science

Good Science Journalism – “The Tevatron goes bump” by Jon Butterworth

by

Jon Butterworth has written an article in today’s Guardian that is truly a fabulous piece. I applaud it, not simply because of the pure facts, but also because he has demonstrated scientific integrity at its very best. First, the core of the story itself is this … This week the CDF experiment at the Tevatron … Read more

Newly Discovered Asteroid Is Earth’s Companion

by

Astronomers from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland have found that a recently discovered asteroid has been following Earth in its motion around the Sun for at least the past 250,000 years, and may be intimately related to the origin of our planet.

Details are here on the Royal Astronomical Scciety website.

Their work appears in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

The asteroid first caught the eye of the scientists, Apostolos “Tolis” Christou and David Asher, two months after it was found by the WISE infrared survey satellite, launched in 2009 by the United States. “Its average distance from the Sun is identical to that of the Earth,” says Dr Christou, “but what really impressed me at the time was how Earth-like its orbit was.” Most near-Earth Asteroids — NEAs for short — have very eccentric, or egg-shaped, orbits that take the asteroid right through the inner solar system. But the new object, designated 2010 SO16, is different. Its orbit is almost circular so that it cannot come close to any other planet in the solar system except Earth.

Read more

New branches on the tree of life

by

Now this is simply fascinating to me, and hopefully to you as well. Venter, Eisen and colleagues report in the journal Public Library of Science One that they have analysed marine DNA and discovered genes that look quite different from any seen before. To clarify, the tree of life, as we know it was basically … Read more

Venter vs Joyce

by

Apparently US geneticist Craig Venter is being slapped down (legally) by the estate of James Joyce!!! To clarify, thats the very dead James Joyce, the Irish Writer. So what the heck did Venter do to offend the dead? Easy, he created new life, and then stamped the DNA with a quote from Joyce’s semi-autobiographical 1916 … Read more

Living Longer … what really works?

by

If you wish to live to a ripe old age, in fact if you want to age well, then what do you actually need to do, what makes a real difference? here is a popular list:

• Don’t sweat the small stuff.
• Wear sun block daily.
• Drink plenty of green tea and water.
• Reduce stress.
• Be cheerful and optimistic about life.
• Get a pet.
• Marry.

Does that all sound familiar? Of course it does, because if asked, then it is a list that most of us might have come up with simply because we all face a constant stream of information from a wide variety of sources insisting that this is what you need to do. Tragically these are all myths, there is no long-term data to backup many of these claims. In fact, it now turns out that much of this is simply wrong and will guarantee that you live a shorter life, not a longer one.

Read more

Why teach evolution? – NCSE – YouTube – NatCen4ScienceEd

by

With a hat tip to the Richard Dawkins net for this one …. if you are in any way involved in teaching science, then these folks can help you. At the recent NSTA conference, Steve Newton talked about the central role evolution must play in science education, why biology teachers are hesitant to teach evolution, … Read more

Exit mobile version