Stories tagged Scientific Inquiry
Notice what they're all *not* looking at?
Courtesy Wikimedia CommonsIf you’re into biblical archaeology, you might be interested to know that the patriarch of the Orthodox church of Ethiopia is claiming that they have the original Ark of the Covenant, and will be revealing it today.
If the man with the whip taught me anything, it’s that watching the ghostly things that come out of the Ark of the Covenant makes your face melt and your head explode. In fact, he taught me lots of stuff, like not to trust Austrian women, and that it’s okay to destroy archaeological sites if you do it in an awesome way, and that shooting people is easy and fun. But he also taught me about the face-melting thing.
I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t feel like having my face melt and my head explode, so I’m treating the supposed unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant with skepticism and caution.
Apparently the Ethiopian Orthodox Church keeps an ark replica in each of its churches. But I guess they have the real one too? And they plan to open a museum to display it. So that’s sort of interesting.
I wonder how the Ark has held up over the last 3000 years? It’s supposed to be made of acacia wood and gold, although images of the Ark depict it being carried by just two or four people. Considering how it’s also supposed to be full of broken stone tablets, I’m guessing it’s mostly made of wood to cut down on its weight (it was carried around a lot), and I think wood can get a little crumbly after a few millennia.
It’d be interesting to do some archaeological analysis on the box. I have the feeling, though, that the church wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about lots of radiocarbon dating being done on the Ark, genuine or otherwise. I guess to true test of veracity will be whether or not it electrocutes and melts everyone coming to see it.
PS—The only story I could find for this was on WorldNetDaily, which I'm not convinced is all that great a source. So take it with a grain of salt. I just thought it was interesting. (Face-melting, you know?)
Tags : Inner ear provides secret to better radio reception
Cochlea model for radio reception
Courtesy WelleschikA group of MIT engineers is looking to the human body for solutions to some of our technological problems. Many of us are discovering that our HDTVs or cell phones won't work without a better antenna.
Rahul Sarpeshkar, and his graduate student, Soumyajit Mandal, realized that the cochlea in our inner ear is like an antenna. In a paper titled "A Bio-Inspired Active Radio-Frequency Silicon Cochlea" (15 pg PDF) they explain that
The biological inner ear or cochlea is an amazing custom analog computer capable of the equivalent of 1GFLOPS of spectral-analysis and gain-control computations with 14uW of power on a 150mV battery and a minimum detectable signal of 0.05 angstroms. It achieves such efficiency because of the clever use of an active nonlinear transmission line implemented with fluids, membranes, active piezoelectret cells, micromechanics, and electrochemistry.The cochlea has an amazingly large input dynamic range of 120dB, analyzes frequencies over a 100-fold range in carrier frequency (100Hz-10kHz), and amplifies signals at 100kHz even though its cells have time constants of 1ms.
Mining the intellectual resources of nature
By modeling the cochlea with analagous electronic components, they created what they call an RF silicon cochlea.
The RF cochlea, embedded on a silicon chip measuring 1.5 mm by 3 mm, works as an analog spectrum analyzer, detecting the composition of any electromagnetic waves within its perception range. Electromagnetic waves travel through electronic inductors and capacitors (analogous to the biological cochlea's fluid and membrane). Electronic transistors play the role of the cochlea's hair cells.
The chip is faster than any human-designed radio-frequency spectrum analyzer and also operates at much lower power.
Looking to nature for technological solutions
This is not the first time Sarpeshkar has drawn on biology for inspiration in designing electronic devices. Clicking this link will direct you to ten papers resulting from bio-inspired projects in sensing and computing.
Source MIT News
Wash your hands! (Activity)
in Life Science, History and Nature of Science, Scientific Inquiry, and Human Organism
Not to freak y'all out, but did you know that germs are on everything you touch? Using a special powder called Glo Germ (get it here) you can actually see how germs spread from one thing to another. It will make you want to wash your hands more often. (And the CDC recommends washing your hands frequently. In fact, why don't you go wash up right now?)
Scrub 'em: Use soap and water, and wash for 20 seconds. That's about the time it takes to sing the "Happy Birthday" song twice.
Courtesy mitikusa
TRY THIS:
Goal: to observe how germs are spread
Age level:: 3 and above
Activity time: 2 - 5 minutes
Prep time: 5 minutes
Materials needed:
- Glo Germ powder
- Toys or common household/school/office objects to "spike" with germs
- UV lamp or detector box
Preparation:
- Sprinkle Glo Germ powder on your objects.
