What makes science so powerful is not just the admission of mistakes, it’s also the detailing of those mistakes. Admitting and detailing a mistake is really the essence of scientific heroism. Take, for example, the supposed faster-than-light neutrinos. This highlights the error-correction machinery inherent in scientific research, which is what gives the scientific method its strength!
The Importance of Mistakes from NPR today: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/02/28/147567970/the-importance-of-mistakes
A study has found that turtle embryos communicate with each other to coordinate hatching at the same time!
The findings were published Nov. 30th in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B and it’s even more fascinating than that sentence lets on, because synchronizing hatchings is complicated! When turtles bury their eggs, some end up near the top, closer to the warm sun, and others near the bottom, closer to the cool soil.
The embryos must have some way of communicating with one another but it’s not clear what that might be, or even whether it’s an active process.
Read more here: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/11/24/rspb.2011.2074
I know that Condi is…well, a war-mongering robot, but I still really like her.
A musk ox is not an ox, nor is it musky. It is one of only two arctic ungulates that survived the end of the Pleistocene Era (last Ice Age) and is genetically adapted to survive the harsh climate of the far North. Its long hair skirt, covering a fine wool coat and a 2-inch layer of fat, allows the animal to retain heat during the long, lean winters. They eat lichens, moss and roots buried in the snow, and Arctic flowers in the summer. It has the longest hair of any mammal!
All populations of animals evolve though random mutations in their DNA, which can sometimes be beneficial and add up to major differences over time. Humans are the only ones who adapt with our wits (called acclimatization, when it happens to an individual) and basically live anywhere! These cool glasses are a way that Inupiaq have acclimatized by protecting their eyes from sun and snow glare.
Here’s a story on NPR about human adaptations and cultural evolution: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129604791
Entomologist Mark Moffett has been studying ants for 30 years. In this picture, marauder ants coordinate their efforts in foraging for food. The large ants bus the smaller ants to conserve energy.
Listen to his interview on Fresh Air here: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/22/138576199/ants-a-global-safari-with-a-cast-of-trillions?sc=tw
ALERT! SCIENCE SAYS THE SUN WILL RISE AGAIN TOMORROW!
You can’t pick and choose what science to believe and what to deny. It isn’t honest. If you are going to deny evolution or climate change or something like that, turn in your ipads, smart phones, antibiotics, gps systems and everything else science-y that you benefit from. General relativity is “just a theory”, after all. Here is a great blog on the topic from national public radio.
“He won’t bite you, but he will lick you to death.” -every dog owner
Ryan Bradford is a postal carrier for the USPS and he picked up a cheap camera and decided to document the dogs that he encountered during the day. He documented it on his blog: http://ryancbradford.com/2011/05/05/all-the-dogs-want-to-kill-me/
He writes, “Sometimes you can’t see the dog; you can only hear their unholy growls and snarling from behind the mail slot.Then, when you put the mail through, you’ll find it wrenched from your grip and sucked into the house.”
Cute!
