Category Archives: Education

Harvard Liberal Arts Faculty Votes to Make Their Research Open Source

Harvard Liberal Arts Faculty Votes to Distribute Research Free

Harvard’s decision lends support to the growing open-access movement in academia, an approach opposed by journal-industry representatives who say bypassing journals and their peer-review process may harm the quality of published research.

“This is a large and very important step for scholars throughout the country,” Stuart Shieber, a computer science professor who sponsored the motion to adopt the new policy, said in a statement released after the vote. “It should be a very powerful message to the academic community that we want and should have more control over how our work is used and disseminated.”

Discussion of a similar move by the faculties of law, medicine and business are “well under way,” and the other faculties, such as education and government, are expected to consider it, Peter Kosewski, a spokesman for Harvard’s library system, said in an e-mail. No other votes are scheduled.

The policy would spur professors to distribute work free on a Harvard Web site, rather than through journals that charge subscribers “enormous amounts of money,” said Harry Lewis, a professor of computer science at the university. Authors could choose not to share their work on the site and could publish in a traditional journal.

Another good step for those that support science. As I have stated publicly funded universities should require open access. Privately funded universities I believe should decide to do so also, but it should be their choice. Government funded research should require open access publication.

Non-Vaccination Risks

I think one nice thing about blogs is that you get personal instead of corporate politically correct speak, at times. If you don’t like that you might not want to read – Vaccination Woo Nutz Are Getting Up My Nose Today:

And here lies the part where I start getting ticked off. First, these knuckleheads took one of their unvaccinated children to a region of the world that apparently fails to meet WHO targets for measles vaccination. Not to mention a country which seems to have had very recent measles “outbreaks”. Seems like you might want an abundance of caution, right? Maybe not jump right back to school with a host of unvaccinated kids. But they did. And all of a sudden it is a public health nightmare. Which has very real consequences for a very large segment of your community.

Freedom has responsibility for those that care about people and society. Choosing to risk others because of your actions is something I find uncivil, callous and disrespectful to those you put at risk. If you choose to take actions which risk others it is your responsibility to mitigate those risks to others.

Bollworm Evolves Resistance to Genetically Engineered Cotton

Bollworm Evolves Resistance to Bt Cotton

The genetically modified cotton that was designed to make the Bt (that’s short for Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium) toxins that kill boll weevils has been thwarted by the bugs, according to new research to be published in Nature Biotechnology. The bollworm is the first pest to evolve resistance in the field to so-called Bt crops, according to University of Arizona entomologists.

Bt-resistant populations of bollworm (Helicoverpa zea) were found in more than a dozen crop fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 and 2006. The first resistant worms showed up just seven years after the genetically modified crops were introduced, in 1996, according to the analysis of monitoring studies.

“What we’re seeing is evolution in action,” said lead researcher Bruce Tabashnik.

Clean Clothes Without Soap

photo of eco washing balls

The Soap-free Green Laundry Revolution by Tania Rabesandratana:

Then, there’s the sheer weirdness of entirely eradicating washing powders in favor of such an intangible washing concept. “The balls are made of a special kind of plastic,” explains Steve Jones, the founder of Ecotopia, which sells a variety of washing balls he believes are top of their league, and a scientific breakthrough. “It is the chemical reaction between the plastic and the agitated water that actually does the washing,” he says. The product’s blurb says the balls “produce ionized oxygen that activates the water molecules naturally and allows them to penetrate deep into clothing fibers to lift dirt away.”

Right. Let’s go back to washing basics. Our machine works by combining three actions. First comes chemical action. Here, detergents act as surfactants: they lower the water’s surface tension, making it more likely to mix with oil, so that yucky grease and grime can be removed during rinsing. Second comes the mechanical action from the spinning of the washing machine drum. And finally, there is heat action, which consists of dunking your laundry in hot water.

The eco balls mostly increase the mechanical action so that you can do without the chemical action, thereby saving money and avoiding the use of evil pollutants. The increase of mechanical action also does away with the need for heat action, which in turn conserves electricity and water, which is good for your wallet and your planet.

Pretty cool, if they actually work. I think I might have to try these out. For the next stage of the process, DryerMax Dryer Balls claim to cut the drying time by 25% and soften the fabric. Some other cool gadgets and gizmos.

Giant Duck-Billed Dinosaur Discovered in Mexico

“‘We only know about 29 percent of all dinosaurs out there to be found,’ said study co-author Peter Dodson, a paleobiologist and anatomy professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.” I found this quote to be surprising when I first wrote about it in 2006: Most Dinosaurs Remain Undiscovered. Yet we keep getting new discoveries announced (New Triceratops Ancestor – Nigersaurus the Mesozoic Cow!) showing, while I was surprised, the scientists knew what they were talking about.

