Few creatures stir the imagination like the coelacanth. Scientists thought it had been extinct for millions of years, and then in the 1930s, a specimen seemed to have swum from the Devonian right into a fisherman’s net.
Now scientists have finally sequenced the genome of this elusive, primitive looking...
Few creatures stir the imagination like the coelacanth. Scientists thought it had been extinct for millions of years, and then in the 1930s, a specimen seemed to have swum from the Devonian right into a fisherman’s net.
Now scientists have finally sequenced the genome of this elusive, primitive looking creature to find out how slowly it’s really evolved, and to discern its relationship to those fish that dragged themselves onto land and became our ancestors. The news was announced in a paper in Nature.
At the LA Times, Eryn Brown covered the advance in this story, which told us that it was difficult to get DNA from this highly endangered fish but not how they finally did it. How does one go about getting a DNA sample from a five-...
Right on time - as many years into the mission as is needed to allow three, statistically persuasive blips apiece by other-Earths in orbits like ours - the Kepler Telescope mission has paid off its prime promissory note: habitable planets that are of Earth's approximate size. In fact, astronomers with...
Right on time - as many years into the mission as is needed to allow three, statistically persuasive blips apiece by other-Earths in orbits like ours - the Kepler Telescope mission has paid off its prime promissory note: habitable planets that are of Earth's approximate size. In fact, astronomers with the NASA Ames Research Center program reported they have bagged, with the requisite three orbits each, a numeralogically apt three large and rocky but probably not crazy massive planets. The two-planet report is in Science magazine, that on the third star and its planet is in the Astrophysical Journal .
Big news, gratifying news. Not huge news - that'll come if Kepler, or eventually some even better planet shadow-spotting instrument, reports a world just about spot-on to Earth's specs. The best two of these three, which means they get the most attention in press and that's probably because they are in Science plus are sister worlds which fires...
Medium, the publishing platform created by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, has purchased Matter, the science and technology...
Medium, the publishing platform created by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, has purchased Matter, the science and technology journalism platform that publishes one long story a month.
I wrote a couple of critical posts on Matter last November (here and here), mostly about problems I had downloading stories to my Kindle. One of Matter's founders, Bobbie Johnson, asked that I try the site again, because there were still "a lot of wrinkles to iron out."
Start-up issues aside, I confess that I don't get Matter. I'm always happy to see a new...
[I will be updating throughout the day with thoughts about Boston Marathon coverage.]
Allow me to say that as an alum and an employee of MIT, it was shocking to learn that the campus had become the scene of a terrorist shootout. The most violent event I can think of on the MIT campus was when it was...
[I will be updating throughout the day with thoughts about Boston Marathon coverage.]
Allow me to say that as an alum and an employee of MIT, it was shocking to learn that the campus had become the scene of a terrorist shootout. The most violent event I can think of on the MIT campus was when it was tear-gassed during Vietham War-era protests. But that was nothing like this.
And condolences to the family of the MIT police officer who was killed. I'm afraid I still cherish university campuses as a place for study and reflection; I'm always heartened to walk through MIT and see students buried in textbooks or collaborating on a project. That officer gave his life to help protect the unique place of MIT in the world, as a distinguished institution that contributes so much more to the world than terrorists can ever hope to erase. I hope that can provide some comfort to his family.
* * *
If you'll pardon the...
Last week, researchers at the University of Bristol published a study in Nature Reviews Neuroscience in which they report that much of what passes for research in neuroscience is--what's the word I'm looking for?--worthless....
Last week, researchers at the University of Bristol published a study in Nature Reviews Neuroscience in which they report that much of what passes for research in neuroscience is--what's the word I'm looking for?--worthless.
The researchers, led by Marcus R. Munafo, entitled their study, "Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience." In their abstract, they note that "a study with low statistical power has a reduced chance of detecting a true effect," and it also allows for "statistically significant" results that do not represent real effects.
"Here, we show that the average statistical power of studies in the neurosciences is very low," they write. That means the studies are likely to overestimate the size of any effect they find, and less likely to...
Dark Matter hit the news this week for the second time recently - hot on the heels of another suggestive but hardly conclusive report (see earlier posts Nov. 17, 2010 and just the other day,...
Dark Matter hit the news this week for the second time recently - hot on the heels of another suggestive but hardly conclusive report (see earlier posts Nov. 17, 2010 and just the other day, April 8, 2013 ) on data from the International Space Station and its alpha magnetic spectrometer team led by MIT physicist Sam Ting.
This time the hints of WIMPs, or Weakly Interactive Massive Particles, is detection of three cosmic something or others that kicked their way through the deeply chilled silicon and germanium crystals of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search. The CDMS detector's builders tucked it into the Soudan Mine underground laboratory in Minnesota. The newest one is often called Super CDMS, as it has better crystals than the...
Links--too numerous to describe in detail, but too good to pass up:
--Nicola Jones had a short update April 2 in Nature on the muzzling of Canadian government...
Links--too numerous to describe in detail, but too good to pass up:
--Nicola Jones had a short update April 2 in Nature on the muzzling of Canadian government scientists in seven federal agencies, which has drawn protests from Canadian science writers, among others. Jones reports that Canada's information commissioner has launched an investigation into the practice. Roxanne Palmer of International Business Times asks, in a longer story, which country is more open with regard to scientific research: Canada, the U.S., or China? The Tracker's carefully considered point of view...
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced vaccine critic who claimed to link vaccines to autism and helped create a worldwide anti-vaccine movement, was featured prominently on the front page of a British newspaper over the weekend.
Wakefield's paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was...
