No wonder learning a new language can be more difficult the older you get. We were learning our individual languages before we were even born! That’s what researchers revealed in a release today by Current Biology.
It seems that fetuses not only warm to the sound of mother’s voice as they gestate, they also are being programmed in the direct patterns inherent in certain languages. By the time we are born, our dialect is determined.
Wermke’s team recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, when they were three to five days old. That analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the newborns’ cry melodies, based on their mother tongue.
Specifically, French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody contour, whereas German newborns seem to prefer a falling melody contour in their crying. Those patterns are consistent with characteristic differences between the two languages, Wermke said.
ScienceDaily has a brief story about this new knowledge: Link
Here’s another story about abandoned man-made structures, but this one may have a happy ending.
Instead of using aboveground ponds to grow algae for biofuels, researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology have proposed growing algae underground in abandoned mines. What are the advantages? Underground mines are cheap, maintain constant temperature, solve the aboveground evaporation and contamination problems, and the site preparation has already been done by the mining companies.
But don’t algae need sunlight to grow? Not necessarily, says mining engineering professor David Summers.
It happens that algae work best when they use only the blue and red parts of the light spectrum, which can be provided by LED lights, and they need periods of darkness in which to process the photons.
An added benefit: Mine owners like the idea because it eliminates the need for them to clean up the sites, as algae are particularly good at sequestering metals.
How do starfish keep cool when lying on the sand during low tide? Dr Sylvain Pincebourde and colleagues at the University of California, Davis and Bodega Marine Laboratory, Bodega Bay, California, studied starfish (okay, sea stars) in an aquarium, replicating tides and environmental conditions.
They discovered that a starfish will ingest cold seawater to lower its body temperature before a hot day on the beach. Sucking up water large amounts of water increases a starfish’s body mass, which means its body temperature increases more slowly. Pretty cool!
Infrared photo above by B. Helmuth and S. Pincebourde shows cool areas in purple and warm areas in red, via BBC News.
Hannah Devlin has a neat piece up at Times Online about the continuing shift in architecture towards biological and chemical ideologies. ”Likening the city to an organism,” scientists are hatching amazing ideas like using fish bacteria to illuminate nocturnal skylines.
There’s also speculation about recreating processes like limestone formation -which usually takes nature thousands of years- that eats carbon from the air.
Nanoarchitects are aiming to speed the process up to a matter of days. They believe it could be done simply by coating the walls of buildings with tiny droplets of engine grease. The grease would be laced with a common salt such as magnesium chloride. When the magnesium reacts with carbon dioxide in the air, a solid magnesium carbonate pearl begins to form.
This serves as the seed for the growth of white, wheatsheaf-shaped carbonate crystals. The large surface area of a droplet of grease maximises the interface between the magnesium and the atmospheric carbon, speeding up the rate of the reaction. Within days, the grease would be transformed into a sparkly crystalline coating similar in appearance to heavy frost or snowfall… A green city…would look like Narnia under the White Witch, crystal white and beautiful. The carbon choking our planet could become a harmless decorative feature.
Posted by Queuebot in Animal on October 23, 2009 at 7:52 pm
In order to teach horse owners about their horses, Gillian Higgins spends up to four hours painting anatomical features on her white horse – in essence, turning it inside out!
No more wondering about where a particular bone, joint, or muscle is located – they’re on the horse!
The 19th annual Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded Thursday night at Sander’s Theater on the Harvard campus. The awards are given to “honor achievements that make people laugh, and then make them think.” A few of the winners:
PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.
LITERATURE PRIZE: Ireland’s police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means “Driving License”.
See the entire list of winners at Improbable Research. Link
Modern musicians are frequently believed to be stupid airheads who couldn’t hold down any “real” job. But in reality, there are a lot of intelligent rock stars. Some musicians are even geniuses – and not just when it comes to music composition. These musicians are not only intelligent, they have also used their knowledge to get college degrees or in their secondary professions.
Brian May: Queen
Brian May of Queen isn’t your average rock and roll supernova. He was named the 39th Greatest Guitarist of All Time by Rolling Stone, but he’s also great at something else – astrophysics. May graduated from the Imperial College of London with an honors degree in physics and Mathematics. He then went on to obtain a doctorate in both departments, when Queen exploded into rock and roll stardom. While he gave up his schooling for the band, he did not stop working with physics and published a few academic papers while in the group.
More recently, he printed a book entitled Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe in 2006. In October of 2007, he completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics. His thesis was titled A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud. The month after, he was appointed Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.
Greg Graffin was an anthropology and geology double-major from UCLA. He went on to obtain a master’s degree in geology from the school and then earned a Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell University. Throughout this entire time, he was singing and touring with Bad Religion, a band he helped form when he was only 15.
Although he’s still playing with Bad Religion, Graffin also teaches Life Sciences at UCLA. He has also written two books, one a series of correspondences between himself and historian Preston Jones titled Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity, the other is being released in 2010 and is titled Anarchy Evolution. According to a recent Twitter post, he is also be involved with an upcoming television series, called “Punk Professor.”
Anyone familiar with the punk band The Descendents knows of the nerdy caricature that has come to serve as the band’s logo. That drawing is based on the band’s lead singer, Milo Aukerman. Fans may also recognize the name of the group’s first album, ‘Milo Goes to College.’ The album was named because Milo was actually going to college at UCSD at the time.
