Category Archives: Other science

aka stamp collecting

B1RD Off the Port Bow!

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I went out hiking Saturday, taking advantage of the awesome weather that just showed up. Did some geocaching, but also brought my new camera out to Huntley Meadows Park, a wetland wildlife sanctuary about 40 minutes to the south of me. We had a downpour on Friday (after rain off and on all week), so I knew it would be muddy off the main (paved) trail, but mid 70s with relatively low humidity is just too good to pass up.

About an hour into my hike, I was passing through a meadow area on a soggy path, and I kept hearing a bird chirp right behind me, but there was no tree nearby. I finally spotted it — he (it could have been a she) was dive-bombing me! Either he felt I was intruding or he really didn’t like my Asilomar Beach hat, but either way he was aiming for the head and pulling up at the last second, despite me not having a “strafe me” sign on my back.

I was a little startled, but since I wasn’t hiking with Tippi Hedren I didn’t think I was in too much danger. I got the last pass on film, after this I guess I was far enough away from the nest (there were several birdhouses near the trail). The video camera was still set for 420 fps, so I got it in slo-mo.

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CSI Utah

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Mysterious disappearance of explorer Everett Ruess solved after 75 years

The mysterious disappearance of Everett Ruess, a 20-year-old artist, writer and footloose explorer who wandered the Southwest in the early 1930s on a burro and who has become a folk hero to many, has been solved with the help of University of Colorado at Boulder researchers and the National Geographic Society. The short, compelling life of Ruess, who went missing in 1934 after leaving the town of Escalante, Utah, has been the subject of much speculation.

Doctor Obvious Strikes Again

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Brain research shows past experience is invaluable for complex decision making

Still, it’s good to get scientific results to corroborate this, because “conventional” wisdom isn’t always right, and then there’s the benefit of discovering details of the mechanism.

What we have found is that learning from past experience actually rewires our brains so that we can categorise the things we are looking at, and respond appropriately to them in any context.

Physics v Chemistry. This Time it's Personal …

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Experimental Error: Physics vs Chemistry: Fight!

I often contemplate the differences between these two areas of study. Also, I hear fellow undergrads argue for one or the other, usually divided along the lines of their respective major. Anymore, I think they’re so interrelated that I find it hard to find a difference between the two, except for the phases of matter that they most often deal with.

Same? Different? I think we should forget that, team up, and beat the crap out of biology.

Yakity Yak

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Oh, wait. Wrong coasters.

Cocktail Party Physics: a new wrinkle

The Rocket Scientist is the only faculty member I’ve ever known who keeps coasters in his office (and requires their use). I’ll let you figure out what a coaster fetish tells you about RS – I have my own theories, but (ignoring for the moment the fact that we work for a public university and all our furniture is laminate) there actually are really good reasons for one to use coasters.

Trivia: polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA, mentioned in the post) is an electron-beam resist. That is, if you zap it with electrons (or hard UV) you break some bonds, and the exposed material can be removed chemically. Makes it a useful mask material for various lithography applications.

The Mob Can Now Go Green

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Making the greenhouse gas sleep with the fishes

The Holy Grail: Carbon-Capturing Cement

The Novacem process has two main benefits; creating magnesium oxide doesn’t release CO2, and turning it into cement requires less than half the energy required to create traditional Portland cement. Even better, when the cement hardens, it absorbs 1.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which means that the technique actually removes more than 0.7 metric tons of CO2 for every ton of cement produced. That offers enormous carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) potential.

A Great Un-Idea

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Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine

Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine is ready to receive manuscripts on all aspects of unexpected, controversial, provocative and/or negative results/conclusions in the context of current tenets, providing scientists and physicians with responsible and balanced information to support informed experimental and clinical decisions.

One of the reasons that the popular press report studies that have come out with surprising, but ultimately wrong, results is that you’re going to get that 3-sigma outlier 5% of the time, and without a baseline of null results you might assume that the outlier is, in fact, typical. It’s only after the “Cold Poison Good for You!” headline that it’s worthwhile to publicize the contrary (and expected) result. And who would have published that study, before now?