It appears that Dr. James Watson (half of the famed Watson and Crick pair) and his politically incorrect comments have finally caught up to him. Dr. Watson has been known to make stirring racial comments in the past. In fact, Dr. Watson made such comments during his one week visit to IWU, my alma mater, in September 2000. At the time, I thought to myself that he is free to voice his opinion. However, I found it unprofessional that he used that particular pulpit to push this agenda.
Continue reading ‘Dr. Watson’s comments catch up to him’Tag Archive for 'Science'
For those of you who are early risers, a lunar eclipse will begin at 4:51 EDT on Tuesday morning. According to the NASA graphic on the linked page, mid-eclipse will occur at 6:37 EDT. For those curious about eclipses, the NASA page links to Lunar Eclipses for Beginners, by Fred Espenak.
Scientists (that’s what the CNN article calls them) have solved the mystery of the missing Chilean lake I posted about two weeks ago:
A buildup of water opened a crack in an ice wall along one side of the lake.
Water flowed through the crack into a nearby fjord and from there into the sea, leaving behind a dry lake-bed littered with icebergs, scientists told Chilean state television Tuesday.
CNN reported that Andres Rivera, a glacier expert who lead the team of scientists investigating the missing lake, said that the lake’s disappearance was evidence of global warming.
I don’t know if "global warming" was the phrase Rivera used, or if that is what the reporter chose. At any rate, it is my understanding that the currently accepted theory in the scientific community is not that we are undergoing global warming, but rather global climate change. I know I am just being picky, but I wish the correct terminology was used in scientific articles.
Depth: 100 feet
Color: Blue or clear
Origin: Glaciers
Age: Hundreds or thousands of years
Last seen: March 2007, in the Chilean Andes
A 100-foot deep lake in the Andes disappeared sometime between March and May. I’m not even kidding. The lake is nowhere to be found, although ice that previously floated atop the lake has been spotted.
Steven D. Levitt, one of the co-authors of Freakonomics and professor of economics, wanted to wish Dr. Michael Levitt, his father, a happy Father’s Day. In his post, he links to a 1995 article in Discover Magazine about his father’s research in flatulence.
Among the nuggets of neat information is that flatulence is 99% non-odorous gases carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and methane. The 1% that announces your work to the world is made up of waste gases produced by microorganisms that break down complex carbohydrates. What foods create the room-clearing odors, and what foods are safe to eat before an important date or meeting? Here is what the article says:
Nutritionists have long known that while there are many kinds of carbohydrates present in food, Levitt says, not all of them are digestible. Generally it is only the simplest carbohydrates, made up of the simplest sugars, that we’re able to process. Some complex carbohydrates– those made up of three or four sugar molecules–can’t be broken down by normal metabolism. When these get into the digestive tract, they are simply passed along to the colon, where the intestinal flora get hold of them.
Among the foods with the fewest complex carbohydrates and thus the fewest flatulent consequences are meat, fish, grapes, berries, potato chips, nuts, and eggs–the so-called normoflatugenic foods. Further up the gaseousness scale are pastries, potatoes, citrus fruits, apples, and breads, all of which contain some complex sugars, and thus some potential for flatulent fallout. At the top of the explosiveness list are the Fat Man and Little Boy of our diets–those foods that are practically nothing but complex sugars. Among these most eruptive edibles are beans, carrots, raisins, bananas, onions, milk, and milk products.
The remainder of the article is an interesting read, indeed. If you’re at all curious about flatulence, and who isn’t, read the article.
Also at Truthy, too, is an account of a high school student finding toilet contains less bacteria than water from drinking fountain.
I personally let the drinking fountain run for at least a few seconds before I bend down to take a drink from it. I may let it run for a few more seconds after having read that.
Science News Online has an article about the mathematical patterns that can be found in plant life. Most notable is the appearance of the golden angle (approximately 137.5°) and the Fibonacci sequence (the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, …; the addition of the last two numbers produces the next number).
The article does a pretty good job explaining the findings that someone who has had high school geometry should be able to understand it. Hell, you might not even need that much math. Then again, if you haven’t had that much math in school, you probably aren’t going to be interested in the article.
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