His affection for learning caused the band to go on a number of temporary hiatuses while he returned to school. Eventually, Aukerman earned a Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Even after graduation, the band continued the cycle of reuniting and separating as Milo kept returning to the band and then his career in biochemistry. The group is currently dormant, but with their history, most fans still hold out hope that Milo will come back soon.
Tom Scholz is the founder and guitarist for a little band called Boston. But before he ever even started the group, he received a master’s degree at MIT in the field of mechanical engineering. He was working as a senior product design engineer for Polaroid when he decided to try his hand at rock.
After Boston took off, Tom created his own music technology company, Scholz Research & Development in 1980. In 1995, he sold the company to Dunlop Manufacturing, who continued to produce the company’s most famous product, the Rockman guitar amp. The amp was designed by Sholz himself and still is manufactured with his signature on each unit.
The lead singer and co-founder of the Offspring, Dexter Holland graduated as valedictorian of his high school before he moved on to college. He then moved on to USC where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in biology and Master’s degree in molecular biology. When the Offspring took off, he actually left his doctoral program in Molecular Biology at USC in order to focus on the band. Unrelated, but also interesting, Holland is also a licensed pilot and hot sauce entrepreneur. His hot sauce, Gringo Bandito, has even been picked up by Albertsons.
Dexter isn’t the only smart guy who’s played in the band though. James Lilja played drums with the band for a few years before returning to his medical calling – in gynecology. If you thought it was strange to have a punk rock professor in LA, just imagine visiting a rock star gynecologist in San Jose.
After leaving Iron Butterfly, bassist Philip Taylor Kramer obtained a degree in aerospace engineering. He then began working on the MX missile guidance system for a US Department of Defense contractor. After that, he began working on facial recognition systems, advanced communications and fractal compression systems for CDs. In 1990, he opened a business, Total Multimedia, with Micheal Jackson’s brother, Randy, where they specialized on data compression techniques for CDs. Kramer also worked on a project started by his father that would discredit Einstein’s theories. Part of his research involved a transmission project that could result in communications that went faster than the speed of light.
His disappearance in 1995 sent conspiracy theorists aflutter and remained a complete mystery for four years. It started when he drove to the LA airport to pick up an investor who never showed up. Kramer then made a number of phone calls from his cell phone, including one to the police where he said, “I’m going to kill myself. And I want everyone to know O.J. Simpson is innocent. They did it.” He was never heard from after this and the mystery ended up appearing on Oprah, America’s Most Wanted, Unsolved Mysteries and a Skeptic magazine article depicted the number of conspiracy theories surrounding his disappearance.
His body was finally uncovered in 1999, when photographers looking to shoot old car wrecks at the bottom of Decker Canyon in Malibu discovered his minivan with his remains inside. The death was officially ruled a suicide based on his phone calls made that day, but conspiracy theories still rage on.
Jeff “Skunk” Baxter: Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers
The guitarist for such classic bands as Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers is also a self-taught expert on weaponry systems. After a lengthy studying period at home, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter decided to demonstrate his knowledge on the subject by writing a five-page paper that proposed the ship-based anti-aircraft Aegis missile be converted into a missile defense system. After he gave the paper to California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Baxter’s career as a defense consultant began.
In 1995, he was elected chairman of the Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missile Defense, a position he still holds. Through work with that project, he was awarded consulting contracts with the Missile Defense Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, Science Applications International Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. He has also joined the NASA Exploration Systems Advisory Committee.
Baxter believes his unique way of looking at terrorism is what has allowed him to do so well in the industry, “We thought turntables were for playing records until rappers began to use them as instruments, and we thought airplanes were for carrying passengers until terrorists realized they could be used as missiles. My big thing is to look at existing technologies and try to see other ways they can be used, which happens in music all the time and happens to be what terrorists are incredibly good at.” Next time you’re wondering if the country is doing everything it can to keep you safe, remember that someone nicknamed “Skunk” is on top of it. It may not help comfort you, but at least you might giggle about it.
-Lionel Richie has a degree in economics from Tuskegee.
-Art Garfunkel has a Masters from Columbia in both history and math.
-Tracy Chapman has degrees in anthropology and African studies from Tufts University, where she was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts.
-Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave has a degree in social studies from Harvard. After leaving the music world, he settled down and began teaching history.
Many communities have enacted smoking bans in public places, some of which have been in effect for several years. How is that affecting our overall health? According to an analysis of studies, the bans are significantly cutting the rate of heart attacks in those communities.
“By lumping 11 studies together, we have increased the certainty that smoking bans really do reduce the risk of heart attack,” lead author Dr David G Meyers (University of Kansas School of Public Medicine, Kansas City) told heartwire. Meyers and colleagues report their findings online September 21, 2009 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Meyers says there are some additional messages from this review. Although they found, on average, a 17% reduction in AMI, this figure is “deceptive,” he says, because they also showed—in longer-term studies—a 26% decrease in heart attacks per year that the ban had existed. So this proves “the longer a community bans smoking, the greater the effect.” It also appears the people who seem to derive the greatest benefit from the bans are younger and often predominantly female—likely those working in the hospitality and entertainment industry, he says.
