Category Archives: Students

Items for students and others, interested in learning about science and engineering and the application of science in our lives. We post many of the general interest items here.

Photos by Fritz the Cat

Fritz the cat - photographer

fritz-cam by Fritz the cat:

My name is Fritz [photo of me on the left] and I live at 23 Cat Street [in Germany]. My mistress is an artist, and now it’s my turn to show what I can do. Since September 2007 we’ve owned a Mr-Lee-Catcam
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Third time lucky. I went for a long walk with the camera. Perhaps a bit too long, because she was looking for me everywhere. Anyway, she was very pleased when I came home with the camera and a mouse. I’d taken over 200 photos while I was out. Unfortunately the battery gave up the ghost before the final capture … of the mouse, I mean.

See many more great photos by fritz at fritz-cam.

Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace

The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations – and coming up dry.

Whatever the cause, there was widespread agreement among those attending a five-day meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council here last week that the regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost certain to remain closed this year from northern Oregon to the Mexican border.
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So what happened? As Dave Bitts, a fisherman based in Eureka in Northern California, sees it, the variables are simple. “To survive, there are two things a salmon needs,” he said. “To eat. And not to be eaten.”

Fragmentary evidence about salmon mortality in the Sacramento River in recent years, as well as more robust but still inconclusive data about ocean conditions in 2005, indicates that the fall Chinook smolts, or baby fish, of 2005 may have lost out on both counts. But biologists, fishermen and fishery managers all emphasize that no one yet knows anything for sure.

Drug Price Crisis

I don’t think the suggestion below really solves the drug price crisis. But I do think it is an example of an educational and research institution actually proposing sensible role for themselves. As I have said too many universities now act like they are for-profit drug or research companies: Funding Medical Research. For some background on drug prices read my post on the Curious Cat Management blog from 2005.

Solving the drug price crisis

The mounting U.S. drug price crisis can be contained and eventually reversed by separating drug discovery from drug marketing and by establishing a non-profit company to oversee funding for new medicines, according to two MIT experts on the pharmaceutical industry.
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Following the utility model, Finkelstein and Temin propose establishing an independent, public, non-profit Drug Development Corporation (DDC), which would act as an intermediary between the two new industry segments — just as the electric grid acts as an intermediary between energy generators and distributors.

The DDC also would serve as a mechanism for prioritizing drugs for development, noted Finkelstein. “It is a two-level program in which scientists and other experts would recommend to decision-makers which kinds of drugs to fund the most. This would insulate development decisions from the political winds,” he said.

Book – Reasonable Rx: Solving the Drug Price Crisis by Stan Finkelstein and Peter Temin

NCAA Basketball Challenge 2008

Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat college basketball fans. To participate, go to the curiouscat ESPN group and make your picks.

This year we also have a second challenge, using sportsline, that rewards picking upsets. So those that enjoy the tournament please join the fun. The password for this one is cat

Go Badgers and Go Davidson,

Contractor Warned NYC About Crane

Contractor warned city about crane but was blown off

A retired contractor warned the city 12 days ago the doomed crane on E. 51st St. wasn’t properly braced, but the Buildings Department blew him off after making a cursory check. “I think the Buildings Department is grossly negligent because they had been warned. They sent an inspector and they brushed it under the rug, so to speak,” said Bruce Silberblatt, an 80-year-old former contractor.

“Now, I’m sitting here and, at last count, four people are dead and a couple buildings on 50th St. are completely wrecked. … It looks like Baghdad over there.” Silberblatt said he called the city at 3 p.m. on March 4 because he had been concerned for days about the lack of braces securing the crane at a construction site near his United Nations Plaza home.
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Early yesterday, Silberblatt watched as the crane was lifted about 50 feet higher into the air. That left almost 150 feet of the massive white crane unsecured, he estimated. “That to me is unstable,” he said. “It’s too heavy. You don’t have to be an engineer to understand that.” Hours later, Silberblatt’s worst fear was realized: The crane toppled over, splitting in two after it crashed into one building, and then flattening a four-story building.
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Stephen Kaplan, owner of the construction company managing the site, Reliance Construction Group, said the crane became dislodged after a piece of steel fell and severed one of its ties. “It was an absolute freak accident,” Kaplan told The Associated Press. “All the piece of steel had to do was fall slightly left or right, and nothing would have happened.” Silberblatt called that explanation nonsense.

Update: Inspector Is Charged With Filing False Report Before Crane Collapsed
Continue reading →

Bird Brain Language Research

Molecular Mapping of Movement-Associated Areas in the Avian Brain: A Motor Theory for Vocal Learning Origin

Vocal learning is a critical behavioral substrate for spoken human language. It is a rare trait found in three distantly related groups of birds-songbirds, hummingbirds, and parrots. These avian groups have remarkably similar systems of cerebral vocal nuclei for the control of learned vocalizations that are not found in their more closely related vocal non-learning relatives. These findings led to the hypothesis that brain pathways for vocal learning in different groups evolved independently from a common ancestor but under pre-existing constraints. Here, we suggest one constraint, a pre-existing system for movement control.

