Interesting “body as a map” artwork by Samantha Loman
Bony Landmarks – The cranium drawn as a map
Underskin – the body’s various systems drawn as a subway graphic, and there’s no Taconic parkway leading to the clavula (did Ty just make that up?)
Unfortunately only part of the Underskin drawing is shown in high resolution; I found another site with the work that lets you click for more detail
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Other artsy stuff inspired by subway graphics
Learn How Google Works: in Gory Detail
As nice as Google is, I am finding it to be somewhat less useful these days. I don’t know how much of that is from changes in Google, or because of changes in website “strategy.” In the early days of the internet, many web pages were all one page, and a search could give a hit because the terms all appeared, but in disparate topics located in different parts of the page. Then people learned they could/should link to different pages, and they segregated content to reduce load times, especially when pictures were being included and everyone had dialup. A long load time is bad for traffic — people are impatient (probably even for porn. Or especially for porn). But now we’re back to large pages, probably because enough people now have high speed access. So a search on reducing government waste will get you news or blog links that have stories on weight loss, politics and trash removal all on the same page. But some of it is due to the way Google has changed the way they do a search.
I am occasionally annoyed by Google because of the expansive use of synonyms and including different verb tenses, which lead to many more useless searches. Part of that is because it’s a very Microsoftian “I know what you want better than you do;” I haven’t gotten used to putting single words in quotes because it didn’t used to be necessary. (A blog search on swansont and some other term(s) should give my blog posts, but now I get masses of hits that include swan song and swansong, which I find to be less than useful. No, I typed what I meant, dammit. You used to ask did you mean “X” when you thought it was a typo.)
Another annoyance is searching on multiple terms and getting hits that don’t include all the search terms in the link. No, I wasn’t kidding about wanting to find that word in the text. It’s not optional.
The Secret Film of the CIA Supersonic Spy Plane’s First Flight
After Lockheed Aircraft completed “antiradar studies, aerodynamic structural tests, and engineering designs,” the CIA gave the green light to produce 12 aircraft on January 30th, 1960. It was called the A-11 at the time. Lockheed engineer Clarence L. Johnson was the main designer, who was responsible for the U-2. Despite Johnson’s experience, many were skeptical at first and, after months of drawings and wind-tunnel model testing, they were not convinced this beast could fly.
Daniel Okrent has book out on Prohibition and was on The Daily Show the other night. George will has an op-ed that uses some of the information from the book.
Another round of Prohibition, anyone?
[B]y 1830, adult per capita consumption was the equivalent of 90 bottles of 80-proof liquor annually.
Although whiskey often was a safer drink than water, Americans, particularly men, drank too much. Women’s Prohibition sentiments fueled the movement for women’s rights — rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to divorce those husbands; to vote for politicians who would close saloons. So the United States Brewers’ Association officially opposed women’s suffrage.
(George still writes well, as long as the topic isn’t global warming.)
Okrent mentions the parallel to marijuana in the interview, though the op-ed doesn’t go there.
A model showing what would happen to geography/geometry of the earth if it did not rotate.
Earlier techniques cooled antiprotons with cold electrons, but the coldest antiproton temperature recorded with this method was about 100 kelvin. To turn down the heat, Hangst and colleagues used a technique called evaporative cooling, which had previously been used only for neutral atoms. “It’s exactly how your coffee cools itself,” Hangst says. “The steam above your coffee, those molecules are the hottest ones. They can escape from the coffee and carry away energy, so the coffee is absolutely colder.”
Meanwhile, protons are suddenly smaller: The proton shrinks in size
Pohl and his team have a come up with a smaller number by using a cousin of the electron, known as the muon. Muons are about 200 times heavier than electrons, making them more sensitive to the proton’s size. To measure the proton radius using the muon, Pohl and his colleagues fired muons from a particle accelerator at a cloud of hydrogen. Hydrogen nuclei each consist of a single proton, orbited by an electron. Sometimes a muon replaces an electron and orbits around a proton. Using lasers, the team measured relevant muonic energy levels with extremely high accuracy and found that the proton was around 4% smaller than previously thought.
Update (7/9) Chad has posted an excellent summary of the paper
ScienceBlogs, we have a problem
Much consternation over at the home of science blogging, ScienceBlogs. The forum for the brilliant Orac, Pharynula, Molecule of the Day, and countless other insightful, funny and informative blogs has decided upon a bizarre new strategy in sourcing new posts. As of yesterday, the platform will host a new blog written by food giant PepsiCo, all about the company’s specialist subject of refreshing sugary drinks and their benefits for dental and dietary health.
Sorry, no, PepsiCo’s scientific staff will be writing about nutrition on the new Food Frontiers blog. I’ll give you a moment to get back on your chair.
They also host several of my favorite physics-y blogs, though I’ve only seen action-reaction (as of writing this) from The Quantum Pontiff, who is leaving, but mostly for other reasons and Science After Sunclipse, who is also eclipsing.
I can’t see this as anything but an advertising platform for a corporation. Which raises the question — will Scienceblogs be paying Pepsi to blog there, (as is the arrangement I expect it has with the rest of its bloggers) or is it the other way around? If it’s the former, why would you bother? Is this a Pepsi blogging juggernaut that they’ve assimilated? If it’s the latter, and the article implies that this is the case, then the sellout is blatantly obvious. Krusty, what were you thinking?
Efficient nano motor cleverly harnesses light
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Labs and the University of California have made a new nanoscale motor that can drive a disc 4000 times bigger than itself. It is powered via the so-called “plasmonic effect” and could be used to manipulate ultra-small objects like DNA and for powering nanoelectromechanical machines (NEMS). At merely 100 nm across the motor looks like a tiny windmill, inspiring the researchers to dub it a “light mill”.
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In recent years researchers have discovered that they can increase the interactions between light and matter by taking advantage of the electrons that oscillate collectively at the surface of metals – called “surface plasmons”. Light fields are enhanced when they are resonant with these plasmons – an effect that has already been successfully used in techniques like single-molecule detection and surface-plasmon enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS).
This Beer Knows Where You’ve Been
New research suggests that your visits to such places can be tracked by analyzing chemical traces in your hair. That’s because water molecules differ slightly in their isotope ratios depending on the minerals at their source. In a study published in the current issue of The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers found that water samples from 33 cities across the United State could be reliably traced back to their origin based on their isotope ratios.
From the paper
The δ2H and δ18O values of a fluid input composed of beverages distributed on a large, regional scale may not necessarily mirror those of local tap water. The power of prediction using local tap water isotope ratios in models like that of Ehleringer et al. (1) would be confounded by the consumption of nonlocal beverages. On the other hand, some beverages (e.g., carbonated soft drinks, microbrew beer) likely use a more local distribution system. We expect the isotopic composition of a fluid input composed of beverages distributed on a small, local scale would generally mirror those of local tap water.
Which is why, to hide my whereabouts, I drink bottled water and imported beer. Stay thirsty, my friends.
Synopsis: Why pi should be replaced with a constant twice as big.
Alternate synopsis: Getting a little too worked up about where to stash a factor of two