Two male squirrel monkeys were given gene therapy and now the normally color blind animals are able to distinguish between shades of red and green in color vision tests. In normal situations, female squirrel monkeys can see a full range of colors, but males cannot see red or green.
Is this the beginning of the end of monkey sexual discrimination? Only time will tell.
Resembling something out of Independence Day, or the arrival of Cthulu, Mammatus Clouds are a meteorological phenomenon caused by sagging cellular accumulations produced in clouds of ice and water, and usually mean a fierce storm is trying to develop.
Tending to form in warmer months over the Midwest and eastern areas of the US, mammatus are nonetheless found elsewhere, as our chase across the States to track this singular meteorological phenomenon will reveal.
The above photograph was taken in Colorado, but Environmental Graffiti has a bunch of cool examples. The one from Tornado Alley state Oklahoma is particularly ominous.
A ‘telepathy’ chip that allows people to control computers, televisions and light switches by the power of thought is being developed by British scientists. The idea was conceived by Dr. Jon Spratley while he was studying at the University of Birmingham.
The tiny sensor would sit on the surface of the brain, picking up the electrical activity of nerve cells and passing the signal wirelessly to a receiver on the skull.
The signal would then be used to control a cursor on a computer screen, operate electronic gadgets or steer an electric wheelchair.
This type of technology would allow disabled people such as Stephen Hawking to have more control over their environment. Link
The food we eat – from corn to cattle – has been domestically modified for thousands of years. Today scientists, agronomists and geneticistsare taking the next step: improving our food from the inside out.
Allergic to tomatoes? It’s more likely than you think – up to 16 percent of people are sensitive to tomatoes, adding extra complications to life in a world of free-flowing ketchup, tomato sauce and burgers with the works. It’s not tomatoes themselves that are at fault, it’s a small protein called Profilin. By silencing two genes responsible for Profilin production in tomatoes, scientists can create non-allergenic fruit that are otherwise completely normal in taste, texture and appearance.
This Cracked Photoshop competition asked what science classes would be like if science were as it is portrayed in movies. This CPR poster is only one of the top 19 funny images. Don’t skip reading “The Benefits of Electrocution”. Link -via Digg
Another step in the quest to create life has been made, as scientists successfully transformed one bacteria into another by replacing it’s DNA with a related species’. Now, scientists are setting their sights on creating entirely new microbes with unique genome sequences, from scratch.
Dr Venter likened it to “changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by inserting a new piece of software” and stressed it would be more difficult in other kinds of cells, which have enzymes to snip the DNA of invaders.
But he said to achieve the feat, without adding anything more than naked DNA, “is a huge enabling step.”
“It’s a necessary step toward creating artificial life,” added microbiologist Fred Blattner of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Dr Venter said that, in the light of this success, the culmination of a decade’s work, he will be attempting the first transplant of a lab-made genome to create the first artificial life “within months.”
You’ve heard of spontaneous human combustion and you may have read about frogs raining from the sky, but have you ever heard of earthquake lights? Or star snot? How about the Naga Fireballs, glowing red eggs that shoot up from the bottom of the Mekong River in Vietnam? These weird phenomena have yet to be explained by science. Pictured is a blue jet and a red sprite, colorful unexplained lights that happen above thunderstorms for unknown reasons. Link -via Digg
All you science-lovers on Neatorama should appreciate this great sweater featuring the Periodic Table of Elements. The sleeves feature fungi and bacteria names. The creator made it for her husband, a microbiologist working in the pharmaceutical industry.
This little guy was found with a broken leg, but vets couldn’t convince themselves to put it down, so instead they gave it a bionic leg made with steel pins, nuts and bolts so she could start walking around on her own.
Cathy Jackman, a diver, spotted the tiny blue bird struggling to keep afloat off Brixham in Devon.
She plucked the distressed budgie – nicknamed Captain – from the sea and looked after him until they returned to shore.
She said: “When I first saw him he was flapping and disappearing under the water. He nearly drowned as he couldn’t take off or swim.
A rock named Blue Genesis was brought back from the moon by Apollo 16, the final moon mission, in 1972. Moon rocks remain rare and precious for that a single reason – because we never went back for more.
The astronauts brought it and 200 pounds of other rocks back to Earth as the bounty from Apollo 16. At the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, scientists ascertained that Blue Genesis, as it was once called, weighed 12 pounds, and they cut it to pieces to send out for study. Geologists estimate that it could be 4.23 billion years old.
Since 1981, a sliver of that rock has resided like a wedge of old cheese — a light gray speckled filling inside a dark rind — at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.
For most of its history, science has always been done by individual or at best a small group of scientists. World War II changed that: during the war, government-sponsored laboratories employing thousands of scientists sprung up to do large-scale research on weapons and technology. Since then, scientific research has entered a new era dubbed "Big Science".
Whether "big" science is any better than "small" science is a matter of controversy. Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory Alvin Weinberg (who coined the term "Big Science" in the 1960s) defended the organization and big-budget financing of Big Science as the only way to continue research into progressively more complex scientific matters. On the other hand, science historian Paul Forman posited that defense-related funding by the government shifted the focus in physics from basic to applied research.
