Method: The Best Science Blog Posts

Global Warming and Energy News for a Warm Weekend

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T23:12:38-04:00

Global Warming affecting the weather?� Absolutely. The weather in Minnesota (where I live) is bizarrely warm. In fact, we are experiencing the warmest November on record. I have heard other people in the northern U.S. talk about how strangely warm it is where they live, too. You would think Americans would put together record-breaking warmth with global warming, but they don’t. In England, they are suffering from record torrential rains and flooding.Torrential rains and flooding
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Method: The Best Science Blog Posts
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Another great Enceladus shot

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T21:16:55-04:00

Here's a 4-frame mosaic of Enceladus images -- just another everyday spectacularly alien landscape. By the way, if you checked the Cassini raw images website earlier in the day, you should return, because there are more photos from the Enceladus flyby as well as numerous high-resolution shots on Rhea, apparently color frames captured with high sun. I don't yet know their geometry -- I wonder if they'll reveal more of the relatively blue spots ....
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Method: The Best Science Blog Posts

On commitment

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T20:14:50-04:00

I hear a lot of talk about commitment these days, and I?m not just referring to when the topic comes up in the context of the fact that I?ve been married more than once? For example, since I moved from Long Island to Brooklyn (which is an experience pretty close to entering a different universe), some of my colleagues at Stony Brook University have been mumbling along the lines that I am not sufficiently ?committed? to the department or the university. That got me thinking.read more
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Method: The Best Science Blog Posts
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Rubik Cube solving robot

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T20:09:04-04:00

This Japanese game show video depicts a robot that can solve the Rubik Cube puzzle faster than most humans.read more
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Method: The Best Science Blog Posts

Some people know morphology, other people know convolutions.

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T18:08:21-04:00

>> The only question is, what do you convolve the durations with?>> I fear it isn't the only question.�� I'll start with: 'What does 'convolution' mean?'Sorry.�� Running ahead of myself there.� Mathematically, a convolution is this:out[i] = Sum� of� input[i-d] * kernel[d],where the sum is taken over whatever d-values are ...
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LHC: Beams back in business!

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T17:01:05-04:00

Yesterday, the Large Hadron Collider once again had a beam of protons whizzing around its 27 km-long circumference!After a series of setbacks — some devastating, holding up the world’s largest scientific experiment for many months — this milestone achieved shows that the collider is heading back to full operations, which should get started again next [...]
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Method: The Best Science Blog Posts

GITMO

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T15:58:00-04:00

My renewable energy projects have been placed on hold, for now, because I'm on assignment at GITMO. Fortunately, my off-grid system is running on automatic pilot. Too bad I didn't make provisions for monitoring it via the Internet. For anyone who might be interested, here's a little information from where I am at the present time. Check back later for my report on renewable energy at GITMO.GITMO is an incredibly interesting place to explore. There are some great bike trails. Here's a view
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Method: The Best Science Blog Posts
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A Universe of Marshmallows

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T15:28:52-04:00

I fear that even contemplating writing the tirade of geekery that's about to ensue might forever concrete my reputation as a mad scientist. Although I don't really have a reputation as a mad scientist. Yet. This started out as a slightly bizarre twitter conversation with @Stellar190 and @PenguinGalaxy. About marshmallows. And the Universe. It all got a bit silly and ended up in a rather bizarre piece of recreational mathematics... After all of that, someone had to write a blog entry about it --
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Cassini Sends Back Images of Enceladus as Winter Nears

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T15:11:00-04:00

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has sailed seamlessly through the Nov. 21 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus and started transmitting uncalibrated temperature data and images of the rippling terrain.
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Method: The Best Science Blog Posts
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yet another hunt for the god gene

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T14:36:19-04:00

Science reporter Nicholas Wade just published a book which boasts that his insights into the evolution of the human predisposition to supernatural beliefs offer some sort of new or one of a kind explanation for why we have religion in society. To help promote his case, he wrote an article in the New York Times [...]
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Cassini buzzes Enceladus once again

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T13:29:56-04:00

On November 20, 2009, the Cassini spacecraft buzzed the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus once again, returning dramatic images of its water geysers and wrinkled, ridged surface:That raw image (which means it has not been processed to remove instrument/detector artifacts like bad pixels and such) was taken when Cassini was a mere 2000 km [...]
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Rhodes Secretary: Wall Street Megabonuses Draining Our Young Talent

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T12:05:10-04:00

In the op-ed pages of The Washington Post today, Elliot Gerson--the American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust--takes a bold stand:Tonight, 32 young Americans will win Rhodes Scholarships. Their tenures at Oxford are funded by the legacy of the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes, a man whose life would not be honored today were it not for his vision that young people of outstanding intellect, leadership and ambition could make the world a better place.For more than a century Rhodes scholars have left
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Florence Nightingale: The passionate statistician

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T10:19:00-04:00

Florence Nightingale: The passionate statisticianShe brought about fundamental change in the British military medical system, preventing any such future calamities. To do it, she pioneered a brand-new method for bringing about social change: applied statistics.…he statistics changed Nightingale?s understanding of the problems in Turkey. Lack of sanitation, she realized, had been the principal reason for most of the deaths, not inadequate food and supplies as she had previously
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Exquisite rubble

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T10:00:05-04:00

I know, I usually wax lyrical and scientific over this picture or that returned from various astronomical and space observatories. But honestly, I don’t have a whole lot to say about this particular image, from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing boulders that have rolled downhill to the bottom of the 45 kilometer-wide Rutherford crater:Except:a) Click [...]
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Today's Mystery Birds for you to Identify

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T09:59:33-04:00

tags: identify these birds, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz[Mystery birds] photographed at Atherton, Queensland, Australia. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]Image: Steve Duncan, 26 August 2009 [larger view]. Nikon D200 w/ Nikkor 300mm f/4 & TC17E. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
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Science Laughs: Science Comedian Brian Malow

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T08:48:00-04:00

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Prepare for your jaw to hit the floor when you see these pictures of Enceladus

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T08:26:01-04:00

Wow, just wow. I didn't know what to expect from the second flyby of Saturn's geyser moon Enceladus in November, which happened yesterday. I knew the cameras were given control of spacecraft pointing during the closest part of the flyby, so that there should be some pretty cool photos of tiger stripes, but I have to confess I didn't expect anything tremendously different from the first high-res imaging flyby. Well, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, ....
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What Would a Pennsylvania Polar Bear Look Like?

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T08:13:00-04:00

The USGS recently estimated that the Arctic holds 22% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas resources. Unfortunately, the predominant Arctic hydrocarbon is natural gas, expensive to develop and very expensive to transport over long distances. Even more thorny are the issues of politics, extreme en
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Preventing Catastrophic Welding Failures

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T08:13:00-04:00

Welding failures have resulted in catastrophic consequences. For instance, a defective 6 mm weld wrecked the Norwegian Alexander Kielland semi-submersible drilling rig, taking 123 lives in 1980. To prevent similar future disasters and economic consequences of possible weld failures in gas transport
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Help Stop Supply Chain Energy Leaks

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T08:13:00-04:00

Energy efficiency and conservation are hot topics in all links of the supply chain. One article in this issue talks about how to save energy in a distribution center. We also read recently about how Toyota installed new systems in its paint booths that cut energy use by one-quarter and will pay for
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Greenland ice loss behind a sixth of sea-level rise

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T06:00:00-04:00

The ice cap lost 1500 cubic kilometres of ice between 2000 and 2008, and the loss is speeding up
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Cells and DNA

blogdig.net — 2009-11-21T05:35:48-04:00

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