, and the role of the enzyme telomerase. The Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced later this week, while the economics award will…
ejohnson | October 5, 2009This week kicked off the 2009 Donors Choose Social Media Challenge--a program ScienceBloggers take part in annually to help public school teachers build scientific literacy, engagement, and excitement among their students. DonorsChoose.org is an online charity where public school teachers from across the country submit requests for specific needs or special projects in their classrooms, such as microscopes for biology lessons or notebooks for a writing workshop. Readers can browse these requests online, and choose any classroom they'd like to donate to. The program has been an important event…
ejohnson | October 1, 2009There's no denying that sex is important for most creatures biologically. For humans, the biological imperative of sex has seeped into our psyches over thousands of years worth of evolution, making it more essential than we realize. On The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer reports on a new column in Mind Matters positing that love and lust have cognitive benefits, significantly affecting test subjects' abilities to solve logic and insight puzzles. Over on Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed Yong reports on an exceptionally atypical case of invertebrates that have "abandoned sex altogether" for some 80…
ejohnson | October 1, 2009This week, ScienceBloggers are full of ideas to better the practice of research science. In Scicurious's perfect lab, negative data--data that doesn't support a study's hypothesis--would be every bit as publishable as data that confirms it. In Janet Stemwedel's perfect lab, animal researchers would engage in dialogue over debate in the face of violent opposition. In DrugMonkey's perfect lab, undergraduate research assistants would be paid or receive academic credit for their work. And while Isis the Scientist agrees with DrugMonkey, she offers some hypothetical situations that could…
ejohnson | September 29, 2009Ligers are known in popular culture for being pretty much Napoleon Dynamite's favorite animal, but a lesser known fact is that the lion-tiger hybrids are actually the largest of the big cats, more massive than either parent due to a quirk of genetics. As Razib explains on Gene Expression, parental imprinting is responsible for the difference in size: Imprinted genes from female lions usually keep "largeness" genes from the males in check, but female tigers have had no selective pressure to evolve such genes. The resulting offspring of a tiger mother and a lion father are the oversized ligers…
ejohnson | September 28, 2009
I have photographed jugglers several times in the past for physics text books. I have been impressed with the level of skill some jugglers can obtain. It is difficult enough to juggle three balls, four is more difficult, and fire is a another story. When objects move in a circle they can undergo some fairly complicated motions. What would be the best way to show this motion in a still image?
In this case the camera is panned by the juggler at a constant rate on a computer controlled pan head. When the juggler is about the center of the frame a flash is set off. The image…
ejohnson | September 28, 2009Last June, scientists were thrilled to find evidence of ice on Mars. Now, the galaxy is again proving to be more abundant in water than believed. Data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument aboard the Indian satellite Chandrayaan-1 has revealed that the surface of the Moon may be covered in either water or closely related hydroxyl ions (OH-). As much as one quart of water or hydroxyl might be contained in a cubic yard of Moon soil, according to the best estimates from the data. "This could be a huge boon to establishing a Moon base," said Ethan Siegel of Starts With a Bang, "as with water…