Cool video from the NIH National Eye Institute, more info here!
Monthly Archives for November 2014
November is Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month!!
Credit: Alz.org
Check out the Alzheimer’s Association page for Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. Also check out the President Obama’s Proclamation, which mentions the Brain Initiative and the governments Alzheimer’s Disease webpage!
Alzheimer’s Association Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures 2014 – Every 67 seconds someone in the United States develops Alzheimer’s disease. More than 5 million Americans are living with the disease. Learn the facts. Help wipe out Alzheimer’s disease. http://www.alz.org/facts
NASA’s Orion Spacecraft is on the launchpad prepping for Dec 4th test flight!! #JourneytoMars
NASA’s Orion spacecraft is on the launchpad and ready for a test flight orbiting around Earth. The Orion program is to transport astronauts into space, with the eventual goal for a Jouney to Mars (#JourneytoMars)!!
[tweet https://twitter.com/ulalaunch/status/534561292686618625]A cool NASA video about the heat shields that are part of the test flight!
Orion: Heat Shield – Orion’s heat shield has to endure temperatures near 4000 degrees Fahrenheit in its December flight test. Engineer Molly White explains how it works in this video.
How Did Brains Evolve?
Fantastic article from i09 (and a friend), How did brains evolve?
Our brains are each made of billions of cells, called neurons, that link together to form living circuit boards that control everything from our thoughts to our behaviors to the rhythm of our breathing. We aren’t the only creatures with brains, but our brains are unique in terms of their size relative to our bodies, and in terms of their complexity. Just how did incremental changes to ancient animal brains, over millions of years, eventually result in this most sophisticated of living, computing machines?
Check out the in depth and thoughtful analysis of how we have come to be the way we/our brains are!
New ORF post @ErinGoBrain: Discussion about 5 ways to lie with charts/graphs #science
Another great Wednesday Open Reading Frame from ErinGoBrain!
[tweet https://twitter.com/ErinGoBrain/status/535151537010790400]Treating 2 patients with #Ebola cost University of Nebraska Medical Center $1 million! Who do we send the bill to?
According to the University of Nebraska’s Medical Center’s Chancellor, Dr. Jeffrey Gold, treatment of 2 patients with ebola cost over 1 million dollars (Austin Powers anyone?). Apparently it is unclear who will pay for the patients care at the specialized center.
“I urge Congress to approve funding and policies supporting full reimbursement of the cost of care for these unique cases that are not recoverable from insurance policies. These are patients that federal government directed to UNMC and Emory,” Gold said.
Are science journals hurting science? Daniel Marovitz explains that science publication needs to embrace the internet age @WiredInsights
Daniel Marovitz has written an article describing a number of reasons that science journals no longer make sense for science, and how they may be holding science back from the age of technology. The article is on Wired.com’s InnovationInsights.
Technology has helped so many industries evolve over the past few decades, but scientific publishing, surprisingly, has hardly changed since the first journal article in 1665. They must; their day is done. Their continuing existence damages science.
Marovitz includes the following reasons, and great explanations for each:
1 – The use of an arbiter (Editor) in science
2 – Extensive delays
3 – The public trust –
4 – Anonymous peer review
5 – Missing data
Marovitz closes the article with a plea for publication of science to embrace the age of the internet:
It is time for publishing — the sole window through which science is made visible to the world — to embrace the open culture of the Internet. In an age of serious global challenges, science will continue to be the source for answers. Those answers must be delivered with speed, fairness, transparency, and freedom from bias. The scientific journal is a relic of another age.
NASA video: 3D printing on the International Space Station!! #science
Space Station Live: Setting up a Machine Shop in Space
Niki Werkheiser, NASA’s 3-D Printing Project Manager, talks with Marshall Space Flight Center’s Bill Hubscher about today’s on-orbit set-up and first test run of the International Space Station’s 3-D Printer, a technology demonstration that is the first step toward establishing an on-demand machine shop in space to manufacture spare parts, a critical technology to enable future exploration of deep space.
Global temperature in 2014 continues record warmth – October ties as warmest ever! YIKES!!!
2014 continues to set records for the warmest year on record for average global temperatures. So far May, June, August, and September have been the warmest of each of those months ever recorded. Now October has tied as the warmest October ever recorded. For more info on this, and how it continues to show that there is not a global warming hiatus, check out Tom Yulsman’s blog – ImaGeo!
September is the 4th month this year to set record for warmth. SEE maps & more climate.gov/news-features/… #StateofClimate http://t.co/6gfr0N2XzN—
NOAA Climate.gov (@NOAAClimate) October 20, 2014
New paper reports multiple incidents of fur seals sexually harassing penguins. #science
A new paper published in the Journal of Polar Biology reports a disturbing behavior of male Antarctic fur seals. The sexual harassment of penguins by seals…. multiple times. Check out the paper if you have access, or check out this great BBC summary of the paper. The BBC summary also has videos… some of which are graphic. It turns out that young male seals are attempting to copulate with king penguins. While the authors are unsure why this is happening, they offer a number of possible reasons and that they believe it could be a learned behavior that is on the rise. Another example of nature that makes me reconsider how bad humans are. hahaha.
CauseScience 