- Arrange them somewhere where others can handle them.
- Plug in UV lamp, but don't turn it on.
Directions:
Encourage others to pick up and play with the objects. Ask them what they know about germs.
- Do you know where microbes are found?
- Do you know what a microbe/germ is?
- Do you know what illnesses are caused by germs?
- Do you know the best way to avoid getting sick because of germs?
After the discussion, tell them that, as part of an experiment, you've put "pretend" germs on one or some of the objects they may have touched today. Switch on the UV lamp: what glows?
Reinforce the fat that the Glo Germ powder is just to simulate germs. It won't make you sick. You can get rid of the germs by washing your hands. In fact, encourage your audience to wash their hands and then hold them under the UV light again.
(On the other hand, remember that not all germs are bad. Exposure to some germs is thought to protect people against asthma and allergies or colitis, and overuse of antibacterial products leads to antibiotic resistance and superbugs as well as potential damage to the environment.)
Predicting flu cases and locations
in Life Science, History and Nature of Science, Math, Scientific Inquiry, and Human Organism
A research group led by Dirk Brockmann at Northwestern University has created a computer model that predicts the spread of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus in the US. (It uses a complex set of mathematical equations to describe the movement of people and virus.)
How can you track and predict the movement of something so small?: Follow the money, of course! (This is a colorized negative stained transmission electron micrograph (TEM) showing some of the ultrastructural morphology of the A/CA/4/09 swine flu virus. Got that? Good.
Courtesy CDC/C.S. Goldsmith and A. Balish
(Brockmann was a guest on Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning show today, and you can listen to it online.)
The good news is that, based on what we know now, and assuming that no one takes any preventive measures, we could expect to see some 1,700 cases of swine flu in the next four weeks. Because of the preventive measures being taken wherever a suspected case of H1N1 flu has popped up, we should actually see fewer cases. (You can see Brockmann's models here.) That's lousy if you're one of the folks who picks up the virus, but not a devastating number of cases. Of course, this is a rapidly developing, fluid situation, and things may change. Still, tools like Brockmann's model help to ensure that emergency supplies and other resources get to the places likely to need them most before they're needed.
Professor's Computer Simulations Show Worst-Case Swine Flu Scenario from Northwestern News on Vimeo.
Don't have faith in computer models? Well, a second research group at Indiana University is using another model, with different equations, and getting very similar results. That's a pretty good indication that the predictions are reliable.
You might remember Brockmann from a 2006 study that used data from WheresGeorge.com, a site that allows users to enter the serial numbers from their dollar bills in order to see where they go, to predict the probability of a given bill remaining within a 10km radius over time. That gave him a very good picture of human mobility, reflecting daily commuting traffic, intermediate traffic, and long-distance air travel, all of which help to model how a disease could spread.
Theda Bara as Cleopatra: The silent film star portrayed the Queen of Egypt as a vamp in the 1917 production.
Courtesy Mark RyanArchaeologists in Egypt believe they may be on the verge of uncovering the long-sought final resting place of Cleopatra and Marc Antony. The two ill-fated lovers committed suicide together in 30 BC after being defeated in a power struggle over control of the Roman Empire.
Zahi Hawass, the Indiana Jones of Egyptian antiquities says crews are ready to dig up three chambers located 65 feet below the surface, where they hope the remains of Antony and Cleopatra will be found. The chambers were discovered using ground-penetrating radar in the vicinity of the Taposiris Magna, a temple erected in 300 BC in honor of the Egyptian god Isis.
"In my opinion," Hawass said, "if this tomb is found it will be one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century because of the love between Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and because of the sad story of their death."
The two lovers have appeared in stories throughout the ages including a play by William Shakespeare, another by George Bernard Shaw, and a number of major motion pictures (1912, 1917, 1934, 1945, 1963). According to legend, Antony died by his own sword while Cleopatra took her life by holding poisonous asps to her bosom
Discovery of their graves would indeed be a coup, especially for lawyer-turned-archaeologist Kathleen Martinez who seems to have made it her life’s work to restore the Queen of the Nile’s tainted image.
As a young girl in the Dominican Republic, Martinez remembers listening to her father and his colleagues bad-mouthing Cleopatra’s reputation during scholarly discussions in their library.
"They were speaking very badly about her and about her image," Martinez recalled. "I got very upset. I said I didn't believe what they are saying, that I needed to study more about her."
Martinez spent the next 14 years uncovering as much as she could find about Cleopatra’s life. In the end, her studies led her to a portrait of an intelligent leader who ruled as Egypt’s last pharaoh.
