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Science 
Sat Mar 13, 2010 at 18:45:13 PST
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(noon. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
I personally believe western civilization, in general, suffers from a serious lack of "Science Literacy". Even though it is Science that has allowed us to achieve so much as a Species, and as a Society -- it is this same Science that far too many treat as "magic", as "geeky", as "Debatable".
Funny that those who most question Science's usefulness, seem to appoint themselves as "Experts", capable of dismissing its "Findings".
(Based on what Expertise? ... one should always ask back.)
Well IF Science is indeed, Debatable -- shouldn't it be ACTUAL Scientists Doing the Debating???
(and not the well paid shills from industry and politics, who's goals are typically to create "more heat than light"?)
Well there is a very interesting Interview conducted by Discover Magazine that attempts to do just that -- Let the Pro and Con Climatologists critique each other ... Let the Scientists Speak for themselves!
I have pulled some of the interesting sections of that "debate" for your elucidation ...
(though I recommend reading the entire article if you are so inclined.)
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Sun Mar 07, 2010 at 18:11:31 PST
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(10PM EST - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
Hello, all. I did not have research time to finish up the next installment about nuclear fusion in stars, so we will have to do with this. I began planting my garden last week, so the subject of canning food came to mind.
Most people do not realize that canned foods are relatively recent developments, not counting wine and beer, which are at least technically, canned in many cases.
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Wed Mar 03, 2010 at 13:41:51 PST
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( - promoted by buhdydharma )
Here's the latest GOP "stall tactic" in a very long parade of stall tactics:
Global-Warming Scientists 'Need to Go Back to Square One,' Rep. Barton Says
By Karen Schuberg, March 03, 2010
"Science is verifiable, science is something that can be replicated," Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told CNSNews.com.
"This whole theory of global warming is just that: It's a theory. It's based on models. Models are based on variables, and conditions that the modelers that develop the models put into them. And the models don't replicate what's happened," Barton said. "So (scientists) need to go back to square one, look at the empirical data, look at alternative theories, and see if they can find a theory that actually fits the facts."
http://news.google.com/news/se...
Sounds much more like Fudging the Science, to me ...
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Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 06:16:31 PST
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( - promoted by buhdydharma )
Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have published a study, Evidence for a recent increase in forest growth, suggesting that climate change can quite literally be measured by treehuggers. Like the average American citizen, American trees look to have had increasingly bulging middles in recent decades. Having spent their careers quite literally hugging trees, SERC scientists Geoffrey Parker and Sean McMahon have written a study documenting
evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.
For over 20 years, Parker has gone into a set of forests in the mid-Atlantic, tape measure in hand,  and giving them a hug to measure their size. Parker's own hugging has been extended with a robust group of volunteers conducting regular measurements of specified trees. (The boy scout to the right, while in a SERC forest, isn't engaged in actual measurements for the study.) Some 250,000 hugs later, he has quite a database in hand.
The results of analyzing hugs surprised these researchers. Based on the data from these 100,000s of hugs, Parker's and McMahon's analysis documents
that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. ... on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.
Now, there are many things that contribute to plant growth, from soil quality to rainfall to temperatures to CO2 concentrations. Parker and McMahon have concluded that the driver for the bulging middles of the studied groves is best explained through human impacts: the rising levels of CO2 (a nutrition); and the warmer temperatures and extended growing season due to global warming (driven, in no small part, due to the rising CO2 levels).
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Fri Feb 19, 2010 at 17:21:05 PST
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Mr Luntz is at it again, doing what he does best: Making Stuff Up for purely Politcal Gain!
Wall St Consultant Frank Luntz Pens Memo On
How To Channel Economic Anxiety Into Protecting Wall St Abuses
Lee Fang, ThinkProgress - 02/01/2010
[...] Luntz, who gained national recognition for his role in shaping the buzzword-heavy Contract for America with Newt Gingrich in 1994, has built a sizable business selling his messaging advice to both corporations and Republican campaigns.
The new memo instructs opponents of financial reform to simply lie about reform legislation, and to twist economic anxiety resulting from the recession into fear of any government effort to fix the underlying cause of the financial crisis. The most dishonest argument is that financial reform would "punish" taxpayers while rewarding "big banks and credit card companies." In reality, top financial industry lobbyists are not only fighting proposed oversight regulations, but have said recently that they are opposed to "any regulation" at all.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/...
How DOES this Man sleep at night?
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Mon Feb 15, 2010 at 15:47:15 PST
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
 Some say that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But what do we know about our early universe and how we got here? How do we know that our ideas about the early universe are right? What is dark matter and dark energy and why do we think it exists in the first place?
All of the matter in the universe expanded from a single point. It doesn't matter much what that means, though. To beg the question is to ask what happened before time began. And because of events that happened during the the inflationary epoch, we can no longer see all of the details of how the universe looked at the beginning of time.