Whatever the answer, Big Science is here to stay. So let’s take a look at some of the biggest Big Science projects in the World:
1. The Manhattan Project
During World War II, urged by physicists Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd, President Franklin Roosevelt sanctioned a secret government project to develop the world’s first atomic bomb. Dubbed the Manhattan Project, this secret weapon program employed more than 130,000 people over 30 different research and production sites and cost $2 billion ($24 billion in today’s dollar).
The Manhattan Project was initially called the Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Metals (a purposely deceptive cover name by the military). Concerned that even that name would attract too much attention, the military changed it to the Manhattan Engineer District or the Manhattan Project for short.
The very first problem facing the scientists was how to initiate a controlled and self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. In 1942, scientists at the University of Chicago’s "Metallurgical Laboratory" (yes, another cover name) achieved such a reaction. Physicist Arthur Compton promptly placed a coded telephone call to Washington, D.C., saying "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world, the natives are friendly." And so began the atomic age.
What Happens in Oak Ridge, Stays in Oak Ridge: World War II-era billboard at the Oak Ridge Facility, part of the Manhattan Project. (Photo: Life)
Calutron at the secret Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It was used to enrich the uranium fuel required for nuclear weapons. (Source: DOE)
Perhaps what’s more remarkable than making the first atomic bomb was that the scientists managed to keep the mega project secret, even from their wives:
At a social gathering a few days later, Laura Fermi noticed her husband being bombarded with congratulations. She wanted to know why, but no one would give her a reason. Woods finally whispered to her: "He has sunk a Japanese admiral!" When Laura Fermi asked her husband if that was true, he replied, "Did I?" The obvious next question was asked: "So you didn’t sink a Japanese admiral?" Without changing his sincere expression, Fermi said, "Didn’t I?" Laura Fermi would not learn of the events of December 2 for another two-and-a-half years.
The very first nuclear explosion was conducted on July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The detonation was equivalent to the explosion of about 20 kiloton of TNT. It marked the beginning of the Atomic Age.
(Note: the history of the Manhattan Project is very fascinating. Interested readers are highly recommended to read the early history of the Manhattan Project over at Argonne National Laboratory: Link)
2. Space Race
Although it’s debatable whether "science" was much of a part of the Space Race, there’s no doubt that it definitely filled the "Big" part of "Big Science." From 1957 to 1975, the United States spent approximately $100 billion competing with the Soviet Union in space exploration.
The Space Race was kicked off in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik-1, making it the first space power. A couple of months later, they launched Sputnik-2 with the first living passenger to go to space, Laika the dog. Then Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he orbited Earth in 1961. There’s no question that the Soviet Union took the early lead (United States’ first attempt at space exploration, the Vanguard rocket, pathetically blew up on the launching pad).
In 1961, President Kennedy proclaimed that Americans would land a man on the Moon before the decade was out. In public, Kennedy said that NASA’s Apollo Program would benefit the economy, close the missile gap in which the Soviets have more ballistic missile weapons than the Americans, and spur science and technology in the United States. In private, Kennedy said that his main motivation was to beat the Soviet Unions and show them who’s better.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon, photo taken by Neil Armstrong (Photo: NASA)
Video of the very first moon landing of the Apollo 11 mission [YouTube Clip]
In 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the lunar surface. The momentous event marked the apex of the Space Race, and intense rivalries between the US and the Soviet Union dwindled from that point on. In 1975, the Space Race came to an end with the rendezvous of the Apollo and the Soyuz spacecraft in orbit.
3. Human Genome Project
Fluorescent In-Situ Hybridization identification of human chromosomes (better known as "chromosome painting"). This technique uses DNA probes attached to fluorescent markers to identify the various human chromosomes. Photo: Steven M. Carr
Not all Big Science projects are physics and engineering. The Human Genome Project is a project to sequence the entire 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up the human DNA and identify all the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 genes that make up our genome.
The project formally began in 1990, and was estimated to take 15 years to complete. In contrast to other Big Science projects listed here, the Human Genome Project was actually completed two years earlier than expected due to better technology (take that, physics!). The final sequencing of human DNA was completed in 2003, though analysis of the data is ongoing till today.
It’s easy to envision the benefits that the Human Genome Project for humanity: advances in understanding our genetics would undoubtedly aid medicine and research to cure diseases. But some people point out that the ethical, legal and social costs may be high: who owns and should have access to our genetic information? Do people’s genes make them behave in a particular way and if so, how would this factor in determining guilt or innocence when it comes to criminal behaviors?
4. International Space Station
Space Shuttle Atlantis docked to the Russian Mir Space Station in 1995 (Photo: NASA)
The International Space Station in 2009 (Photo: NASA)
Hands down, the biggest Big Science project ever launched is so big, so expensive, and so ambitious that it is – literally – out of this world. The International Space Station, a joint collaboration of space agencies of a couple dozens of countries, is not so much a scientific project as an exercise of engineering prowess and political will.
The ISS is so expensive that it’s hard to pin down its actual cost. The European Space Agency estimates that the entire station costs €100 billion over a period of 30 years. Critics pointed out that the amount of science being done is paltry as compared to the sums of money being spent, but its advocates defended the program as a necessary first step towards manned exploration of space.