"[Cleopatra] spoke nine languages, she was a philosopher, she was a poet, she was a politician, she was a goddess, and she was a warrior."
Four years ago, Martinez convinced Hawass to allow her to join his archaeological team, and for the last three years has been excavating the hillside site near Abusir about 30 miles east of Alexandria, where the tombs are thought to be located.
According to writings by Greek historian Plutarch, Antony’s political rival Octavian (Caesar Augustus) allowed for Antony and Cleopatra to be buried together although it’s not mentioned where.
But artifacts from the Abusir site – including a piece of male statuary, coins with Cleopatra’s image, and a mask fragment with a cleft-chin - seem to point to this being Marc Antony’s burial site. And if his remains are buried here, then so are Cleopatra’s.
"She couldn't be buried in a different place from Mark Anthony and be protected by Isis,” Martinez said.
The scientists hope to begin digging into the chambers as soon as next month but a modern hitch may postpone that for a few months. One of the summer homes of Egyptian president President Hosni Mubarak is located near the dig-site, and security concerns could delay digging into the chambers until autumn.
LINKS
CNN story
Telegraph story
Story on Yahoo
Egyptology News story
Capitalism saves the planet!
in Earth and Space Science, Scientific Inquiry, Energy Transformations, and Historic Perspectives
Money: it's a hit: Give the banker his props: rich societies pollute less and emit less carbon (per unit of energy used) than poorer societies.
Courtesy Steve Wampler
We’ve talked before about how rich cities also tend to be clean cities. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people in subsistence situations tend to scrabble for mere survival, without much regard to any other issues. Only after securing basic life necessities can they focus attention on externalities, such as the environment.
Now comes word that there is something of a linear progression going on:
the richer you are, the greener you are.
As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably steady rate since 1850, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
The professors argue: “If the energy system is left to its own devices, most of the carbon will be out of it by 2060 or 2070.” All thanks to the free-market system, and the wealth that it brings to us all.
Money…it’s greener than you think!
Homo sapiens: Yours truly, just a little while ago. (Had I shaved I'd look even more modern).
Courtesy Mark RyanEver notice how some of your relatives have similar features just like those of some of your long dead ancestors? Perhaps you yourself are stuck with the same ears great-uncle Larry proudly displays in that sepia photo you have of him grinning in front of his brand new Model T. 
Great-grandpa Homo heidelbergensis: 500,000 years ago.
Courtesy Open University (and Mark Ryan)You know, those Dumbo ears that look like a donation from the US Air Force.
Great-great-granddaddy Homo erectus: 1.8 million years ago.
Courtesy Open University (and Mark Ryan)But what about those family members who were evolving long before the advent of photography or even cave painting? Have you ever wondered what some of those ancient knuckle-draggers on the old family tree might have looked like?
Great-great-great-grandfather Homo habilis: 2.2 million years ago.
Courtesy Open University (and Mark Ryan)Well, of course none of us (except the Terminator, Mr. Peabody, Marty McFly and JGordon) can actually travel back in time but we can do the next best thing, which is devolving via the miracle of modern technology. 
Great-great-great-etc.etc-grandpa Australopithecus afarensis: 3.7 million years ago.
Courtesy Open University (and Mark Ryan)How can we do that, you ask? It’s easy. Simply go here to Open University's Devolve Me site, upload a photo of yourself (or great-uncle Larry if you wish) and watch the image change into great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle Troglodyte,
For the sake of scientific inquiry I tried it myself and you can see the results on the right. Also, I tried to minimize the use of title prefixes in the photos (e.g. Great-great-great grandpa) since the actual titles would have gone on forever, and would have become really, really tiresome. I'm sure you get the picture.
Anyway, give it a try yourself. You just don't know what you'll find out about your ancestry. It may even answer those questions you have about your grandma's excessive back hair.
Hey, I think I have great-grandpa Australopithecus afarensis's eyes.
LINKS
Devolve Me site
More about human evolution
Open University site
An early Hawaii-area triviashipman: Hopefully this triviashipman will come to a better end. I've tried to be courteous to the locals, at least.
Courtesy ArtmechanicThe Puddleduck has crossed the Pacific! They said it couldn’t be done. But they also said that double-stuff Oreos would fail, and they said that Wham! would never play in China, and they said that Dances With Wolves could never win an Academy Award.
So here we are, on the northern tip of Polynesia, getting ready to answer some random questions.
How did I get random questions? Pff. Duh. I took them with me, of course. I never go anywhere without a few extra randoms, even if it means leaving my anti-psychotics out of my backpack for the extra space.
