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Another classic quote mine

post from Pharyngula on 21 August 2008 11:12:46 PM. © Pharyngula

This is another wonderful example of the sloppy scholarship of the creationists. The always pretentious Berlinski made the interesting claim that John Von Neumann, the deservedly famous mathematician, thought that Darwinian theory was ridiculous. Douglas Theobald crushes that claim. Von Neumann was clearly on the side of evolutionary theory … but of course, whether he was or wasn't is actually irrelevant, since we don't judge ideas in modern biology by the authority of mathematicians from 50 years ago.

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West 66th/Lincoln Center Subway Art 42

post from Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) on 21 August 2008 09:59:59 PM. © Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

tags: West 66th street/Lincoln Center Subway Art, Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC

Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers.

Artist: Nancy Spero, 1999. Installed 2004.

West 66th Street/Lincoln Center Subway tile mosaic art #42
as seen at NYC's Lincoln Center stop at Broadway for the uptown (northbound) 1 train.

Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view].

Glass mosaic murals depicting scenes of theater, dance, and orchestra-related subjects are scattered throughout this station.

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Engineers Should Follow Their Hearts

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 21 August 2008 09:16:00 PM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder is a great engineer and full of wonderful quotes for engineers to take to heart. The autobiography of the Woz is certainly a good read for any engineer. Woz urges engineers to follow their hearts

Wozniak talked about a life driven by his passion for the electronics and computing. And passion can be a more important incentive than money, he said.
…
“Sometimes when you’re short of resources it forces you to do better work,” he said. To design the Apple’s logic circuitry, “I couldn’t afford an online timeshare computer system. I had to write down ones and zeros (and simulate the computer’s operations). It was all done by hand, never once on a computer.”
…
He offered his computer designs to HP five times, but they never were interested. “I would not sell something for money without my employer getting a cut of it.”

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Usher syndrome part IV: Clinical management and
research directions

post from Pharyngula on 21 August 2008 08:50:03 PM. © Pharyngula

Guest Blogger Danio, one last time:

Part I
Part II
Part III

The current standard of pediatric care mandating that all newborns undergo hearing screenings has been applied successfully throughout much of the industrialized world. Early identification of hearing impairments gives valuable lead-time to parents and health care providers during which they can plan medical and educational interventions to improve the child's development, acquisition of language skills, and general quality of life.

Up to 12% of children born with hearing loss have Usher syndrome. However, diagnosing Usher syndrome as distinct from various forms of congenital hearing impairment is often impossible until the onset of retinal degeneration years later. The considerable number and size of the genes involved makes genetic screening impractical with the current methods, unless there is a family or community history that can shorten the list of targets by implicating a particular Usher gene or subtype.

The educational and medical interventions undertaken to improve a deaf or hearing-impaired child's cognitive and social development can vary extensively, based in part on whether the child in question is expected to lose his or her vision later in life. Thus an earlier diagnosis of Usher syndrome is an immediate and critical research goal. The most imminent hope for such a diagnostic advance lies in gene chip screening. With this technology, the patient's DNA can be screened against a microarray of human genes known to cause deafness (and/or Usher syndrome) when mutated, and variances in the DNA sequence of any screened gene would be detected and analyzed. One such pilot effort appears to be approaching clinical availability, and, if successful, will be a tremendous asset in the early diagnosis and management of this disease.

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Hubble sees magnetic monster in erupting galaxy

post from Science Blog - Science news straight from the source on 21 August 2008 06:13:01 PM. © Science Blog - Science news straight from the source

The Hubble Space Telescope has found the answer to a long-standing puzzle by resolving giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275. It is the most striking example of the influence of these immense tentacles of extragalactic magnetic fields, say researchers.

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Volcanoes!

post from Bad Astronomy on 21 August 2008 05:52:00 PM. © Bad Astronomy

For some brilliant reason, The Boston Globe has started a new online feature called The Big Picture, which showcases incredible hi-res images of different topics. They just ran one on volcanoes, and it’s, well, incredible.Like I said. Wow. And[...]

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Sandia work shows anthrax letters contained
non-weaponized pathogen

post from Science Blog - Science news straight from the source on 21 August 2008 05:24:49 PM. © Science Blog - Science news straight from the source

They have worked for almost seven years in secret. Most people did not know that the work in Ray Goehner?s materials characterization department at Sandia National Laboratories was contributing important information to the FBI?s investigation of letters containing bacillus anthracis, the spores that cause the disease anthrax.

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Scientific Stereotype

The wacky characters that introduce kids to science may be doing more harm than good. Reinforcing the white-man-in-a-lab-coat or mad-scientist stereotype could diminish not only children’s interest in science, but also the diversity of future scientific workplaces.The Web is littered with “Ask a Scientist” sites aimed at getting children “into” science. Some of these sites [...]

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In case you were wondering…

I'm still yucky icky sick and oozing slime and fluids like a mollusc, but I did go see the doctor, and she assured me that my death was not imminent but probably at some distant time years hence. I interpret that to mean that my agony will be long and interminably enduring.

We also scheduled a colonoscopy. This is probably not a good day to annoy me.

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