Written by Alex Berezow
Scientists are humans, too. And, just like other humans you know, some of them aren’t very good at their jobs. There are three main ways in which scientists can mess up.
First, some scientists feel as if they have something valuable to say on any topic under the sun. (Far too often, it’s politics.) Like those suffering from the dreaded Nobel Disease, they act as if their true expertise in one subject gives them wide latitude to speak boldly on every subject. They are wrong.
Written by www.spacedaily.com
An international study led by Monash scientists has debunked the popular view that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are in a much better environmental shape than the rest of the world.
The study, published this week in PLoS Biology and involving an interdisciplinary group of 23 researchers compared the position of Antarctic biodiversity and its management with that globally using the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Aichi targets.
Written by hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk
Early in the “space race” of the 1950’s, US Air Force Research Laboratory meteorologist and “rocket design climatologist” Norman Sissenwine “recognized the urgent need for complete data on the properties of the atmosphere” and thus became “a catalyst between the aerospace and meteorological community” to develop the US Standard Atmosphere physical model of Earth’s atmospheric pressure, density, and temperature profile by altitude from the surface all the way up to the edge of space at ~100,000+ meters altitude.
Written by Dr. Sebastian Lüning & Josef Kowatsch (Translated & rewritten by P Gosselin)
At the Hamburg Binnenalster near the Lombard Bridge, one finds a particular patch of forsythia, which blossoms every year when spring arrives at the north German port city. And just days ago on March 24, 2017, the famous patch blossomed again as it does every year.
So what’s the big deal about a spring flower patch blossoming in the spring?
Written by Jessica Hamzelou
Blind tadpoles have learned to see again, using eyes implanted on their tails. With help from a migraine drug, these eyes were able to grow new connections to the tadpole’s nervous system. The same approach may work in humans, allowing the body to integrate bioengineered organs, say the team behind the work.
“If a human had an eye implanted on their back connected to their spinal cord, would the human be able to see out of that eye? My guess is probably yes,” says Michael Levin, at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Written by Kenneth Richard
For decades scientists have suggested that the effects of a climatic warming would likely lead to an increase in Antarctica’s surface mass balance (i.e., mass gains exceed losses), and this would lead to a concomitant lowering of sea levels.
“Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away”
Written by Sid Perkins
Huge ripples in Earth’s atmosphere called Rossby waves help to steer the planet’s jet streams and weather patterns. Now, a study in Nature Astronomy offers the best evidence yet that similar large-scale features also exist on the Sun.
Written by Rhett Allain
I teach an introductory physics course to elementary education majors, but my lessons aren’t really about physics. At first glance, it might seem that they are, but it’s a trick. The course examines the nature of science. That’s what makes it so awesome.
When I talk about the nature of science, I don’t mean the list of steps outlined on that poster in your fourth grade classroom—that’s not how science works. Instead, think of the nature of science as both the process and the limitations of the scientific endeavor. Let me explain with an example from my class.
Written by Leonard David
THE WOODLANDS, Texas—Should the U.S. send humans back to the moon in a 21st-century reboot of the cold war–era Apollo program…or should the nation go full-throttle and for the gusto, sending crews to all the way to Mars, where none have gone before? U.S. scientists and policy makers have grappled ad nauseam with America’s next great otherworldly destination for decades, without making much meaningful progress. Now that it is approaching a half-century since an American—or anyone at all, for that matter—last left low Earth orbit, the debate seems lost in space.
Written by Jeffrey Lin and P.W. Singer
Launch: Chinese Internet via escobar
The LM-11 rocket carrying XPNAV-1 and several other satellites took off on Nov. 10 in northern China, with the mission a success (though some rocket segments landed in Burma).
To support its big plans for deep space exploration, including a manned Lunar mission and the Martian lander, China just launched the world’s first x-ray navigation system. The X-ray Pulsar Navigation 1 (XPNAV 1) satellite, which the country launched on Nov. 10 aboard a solid-fueled Long March 11 rocket from the Jiuquan Space Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, is the world’s first x-ray navigation system to go in orbit, beating out NASA’s Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology (SEXTANT), which is scheduled to be installed on the ISS next year.
Written by Pierre L. Gosselin
Climate scientists at Switzerland’s renowned ETH Zurich and the University of Bern have long warned of the risks of man-made global warming. But in a brand new study their results now appear to have compelled them to postpone the expected global warming – by a few decades!
Written by Viv Forbes et al.
Every day some green energy promoter or a battery salesman tells us how green energy with battery backup will supply Australia’s future electricity needs.
A battery stores energy. Energy can be stored using lead-acid, nickel/cadmium, lithium, molten salt, pumped hydro, hydrogen, flywheels, compressed air or some other smart gizmo. But NOT ONE battery produces new energy – they simply store and discharge energy produced by other means. They all deliver less energy than they consume. Moreover, to manufacture, charge, use and dispose of batteries consumes energy and resources.
Written by Ben Southwood
Written by Werner, J. P., Divine, D. V., Charpentier et al.
Abstract. In this article, the first spatially resolved millennium-long summer (June–August) temperature reconstruction over the Arctic and Subarctic domain (north of 60° N) is presented. It is based on a set of 54 annually dated temperature sensitive proxy archives of various types, mainly from the updated and revised PAGES2k database supplemented with 6 new recently published proxy records.
Written by Dr John Christy
“Science” is not a set of facts but a process or method that sets out a way for us to discover information and which attempts to determine the level of confidence we might have in that information. In the method, a “claim” or “hypothesis” is stated such that rigorous tests might be employed to test the claim to determine its credibility.
Written by Pierre L. Gosselin
As wind projects continue to get planned throughout Germany, concerns over their effects on nature, wildlife and human health are growing more than ever.
The online Sächsische Zeitung (SZ – Saxony News) reports how one locality in Germany held a public forum on the subject of low-frequency infrasound earlier this year. Infrasound generated by wind turbines is low-frequency at a range that is not audible to the human ear (< 20 Hz), but the air pressure waves are in fact registered by the inner ear. For a fair amount of people these pulsing pressure changes can trigger a variety of physical discomforts, and over the long term to severe health risks, a growing body of literature shows.