jlynch | October 23, 2007One result from a Barna Group poll on biblical literalism:
The Bible opens with the description of God creating the universe in six days. That report is accepted as literally true by 60% of the adult population. This passage brought out major distinctions across people groups. For instance, while 73% of the adults who did not attend college believe this account to be literal, just half as many college graduates (38%) hold that view. About half of the residents of the Northeast (52%) and West (50%) hold a literal view of the creation account, compared to 62% of those in the Midwest and 72% of…
jlynch | October 23, 2007According the Associated Press, the White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health. The testimony was cut from 14 pages to four, though some of the redacted material appears to have come up in questions.
The deletions directed by the White House included details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming and the scientific basis for some of the CDC’s analysis on what kinds of diseases might be spread in a warmer climate and rising sea…
jlynch | October 22, 2007Births
1875 - Gilbert N. Lewis, American chemist
1905 - Felix Bloch, Swiss physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1908 - Ilya Frank, Russian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1581 - Michael Neander, German mathematician and astronomer
1944 - Charles Glover Barkla, English physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1986 - Edward Adelbert Doisy, American biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | October 22, 2007Good Monday morning to all my readers, especially to the 406 who read the blog via Feedburner. Did you know, that if each and everyone of you donated a mere $10 to our DonorsChoose drive, we’d have raised a total of $5,353 and will have met our challenge goals? That’s less than three cents a day spread over a year, and overall ten dollars well spent.
You know what to do ...
Thank you.
And if you donate (or have done so), please remember to forward your e-mail receipt to scienceblogs@gmail.com to take part in our prize drawing.
And now, your Today in Science.
Events
4004 BC - The universe…
jlynch | October 21, 2007In a strangely unreal moment - and coming off of a by-week - ASU finds itself ranked #4 in the BCS rankings, reflecting (I guess) the fact that teams we have beaten in turn beat the likes of Oklahoma (#6), Cal (#21), USC (#12) and Oregon (#5).
Up next week is Cal who, because of losing two straight, will be dangerous though I think beatable in Tempe as long as we don’t let them get out of the gates quickly. The real test will then be Oregon the following week, a game that I will unfortunately miss because I’ll be at a conference. And the home stretch (UCLA, USC, U of A) isn’t likely to be too…
jlynch | October 20, 2007Events
1983 - The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
2003 - Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz.
Births
1660 - Georg Ernst Stahl, German scientist
1833 - Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize
1957 - Wolfgang Ketterle, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1872 - Jacques Babinet, French physicist
jlynch | October 19, 2007But first your DonorsChoose update. We have raised $1,293 (32%) of our $4,000 goal and have eleven more days to raise the remainder. Many of my SciBlings have reached their chosen goal, so it would be nice to join their ranks. Even the minimum donation of $10 would help.
If you donate (or have done so), please forward your e-mail receipt to scienceblogs@gmail.com to take part in our prize drawing.
You know what to do ...
Thank you.
Births
1808 - Karl Andree, German geographer
1891 - James Chadwick, English physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1942 - Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, German…
jlynch | October 19, 2007This is old news, but in 1998 Random House generated one of those "100 Best Novels" lists as voted by a panel and by readers. Interestingly there was quite the disconnect between what both groups favored:
The Board’s Top 5
ULYSSES by James Joyce
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
The People’s Top 5
ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
The…
jlynch | October 19, 2007
A colorized scanning electron micrograph depicts a group of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The bug made headlines this week because of a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that it caused 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths in 2005 - most of them in hospitals. (Source: Janice Carr/CDC/Handout/Reuters)
jlynch | October 19, 2007Nobody heard him, the dead man,But still he lay moaning:I was much further out than you thoughtAnd not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larkingAnd now he’s deadIt must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always(Still the dead one lay moaning)I was much too far out all my lifeAnd not waving but drowning.
Stevie Smith.
jlynch | October 18, 2007Events
1943 - Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.
