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Prediction: 'Dark Genome' Popularity May Make 'Dark' The Top Science Media Cliche Of 2013
With the popularity of dark matter and dark energy as blanket terms for 'this is weird and we don't understand it but we are studying it, ain't science awesome?' in physics, it was only a matter of time before it caught on elsewhere.
So we have dark lightning and the life sciences made sure they caught the wave, migrating non-coding DNA (factual = booooring) from the colloquially misunderstood blanket term 'junk DNA' to the cooler and edgier 21st century 'Dark Genome'.
Can Pharmaceutical Advertising Regulate Itself?
In America, science is as polarized as politics. Corporate scientists, like at pharmaceutical companies, are criticized for working at unethical companies while academic scientists are criticized for 'chasing funding' rather than helping people.
Like many stereotypes, those images started with a kernel of truth. So if you ask most people if the pharmaceutical industry can self-police its advertising policies, they will reply it is not possible, an outside force must do it. But then if you ask people who are skeptical of medicine, they will say the FDA is also controlled by pharmaceutical companies.
Most countries have an established system for self-regulation of pharmaceuticals advertising.
Finding Nematostella: How Epithelial Cell Shape Changes Drive Tentacle Development
When you read studies about embryogenesis and the cellular and molecular mechanisms used by cells to assemble into layers or clusters of epithelial cells, you often see the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model.
Stowers Institute for Medical Research Associate Investigator Matt Gibson, Ph.D., uses a different star, Nematostella vectensis, for his lab's paper on embryology.
Tissues comprised of epithelial cells shape the body not only of simple creatures but also of mammals, where they line every body cavity from lung to intestine and form hormone- and milk-secreting glands. Unfortunately these cells have a dark side too - over 80% of human cancers, carcinomas, are of epithelial origin.
The Complex Physics Behind Ducks' Feet
Although a duck may already intuitively know the answer, the question has now been clarified for us humans as part of a recent research project undertaken at the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in the US.
Research Scientist and Post Doctoral Scholar Dr. Daegyoum Kim performed the study along with professor Morteza Gharib. The team employed a range of experimental setups with mechanical flappers, clappers and paddlers in tanks of fluid which was seeded with silver-coated glass microspheres and illuminated by an Nd:YAG laser.
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When Anti-Science Is Not
Egg White Protein May Help Lower High Blood Pressure
Chlorogenic Acids In Green Coffee Beans Help Control Blood Sugar Levels
Balkan Bean Remedy Traps Bedbugs
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The Cave Of Death: 10 Million B.C.
Why did saber-toothed cats, hyenas, an extinct 'bear-dog', ancestors of the red panda and several other carnivores die under unusual circumstances in a Spanish cave near Madrid approximately 10 million years ago?
Different scenarios have been floated for why an unusually large concentration of healthy adult carnivores died in this cave during the Late Miocene, a location known now as Batallones-1 fossil site, Madrid Basin, Spain; accidental falls into the cave, maybe the animals died in other locations and were washed into the cave, everything but mass suicide.
Yet those scenarios would mean mean herbivores also got trapped. And not just healthy adults.
Manure Pits Sound Funny - Until You Die From Hydrogen Sulfide Gas
Researchers estimate that about 10 people die each year in North American animal-manure pits. That doesn't sound like a lot but the number of manure storage facilities on farms is steadily growing, because the average farm size is increasing, the number of farms is decreasing and that will mean more manure pits. These deaths are entirely preventable, it was just not a problem in the past, so Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences have published a standard for ventilation in confined animal-manure storage facilities used at large livestock operations.
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Reducing Peak Torque: Proper Cleats Mean Less Injuries On Artificial Turf
Synthetic surfaces, popularly called Astroturf since the Houston Astrodome made it famous, were introduced in the 1960s to reduce strain on the playing surface and thus reduce field maintenance.
But it was linked to an increase in injuries, one example in football parlance being "turf toe".
Third generation artificial surfaces behave more like grass and soil but continue to be associated with injuries to the foot, ankle, toe, knee and even concussions. Characteristics of the play surface directly affect how much energy is absorbed by the athlete upon impact and that means shoes are important.