5. Hubble Space Telescope
In 1923, pioneers of modern rocketry imagined that rockets could propel a telescope in Earth’s orbit, but it wasn’t until the late 1970s that the Hubble Space Telescope project got off the ground (after an intense lobbying of Congress by astronomers, no less).
Hubble Space Telescope released by the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990 (Photo: NASA/IMAX)
Hubble Space Telescope, as seen from the Space Shuttle Discovery on its second servicing mission in 1997 (Photo: NASA)
Like many Big Science projects, the Hubble Space Telescope was fraught with errors and setbacks. The Challenger disaster brought US space program to a halt and forced the project to be postponed for years. When the telescope was finally launched, scientists found that it was out of focus because its primary mirror had been ground to the wrong shape! The telescope became the butt of jokes (an editorial cartoon likened the telescope as being built by the nearsighted Mr. Magoo)
Three years later, scientists gave the telescope a new set of "eyeglasses" and Hubble began producing some of the most fantastic images from space ever seen. The telescope went from being the butt of jokes into the apple of Big Science’s eye.
"Pillars of Creation", the star-forming pillars in the Eagle Nebula, one of Hubbles’ most famous photos. Image: NASA, Jeff Hester, and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University)
In its nearly two decades of service, the Hubble Space Telescope has snapped over 570,000 pictures of the birth and deaths of stars and galaxies.
6. Super Kamiokande
Every second, 50 trillion solar neutrinos pass through your body so it’s no wonder that this "ghostly" elementary particle is so darned difficult to detect. But that doesn’t deter physicists building the Super Kamiokande (Super-K, if you want to be cute) neutrino detector in Japan.
The Super-K is basically a tank filled with 50,000 tons of ultra-pure water, buried some 1,000 m (3,280 ft) underground. The idea is that once in a great while, a neutrino will interact with electrons or nuclei of water that will create a detectable electromagnetic radiation called the Cherenkov radiation (the blue glow we usually see in nuclear reactor cores).
7. Superconducting Super Collider
Perhaps the most difficult part of a Big Science project is actually not science – it’s the politics, and there’s no better example of this fact than the birth and demise of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas.
In late 1982, Fermilab Director Leon Lederman proposed a gigantic particle accelerator that would be the world’s largest. Dubbed "The Machine in the Desert" or Desertron, the particle accelerator would be 54 miles long tubes of capable of producing enough energy to snag the Holy Grail of particle physics, the elusive Higgs Boson.
Initial estimate of the project pegged the cost at $3 billion, but in just a couple of years, the projected total cost had quadrupled to $12 billion and the SSC became a political football. In 1992, the Collider was killed by the House only to be resurrected by the Senate ("It’s not the science, it’s the jobs"). The next year, the House killed it again and the Senate revived it again ("It’s actually not the jobs, it’s America’s supremacy in science"). A few months later they ran out of excuses, the House killed the SSC again and this time, it stayed dead.
Photo: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
When it was cancelled, $2 billion had been spent and some 23 km (14 mi) of tunnels had been dug, thus leaving Texas with a super-sized hole in the ground.
8. Very Large Array
Remember the scene in the 1997 movie Contact, where the character played by Jodie Foster received signals from outer space? All those antennas are actually real – they’re part of the radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico called the Very Large Array (VLA).
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s VLA is composed of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration, located on the Plains of San Agustin, New Mexico. Each antenna is 25 m (82 ft) in diameter and weighs about 230-ton. They’re programmed to work together as a single instrument (hence the name).
The Very Large Array is actually going to be even larger – 8 new stations as distant as 250 km (155 mi) from the current array are planned (but not yet funded).
9. National Ignition Facility
Laser beams entering the target chamber at the NIF. Photo: Dave Bullock (more at his gallery at Wired)
The mild name of the National Ignition Facility belies one big fact: it is the world’s largest laser, capable of heating and compressing a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point of nuclear fusion. Simply said, the NIF recreates the condition of an exploding star right here on Earth.
The NIF is designed to deliver nearly 2 million joules of ultraviolet laser energy in billionth-of-a-second pulses onto a target of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head, heating it up to 100 million degrees while simultaneously subjecting it to pressures 100 billion times Earth’s atmosphere. If everything goes well (and that’s a very big if – there’s a lot that could go wrong. For instance, the NIF has some 60,000 points of control, 30 times as many as on the space shuttle), it would deliver the holy grail of energy: nuclear fusion.
The NIF is so full of technical marvels that it’s hard to pick just one to highlight. But if we had to pick one, it would be this: when fired, the pulses of NIF’s 192 laser beams – comprised of nearly 60 miles of mirrors, fiber optics, crystals and amplifiers – must arrive within trillionths of a second of each other and must strike within 50 micrometers on the target. The NIF website describes it as such:
NIF’s pointing accuracy can be compared to standing on the pitcher’s mound at AT&T Park in San Francisco and throwing a strike at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, some 350 miles away (Source).
10. Large Hadron Collider
Photo: Maximilien Brice, CERN
CMS Detector commissioning in Cessy, France, VR Photography by Peter McCready
If there’s a science project that is synonymous with Big Science, it’s CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Everything about this project is big: at 27 km (17 mi) circumference, the LHC is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is built by over 10,000 scientists and engineers from hundreds of universities and laboratories from over 100 countries.
