A quarter honoring a dinosaur whose remains were discovered in Alberta back in 1974, the Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai., is being made available for purchase on April 16, 2012. It glows in the dark to reveal a likeness of the fossilized skeleton.
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Canada Mint Offers a Glow-in-the-Dark Dinosaur Quarter | Geekosystem
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BBC - BBC Radio 4 Programmes - In Our Time, The Scientific Method
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution of the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific thought.
In 1620 the great philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a work outlining a new system of thought which he believed should inform all enquiry into the laws of nature. Philosophers before him had given their attention to the reasoning that underlies scientific enquiry; but Bacon's emphasis on observation and experience is often seen today as giving rise to a new phenomenon: the scientific method.
The scientific method, and the logical processes on which it is based, became a topic of intense debate in the seventeenth century, and thinkers including Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Karl Popper all made important contributions. Some of the greatest discoveries of the modern age were informed by their work, although even today the term 'scientific method' remains difficult to define.
With: Simon Schaffer, Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge; John Worrall, Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Michela Massimi, Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Science at University College London. Producer: Thomas Morris.
via www.bbc.co.uk
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20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results | NCPP - National Council on Public Polls
By asking these 20 questions, the journalist can seek the facts to decide how to report any poll that comes across the news desk.
The authors wish to thank the officers, trustees and members of the National Council on Public Polls for their editing assistance and their support.
- Who did the poll?
- Who paid for the poll and why was it done?
- How many people were interviewed for the survey?
- How were those people chosen?
- What area (nation, state, or region) or what group (teachers,lawyers, Democratic voters, etc.) were these people chosen from?
- Are the results based on the answers of all the people interviewed?
- Who should have been interviewed and was not? Or do response rates matter?
- When was the poll done?
- How were the interviews conducted?
- What about polls on the Internet or World Wide Web?
- What is the sampling error for the poll results?
- Who’s on first?
- What other kinds of factors can skew poll results?
- What questions were asked?
- In what order were the questions asked?
- What about "push polls?"
- What other polls have been done on this topic? Do they say the same thing? If they are different, why are they different?
- What about exit polls?
- What else needs to be included in the report of the poll?
- So I've asked all the questions. The answers sound good. Should we report the results?
via www.ncpp.org
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MIT Report: How to Keep from Getting the Flu | Big Think
When MIT researchers set out to find inexpensive and household methods to slow the spread of a potential flu pandemic, they were simultaneously finding ways to stop the seasonal flu. After reviewing 40 studies of the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical solutions, they recommend washing hands with soap and water for 20-30 seconds, wearing a mask if you have a virus, installing air filters, keeping temperatures and humidity levels high and installing an ultraviolet light (because UV light is antimicrobial).
At the start of their research, the MIT scientists imagined an H5N1 bird flu pandemic, perhaps on the scale of the influenza epidemic that swept the globe between 1918 and 1920, killing 50 to 100 million people. Were the bird flu to mutate and become communicable between humans, vaccines might help stop its spread, but it is possible that their production would be too slow to have much effect. The hygiene methods highlighted above are sufficient for slowing the spread of influenza among members of the same household.
via bigthink.com
Image by Karsten Schneider/Science Photo Library. (Click to enlarge.) "Spreading potentially lethal pathogens, influenza virus particles (brown) invade cilia (blue) in the airways of the human lung."
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Henrietta Leavitt: Beyond Parallax, Before Hubble
Henrietta Leavitt is a relatively unsung hero of astronomy. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she went to work--at first as a volunteer--at the Harvard College Observatory in 1893 examining photographic plates of images of the night sky.
In Leavitt's day, a star's distance from us was determined in part through a method known as parallax. No, a parallax is not two hammocks side-by-side or a semi-laxative. It's a process that is difficult to explain briefly in writing (for me), but it is summarized on Wikipedia, (see parallax), including this possibly helpful example from the entry:
A simple everyday example of parallax can be seen in the dashboard of motor vehicles that use an older-style "needle" speedometer gauge. When viewed from directly in front, the speed may show exactly 60; but when viewed from the passenger seat the needle may appear to show a slightly different speed, due to the angle of viewing.
Anyway, parallax as a method for measuring a star's distance only works with stars relatively close to us. Leavitt noted that stars with variable brightness (that is, they pulsate), known as Cephalids, exhibit a direct relationship between how bright they are and how long they're bright for. Her work used this finding to pushed out farther, beyond the parallax method, the maximum distance at which we can measure a star's proximity to us.
