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Movies and television shows always show scientists as being stuffy older folks shrouded in white lab coats, but real scientists look much more like the rest of us than they would have you think. That’s why This Is What A Scientist is so great -it shows real scientists living their everyday lives, looking like regular people. What a great way to counter the stereotypes.
A robot that can learn, think and act for itself might make some people lose sleep over the possibility of a Terminator-esque robotic revolution, but scientists in Japan feel that this advancement in the field of robotics is a good thing, and may revolutionize how our mechanized workforces handle the tasks they’re designed to perform . Watch as this robot figures out how to do something it was never taught to do-pour a glass of ice water. Utterly fascinating to watch? Perhaps not, but this leap forward in artificial intelligence means science fiction is rapidly becoming science fact. Link -via Wired
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These computer generated images were created during experiments to replicate the big bang. Scientists at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland are doing so in an effort to determine how the universe came into existence by recreating sub atomic explosions that may have occurred during the time of the big bang.
In a series called Science Vs Delirium, artist Simon Bent creates colorful icons of some of the most amazing scientists in history, from Galileo to Freud. The series reminds me of the Yellow Submarine movie, which is to say I love it.
Link via Flavorwire
Genesis Medical Imaging, Inc. has allowed scientists from Chicago’s The Field Museum use of a mobile CT scanner to scan their ancient discoveries, and the results have been surprising. In one mummy they found nothing but straw under the wraps, in another only a skull and legs, and although some of their findings have been disappointing overall the Field Museum has been happy to know exactly what they have in their collection. Read more about it at Art Daily.
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Adam Ruben, PhD. wrote about what kind of parents scientists turn out to be -mainly geeky. The above is his imagery of what his child’s birth “project” would look like in a peer-reviewed journal. The rest of the article is not only entertaining, but I can concur that it is pretty much accurate, as I was raised by a scientist father. Link -via Boing Boing
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Who has more bacteria in their navel -Carl Zimmer of The Loom or Peter Aldhous of NewScientist? The swabs have been taken, and the cultures were grown. You can see the results in petri dishes. It’s part of the Belly Button Biodiversity Project led by Jiri Hulcr of North Carolina State University.
The project was conceived as a device to interest the public in microbiology, and to counter the common view that bacteria are nothing but causes of disease. “This fear is based on a lack of awareness that we live in a microbial world,” says Hulcr, who notes that even some “self-described germophobes” have confronted their anxieties and given swabs.
Hulcr also aims to extend a scientific frontier: researchers are realising that the human “microbiome” – the diversity of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies – is a key influence on our health and physiology. The skin remains poorly explored territory, and the belly button is an ideal sampling point because it doesn’t get as scrubbed and sprayed with chemicals as much other, more accessible parts.
See more navel microbes growing at NewScientist. Link -via Carl Zimmer
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The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists is, as the name implies, a club for scientists who have luxuriant flowing hair. LFHCfS, as it is known unpronouncably to its members and their admirers, was founded in early 2001. Anyone can join, provided only that she or he is a scientist and has luxuriant flowing hair, and is proud of it.
The “proud” part is important. The club is not for the morbidly shy, people-averse scientist of stereotype and legend. Every LFHCfS member’s hair is on display on the Improbable Research web site.
LFHCfS was founded by admirers of the famously curly mane of psychologist Steven Pinker. Dr Pinker, then a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and now head of the psychology department at Harvard University, became the first member. He proudly lists the club on his academic web page.
The ranks now include mathematicians, astronomers, linguistics professors, organic chemists, computer researchers, immunologists, geneticists, physicists, neuroscientists, three sisters, a married couple, and other men and women of science, of both sexes, all hair colors, and many hair styles.
Dr. Piero Paravidino, 2002/3 LFHCfS Man of the Year, is a research chemist at Isagro Ricerca Srl, Novara, Italy, and a guitarist in the heavy metal band Mesmerize.
There is even a real rock star.* Italian chemist Dr Piero Paravidino plays guitar for the heavy metal band Mesmerize, and co-authored the paper “Synthesis of Medium-Sized N-Heterocycles Through RCM of Fischer-Type Hydrazino Carbene Complexes.”
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This Twaggie was drawn by David Barneda from a Tweet by @TeenDreaming. Bill Gates’ picture was skipped, possibly because we all know what he looks like. Link
Busting stereotypes wherever they go! Meet the Science Cheerleaders, former NBA and NFL cheerleaders who went on to careers in science and engineering -but still enjoy kicking up their heels! Link -via The Daily What
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Annalee Newitz of io9 asked six prestigious scientists to provide examples of realistic works of science fiction. Dave Goldberg, a physicist at Drexel, argued that the first Terminator movie provided the most reasonable presentation of time travel:
The entire thing is a completely self-consistent time loop, from John Conner’s parentage and survivalist training, to the picture of Sarah Conner that finds its way to Kyle Reese. No grandfather paradoxes at all, but there are information paradoxes.