It’s expensive, too: the LHC cost the member countries of CERN and other participating countries an estimated €4.6 billion (about US$ 6.4 billion), not including extras like detectors and computing capacity (an additional €1.43 billion).
The risks are also big. Doomsday scenarios include micro black holes with a mass of Mt. Everest, killer strangelets, magnetic monopoles, and vacuum bubbles which would pop all of us out of existence.
If you’ve ever lost your wallet, you know what a pain it is to cancel all your cards and get them reordered. You know how annoying it is to go to the DMV and get a new driver’s license. You probably also know how much of a bummer it can be to lose important phone numbers, photos, tickets stubs and cash you had in there too.
Fortunately, scientists have come up with a great way to increase your likelihood of getting your wallet back -put cute kids pictures in it. Adorable images of children trigger a person’s empathy and their “compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations.”
Wallets with a cute baby pic were sent back 90% of the time, whereas those with no images only had a one out of seven chance of reuniting with their previous owner.
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How do researchers study the tops of rain forests? One way is to use a canopy raft, which is flown up and settled on the very tops of trees.
canopy rafts are extraordinary things. they’re basically enormous nets attached to an inflatable frame and are dropped onto trees from airships, resulting in a viewing platform like no other which can also be used as a base from which to hang using climbing gear. the raft above is the solvin bretzel, a new design by gilles ebersolt which due to its pretzel-inspired shape is both safer to use and more effective than older versions. researchers can spend days at a time on the raft (hence the tent) and due to its extremely light weight the trees are left unharmed.
deputy dog shows us several other ways scientists can get to the tops of forests to study the ecosystems that sustain the majority of our planet’s species. Link
Knowledge on evolution fills many books, which can be intimidating to someone just beginning to learn about it. Geeks are Sexy has a post explaining in layman’s terms how evolution works and the reason why the theory is so important as a tool when examining the world. The basics boil down to four statements:
* Variation, which arises through mutation, exists within and between populations for every trait.
* More individuals are born into a population than can survive (usually because of the scarcity of resources).
* Traits are passed down from parents to their offspring.
* Individuals most fit to survive in their environment generally do (Natural Selection).
Of course, there’s a lot more which is easier to absorb once you have the basics. Link
Since the beginning of modern science we have been solving the great mysteries around us. Because of recent advances in science and technology
we now have the ability to unravel some unknowns like never before.
The Ancient Theater of Epidaurus near Athens Greece was constructed in the late 4th century BC and is one of the best preserved ancient theaters. Even in ancient times, the theater was considered to have great acoustics. The actors can be perfectly heard by all 15,000 spectators without amplification. To demonstrate the theaters great acoustics tour guides have their groups scattered in the stands and then show them how faint sounds can be heard at center-stage. How this sound quality was achieved has been the source of academic and amateur speculation for many years. One of the theories suggested that prevailing winds were carrying the sounds. It turns out that that answer is in the seats. In 2007 researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered that the limestone material of the seats provide a filtering effect suppressing low frequencies of voices, thus minimizing background crowd noise so the seats act as natural acoustic traps. It is still unknown whether the acoustic properties are the result of an accident or the product of advanced design.
To be fair, there may be other ways to explain their conclusions – and you might not need the clamps, harnesses and whips to replicate that kind of closeness (simply cooking a meal together might do the trick as well). Still, there is a stigma associated with S&M that critics are calling into question.
SPANKING is stressful at first, but it could bring consenting couples closer together. That’s the implication of two studies of hormonal changes associated with sadomasochistic (S&M)activities including spanking, bondage and flogging.
Throughout history there have been a few lost souls who have taken the beauty of science and instead of honoring it, twisted it and contorted it into something evil.
Science, we are informed by conscientious historians of the discipline, is something that comes to us without anything we might call a “moral imperative” as to what we should or should not be doing with the knowledge. In fact, science has often been described as an “amoral” enterprise, which can be put to evil uses just as easily as good ones. Scientists themselves bear no responsibility to ensure how their discoveries are used by others.
But what if the scientist himself is a diabolical mad man?
Lava explodes and flows in different forms. How many of these are you familiar with?
The explosive nature of these fascinating geological mountains provide us with a time line of earth’s past, they create chains of living and breathing islands, and they cause deathly destruction to everything they touch.
The violence of a volcanic eruption is based upon many factors including the viscosity of the given magma. (the more viscous, the more violent) Viscosity is a measure of a materials resistance to flow, and the thicker it is, the slower is will flow. This works the same way in our bodies when we are dehydrated.
History is consistently shaped by consensus, but consensus is usually formed through old-fashioned rough-and-tumble fist fights… the intellectual kind of course.
Anyone who studies history quickly discovers that ideas don’t come cheaply and they don’t win easily. There are almost always deep divides and passionate camps surrounding big ideas, and the ensuing battles are some of the most interesting artifacts of the past. Shown are Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, who began a debate on quantum indeterminism.
The arguments revolved around what is known as the measurement problem and whether or not particles in the quantum state were really both wave and particle at the same time until measurements were made. Einstein wanted to insist that the apparent indeterminacy at the quantum level was just a (temporary) inability to measure certain properties, while Bohr maintained the impossibility of determining precise values of certain properties because at the quantum level the values were by nature uncertain.