Man the guns, Buzzketeers! Random questions to port! Let us rake them to Swiss cheese, and send them to Davey Jones. (As answers.)
Elise asks: Are polar bears really bears?
Ka-boom!
Heck yeahs, Elise, polar bears is bears alright. The polar bear belongs to the family ursidae, just like all other bears. It is a pretty unique bear, though, so I can see how the confusion might arise. Polar bears, along with Kodiak bears (they’re big brown bears), are the largest meat-eating land animals. They’re also sometimes considered to be “marine mammals.” When you think about other marine mammals, like whales, seals, and dolphins, that might sound pretty weird, because bears seem pretty different from all of them. Polar bears, however, are excellent swimmers, and they spend months every year living on sea-ice, far away from land.
But, yeah. Polar bears are indeed bears.
Anonymous asks: Do they still say, “Ontology recapitulates phylogeny”?
Swab! Load! Ram! Spark the touchhole!
Um, no, they don’t. Sometimes they say, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” but for the most part nobody says stuff like that. I mean… are you serious? You could have asked about naked mole rats, and this is what you came up with? Shhh… I think I hear your old professor calling. She says that class has been really quiet since you left. Better go fix that.
Anonymous 2 asks: Why does poop smell?
Blam! Direct hit! I think we decapitated someone with that!
See? This is what I’m talking about! Sure, this is a joke question… but so was the last one, and at least this is an answer we can take to the bank. Why, when we eat delicious smelling foods, does poop smell so… bad?
It’s because after we eat food, as we digest it, bacteria inside our bodies help break that food down into other materials we can use for energy, or to build our bodies. But when bacteria do this, they also produce chemicals that don’t smell great. Some of them smell really bad! A lot of the worst smelling chemicals—the ones that make farts so gross too—contain the element sulfur, like the gas hydrogen sulfide, or the chemicals indole and skatole. Skatole smells so bad that its name comes from the Greek word for poop: “skato.” The food we eat can also change the smell of out poop. Undigested spices can show up in the odor, and sometimes eating lots of meat can make it smell worse too.
Lots of animals don’t really mind the smell of poop, but people probably think its bad because having too much contact with poop can make us sick (it can have some pretty bad germs). When we smell that smell, we know it’s something we should probably avoid for our own health.
Annika (with the help of a parent) asks: Why do blue leaves not grow?
Boom!
Good question, Annika. We have blue flowers sometimes, but leaves are usually green. Why? We have to go a couple steps back to get a good answer, I think.
Plants grow with the help of sunlight. They absorb air (or carbon dioxide from the air) and use the energy in sunlight to turn that air into more plant material. “Photosynthesis” is the fancy word for this. Plants use a green chemical called Chlorophyll, and that gives plants their green color. When white sunlight (remember, white light is made up of all colors of light) hits those leaves, the leaves reflect green light back to our eyes, but they absorb all the other colors of light, especially red and blue light. The energy in that light can then be used to help the plant grow.
Oh, man, those questions have been mutilated! I’ve got a thirst for blood now. Let’s sail on, and see which questions are foolish enough to fall into the range of our science cannons. So, until next time…
PS—It’s still Easter in Hawaii right now, by the way, so Happy Easter. (If that’s your thing.) I’m afraid JGordon is alone this Easter, but don’t get too concerned. I’ve got plans. I’m going to spin around until I almost throw up, and then I’m going to take a basket of eggs and scatter them wherever I happen to stagger. When I get my equilibrium back, I’ll go try to find the eggs. It shouldn’t be so hard—the eggs will certainly be uncooked, and the whole thing will take place in an empty parking lot.
Evolution MegaLab launches evolution mega-study
in Life Science, Scientific Inquiry, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
Banded snail
Courtesy mer de glaceRegular folks across Europe are being asked to take part in what’s being touted as one of the largest studies of evolution ever done.
Evolution MegaLab is requesting people living in the United Kingdom and the European continent to check the snail population in their areas and report their findings to the MegaLab website. The research study which was just launched by The Open University, will end six months from now and hopefully show how changes in climate and predation have affected the snail population over a relatively short span of time. Project researchers are specifically interested in two banded snail species, Cepaea hortensis and Cepaea nemoralis.
“Banded snails wear their genes on their backs,” said Professor Jonathan Silvertown of The Open University. “Their colors and banding patterns are marvelously varied – but the darker shell types are more common in woodland, where the background color is brown, while in grass banded snails tend to be lighter-colored, yellow and stripier. These differences are thought to have evolved over time because they provide camouflage from thrushes, which like to eat the snails.”
