Why do organisms build tissues they seemingly
never use

post from Top stories on 10 August 2012 10:33:27 PM. © Top stories

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Why, after millions of years of evolution, do organisms build structures that seemingly serve no purpose?

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To Sum Up: We Are Screwed. Questions

post from Top stories on 10 August 2012 10:12:45 PM. © Top stories

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I love ecology. I can geek out all day on patterns in nature: ecosystem services, food webs, eco-evolutionary dynamics, nutrient cycles, range shifts.

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New 3D system reconstructs sparse facial hair and
skin

post from Top stories on 10 August 2012 10:09:02 PM. © Top stories

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Researchers at Disney Research, Zürich, ETH Zürich, and Cornell University have invented a system to digitize facial hair and skin. Capturing facial skin and geometry is a fundamental technology for a variety of computer-based special effects for movies.

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Just because we can, should we

post from Top stories on 10 August 2012 10:05:16 PM. © Top stories

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With whole genome sequencing quickly becoming more affordable and accessible, we need to pay more attention to the massive amount of information it will deliver to parents ? and the fact that we don't yet understand what most of it means, concludes an article in the

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Of mice and melodies

post from Top stories on 10 August 2012 09:58:27 PM. © Top stories

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Singing mice (Scotinomys teguina) are not your average lab rats. Their fur is tawny brown instead of the common white albino strain; they hail from the tropical cloud forests in the mountains of Costa Rica; and, as their name hints, they use song to communicate.

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Infinities

post from Top stories on 10 August 2012 09:54:57 PM. © Top stories

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The concept of infinity is hard to grasp because it is an abstraction. There are no tangible objects in our lives that are truly infinite in number so we really have nothing to compare it to.

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Curiosity's high-res Navcam panorama in striking
color

post from Planetary Society Blog on 10 August 2012 08:10:07 PM. © Planetary Society Blog

A color-processed version of Curiosity's high-resolution Navcam panorama.

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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/jason-davis/20120810-curiositys-high-r
es-navcam.html

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NCBI ROFL: Headaches induced by pornography use.

“A 24-year-old unmarried male software professional, not a known case of diabetes or hypertension, presented with episodes of severe, exploding holocranial headache on watching pornographic videos for the last 2 years. The headache would develop gradually over 5 min of viewing videos and would peak within 8?10 min. The intensity was so severe that he had to abort watching. There was no accompanying nausea, vomiting, or phonophobia. Progressively, he started to refrain from viewing videos as a means of avoiding headaches. There was no history of headache associated either with masturbation or with coitus. He had no history of head injury or meningoencephalitis in early childhood. There was no history suggestive of migraine in the family. He did not have a history suggestive of migraine, tension type or exertional headache. A physical and systemic examination was unremarkable. The neurological examination was normal. Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging, MR angiography of brain, and electroencephalogram were normal. He was advised non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agent combination (ibuprofen 400 mg and paracetamol 500 mg) half an hour before watching, to which he reported significant pain relief.

Headaches associated with sexual activity are uncommon (Anand & Dhikav, 2009). ...

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Curiosity sol 4: EDL updates, rover ready for
software upgrade

A recap of the final Curiosity press conference of the week: lots of updates from the entry, descent and landing (EDL) team that safely deposited the rover on Mars, as well as an overview of the rover's R10 software upgrade.

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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/jason-davis/2012-08-10-curiosity-sol-4
-edl-updates.html

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What Shape is a Photon

I remember once, a long time ago, wondering what a photon would look like if I could freeze one, or better yet, if I could catch up to one and travel with it. I also recall being completely flummoxed by the question and the answers my professors gave me (when they didn't roll their eyes and kick me out of their offices.)

Stylized map showing the probaility that a photon will be detected at various locations. Image courtesy of M. Bellini/National Inst. of Optics

Our good friends over at Physics (the publication, not the subject) have finally explained it in a way that I can understand - a photon doesn't have a shape. However, you can map out a region where you could find the photon if you placed a detector at various places and took a measurement. That is, you can map out the probability that a photon would appear at any given place. It's a lot like the orbital maps of electrons around the Hydrogen atom.

Hydrogen orbitals. Image courtesy of FlorianMarquardtWhat's really cool is that a group of Italian physicists have figured out a way to actually measure the probability map of a photon. Of course, you can only detect a photon once, so they actually make many measurements with many photons, each of which have been prepared in the same way, so they are essentially identical. Here's what one of the maps looks like.

C. Polycarpou, K. N. Cassemiro, G. Venturi, A. Zavatta, and M. Bellini, Physical Review Letters The formal article describing the research was published last week. It's a bit dense (hey, its' the Physical Review). But the Focus article in Physics is a pretty clear piece.

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pe-is-photon.html