But we won't ask those questions today. Here we will talk about the current state of cosmology given by The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe -- the reigning Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation [CMBR] experiment that gives us our best data from the early universe. Within a year, though, we expect a new and improved data set from The Planck Satellite.
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Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 19:24:50 PST
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Things get expensive from time to time. Right now, with the cold weather, heat is expensive. At other times, being cool is expensive.
Please follow me over the fold to talk about cutting expenses starting now. Most of them will not affect your comfort, but one the most important one just might.
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Wed Jan 20, 2010 at 18:33:15 PST
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Watch CBS News Videos Online
copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert. BeThink.org
Today, Americans are engrossed in earthquake coverage. The tremor in Haiti bought unimaginable death and destruction just south of our borders. Events related to the recovery and rescues emerge as banner headlines. Haitians Seek Solace Amid the Ruins. For a week now, the struggle to survive, revive the injured, and retrieve the bodies strewn on the streets of Port-au-Prince was also the central theme of most every broadcast. In the midst of the misery, many Americans, felt desperate for a reprieve from the devastation that emotionally drained them. Millions took time to escape in a welcome distraction. Sassy, former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin Made Her Debut appearance on Fox. Tomorrow another reality will replace these stories, just as each superseded the hoopla over Harry Reid's reference to race. Metaphorically, the tales provide persons, policies, and, or practices fifteen minutes of fame. In actuality, these fade from our mind quickly.
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Sun Jan 17, 2010 at 17:57:34 PST
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(10 pm. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Carbonated water is incredibly common, and, in one form or another, just about everyone drinks it. Sometimes it is enjoyed alone, but often it is mixed with flavoring ingredients. Just about all soft drinks are flavored carbonated water, and in a sense beer, ale, champagne, and spumati are as well, except the traditional carbonation method for the alcoholic drinks is different from that of carbonated water.
Carbonated water with no other ingredients is usually called seltzer in the United States, whilst carbonated water with some added minerals is usually referred to as club soda. Please join me in looking at the history of this material and its unlikely contribution to modern chemistry.
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Sun Jan 10, 2010 at 17:49:02 PST
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It is still cold here in the Bluegrass, as it is in much of the country. The last time that it was freezing or above was at 02:00 on New Year's Morning. My thermometer right now reads 17.4 degrees F, and it made it up to nearly 30 when the sun came out for a little while this afternoon. There is still snow all over the ground, but the road crews have done a good job with the roads, although two people were killed on the highway off of which I live when it fist started, one only about two miles from me. Drive carefully, please.
Someone asked me the other day why static electricity is so noticeable in winter and not so much so in the summer. I thought this would make a good topic for Pique the Geek, but to understand that it is important to understand what static electricity is in the first place. Please follow for fun and information.
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Sun Jan 03, 2010 at 17:58:15 PST
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(10 pm. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Hello, everyone. I hope that all of you had a wonderful holiday season and are refreshed and recharged for the new year. Mine was particularly busy, with two 1200 mile round trips to Arkansas, first for Eldest Son's wedding and then for Christmas, the former Mrs. Translator graciously inviting me to spend with the family. Everyone was there, and it was a wonderful, but low-key, get together, just like they should be.
It is COLD here in the Bluegrass. As I edit this Sunday evening, my outdoor thermometer shows 19.2 degrees F, nearly 20 degrees below normal for this time of the year. It has not made freezing since 30 December, and is not predicted to exceed freezing for many more days. I finally settled on 58 degrees F as the minimum comfortable temperature during waking hours, and 52 whilst sleeping.
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Sun Dec 20, 2009 at 17:57:49 PST
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The Geek took hiatus last week to attend, and be part of, the marriage between Eldest Son and his very wonderful bride. It was a very traditional Methodist service, and it went off perfectly insofar as no one fainted, no one objected (there was not a "If anyone objects..." clause in this particular service, so no one did.
The Geek also took today off and did not write a scientific column for several reasons. First, I stayed up too late last night reading the news and weather. Second, I could never come up with a good topic for tonight. I will do better for next week, I promise. Third, The Geek has just been feeling a tiny bit under the weather, but not horribly ill or anything.
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Wed Dec 09, 2009 at 21:09:21 PST
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(noon. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Chalk One up for Science, as if Science, were subject to Popular Vote ...
(If that were true, guess who would of won in 2000?)
NBC's Andrea Mitchell interviews Al Gore
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21...
MITCHELL: Palin calls it "junk science." She says, "The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worst."
What's your response to that?
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Sun Dec 06, 2009 at 12:25:30 PST
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( - promoted by buhdydharma )
This 40% breakthrough ... has finally become available for your home (maybe?) and office use ...
Solar cell breaks efficiency record
Michael Kanellos, CNET News -- December 6, 2006
Boeing-Spectrolab has developed a solar cell that can convert almost 41 percent of the sunlight that strikes it into electricity, the latest step in trying to drop the cost of solar power.