1688 - William Cheselden, English surgeon and anatomist
1858 - George Albert Boulenger, Belgian naturalist
1897 - Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Pakistani scientist and scholar
1909 - Marguerite Perey, French physicist
1910 - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Indian-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1916 - Jean Dausset, French immunologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1951 - Demetrios Christodoulou, Greek mathematical physicist
Deaths
1937 - Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron…
jlynch | October 17, 2007Births
1859 - Henri Bergson, French philosopher and author of Creative Evolution.
1897 - Isabel Briggs Myers, American psychological theorist
1902 - Pascual Jordan, German physicist
Deaths
1886 - Philipp Franz von Siebold, German physician
1911 - Alfred Binet, French psychologist
jlynch | October 17, 2007Events
1604 - Johannes Kepler observes Kepler’s Star (Supernova 1604), the last supernova to have been observed in the Milky Way.
Births
1919 - Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov, Russian physicist
1936 - Hiroo Kanamori, Japanese seismologist
Deaths
1757 - René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French scientist
1780 - William Cookworthy, English chemist
1887 - Gustav Kirchhoff, German physicist
1931 - Alfons Maria Jakob, German neurologist
1934 - Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish neuroscientist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | October 14, 2007Events
1951 - Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes synthesizes the first oral contraceptive
1997 - The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.
2001 - NASA’s Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter’s moon Io.
Births
1608 - Evangelista Torricelli, Italian physicist
1829 - Asaph Hall, American astronomer
1909 - Jesse Leonard Greenstein, American astronomer
1940 - Peter Doherty, Australian immunologist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1980 - Mikhail Lavrentyev, Russian physicist and mathematician
2000 - Konrad Emil Bloch, German-born biochemist and Nobel…
jlynch | October 13, 2007Births
1801 - Joseph Plateau, Belgian physicist
1861 - Artur Gavazzi, Croatian geographer
1914 - Raymond Davis Jr., American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1831 - Jean-Louis Pons, French astronomer
1960 - Abram Ioffe, Russian physicist
1984 - Martin Ryle, English radio astronomer and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | October 13, 2007On a Saturday in which #1 LSU lost, #2 Cal lost to Oregon State, and USC barely squeezed past Arizona, ASU beat Washington 44-20 after trailing 17-13 at the half- a dominant performance in the second half that nicely illustrated Dennis Erickson’s ability as a coach, particularly considering our top running back (Torain), receiver (Jones) and tight end (Miller) were all injured. Rudy Carpenter went 20 of 31 for 227 yards and two TDs, while the team ran for 296 yards of rushing. Impressive all round (though I will admit to be frustrated at the half).
ASU should crack the top 10 in the polls…
jlynch | October 13, 2007
Events
1773 - The Whirlpool Galaxy (above) was discovered by Charles Messier
1892 - Edward Emerson Barnard discovers D/1892 T1 (Barnard 3), the first comet discovered by photographic means
1976 - The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle was obtained by F.A. Murphy at the C.D.C..
2003 - The Public Library of Science commences publication of an open access scientific journal, PLoS Biology.
Births
1820 - John William Dawson, Canadian geologist
1821 - Rudolf Virchow, German physician, pathologist, biologist, and politician
Deaths
1687 - Geminiano Montanari, Italian astronomer…
jlynch | October 12, 2007Tonight #16 Hawaii played San Jose State and won 42-35 in overtime. That’s the same San Jose that ASU beat 45-3. Hawaii go 7-0 but frankly, given whom they have beat, are horribly overrated. Despite being unbeaten. Hawaii haven’t really met any real opposition (witness Northern Colorado, Louisiana Tech, UNLV, Charleston Southern, Idaho, Utah State). They certainly don’t deserve a BCS bearth. As for Colt Brennan’s Heisman hopes. Nope, ain’t gonna happen.
Later tonight, it’s ASU (#14, 6-0) versus Washington.