In the early 1900's, scientific opinion was divided as to whether or not all stars were contained within our galaxy. The famous astronomer Edwin Hubble would in the 1920's conclusively prove that some stars visible to us were outside of our galaxy--that is, really, really far away--which would more or less also confirm that our galaxy was just one of many, many galaxies.
He accomplished this in part through the benefit of Leavitt's preceeding work.
Before Hubble's discovery, astronomers were seeing other galaxies in their telescopes all of the time, but it wasn't a certainty what they were. They looked most or less like what one might call smudge-stars; they seemed to have shape and structure, but what the heck were they, really? Some scientists speculated that they were other galaxies, but, as I wrote above, there wasn't conclusive proof. Hubble provided that proof doing what scientists do: "building on" (including correcting, improving, refining, integrating, or simply using) the work of other scientists--some of them maybe long dead!) who built on the work of other scientists who built on the work of other scientists, and so on..... You get the idea. I hope. Hubble
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Craig Ferguson's "Doctor Who" cold open
Brilliant! "Triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism...." Yup, that about sums it up.
(Doctor Who premiered on 23 November 1963.)
(Five famous celebrity Whovians.)
("What's a cold open?" you ask?)
(By the way, big no-no among Whovians: abbreviating Doctor in reference to the Doctor or the show.)
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Intragalactic Ethics
Ronald Bailey ponders our responsibility in exploring other planets:
[O]ne chief reason [to avoid human contamination of new planets] is to prevent inadvertent contamination by Earth microbes from being mistaken as evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life. But do we have an ethical obligation to prevent harm that might be caused by Terran life to extraterrestrial life? Even more broadly, do we have the right to change the environments of other worlds even if they do not contain any living organisms?
Josh Rothman weighs the arguments:
About these questions, moral philosophers disagree. There's a long pro-terraforming tradition (especially among philosophically inclined science-fiction readers): Turning a lifeless place into an inhabitable one seems like a noble goal. Meanwhile, others argue that we have a moral, and possibly even an aesthetic, obligation to leave extraterrestrial life untouched.
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BBC News - Old American theory is 'speared'
The rib, from a tusked beast known as a mastodon, has been dated precisely to 13,800 years ago.
This places it before the so-called Clovis hunters, who many academics had argued were the North American continent's original inhabitants.
News of the dating results is reported in Science magazine.
In truth, the "Clovis first" model, which holds to the idea that America's original human population swept across a land-bridge from Siberia some 13,000 years ago, has looked untenable for some time.
A succession of archaeological finds right across the United States and northern Mexico have indicated there was human activity much earlier than this - perhaps as early as 15-16,000 years ago.
The mastodon rib, however, really leaves the once cherished model with nowhere to go.
The specimen has actually been known about for more than 30 years. It is plainly from an old male animal that had been attacked with some kind of weaponry.
It was found in the late 1970s at the Manis site near Sequim, north-west of Seattle, in Washington State.
Although scientists at the time correctly identified the specimen's antiquity, adherents to the Clovis-first model questioned the dating and interpretation of the site.
To try to settle any lingering uncertainty, Prof Michael Waters of Texas A&M University and colleagues called upon a range of up-to-date analytical tools and revisited the specimen.
These investigations included new radio carbon tests using atomic accelerators.
via www.bbc.co.uk
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Neanderthal sex boosted immunity in modern humans
Mating with Neanderthals and another ancient group called Denisovans introduced genes that help us cope with viruses to this day, they conclude.
Previous research had indicated that prehistoric interbreeding led to up to 4% of the modern human genome.
The new work identifies stretches of DNA derived from our distant relatives.
In the human immune system, the HLA (human leucocyte antigen) family of genes plays an important role in defending against foreign invaders such as viruses.
The authors say that the origins of some HLA class 1 genes are proof that our ancient relatives interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans for a period.
via www.bbc.co.uk
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Short Sharp Science: Exploding star coming to a telescope near you
Over the next few days, those of us in the nothern hemisphere will have the rare chance to watch a star explode - hopefully via nothing more than a small telescope.
A supernova has been spotted in a nearby galaxy, located in the Ursa Major constellation, a find that might even help the study of dark energy. An automated telescope detected the blast on 25 August as part of the Palomar Transient Factory sky survey.
The explosion is taking place about 25 million light years from Earth, in a spiral galaxy called the Pinwheel, also known as M101. It is still increasing in brightness, and may eventually be visible with small telescopes.
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