Fantastical Fridays
scientificactivist | September 8, 2006The Scientific Activist will be taking a break from Fantastical Fridays for a while, starting with last week. (Yes, I know, this post is a little late). Things have been pretty busy in the lab lately and that, combined with the fact that I haven't had home internet access for over a month (until two days ago), means that I have a lot of blogging to catch up on. Instead of being tied down to a Friday feature, I'd like to keep things a bit more open for now.
scientificactivist | August 25, 2006...Or at least that's the impression that college freshmen with US Department of Education Smart Grants are getting, the The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Tuesday:
Like a gap in the fossil record, evolutionary biology is missing from a list of majors that the U.S. Department of Education has deemed eligible for a new federal grant program designed to reward students majoring in engineering, mathematics, science, or certain foreign languages....
The awards in question -- known as Smart Grants, for the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent program -- were created by…
scientificactivist | August 18, 2006It has been known officially since 2002 that the sciences are hard, and, as much as we scientists love it when our friends and family tell us how smart and wonderful we must be since they could never understand what we do... is this elevated position going to cost us in the end? Big time?
Addressing this issue, an article by Emma Brockes in yesterday's Guardian explores the plight of the physical sciences in the UK, taking a humorous look at the question of whether a lack of interest from students will spell their eventual demise:
It is presumably never easy being a physics teacher, what…
scientificactivist | August 11, 2006This week's installment of Fantastical Fridays discusses a not-so-impressive finding reported in the media in January 2006. From the archives:
(30 January 2006) To all of those who worried about the United States' dependence on Middle Eastern oil, who tried to raise awareness about dwindling global oil reserves, or who fought for decent fuel economy standards, you can all go home now. We found the answer: methane... methane hydrate. Boy were we misguided, thinking that renewable or clean energy sources might be a part of the solution. USA TODAY reports on humanity's newfound salvation…
scientificactivist | August 4, 2006With a name like Ready.gov, the Department of Homeland Security's emergency preparedness website isn't particularly modest about its objectives. However, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) claims that the site isn't living up to its mission. Instead of just complaining about it, though, FAS has put its money where its mouth is: it made its own site, ReallyReady.org.
Here's the best part. Instead of spending millions of dollars and involving who knows how many people, ReallyReady.org was created by one FAS intern, Emily Hesaltine, as a summer project. Whoa.
Now, before I go on, I…
scientificactivist | July 28, 2006From the archives:
(19 March 2006) Genetic engineering holds a great deal of promise, from potentially curing a variety of human ailments to addressing nutritional deficiencies through transgenic crops. One project even aims to engineer into bacteria the ability to generate a variety of alternative fuels. When it comes to genetic engineering and its emerging potential, it seems that the only real limit to the field is that it can only be used to design or improve something that is actually alive.
Despite this "limitation," some scientists have found that the raw material used in genetic…
scientificactivist | July 21, 2006This post from the archives describes a recent research finding that may be welcome news for some....
(24 May 2006) If you know what I'm talking about, and if you are in fact "cool", then you might also be interested in the findings presented Tuesday by Dr. Donald Tashkin and his coauthors at an American Thoracic Society meeting in San Diego. In short, smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer:
The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A…
scientificactivist | July 14, 2006Although a given scientific paper probably has at least something fairly interesting or unique about it, most people aren't going to be too interested in reading about, for example, the structural details of the protein-protein interactions between cytoplasmic integrin tails and focal adhesion-associated proteins (my work).
But this paper... man, this is completely different. Not only could I not wait to read it, hell, I wished I was there when the experiments were taking place!
On July 7th, researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine published a paper in Psychopharmacology…
scientificactivist | July 7, 2006Since all of my Fantastical Fridays posts so far have been about chemistry or physics, I think it's time for a change of pace. Here's a post I wrote a couple of months ago about some more "political" science that had been in the news.
(24 January 2006) Now I have an excuse for my behavior the next time I get into a bitter political debate: I can't help being defensive--it's hardwired into me!Those are the findings, at least, of a recent study led by psychologist Drew Westen, as reported by The New York Times today.
Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the…
scientificactivist | June 30, 2006There are a number of approaches scientists take to get at the fundamental nature of life, and one of those is elucidating the chemical structures of the molecules that make life happen, particularly proteins, which are the workhorses of the cell. One of the two primary methods for determining these structures is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and the other is x-ray crystallography. My current work is in the former, meaning I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a huge magnet and even more time staring at a computer screen trying to make sense of the data I get from the magnet. As…
scientificactivist | June 23, 2006Last week's Fantastical Fridays was a big hit, so we'll keep the momentum going with more chemistry this week. Instead of anthropomorphic molecules, though, this one is all about chemicals with downright ridiculous names.
If you still have any doubts after last week that chemists can have a great sense of humor, hopefully Paul May, a chemistry lecturer at the University of Bristol, and convince you once and for all. May runs a popular website that describes various Molecules with Silly or Unusual Names. In a collection that can only be described as extremely thorough, he covers the entire…
scientificactivist | June 16, 2006Lurking beneath the surface here at ScienceBlogs is a force that compels people to do extremely gimmicky things on Fridays. Since I know that I'm no better than anyone else, I've decided to join in on the fun. Therefore, I introduce to you Fantastical Fridays at The Scientific Activist. From now on, every Friday I'll take a break from the more serious scientific activism to explore the stranger, more outlandish, and in general more lighthearted aspects of science.
Today's installment of Fantastical Fridays brings you a fascinating discovery reported in 2003: the creation of tiny people,…