Using behavioral molecular mapping, we discovered that in songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds, all cerebral vocal learning nuclei are adjacent to discrete brain areas active during limb and body movements. Similar to the relationships between vocal nuclei activation and singing, activation in the adjacent areas correlated with the amount of movement performed and was independent of auditory and visual input.
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Based upon these findings, we propose a motor theory for the origin of vocal learning, this being that the brain areas specialized for vocal learning in vocal learners evolved as a specialization of a pre-existing motor pathway that controls movement.

Peru Meteorite Provides Puzzles

Peru meteorite may rewrite rules

Usually, only meteorites made of metal survive the passage through Earth’s atmosphere sufficiently intact to scoop out a crater. But the object which came down in the Puno region of Peru was a relatively fragile stony meteorite. During the fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere, these are thought to fragment into smaller pieces which then scatter over a wide area.

Yet pieces of the estimated 1m-wide meteorite are thought to have stayed together during entry, hitting the ground as one.
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Peter Schultz told the conference that the meteorite was travelling at about 24,000km/h (15,000mph) at the moment of impact – much faster than would be expected. “This just isn’t what we expected,” said Professor Schultz, from Brown University in Providence, US. “It was to the point that many thought this was fake. It was completely inconsistent with our understanding of how stony meteorites act.”
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At the velocity it was travelling, fragments could not escape the “shock-wave” barrier which accompanies the meteorite’s passage through the atmosphere. Instead, the fragments may have reconstituted themselves into another shape, which made them more aerodynamic. Consequently, they encountered less friction during their plunge to Earth, holding together until they reached the ground. “Although [the meteorite] is quickly broken up, it is behaving like a solid mass,” Professor Schultz told the conference.

Excellent article. First it is just interesting. Also it shows how scientists have to learn from what they observe and try to understand what explains the results they see.

HHMI Nurtures Nation’s Best Early Career Scientists

New HHMI Program Aims to Nurture Nation’s Best Early Career Scientists

HHMI will invest more than $300 million in this first group of scientists and plans a second competition in 2011.
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HHMI is focusing on researchers who have led independent laboratories for two to six years at one of the approximately 200 U.S. medical schools, universities, and research institutes that are eligible. Those who are selected by HHMI will receive six-year, non-renewable appointments including full salary and research support while remaining affiliated with their home institution.
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HHMI is seeking scientists from a wide variety of fields, including all areas of basic biological and biomedical research, and areas of chemistry, physics, computer science and engineering that are directly related to biology or medicine.
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Scientists who wish to be considered for this competition must indicate their intention to submit an application by April 30, 2008. The deadline for completed applications is June 10, 2008. Panels of distinguished biomedical researchers will evaluate the candidates’ applications. Final selections are expected to be made by February 2009.

HMMI is an incredible source of funding for science.

Antarctica’s Unique Meteorites

Antarctica’s unique space rocks

Dr Shearer agreed the 4.5-billion-year ages of the meteorites indicated the likely source was an asteroid. “The history of this rock involves partial melting on a fairly primitive body,” he explained. Even if the rocks had been blown off Venus in an impact 4.5 billion years ago, they could not have drifted in space for such a vast length of time before landing in Antarctica recently, scientists said.
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The identity of the object that spawned the two meteorites may be elusive, but researchers have been able to draw up a basic profile. They know, for instance, that the parent body had “differentiated” – that is, had been reprocessed into a layered object, usually with a core, a mantle and a crust. Stony meteorites which have undergone this reprocessing are known as achondrites.

Secret Life of Microbes

New Window Opens on the Secret Life of Microbes: Scientists Develop First Microbial Profiles of Ecosystems

Nowhere is the principle of “strength in numbers” more apparent than in the collective power of microbes: despite their simplicity, these one-cell organisms–which number about 5 million trillion trillion strong (no, that is not a typo) on Earth–affect virtually every ecological process, from the decay of organic material to the production of oxygen.

But even though microbes essentially rule the Earth, scientists have never before been able to conduct comprehensive studies of microbes and their interactions with one another in their natural habitats.
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Because microbes are an ecosystem’s first-responders, by monitoring changes in an ecosystem’s microbial capabilities, scientists can detect ecological responses to stresses earlier than would otherwise be possible–even before such responses might be visibly apparent in plants or animals, Rohwer said.

Evidence that viruses–which are known to be ten times more abundant than even microbes–serve as gene banks for ecosystems. This evidence includes observations that viruses in the nine ecosystems carried large loads of DNA without using such DNA themselves. Rohwer believes that the viruses probably transfer such excess DNA to bacteria during infections, and thereby pass on “new genetic tricks” to their microbial hosts. The study also indicates that by transporting the DNA to new locations, viruses may serve as important agents in the evolution of microbes.