So Far, Big Data Is Small Potatoes
Is Big Data going to revolutionize science and help us make a better world? Not based on what it’s done so far. Let me back up a moment.
"technology"
A Dig Through Old Files Reminds Me Why I’m So Critical of Science
I’m moving soon, and so I’m riffling through the files I’ve accumulated in my decades as a science writer and chucking those I’ll never (I hope) need.
Comparing Apple’s and Big Oil’s profits – in one chart
Apple is blowing and going.
Space: The Private Frontier
Following up on the SpaceX launch videos I posted yesterday, I wanted to repost this video I made a couple years ago for Time.com. In 2010, I visited the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, CA...
Global STEM Outreach Effort to Target Middle Schoolers in Barcelona and Malaysia
A global alliance aimed at educating and empowering youth to become the next generation to enter the information and communication technologies (ICT) workforce was announced today in Barcelona, Spain, at Cisco’s Internet of Things World Forum....
Khalil’s Picks (25 October 2013)
We’re back in business! This week was pretty phenomenal with Shutdown’s effects on science, evolution, history of sand, Google Flu, the chemist that is nature… Quick note before I leave you with this week’s great reads...
Mini Brains and Human–Mouse Hybrids Could Reveal the Brain’s Wiring Diagram
The Obama administration’s neuroscience initiative highlights new technologies to better understand the workings of brain circuits on both a small and large scale.
#SciAmBlogs Wednesday – Dead Zone, Chemistry Nobel, Hayflick Number, Cognitive Training, Pediatric Depression, and more.
- Kristopher Hite – Dead Zone Judo - Buddhini Samarasinghe – The Hallmarks of Cancer: 4 – Limitless Replicative Potential - Scott Barry Kaufman – New Cognitive Training Study Takes on the Critics - Deborah Serani – What Adults Need to Know about Pediatric Depression - Ashutosh Jogalekar – Computational chemistry [...]..
#SciAmBlogs Tuesday – Nobel Prizes, cell transport, Higgs boson, pumpkin spice, deadliest jellyfish, Sci-Fi ships, and more.
Check out the brand new Image of the Week! - Mark Jackson – The not-so-noble past of the Nobel Prizes - Lawrence Rifkin – 10 Sublime Wonders of Science - David Stipp – How Anti-Aging Drugs Could Help Medicare - Ilana Yurkiewicz – Because I work in a hospital, I can’t help [...]..
The Smallest and Deadliest Kingslayer in the World
Image of the Week #112 October 8th, 2013: From: The Smallest and Deadliest Kingslayer in the World by Becky Crew at Running Ponies. Source: GondwanaGirl Discovered and named in 2007, Malo kingi, also called the Common Kingslayer, is an extremely venomous, very small sea jelly...
#SciAmBlogs Monday – Breaking Bad, BioBlitz, Crowdfunding, Marketing Diet, smelling food, DNA stories, Spinning Dancer, and more.
Check out the brand new Image of the Week! - Elizabeth L. Cohen – TV So Good It Hurts: The Psychology of Watching Breaking Bad - Olaf Woldan – Biology in the Big Apple: Surveying the Wildlife of Central Park - Alexandra Branscombe – Crowdfunding: What’s in It for Scientists?...
Renewables: Fewer subsidies and more R&D please
There’s a good article in Slate which lays out a case for shuttling some of the funds spent on subsidies for renewable energy into R&D instead.
Maybe Mars Seeded Earth’s Life, Maybe It Didn’t
This week a major geochemistry conference heard an argument for life on Earth having originated on Mars, but does this hold up to scrutiny?
Arctic Methane: MAMM Lapland air sampling road trip
By Dave Lowry and Nathalie Grassineau Part 1 – In the beginning – Tuesday Aug 13, 21:00 UT Reached Kiruna, Sweden, yesterday (Monday) afternoon having taken the early flight from Heathrow...
We Must Start Thinking Again about the Unthinkable
For those titillated by Strangelovian fantasies of nuclear apocalypse, the early 1980s were a golden age. That was the height of the Cold War, when nuclear arms and rhetoric escalated, and President Ronald Reagan envisioned a space-based anti-missile “shield”—promptly dubbed “Star Wars” by skeptics—that could thwart attacks by the “Evil Empire,” also known as the [...]..
Photoblogging: Secretary Bird
Photo taken October 11, 2013 at the San Diego Zoo with a Canon 60D and Canon 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 telephoto zoom lens.
We’re Up All Night To Get Data: The Next Great Science Parody
You all must know by now that Joanne Manaster and I are suckers for excellent science music video parodies. This one, by the folks at UCSD Neuroscience, is our latest favourite.
Skeletons of Light
From: Tripping the Light Fantastic: Artists Paint With Light by Jennifer Ouellette at Cocktail Party Physics Source: Janne Parvianen Light painting is a 125-year-old art form where long exposure cameras capture the path of light, rending a sometimes other-worldly image...
Highspeed Video of Liquid Art
Water sculptures—a marriage of liquids, photography, and timing—are spectacular form of fluid dynamics as art. Artist Markus Reugels is a master of the form.
Five questions that (should) keep chemists awake at night
It is often said that chemistry lacks “big questions” like physics and biology. But this is not entirely true. The origin of life is a quintessentially chemical problem, and it’s as big as fundamental questions can get...
