New York City is a magnet for practically everyone, but who knew that New York City was a magnet for scientists? If you're tired of the usual art and theatre fare in New York City, check out the New York Academy of Sciences' Science & The City website, which lists dozens of science lectures, exhibits, conferences, and family events around the city each week. There are over 60 events listed for this week alone, including a talk on green roofs at the Center for Architecture, a lecture on understanding global warming forecasts at Columbia University, and a garden workshop on terrariums in the Bronx. The NYAS even put together a neat little Flash video filled with interviews of everyday New Yorkers and prominent local scientists and intellectuals, including James Watson, Jeffrey Sachs, and Neil deGrasse Tyson (pictured right) talking about science and why scientists like to call NYC home.

A study of the water, sediment, and seafood quality of Lake Pontchartrain by several U.S. government agencies has found that conditions in and around the lake are within limits acceptable for recreational waters. The collaborative study was conducted following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS), Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Pockets of high contamination or "hot spots" were found in sites around the lake; however, the concentrations decreased over a period of three to four weeks after the hurricanes. Areal photographs and other environmental data reports from the areas impacted by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma can be found on the USGS website.

You've probably heard of SETI@home, the project started by UC Berkeley researchers that uses free time on personal computers connected over the internet to analyze radio telescope data with the hope of finding evidence for extraterrestrial life. Now, a similar effort, called the World Community Grid has developed the technical infrastructure to create the world's largest public computing grid. The purpose of the grid is to host scientific research projects that require massive amounts of computing power using computer time donated by the public and which will benefit humanity. The grid has nearly 100,000 members contributing over 150,000 computers that currently are being used to conduct research on human proteome folding. The grid is open to public and not-for-profit organizations and research results must remain in the public domain. Researchers may apply to use the grid by submitting a research proposal. Hardware, software, and technical services were donated by IBM to create the core infrastructure for the World Community Grid project.

Ever wish you could spend your time studying cheetahs in Namibia, dolphins offshore of Brazil, or stone age archeology in France? Now you can - for a fee, of course. For around $2,000 to $3,000 (not including travel to the rendezvous point), the Earthwatch Institute will send you on your choice of dozens of scientific research expeditions that could use a research assistant or two. Earthwatch emphasizes that these are volunteer opportunities, not tours, meaning that you're actually going to have to do some work while you're out there. Most of the tasks are simple, like counting bugs or interviewing farmers, while some expeditions may require scuba training or a high level of physical fitness. Over 4,000 volunteers participate in the program each year. You can find a schedule of expeditions at the EI website.

What is the archetypal researcher personality? Are there some personalities that are better suited than others to a scientific career? To provide insight into this issue, The Science Advisory Board created the first-ever psychological profile of life science researchers, the Scientific Personality Assessment. The assessment is meant to help scientists better evaluate their strengths and assets as well as confront the particular challenges they face in their everyday work life. The goal is not to suggest that one personality type is better than another or that having specific character traits will engender more professional success, but rather to encourage people to align their professional aspirations with their own particular blend of expertise and skills. A summary of results based on recent participants has been posted on the Science Board website. It might not be surprising that the largest percentage of participants (32%) fell into the Organizer category, while the smallest percentage of participants (16%) fell into the Enthusiast category, defined as those who like to "interact with and please others." You can try the test yourself at the Science Board website.

The cost of silicon solar cells has been the principal barrier preventing consumers from converting from fossil fuel-based energy to solar energy. The high cost is driven in part by competing demand for high-quality silicon from the computer industry. Now scientists at the University of California Los Angeles have created a new plastic solar cell that can be produced at 10 to 20% of the cost of traditional silicon solar cells. The new plastic solar cells were designed by Prof. Yang Yang (pictured right with a plastic solar cell (left) and a silicon solar cell (right)) and colleagues at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. The plastic version, however, has only about 30% of the efficiency of the silicon solar cell. Prof. Yang and his team are now working to improve the efficiency rating.