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced vaccine critic who claimed to link vaccines to autism and helped create a worldwide anti-vaccine movement, was featured prominently on the front page of a British newspaper over the weekend.
Wakefield's paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was later retracted. An investigation has accused him of fraud. And numerous studies have failed to find any evidence that vaccines cause autism. Yet a press release that he issued was reprinted by Britain's The Independent as if it were an Op-Ed comment.
In the press release, Wakefield, who may have done more than any other individual to discourage parents from vaccinating their children, blamed the government for a measles outbreak in the UK that has afflicted nearly...
A hefty, long investigation into the environmental and human impacts of a messy, acrid pipeline rupture that forced evacuations of homes and polluted Michigan waterways won the upstart Inside Climate News service a Pulitzer yesterday....
A hefty, long investigation into the environmental and human impacts of a messy, acrid pipeline rupture that forced evacuations of homes and polluted Michigan waterways won the upstart Inside Climate News service a Pulitzer yesterday. Congratulations quickly poured in, including from many others who run non-profit news agencies to fill the gaps left by the fade of big media, including networks and metropolitan newspapers.
Kudos from this corner as well.
The winning reporters are Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song, and David Hasemyer. The story package that won it is "The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of. " The link goes to an Amazon page selling (for Kindle users) an e-book repackaging of the series....
[Updates with link to Scientific American stories.]
As I write, it's less than 24 hours since two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the oldest marathon in the country and one of the nation's greatest amateur sporting events. Many reporters and others are reminding...
[Updates with link to Scientific American stories.]
As I write, it's less than 24 hours since two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the oldest marathon in the country and one of the nation's greatest amateur sporting events. Many reporters and others are reminding us that early reports in the aftermath of violence are often wrong. That was the case following the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings. Even such prestigious news outlets as The New York Times made mistakes in the first hours.
And the same thing seems to have happened here. Initial reports said investigators had found two unexploded bombs after the blasts. But that was later retracted, and...
Here's a switch on the usual cute critter story. While perhaps nothing is cuter than a newborn fawn gangly-hopping along beside its mother unless it is twin newborn fawns, one West Coast newspaper writer forthrightly celebrates them with a thought other than awww, lookit that.
Here's a switch on the usual cute critter story. While perhaps nothing is cuter than a newborn fawn gangly-hopping along beside its mother unless it is twin newborn fawns, one West Coast newspaper writer forthrightly celebrates them with a thought other than awww, lookit that.
Stienstra, who looks a lot like an old-time Rocky Mountain fur trading man, is the Chronicle's outdoors writer. He puts words down in a deliberately manly way. He also is as romantic as anybody about the soul-filling blessings of a solitary, meditative walk through the wild and is often rapturous upon spotting its native residents. One is unsure what the animal rights and PETA crowd generally will make of this piece. The story riffs off his recent encounter, at...
Lately geeks are heroes along manifold axes of popular culture. NASA's crop of them are near the head of their line. But in the newest New Yorker is a feature and profile that blows out the stops. And it raises a question: is the magazine's staff writer and frequent science specialist...
Lately geeks are heroes along manifold axes of popular culture. NASA's crop of them are near the head of their line. But in the newest New Yorker is a feature and profile that blows out the stops. And it raises a question: is the magazine's staff writer and frequent science specialist Burkhard Bilger always this good?* His latest is about one of the principle (yikes and correction, principal, as old pal D. Perlman tells me by terse email) characters who made possible the stunningly complex and, so far, highly productive Curiosity Rover. That's the plutonium-propelled machine poking around in Mars's Gale Crater on the prowl for leftovers of once-cozy habitats for life. And no, Bilger's particular focus for his story is not Mohawk Guy, the media hero of the landing's broadcasts who was done to death. Oh, he...
Today is Patriot's Day in Massachusetts and a holiday at MIT. We will be back tomorrow with something to say about statistical power in neuroscience, among other things. Please tune in.
-Paul Raeburn
Today is Patriot's Day in Massachusetts and a holiday at MIT. We will be back tomorrow with something to say about statistical power in neuroscience, among other things. Please tune in.
-Paul Raeburn
I had never heard of Markus Persson when I ran across him in an online story at The New Yorker, but I had heard of his most famous creation--the video...
I had never heard of Markus Persson when I ran across him in an online story at The New Yorker, but I had heard of his most famous creation--the video game Minecraft. I haven't played Minecraft. I haven't actually seen it. All right; my six-year-old told me about it.
In a piece entitled "The Creator," Simon Parkin tells us the story of the creation of the game and of Persson, a 33-year-old Swedish programmer who thinks of himself as "only a workmanlike coder." The game has sold more than 20 million copies, Parkin tells us, and Persson has earned more than $100 million from the game and related merchandise. (LEGO is among the companies that have done merchandising deals with Persson and Minecraft.)
Minecraft has rudimentary graphics and sound effects. Its...
The Lancet has just now corrected the obituary of a pioneering epidemiologist after what it calls "an unduly prolonged period of reflection."
The obit was published in...
The Lancet has just now corrected the obituary of a pioneering epidemiologist after what it calls "an unduly prolonged period of reflection."
The obit was published in 1858.
It reported the death of John Snow, who bucked the wisdom of "most medical men at the time" by suggesting that cholera "was a disorder of the digestive system not the blood; and that it was contagious and spread through the oral-faecal route, largely through contaminated drinking water." The medical men widely believed the cause was "miasma, or the stench from decaying vegetable and animal matter."
Here is the original obit, in full:
Dr John Snow: This well-known physician died at noon, on the 16th instant, at his house in Sackville Street, from an attack of apoplexy. His researches on chloroform...
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