Giant Duck-Billed Dino Discovered in Mexico

The discovery of the 72-million-year-old fossil adds to the rich gallery of dinosaurs that scientists now know lived in western North America during the latter part of the dinosaur era. The new species was dubbed Velafrons coahuilensis in honor of the state of Coahuila in north-central Mexico where the fossil was found.

Reaching lengths up to 35 feet (10.5 meters) long, the newfound dino was a plant-eater belonging to a group of duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs, that roamed the region together with carnivores like tyrannosaurs and velociraptors.

Electrical Brain Stimulation Boosts Memory

Deep stimulation ‘boosts memory’

The technique involves implanting electrodes into the brain: in this case into an area in the limbic system called the hypothalamus, which is thought to control the appetite. When the electrodes were stimulated by electrical impulses the patient began to experience feelings of deja vu.

He then had a sudden perception of being in a park with friends. He felt younger, thought he was around 20-years-old, and his girlfriend of the time was there. He was an observer, and saw the scene in colour. As the intensity of the stimulation increased, details in the scene became more vivid.
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The results suggest it might be possible to use deep brain stimulation directly to boost memory. “We hopefully have found a circuit in the brain which can be modulated by stimulation, and which might provide benefit to patients with memory disorders,” said Professor Lozano. He is now leading a pilot study into whether deep brain stimulation can help people with early Alzheimer’s disease. They are initially testing six patients.

Darwin Day

Find a Darwin Day Celebration near you. Events from hundreds of sites including:

Darwin Day in Italy
University of Oslo, Norway
University of Valencia, Spain
Shrewsbury Darwin Festival, UK (Darwin’s home town)
2008 Darwin Festival, Salem State College, Massachusetts, USA
Darwin Day Lecture, Central Washington University, USA
Darwin Day, Case Western Reserve University, USA

The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript

image from the Voynich manuscript

A fun read – The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript:

Voynich asked the leading cryptographers of his day to decode the odd script, which did not match that of any known language. But despite 90 years of effort by some of the world’s best code breakers, no one has been able to decipher Voynichese, as the script has become known. The nature and origin of the manuscript remain a mystery. The failure of the code-breaking attempts has raised the suspicion that there may not be any cipher to crack. Voynichese may contain no message at all, and the manuscript may simply be an elaborate hoax.
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This study yielded valuable insights into the process of reexamining difficult problems to determine whether any possible solutions have been overlooked. A good example of such a problem is the question of what causes Alzheimer’s disease. We plan to examine whether our approach could be used to reevaluate previous research into this brain disorder. Our questions will include: Have the investigators neglected any field of relevant expertise? Have the key assumptions been tested sufficiently?

Dr Gordon Rugg at the Department of Computer Science Keele University – Replicating the Voynich Manuscript

Related: Scientific Method Man – The medieval Voynich Manuscript – in the language of the angels…. or a hoax? – Ancient Greek Technology 1,000 Years Early – Prayer Book Reveals Lost Archimedes Work Studying Ideas at Heart of Calculus – Seeing Patterns Where None Exists

The Science of Kissing

The Differences in Gender — Sealed With a Kiss

In people, kissing to express affection is almost universal. About 90 percent of human cultures do it. One traditional view is that kissing, known scientifically as osculation, evolved from women chewing food for their children and giving it to them mouth-to-mouth, Fisher said.

But, she said, “I’ve never believed that,” adding that similar behavior is found in many species. Birds tap beaks. Elephants shove their trunks in each other’s mouths. Primates called bonobos practice their own version of French kissing. Fisher believes kissing is all about choosing the right mate.

“There’s so much information exchanged when you kiss someone that I just thought it must play a vital role in mate choice, and this paper is elegantly showing that,” Fisher said. A disproportionate amount of the brain, she noted, is geared toward interpreting signals from the mouth.

The research paper – Sex Differences in Romantic Kissing Among College Students: An Evolutionary Perspective

Scientists on Changing Their Minds

When the world’s great scientific thinkers change their minds

The obligation of a scientist to do science by Leon Lederman, Nobel Laureate in Physics (author of The God Particle)

I have always believed that the scientist’s most sacred obligation is to continue to do science. Now I know that I was dead wrong. I am driven to the ultimately wise advice of my Columbia mentor, I.I. Rabi, who, in our many corridor bull sessions, urged his students to run for public office and get elected. He insisted that to be an advisor (he was an advisor to Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, later to Eisenhower and to the AEC) was ultimately an exercise in futility and that the power belonged to those who are elected. Then, we thought the old man was bonkers. But today… A Congress which is overwhelmingly dominated by lawyers and MBAs makes no sense in this 21st century in which almost all issues have a science and technology aspect.

It is important for some scientists to take on other important rolls in society – political leaders, popular authors, business leaders, government officials (regulators etc.), political commentators…