Ooh, we love free publicity. American Scientist, the magazine of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, has chosen little ol' Element List for this week's "Site of the Week." Thanks, guys.

Scientists love to blow things up. Throw in dramatic music, an atomic blast, and a Father-Knows-Best narrator, and you have all the makings of a Cold War propaganda film. The House in the Middle, a 1954 film by the National Clean Up-Paint Up-Fix Up Bureau (who knew?) set in the Nevada Test Site, is designed to show how to guard your home against the heat of an atomic explosion. The film shows how houses surrounded by litter and made of unpainted wood catch fire more easily than tidy houses with a fresh coat of paint. The film is fun for its camp value and atomic bomb footage. You wonder whether the people behind the film really believe that a fresh coat of paint stands between you and your own personal nuclear holocaust. Then you find out that the film was co-sponsored by the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association, and it all makes sense--it's simply marketing disguised as government propaganda disguised as civil defense preparedness. What better way to get the Joneses to paint their house and Johnny to clean up his room than by scaring the hell out of them? The truly scary part is watching scientists touch the houses with their bare hands after the nuclear blast. The film is hosted by the Internet Archive.

We've received several cool, fun, and interesting science video clips lately. There is an online QuickTime video series of three lectures by 93-year-old Hans Bethe, a physicist and professor at Cornell University, who rose to prominence while working on the Manhattan Project and won the Nobel Prize for his work in nuclear physics in 1967. The lectures were given in 1999 to an audience of Bethe's neighbors at a retirement community in Ithaca, NY; thus, the lectures entitled "Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple" are intended for a non-technical audience. If you're missing the days you spent sleeping in physics class, these are an enjoyable refresher--or a cure for insomnia. The lectures are each approximately 45 minutes long. There's also a voice-only link that you can download to your iPod.

Since the interns at Scientific American have nothing to do but surf the web all day, the editors decided to pool all of their bookmarks together, throw away the Gawker and BoingBoing links, and pick 25 science and technology websites that make them look smart. Naturally, the first site on their list is The Whole Brain Atlas. (You can hear them at the cocktail parties now, "and for fun, I study neuroimaging.") Blogs by writers who are not scientists but who write popular science books are also on the list--um, okay. Some of these sites wouldn't pass the bar at Element List, particularly those in need of a professional web designer (yes, even scientists appreciate good design).

Arsenic (also known as rat poison) is found in the drinking water in many countries around the world including Bangladesh and the United States among others. Arsenic may occur in drinking water naturally or as the result of various types of industry, including mining and coal-burning power plants. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has developed a filter that removes arsenic from water using an absorbent recycled by-product that is cheap and widely available. The filtration method uses iron oxide coated sand found in groundwater treatment plants, where natural sand is used to remove iron from the groundwater. Over time, the natural sand becomes coated with iron oxides and has to be replaced with clean sand. Now, rather than sending the iron oxide coated sand to a landfill, it can be reused to absorb arsenic from drinking water cheaply and easily. UNESCO announced last week that they are seeking donations to help build arsenic filtering facilities for public drinking water in needy countries.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) announced September 1 that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded the first year of a four-year, $14.2 million award to design and develop a large telescope that will be used to survey the night sky. The LSST will take 10-second exposures of 10-square-degree sections of the sky every three nights, allowing repeated, time-lapse images or movies of objects that change or move on rapid timescales, such as exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids, and distant Kuiper Belt Objects. The LSST will also be used to trace the apparent distortions in the shapes of remote galaxies produced by lumps of Dark Matter. The LASS website contains a large section explaining the science behind the experiment. The data will be made openly available to the public and scientists from around the world and accessible by a web browser. The final site for the LSST has not been decided. The three candidate locations are Las Campanas, Chile, Cerro Pachon, Chile, or San Pedro Martir, Baja California, Mexico. An artist's rendition of the telescope is shown here with a 6-foot tall person drawn in red to show the relative scale.