Last night, off the coast of Virginia, NASA launched five small rockets in five minutes as part of the ATREX (Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment), to test the winds of the upper atmosphere. The rockets flew up to a height of about 100 km (60 miles) and released a chemical that was blown by those winds, forming an amazing, milky, ghostly scene:
Huffington Post is right up there with Psychology Today in its willingness to post absolute nonsensical woo. But they seemed to have been trying to get better (HuffPo, that is. Psych Today, whatever), even going so far as to create an actual science section.It has to be science in a science section, right? Well, no. If you get some humanities pseudoscience crank determining what science is, its easy to lose sight of what a science site is.
A lower appeals court ruling allowing human genes to be patented has been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which sends the case back down for a continuation of the battle between those who believe that genes carrying the secrets of life should not be exploited for commercial gain and companies who argue that a patent must be the reward for years of expensive research that moves science forward.The ruling again overturns patents belonging to Myriad Genetics Inc. of Salt Lake City on two genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Myriad's BRACAnalysis test looks for mutations on the breast cancer predisposition gene, or BRCA. Now they must go back for a rehearing and the impact could be substantial.
When I did my recap of the Being Human conference held this past weekend in San Francisco, I intentionally did not go into a lot of the content - for two reason. First, I went knowing I would be free to just relax and enjoy the conversations and demonstrations and interaction on stage and in the audience and not find a larger meaning. I was there as a media partner, not a journalist.
Paul Callaghan, a top New Zealand scientist who gained international recognition for his work in molecular physics, has died after a long battle with bowel cancer. He was 64.In a time of increasing desire for nationalized funding of science, Callaghan, best known for his work with magnetic resonance, argued in favor of commercializing science. He was able to make science accessible to regular New Zealanders by explaining it in a straightforward and entertaining way, and that he was able to use radio, books and public lectures to promote his view that the country could use science to become a wealthier and better place.
Some schools, and some psychologists, are concerned about the emotional trauma kids might endure if they have a falling out with a close friend. Solution: Ban kids from having best friends. Kids have to only play in groups.Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey. "They are doing it because they want to save the child the pain of splitting up from their best friend."
What trans fatty acids were to 2007 and global warming was to 2006 and cigarette smoking was to...well, every year since 1960...fracking was to 2011. That is, to say, the blame-all for everything, even without any science basis. Third hand smoke causes cancer believers, I mean you.Sure, there are lots of earthquakes in California, and it has no fracking, but that does not prevent anyone from contending earthquakes are caused by fracking, along with the poles flipping or any other nonsense related to fracking we all read last year.
A light-emitting diode (LED) that emits more energy than it consumes has been published by researchers from MIT.That violates the second law of thermodynamics, right? Isn't that specifically listed as a no-no in the Science 2.0 FAQ? Not the violating, you are welcome to go ahead and do that, but claiming to do so in an article, that is.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which owns Albert Einstein's papers, is pulling never-before seen items from its climate-controlled safe, photographing them in high resolution and posting them on the Internet.Since 2003, 900 manuscript images have been posted online but a grant from the Polonsky Foundation UK, which previously helped digitize Isaac Newton’s papers, is going to make all 80,000 items available.Want to read his love letters? See a handwritten explanation of his theory of relativity and E=MC^2? His thoughts on fellow Jews even before Hitler rose to power? It's all there. They also dispel another urban legend - that he did poorly in school - by publishing his grades.
A number of conservatives hold strange anti-science positions and the same number of progressives do. The non-social-authoritarians of the political spectrum, mostly those with that liber root word, mostly only deny science when it really bugs them.No wonder that liberal science academics seem to like libertarian Ron Paul. Paul — and libertarian philosophy in general — tackles government policy the same way a researcher tackles an experiment.