“However, there has been a big decrease in the numbers of song thrushes in some places over the last 30 years and we’d like the public to help us to find out whether, with fewer predators about, the different snail types are less faithful to their particular habitats.”
As this video explains, it’s fairly easy to distinguish one snail species from the other. The edge of the shell opening (known as the lip) is white on C. horntensis, and brown (or black) on C. nemoralis. The species come in three different colors, yellow, pink, and brown, and can display three different styles of banding: no bands, single band (mid-band), or many bands. These variations in coloring and banding help the snails survive in the environments they happen to be living and the MegaLab researchers are interested in how recent changes in climate and predator populations have changed the snails’ appearances.
Everything the public needs to participate in the study can be found at the MegaLab website, including instructions and downloadable documents to help gather data. Observers are asked to look for snails in their areas, record specifics characteristics about what they find, and then report the findings to the Evolution MegaLab site. The collected data will then be compared with historical records to see if any noticeable evolutionary changes have taken place. The site cautions that only adult snails should be studied and recorded as many of the snails’ specific characteristics are missing in the juvenile or infant stages of the animals.
Kids in the UK are already showing interest. Here’s a cute video documenting one group’s efforts to help gather data.
For now the banded snail observation project, which is supported by the Royal Society and British Council, is limited to the United Kingdom and Europe but who knows, maybe a similar project will be started up in the United States.
LINKS
Story at The Open University site
Video of Cepaea nemoralis taking a long walk
Learning about Ant Architecture at Cafe Scientifique
Courtesy Shanai
Here in the Twin Cities we are lucky to have so many great museums and cultural organizations that celebrate science, but if visiting a zoo or museum to see the latest exhibit is not enough to satisfy you, where can you go?
You might not know it, but there are plenty of science events and programs going on across the Twin Cities RIGHT NOW (depending on when you are reading this). While none of these are actually a secret, they are all ways to learn new things, to meet interesting people and to take part in discussions on relevant science topics, something Science Buzz readers already do online!
Here is a quick list of some upcoming and ongoing science events that are unique to the Twin Cities. The things I've listed here are specifically for adults and young adults, so if you are a kid please plug your ears and close your eyes and patiently wait until it's your turn to rule the world.
Shanai's Favorite Science Events (Twin Cities Edition)
1. Electricity Party
The Bakken Library and Museum throws a monthly party called Bakken Evening Out. At this event adults can play with exhibits about electricity without worrying that the kid with the runny nose who just ran past in a sugar-induced frenzy is going to give everyone the flu. Plus there is live music, wine and appetizers.
2. Water World
The Science Museum is hosting a series of Thursday night lectures in conjunction with the water exhibit. While "lectures" might sound a little dull, knowing loads of information about the chemicals in our lakes or the impact of human development on the Mississippi is a great way to be an informed citizen and a well-known smarty pants.
3. Science on Tap
The Bell Museum's ongoing Cafe Scientifique series invites University of Minnesota researchers to the Bryant-Lake Bowl for informal science talks over dinner and drinks. This month's topic is the Political Virology of Bird Flu, which should go great with a grilled chicken sandwich.
4. Books with a Bang
The Big Bang Book Club is a new science book club being held at Grumpy's Bar & Grill in Downtown Minneapolis. Participants can come to discuss the featured book even if they haven't had a chance to read it. The folks from Magers & Quinn Booksellers do an excellent job of summing things up and asking the question we are all afraid to. Plus there are tater tots for sale, which is pretty amazing.
5. Science (Art) Studio
Leonardo's Basement, a strange and very awesome science/art/technology/design studio in South Minneapolis is always up to something cool. Their dedicated adult program Studio Bricolage lets adults mess around with things and build inventions. Or art. Or anything they can imagine.
6. Science Underground
Mill City Museum is all about the industrial history of Minneapolis, the flour milling capital of the world! In April they are offering what has to be the coolest tour ever. The title, Subterranean Twin Cities, pretty much says it all.
7. Down by the River
And while you are down by the river, you can always contemplate the engineering feat of St. Anthony Falls, which is also home to the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, which occasionally hosts public tours.
8. GO OUTSIDE!
Local park & recreation boards, as well as nature centers, are a great place to go for urban wildlife programs and nature tours. You can also check out Local Biology to see other upcoming events, or to make your own event out of the simple act of going outside.
Other events that I missed? Post them here on Science Buzz!
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