Potentially, the solar cell could bring the cost of solar power down to around $3 a watt, after installation costs and other expenses are factored in, over the life of the panel.
[...]
Current silicon solar cells provide electricity at about $8 a watt, before government rebates. The goal is to bring it to $1 a watt without rebates or incentives.
http://news.cnet.com/Solar-cel...
Here is the Final Product from Spectrolab for your Home use. from this week's news.
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Sun Nov 29, 2009 at 17:09:47 PST
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
We're diving deep into "geek world" today with a story that combines economic hardball, the periodic table of the elements, and a barely noticed provision of the Defense Authorization Act that seeks to break a monopoly which today gives China near-absolute control over the materials that make cell phones, electric cars, wind turbines, and pretty much every other tool of modern life possible.
If we successfully break the monopoly, we'll be able to create millions of new manufacturing jobs in this country-and if we don't, somebody else owns the 21st Century.
Ironically, the global warming we're trying to fight with new green technologies might be an ally in our efforts to make those very same green technologies happen.
There's a revolution in industrial processing going on, rare earths are at the center of it all...and in today's story, the revolution will be televised.
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Tue Nov 24, 2009 at 17:58:52 PST
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As a professional scientist, I am accustomed to observing some phenomenon that is interesting to me, wondering about its significance, looking at background data (if any exist, and yes, "data" is the plural form of "datum"), and then trying to figure out the principles behind.
That works well, for the most part, in systems that can be controlled and only one variable at a time changed. That is the essence of the scientific method as it generally practiced. I dispensed with the classical steps, which are observation, formulation of a hypothesis, experimentally testing the hypothesis, refining or rejecting the hypothesis, and then doing more and better experimental tests to test the hypothesis further. If one is very lucky, the refined hypothesis becomes a theory, and if no exception after crushing peer review, becomes a principle or a law.
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Sun Nov 01, 2009 at 17:59:02 PST
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
We shall get away from food for this installment of Pique the Geek and talk about something more, well, geeky. The concept of nuclear power is widely known, but the actual way that is works is mysterious to some because people think that it is hard. Actually, the basic science behind nuclear power is very simple, but the technology to contain and make it practical is complex.
This complexity is due to several reasons, not the least of which is safety. Whilst the nuclear fuel to power commercial reactors is not very malignant, after that fuel has been used a while it becomes extremely radioactive due to a large number of complex nuclear interactions. It is the spent reactor fuel that is the real problem. However, there is a completely different technology used to generate electricity that does not involve a nuclear reactor, and we shall discuss this one first.
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Thu Oct 29, 2009 at 00:22:01 PDT
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Well here's some serious rain on humanity's latest parade: Cell phones can indeed give you cancer.
Who will tell the children?
In a decade long, landmark study, it turns out that long term use of cell phones 'significantly increases risk' of tumors.
Great.
How much you want to bet that people just decide to ignore this?
I mean, who wants to give up their cell phone?
The "funny" thing (not funny ha-ha but funny queer) about this is that they just don't know how to break it to the public:
Publication of the results of the £20million investigation have been delayed over disagreements how best to present the conclusions.
Maybe they should spend another ten years and twenty million pounds doing a study on how to tell the cell-phone loving public.
I'm sure the corporatocracy would gladly delay this as long as possible.
And it's sort of embarrassing for the governments as well:
The findings are expected to put pressure on the British Government, which has always insisted that mobile phones are safe to use.
Sorry, I realize this is bad news. But something we should all be aware of.
Might want to spread it around.
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Mon Oct 26, 2009 at 15:11:47 PDT
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( - promoted by buhdydharma )
Just over the weekend, my inbox was filled with a discussion attacking climate science with assertions that "none of the models predicted the current cooling period" and, therefore, the entire concept of Global Warming rests on very shaky grounds.
Sigh ...
Those involved in that discussion have now received links to an excellent article by AP science reporter Seth Borenstein. That article, Impact: Statisticians reject global cooling, merits praise because it is an excellent of inventive investigative journalism on a very public issue.
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Sun Oct 04, 2009 at 17:53:46 PDT
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(noon. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Last time we talked about the history of the periodic table and some of the reasons behind why it "works". We also took a look at the first three periods (rows), the very short first period, with only two elements, and the two short periods with eight elements each in them. We also grouped these elements into families (columns) that show similar chemical properties.
Now we shall look at Periods 4 and 5, the two long periods. These periods (and later ones) contain the transition metals. In the first three periods, chemical properties change radically from one element to the next as atomic number increases. For example, fluorine, the most chemically reactive element sits next to neon, which forms no known ground state chemical compounds.
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Reform Immigration -
March for America
Sunday, March 21
March on Washington
Saturday, March 20
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