Eocypselus Rowei: Hummingbird Precursor Discovered
A tiny fossil, the nearly complete skeleton of a bird that would have fit in the palm of your hand and weighed less than an ounce, offers clues to the precursors of swift and hummingbird wings. The fossil
discovered in Wyoming
is unusual in having exceptionally well-preserved feathers, which allowed the researchers to reconstruct the size and shape of the bird's wings in ways not possible with bones alone.
The paleontologists spotted the specimen, which was collected at the Green River Formation, while they were working at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and named it Eocypselus rowei, in honor of John W. Rowe, Chairman of the Field Museum's Board of Trustees.
Smart Objects: Do You Want A Talking Kleenex Box?
Are 'smart' objects the future?
People certainly like so-called smart phones, and almost every home in America has a computer, and making everything 'smart' might be a future trend, say humanities scholars at Penn State University.
As sensors and computers increasingly become smaller and cheaper, smart objects will appear in more homes and offices and not be hidden or shielded from interacting with people, according to the researchers. For example, smart refrigerators could talk or send tweets to signal when certain food items are almost out, or when expiration dates are nearing.
Orbital Traffic Control: How NASA Tracks 17,000 Objects Above Earth To Prevent Collisions
Imagine being the project scientist for a NASA experiment and getting an email telling you that a 3,100 lb. defunct spy satellite dating back to the Cold War might crash into your baby?
That's what happened to Julie McEnery of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which maps the highest-energy light in the universe, a year ago. When she checked her email on March 29th, 2012, she had an automatically generated report from NASA's Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) saying that in about a week Fermi might be hit by Cosmos 1805.
Climate Change: Where Republicans And Democrats Agree
In America, only two political parties can win the presidency. For that reason the two parties tend to have a 'big tent' mentality and embrace a lot of fringe members in return for votes. The perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good, the saying goes.
Due to that structure, and that a tiny percentage of 'swing voters' determine a winner, the opposing sides tend to vilify and stereotype each other as much as possible, including in ways that are tailored to the audience. For example, Democrats hate business and are anti-science, while Republicans hate minorities and are anti-science.
Wait, they're both anti-science? Sure, just about different things.
Early Stage Drug Delivery Companies: Start-ups And Emerging Companies
In the modern regulatory environment, start-ups and smaller companies tend to be less well-known. The costs are increasingly high and its hard to get venture capital funding without knowing how long it can take to clear government hurdles so if things look promising, companies are acquired instead.
But some are sticking it out and they are trying to gain momentum as they advance their technologies and produce significant clinical data on the road to eventual commercialization of their technologies.
Saturn Still Looks Young And Hot For Its Age
As planets age the general rule is that they become darker and cooler - but Saturn is an exception. Why it looks so young for its age has been a space science topic since the late 1960s but a paper in Nature Geoscience says it has some answers.
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DAFT - Towards A New Disk Filing Approach
Identity Crisis: Authenticity Versus Suppression Of Cognitive Dissonance
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Love: An Almost Scientific Investigation
What Is Love ?
If I could answer that long-standing question in precise scientific terms with error bars I would be sure to get a Nobel prize and lynched.
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DC Versus AC
Direct current (DC)
In a DC (direct current) circuit where the electricity flows in one direction, we can think of a battery as a storage tank like the water tower in your neighborhood. If nobody turned on their faucet, the water in the tower would just sit there. Forever. Physicists like to think of this as "potential energy." Like a boulder at the top of a hill, it will just sit there, forever, until someone pushes it over the hill or an earthquake shakes it from the top of the hill or erosion undermines it starting it to roll down the hill. When the boulder is rolling down the hill, physicists like to think of this as kinetic energy. So, the water will just sit in the top of the water tower until you turn on the faucet to your water hose.
-->A Science 2.0 Effort For Dark Data: Elsevier And Columbia University Team Up
Elsevier and the Integrated Earth Data Applications facility at Columbia University have announced a competition to improve preservation of and access to research data in the earth sciences.
Members of the international geosciences community who have worked on preservation and improved access of research data, particularly dark data, can share their work and advise on ways that these data are being processed, stored and used.
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