It almost always provides a false sense of validity of a scientific paper.
Category Archives: General Science
Mouse Embryos
According to the pictures sent back from a high-resolution camera, the 600 embryos, which were put under the camera, developed from the 2-cell stage, an early-on embryonic cleavage stage, to blastocyst, the stage where noticeable cell differentiation occurs, around 72 hours after SJ-10’s launch. The timing was largely in line with embryonic development on Earth, according to CAS.
But we still have no idea what happens in partial gravity. And they didn’t bring them to term.
Your Cat’s Head
What is going on in it? An interesting article on their perception, but there’s a lot we still don’t know.
Climate Prediction
What a concept. Read the concluding sentence.
Outer Space
The manifesto of the committee to abolish it.
To be honest, I had never previously realized how terrible outer space is.
Confident Idiots
A long but very interesting piece on the overconfidence of the incompetent, by David Dunning (of Dunning-Kruger fame). For some reason, I think it has some relevance to the Trump phenomenon, and politics in general.
For the record, I have never had a problem claiming my ignorance on a topic.
The Flower Stalkers
A year ago, we went down to Anza-Borrego State Park for the weekend for Patricia’s birthday. Deborah Netburn went down to check out how the El Nino (so far) flameout went for the flowers.
The “Dangerous” Paleo Diet
Here’s your daily dose of stupid. Based on nine mice.
Future researchers will find bizarre the notion we thought lab mice were good analogs for humans in diet studies. https://t.co/xrT0dOoH02
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) February 19, 2016
Gravitational Waves
This is a huge day for Kip Thorne (and others). Nadia Drake has a comprehensive story up already.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s another write up by Matthew Francis at The Atlantic.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Here‘s the paper itself.
[Update a while later]
And one from Miri Kramer.
[Update a while later]
And from Loren Grush.
Mosquitos
Imagining a world without them:
“The ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes is that you have more people. That’s the consequence,” says Strickman. Many lives would be saved; many more would no longer be sapped by disease. Countries freed of their high malaria burden, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, might recover the 1.3% of growth in gross domestic product that the World Health Organization estimates they are cost by the disease each year, potentially accelerating their development. There would be “less burden on the health system and hospitals, redirection of public-health expenditure for vector-borne diseases control to other priority health issues, less absenteeism from schools”, says Jeffrey Hii, malaria scientist for the World Health Organization in Manila.
They kill more humans than any other animal species, by many orders of magnitude. I wouldn’t miss them.
[Update a few minutes later]
We have the technology to wipe out all Zika-spreading mosquitos.
Why stop there? Go after every species that vectors blood. As the article notes, though, gene drive is not without risk.