Who needs NASA? Spending less than it costs to take an airplane ride, a handful of industrious Spanish students sent a balloon 100,000 feet into space, tracking it by radio signal via Google Earth.
From 20 miles above the Earth’s surface, their handmade spacecraft took compelling photographs of the planet from above which they recovered when they found the landed balloon just over five miles from where they launched it.
The pupils’ incredible school science project has already caught the attention of the University of Wyoming in the US, and the Meteotek team keep those interested updated with regular blogs and updates to their Twitter feed.
This adorable video is brought to you by The Cooks Den. In trying to evaluate whether organic veggies and fruits actually taste better, they decided to try an unbiased judge -Hammy the Hamster. How semi-scientific of them.
The results seemed to show that the little girl preferred organic veggies in five out of the six foods tested.
Have you every read about some new science experiment or research study that just seems… well, stupid? If you’ve ever gotten to the point where you’ve wondered what other bogus things they’ll pay people to learn about, you’re in luck. Here’s 7 of the most ridiculous studies ever:
Sex, Drugs and Science
If this first group of studies show us anything, it’s that scientists are as drugged up and crazy as the junkies up the street from me.
Elephants on Acid:
If you were going to see the effects of LSD on an elephant, wouldn’t you start with smaller doses and progressively increase the dosage until there was a noticeable change in their behavior? I sure would. But the researchers on this one aren’t like you and me.
Instead the researchers working on this one started off by injecting the poor beast with 3000 times the dosage needed for an average human, despite the fact that elephants weigh around 50 times what the average human weighs. Within two hours, the animal died. The scientists defended their actions by saying they had used LSD plenty of times and were sure it was safe. They then concluded, “elephants are highly sensitive to LSD.”
Apparently another scientist found their results to be suspicious, so he gave elephants LSD in their water. In his study, the elephants acted a little funny, but were totally fine.
We’ve all heard stories detailing how stupid turkeys are -like the one that says they’ll drown if you leave them in the rain. Well, some of those turkey stories may be bogus, but two Penn State researchers discovered that turkeys are so stupid they can be trained to be aroused by little more than sticks.
Their experiment consisted of creating a model female turkey that could be progressively deconstructed. The scientists would then gauge the turkey’s interest in the “female” and then remove some parts of her body and try again. They were expecting the birds would lose interest after is was stripped down enough. Surprisingly, the turkeys were aroused even when the model became little more than a stick with a head. I guess this not only shows how stupid turkeys are, but how perverse they are too.
I always thought scientists were supposed to be unbiased. I mean, if you’re hoping for certain results, might that affect your research? Obviously these researchers bypassed that concept, by attempting to prove that semen works as an antidepressant. They decided to study this theory by interviewing college women who were sexually active. Their conclusions proved that women who had sex without condoms were less depressed than women who used them.
Of course, their research was extremely preliminary and they didn’t even bother to take into account additional factors, like the fact that women not using condoms are more likely to be in serious
relationships. It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that this might play into someone’s relative level of happiness. But like I said, this study was about as unbiased as all those tobacco company ones that couldn’t connect smoking with cancer.
The rest of these studies are amazing -in that someone actually bothered to research things so obvious:
Head Banging is Bad For You:
Who would have ever thought that aggressively and repeatedly throwing your head up and down would be bad for you? Gee, I never would have imagined that spinal damage and brain trauma could have resulted from head banging. Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. After years of dating a metal head, I can assure you that head banging can certainly make you retarded…or at least, it doesn’t help your intelligence at all.
The only good thing researchers found was that head banging is unlikely to leave you unconscious. What is really funny is the researcher’s suggestions for the metal genre. They suggest metal bands play more
mellow tunes and less “beat oriented” music. They also urged label to place anti-head banging warnings on their cds. Oh, and listeners were advised to start listening to “adult-oriented rock” instead of heavy metal. Yeah, that’s gonna happen real soon.
Hmmm, who is most likely to be a virgin, a party-girl, a jock, or a nerd? Think about it. No surprise here; male science nerds between 16 and 25 are the most likely to not have had sex.
At least the study provided some legitimate reasons for this statistic, rather than the typical “nerds are pimply and boring” theories of popular media. The study reasoned that these nerds were the population segment least likely to be in situations where they would meet potential lovers. Apparently, doing homework and going to the library doesn’t help you meet chicks. Hey, at least they’re being productive. Interestingly, female art students were the most sexually active.
If bullies were compassionate they would sit around crying whenever they picked on people. The fact that they don’t do so might just indicate that they are mean. Why did anyone need to set up a study to confirm that bullies enjoy seeing other people in pain?
An interesting thing about this study is that it was the first time anyone used fMRI to evaluate how respondents reacted to different emotions. Instead of being empathetic like the brain of a normal person, bullies mind’s activate their reward centers when they see videos of other people being picked on.
