A reminder that the submission deadline for “classic” science posts is coming up on the 15th, and the inaugural compendium of The Giant’s Shoulders will be hosted at Blog Around the Clock
Category Archives: Other science
Random Nonphysics Post
Coffee Grounds Perk up Compost Pile With Nitrogen
About 2 percent nitrogen by volume, used coffee grounds can be a safe substitute for nitrogen-rich manure in the compost pile, explained Cindy Wise, coordinator of the compost specialist program at the Lane County office of the Oregon State University Extension Service.
“A lot of people don’t want to use manure because of concerns about pathogens,” said Wise.
Contrary to popular belief, coffee grounds are not acidic. After brewing, the grounds are close to pH neutral, between 6.5 and 6.8. The acid in the beans is mostly water-soluble, so it leaches into the coffee we drink.
Compost specialist program? Must . . . refrain from . . . making joke . . . about shitty education . . .
Fruit Flies Like a Banana
The Quantum Pontiff on Occupational Arrows of Time
Time goes up, damnit, and that’s all there is to it. Or so say the physicists writing on their blackboards.
Oh I hear you. Yes there are physicists for which time doesn’t always go up, but which can also go up but also in a circle. Yes, Virginia, general relativity allows those crazy solutions (nevermind that they might not be stable.) But those are really loopy physicists who believe in closed-time-like curves. I mean, that sect of the physicists is always going on and on and on about killing their grandfather. Sheesh they’re enough to make Oedipus jealous (and why is that they kill grandfathers all the time and not their fathers?)
I think the kerfuffle is about grandfathers and their pair o’ ducks, but you get the idea.
Keeping Up With the Chemists
In silliness.
Now it’s the biologists’ turn. Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature
An, um, taste of the offerings
Dorcus titanus Boisduval, 1835 (stag beetle)
Doryctes fartus Provancher, 1880 (braconid)
Enema pan (Fabricius), 1775 (rhinoceros beetle)
Eremobates inyoanus Muma and Brookhart, 1988 (solpugid) Inyo is the county where it was first found.
Fartulum Carpenter, 1857 (tiny caecid gastropod) It is rather like a turd in shape and color, too.
Nothing New Under the Sun?
Researchers tug at molecules with optical tweezers
MIT researchers have developed a novel technique to measure the strength of the bonds between two protein molecules important in cell machinery: Gently tugging them apart with light beams.
They don’t really go into what’s novel about this. The optical tweezers technique has been around for a while.
Not All Performance-Enhancing Substances are Steroids
And he was found out without the need to pee in a cup. (Though it’s possible he may have done so anyway, for other reasons.)
The Other Kind of Seven-Year Itch
THE ITCH by Atul Gawande from the New Yorker
Fascinating article, albeit with occasionally disturbing imagery, on itching and phantom pain.
Now various phenomena became clear. Itch, it turns out, is indeed inseparable from the desire to scratch. It can be triggered chemically (by the saliva injected when a mosquito bites, say) or mechanically (from the mosquito’s legs, even before it bites). The itch-scratch reflex activates higher levels of your brain than the spinal-cord-level reflex that makes you pull your hand away from a flame. Brain scans also show that scratching diminishes activity in brain areas associated with unpleasant sensations.
But some basic features of itch remained unexplained—features that make itch a uniquely revealing case study. On the one hand, our bodies are studded with receptors for itch, as they are with receptors for touch, pain, and other sensations; this provides an alarm system for harm and allows us to safely navigate the world. But why does a feather brushed across the skin sometimes itch and at other times tickle? (Tickling has a social component: you can make yourself itch, but only another person can tickle you.) And, even more puzzling, how is it that you can make yourself itchy just by thinking about it?
Photochrome
Photochrome
You give us those nice bright colors
You give us the greens of chemistry
Makes you think all the world’s a funky lab, oh yeah!
Zap the molecule with UV and it turns green. This is due (as I understand it) to the molecule changing to another state (isomer) — and not simply fluorescence — where it then has a different absorption spectrum, so in this example it looks green. When you remove the UV, it reverts to the original state and becomes clear again, and it’s doing this quite rapidly.
Expert Texpert
Don’t you see the joker laughs at you?
Over at Physics and Physicists, a followup to an earlier post, to which I had added my two cents.
In an earlier post, I responded to a writer who called professional scientists the “most scientifically illiterate group in the US” and pointed out several fallacies of that statement. The problem here is that the level of expert knowledge that scientists consider themselves to have. We know what it means and how it feels to know something very well. This is why when we read other area of studies, we know we do not have the same level of expertise and would rather be inclined to refer to a true expert in such a field.
Once again I find myself agreeing, and wanting to add a little more than would comfortably fit in the comments.
What is it to be scientifically literate? We really have to define the term before deciding whether scientists are or are not. When stories surface about scientific illiteracy, it seems that they are pretty basic science questions that are being asked, not in-depth inquiries that require an advanced degree to answer. If we’re going to set the bar that high, then virtually everyone is scientifically illiterate, but that means that “literacy” is the wrong word. “Literacy” is being able to read at an nth grade level or college level (argue amongst yourselves, both of you, as to what that means), but it doesn’t require that you be a literature major, capable of dissecting the works of Hemingway in great detail. But there is a continuum of ability above the threshold of “literate” in terms of what you can get out of the material. Being literate means you can read “An Old Man and the Sea” and understand it. If you think you have to be able to discuss the imagery in it to be considered literate, you’re just making it up.
So scientific literacy has to be the ability to understand the basics of science in general, and some of the major tenets of various disciplines. i.e. how is science conducted, and what’s important about physics and stamp collecting biology, chemistry geology, etc. Do you possess some knowledge, and can you apply it?
I think it boils down to how good your bullshit detector is.
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Fair Fight
Is it Bernardo vs Riff or Bernardo vs Tony?