BEAUTIFUL map showing “the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US right now.”
The above image is from March 27, 2012.
Check out the wind right now here.
One of the most gorgeous things you’ll see today. Click through.
—Via yenn, from SF.
Stuff happened while you were sleeping
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March 29, 2012
March 17, 2012
Detail of a Klimt painting
Beautiful topographical map of the moon from NASA and the US Geological Survey.
— Via yenn, from SF.
March 5, 2012
Nerdbait: How to cite a Tweet in an academic paper, from The Atlantic (h/t saragregory for find)
The future is here.
— Via sasquatchmedia, from SF.
(Source: sasquatchmedia)
September 8, 2010
"I’m working on tumour cells from two childhood cancers, called neuroblastoma and Ewing’s sarcoma. These are both very hard to treat, with less than half the children surviving for five years after their diagnosis. That’s the problem with treating cancer: some patients do brilliantly on a particular drug, but for others it’ll have little effect. At the moment, it’s often a case of trial and error working out which drug is going work – and some people simply run out of time before we can find the right one. So what I’m trying to find out is what causes the differences in responses and how can we use that to our advantage."
—
Nicola Harris, a researcher at the Northern Institute of Cancer Research (part of Newcastle University), in her award-winning essay on rare childhood cancers.
The Max Perutz Science Writing Award honors the best writer amongst young medical scientists. The point is to encourage them to communicate better with the rest of us, mere mortals. An essential endeavor, if you ask me.
Harris focuses on the reasons why apparently similar tumors respond differently to the same drug. It’s short and limpid. Click through and learn something.
— From SF.
May 13, 2010
"It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."
—
Richard Feynman, physicist who took part in the Manhattan project (developing the atomic bomb) and Nobel Prize laureate, quoted by Herman Wouk, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Caine Mutiny and other novels, in an excerpt of his new book The Language God Talks: on Science and Religion (as published by the New Scientist’s CultureLab).
“Calculus,” Feynman also said, “is the language God talks.” A view both Isaac Newton and James Jeans seem to have shared.
A good read.
— From SF.
April 23, 2010
"Equipped with our five senses, we explore the Universe around us and call the adventure Science."
—
Edwin Hubble, American astronomer.
Chapter 8… Well you were warned!
— From Nantes.
April 12, 2010
Sam Harris at TED discusses the use of science to answer moral questions.
“Just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question about how humans flourish will change the way we talk about morality and will change our expectations of human cooperation in the future.”
Using examples such as corporal punishment in schools (apparently legal in 21 U.S. states) and the question of the female body, Harris explains how humans can and should converge around universal values. A controversial idea, if there ever was one. Wait until the Q&A at the end, where he attempts to address a concern regarding “moral imperialism.”
— Via the Primate Diaries, from London.
April 9, 2010