It’s common knowledge that television and other forms of entertainment are a way for people to escape their problems. If you run home to watch tv instead rather than hanging out with friends, you might be unhappy. Did we really need a scientist to tell us that people who socialize are generally more happy than people who sit at home watching tv all day? What’s more crazy is that they needed over 30 years of data to back up their claims. The only unique thing the study discovered was that many viewers are actually addicted. (Marx was right about television, is this evidence that the scientists are commies?):
“Addictive activities produce momentary pleasure and long-term misery and regret,” said Steven Martin, co-author of the study. “People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantaged. For this kind of person, TV can become a kind of opiate in a way. It’s habitual, and tuning in can be an easy way of tuning out.”
Funny, I’ve was using the audio/visual equivalent of heroin the whole time I was researching this. I swear I could quit any time.
Now that I’ve written this, I think I’ve got a couple of ideas I could get funded. For example, are people happier when they’re warm at home or cold in the middle of nowhere? Or maybe I could find out if donkeys really die when they take a bunch of cocaine and other drugs at a bachelor party. Do you guys have any ideas for awesome studies?
No wonder learning a new language can be more difficult the older you get. We were learning our individual languages before we were even born! That’s what researchers revealed in a release today by Current Biology.
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Here’s another story about abandoned man-made structures, but this one may have a happy ending.
How do starfish keep cool when lying on the sand during low tide? Dr Sylvain Pincebourde and colleagues at the University of California, Davis and Bodega Marine Laboratory, Bodega Bay, California, studied starfish (okay, sea stars) in an aquarium, replicating tides and environmental conditions.
ueue, submitted by 
The 19th annual Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded Thursday night at Sander’s Theater on the Harvard campus. The awards are given to “honor achievements that make people laugh, and then make them think.” A few of the winners:
Greg Graffin was an anthropology and geology double-major from UCLA. He went on to obtain a master’s degree in geology from the school and then earned a Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell University. Throughout this entire time, he was singing and touring with Bad Religion, a band he helped form when he was only 15.
The lead singer and co-founder of the Offspring, Dexter Holland graduated as valedictorian of his high school before he moved on to college. He then moved on to USC where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in biology and Master’s degree in molecular biology. When the Offspring took off, he actually left his doctoral program in Molecular Biology at USC in order to focus on the band. Unrelated, but also interesting, Holland is also a licensed pilot and hot sauce entrepreneur. His hot sauce, Gringo Bandito, has even been picked up by Albertsons.
The guitarist for such classic bands as Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers is also a self-taught expert on weaponry systems. After a lengthy studying period at home, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter decided to demonstrate his knowledge on the subject by writing a five-page paper that proposed the ship-based anti-aircraft Aegis missile be converted into a missile defense system. After he gave the paper to California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Baxter’s career as a defense consultant began.
Many communities have enacted smoking bans in public places, some of which have been in effect for several years. How is that affecting our overall health? According to an analysis of studies, the bans are significantly cutting the rate of heart attacks in those communities.
Two male squirrel monkeys were given gene therapy and now the normally color blind animals are able to distinguish between shades of red and green in color vision tests. In normal situations, female squirrel monkeys can see a full range of colors, but males cannot see red or green.
The food we eat – from corn to cattle – has been domestically modified for thousands of years. Today scientists, agronomists and geneticistsare taking the next step: improving our food from the inside out.
Although it’s debatable whether "science" was much of a part of the Space Race, there’s no doubt that it definitely filled the "Big" part of "Big Science." From 1957 to 1975, the United States spent approximately $100 billion competing with the Soviet Union in space exploration. 
To be fair, there may be other ways to explain their conclusions – and you might not need the clamps, harnesses and whips to replicate that kind of closeness (simply cooking a meal together might do the trick as well). Still, there is a stigma associated with S&M that critics are calling into question.
Who needs NASA? Spending less than it costs to take an airplane ride, a handful of industrious Spanish students sent a 
If you were going to see the effects of LSD on an elephant, wouldn’t you start with smaller doses and progressively increase the dosage until there was a noticeable change in their behavior? I sure would. But the researchers on this one aren’t like you and me.
I always thought scientists were supposed to be unbiased. I mean, if you’re hoping for certain results, might that affect your research? Obviously these researchers bypassed that concept, by attempting to prove that semen works as an antidepressant. They decided to study this theory by interviewing college women who were sexually active. Their conclusions proved that women who had sex without condoms were less depressed than women who used them.
Who would have ever thought that aggressively and repeatedly throwing your head up and down would be bad for you? Gee, I never would have imagined that spinal damage and brain trauma could have resulted from head banging. Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. After years of dating a metal head, I can assure you that head banging can certainly make you retarded…or at least, it doesn’t help your intelligence at all.
Hmmm, who is most likely to be a virgin, a party-girl, a jock, or a nerd? Think about it. No surprise here; male science nerds between 16 and 25 are the most likely to not have had sex.
If bullies were compassionate they would sit around crying whenever they picked on people. The fact that they don’t do so might just indicate that they are mean. Why did anyone need to set up a study to confirm that bullies enjoy seeing other people in pain?
It’s common knowledge that television and other forms of entertainment are a way for people to escape their problems. If you run home to watch tv instead rather than hanging out with friends, you might be unhappy. Did we really need a scientist to tell us that people who socialize are generally more happy than people who sit at home watching tv all day? What’s more crazy is that they needed over 30 years of data to back up their claims. The only unique thing the study discovered was that many viewers are actually addicted. (Marx was right about television, is this evidence that the scientists are commies?):
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