Other science fiction works that receive favorable reviews include 2001, Firefly, and The Handmaid’s Tale.
Link | Image: Orion Pictures
Although women have been researching and inventing for as long as men have been grunting and hunting, recognition for their accomplishments has been sparse. We think we owe them a few retroactive shout-outs.
Beatrix Potter may be known mainly as the mother of adorable anthropomorphized animals, but the British author and illustrator also used her skills for some decidedly less cuddly work. Around the turn of the 19th century, scientists had no way of photographing images under a microscope, so Potter found herself churning out watercolor paintings of fungi in labs. Pretty soon, she’d become a well-respected mycologist and was one of the first scientists to study lichens. At the time, women were barred from attending scientific meetings, so Potter’s uncle had to present her papers for her. Eventually, she had to settle for a more “appropriate” profession, and thus Peter Rabbit was born.
As a graduate student in Cambridge in the late 1960s, Jocelyn Bell Burnell builtr a radio telescope with her thesis advisor, Antony Hewish. While taking readings, she noticed a regularly repeating radio signal from a segment of space. Confused, she and Hewish labeled the phenomenon “LGM” for “little green men”. Later, the scientific community renamed them “pulsars,” for “one of the biggest astronomy discoveries in modern history”. In 1974, Hewish received the Nobel Prize. The ever-observant Burnell, however, wasn’t even mentioned during his acceptance speech.
Even though men used to have a hard time sharing their labs with ladies, they seemed more than happy to let women crunch the numbers. In 1946, after John Mauchly and Presper Eckert finished building the world’s first electronic digital computer, known as the ENIAC, they solicited the aid of six women to program and run the thing. Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman subsequently became the world’s first computer programmers. Sadly, their work was considered “clerical”, and their station “sub-professional”. In 1997, however, those words were amended, and all six women were inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame.
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The article above, written by Hank Green, appeared in the Scatterbrained section of the September – October 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.
Don’t forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog today for more!
Scientists — with their flesh-eating robots and whatnot — are always out to get us. Popular Science turns up the fear factor by telling us about five experiments and projects currently underway that (if exaggerated and misunderstood) could destroy human civilization. One example is a “love drug” that could strongly influence the way someone feels about another:
In 2005, researchers in Switzerland gave 29 test subjects a sniff of the neuropeptide oxytocin, a.k.a. the “love drug,” known to play a role in developing trust and social attachment in mammals, before having them play a financial investment game. The result? Almost half of the trust-primed oxy sniffers handed all their francs to an anonymous partner. Now insiders say the military may be in the process of weaponizing oxytocin and similar compounds.
WHY, GOD, WHY? Lead researcher Michael Kosfeld, who conducted the study at the University of Zurich, says the true value of oxytocin may be in treating people with social-anxiety disorder or to help relieve some symptoms of autism and Asperger’s syndrome. But Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense, believes such a drug could find a place in facilitating interrogations and negotiations, or in ending armed conflicts.
Now let’s go burn down the observatory so this will never happen again!
Link | Image: NASA
Neatorama has featured a number of stories about animals who have received prosthetics before, including Beauty the Bald Eagle, who lost her beak when it was shot by a hunter. WebEcoist has a great collection of these stories including many you probably haven’t seen yet.
Among the scientists, inventors, engineers, and leaders who left their mark on the world are some who were mentally ill or even downright insane. The ten men in the list showed signs of paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, crippling introversion, and other disorders. For example, you know Samuel Morse as the inventor of the telegraph and Morse Code, but there was more to him.
He was a little paranoid. He was determined that the Blacks, Jews, Catholics and the entire nation of Austria were working to destroy the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants of America. He wrote several books on the subject in which he talked about how the immigrants and lesser races were oppressing all the white people, how the Jews and Catholics were working together to kill Protestants, and how all of these groups met on a regular basis in the basement of an orphanage in Ireland. Oh, and Austria’s in there too somewhere.
Link -via Unique Daily
The magazine Science has announced the winners of the 2009 “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest. Sue Lynn Lau did a ballet to illustrate the role of vitamin D in beta-cell function. Miriam Sach used modern dance to portray cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs. Vince LiCata danced with his graduate students to represent the interaction of pairs of hemoglobin molecules. And Markita Landry tangoed her way through “Single Molecule Measurements of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes.” The judges included the winners of last year’s competition. All the entries were posted to YouTube. Link (with videos) -via Metafilter
