Element FYI
The Element List science blog covering science news and ephemera has moved to a new page, but you can find our old posts here in the archive.
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ELEMENT Features
Archive of ELEMENT feature articles.
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Overheard in the Science Blogosphere
 Theatre of Science coming to NYC. Drs. Richard Wiseman and Simon Singh are auctioning two front row tickets and the chance to get zapped by a million volts of electricity in front of a live audience. Available dates are Nov. 9-12. Place your bid now!
Submitted 09/05/06, edited 10/15/06.
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 Tired of paying hundreds of dollars for science textbooks each semester? Jason Turgeon has come to the rescue with Textbook Revolution, a website containing links to free, online textbooks in a range of science topics from biology to computer science to math and physics. Even if you have already bought your textbooks for the semester, the site is useful for finding additional information and alternative perspectives on the same subjects. Some textbooks are not exactly books in the linear sense, but are websites with plentiful graphics and flash-based multimedia, such as An Outline of American Geography by Birdsall and Florin and Plate Tectonics by Kare Kullerud. If you have a textbook of your own to contribute, Textbook Revolution is always looking for more submissions. |
 The latest edition of Nature reports that oil and gas exploration company PT Lapindo Brantas may have triggered the eruption of a mud volcano on the island of Java on May 28 during drilling. According to Nature, mud has been spewing from the ground for the last three months at a rate of 50,000 cubic meters per day. Abnormally high temperatures (60C) and hydrogen sulphide gas released with the mud suggests that the volcano is connected to a deep volcanic, hydrothermal source located nearly 3 kilometers below the surface. Geologists suspect that drilling penetrated an over-pressured volume of liquified sediment, which buoyantly pushed its way up to the surface. Walhi reports that gas initially "sprayed 10 meters high from cracks in the ground ... followed by hot mud." The flow of mud has displaced over 9,000 residents from their homes to date. East Java Police seized the rig that triggered the release of mud and gas. Offshore mud volcanos are common in the Java area, which overlies a subduction zone, where water and sediments are carried deep beneath the islands. "According to many geological experts, the scale of this mud volcano is unprecedented -- at least on land," writes Nature.
Submitted 09/04/06, edited 09/04/06.
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 You may not know her name, but you've very likely seen one of her maps of the global ocean floor. Beginning in the 1940s, Marie Tharp worked at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University painstakingly plotting academic and U.S. Navy sonar readings onto basemaps to show the detailed bathymetry of the oceans. Her maps, created in collaboration with famous oceanographer Bruce Heezen, were the first to reveal the presence of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rift valley, which was a crucial piece in the puzzle in the early days of the development of plate tectonic theory. Later, Marie and Bruce created the famous World Ocean Floor Map, published in 1977 (above), long before rapid computer digitzation or satellite imagery became available. Marie Tharp passed away this past Wednesday morning, August 23 in Nyack, NY due to complications with cancer. She was 86.
Submitted 08/26/06, edited 08/26/06.
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Select Science Headlines
Submitted 08/23/06, edited 09/04/06.
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 Einstein's Theory of General Relativity predicts that light rays from a distant object will be bent by the gravitational field of a foreground object. This phenomenon is observed by astronomers as they peer through the universe, where numerous objects in space warp the light from distant objects and distort astronomers' view through the gravitational lens effect. Brian McLeod at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and colleages developed computer software which can distort digitized photographs to show what gravitational lensing would do to images of ordinary objects here on Earth. The image at right is the Smithsonian Institution's Castle in Washington, D.C., as it would appear if a black hole with the mass of Saturn were positioned in front of the observer. Two images of the castle are observed inside and outside of a central ring. This image illustrates the types of images that scientists study at the CfA-Arizona Space Telescope LEns Survey (CASTLeS) of gravitational lenses. The objective of the survey is to learn more about distant galaxies and to determine the rate of expansion of the universe, known as the Hubble Constant. The CASTLeS website contains an online database of images that you can download for fun or research. You can also download the gravitational lens modeling software here.
Submitted 08/21/06, edited 08/21/06.
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 It's an understatement to say that Manhattan looks nothing like the quaint little island it was when the first Dutch settlers arrived. Not only has most of Manhattan been covered in concrete, but the near-surface geology has been altered over the past 370 years with a maze of tunnels. To map these changes over time, architect Brian McGrath and designer Mark Watkins have created Manhattan Transformations, an interactive time-lapse three-dimensional computer model of man-made changes to the landscape of lower Manhattan. The multimedia exhibit is hosted by the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan's Battery Park and can be viewed online. The model presents not only the architectural development of the city, but also a cartographic history of the underground infrastructure that delivers water, electricity, gas, telecommunications, and subway trains to lower Manhattan. As you click through the online exhibit, you can selectively display specific information such as office buildings built between 1917-1940, the location of the Dutch settlements, topography contours, and riverbank areas underlain by landfill. It's like looking at a CAT scan of the city.
Submitted 08/21/06, edited 09/05/06.
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 It's every graduate student's worst nightmare: You're working yourself to the bone in a top-tier lab and competing head-to-head with one or more labs sometimes on the very same data. You want to graduate, but to do so you have to publish unique, original work, which is clearly impossible if someone else gets there first. Plus, it's a long road. Can you afford to lose two years or more only to see your results published by someone else? It's not just a paper at stake, but your Ph.D. degree. This week's NatureJobs covers techniques to cope with the competitive pressures of academic research and what to do if you're scooped. Some good tips: Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. While you're working on a high-profile experiment with high scoop potential, work on one or more side projects that will lead to good, publishable work. Also, play to your strengths and use an "approach that no one else is using ... that will yield unexpected results instead of 'deliberately looking for the most obvious things'."
Submitted 08/17/06, edited 08/17/06.
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 Ever wonder what scientists do on the weekend? Do they party until dawn, talking about string theory with their hot dates, or do they spend the weekend alone in the lab analyzing their earwax? Dylan Styles, a chemist at Stanford University's Trost Lab, spent this past weekend - you guessed it - analyzing his earwax. What did he find? "I had NMR time anyway so I figured what the hell," writes Mr. Tenderbutton. "I scoped (sic) all 36 milligrams of my waxy secretion into a test tube and took it up in CDCl3. I was expecting it to go into solution freely, but there was a mass of material that wouldnt dissolve even with sonication[1]." In a word: Ew. But what do you expect from yet another MIT hack? Check out this close-up of his lab coat. Who said scientists don't know how to have fun?
Submitted 08/08/06, edited 08/17/06.
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 Wondering what to buy for your scientist-guitarist friend who has everything? Buy them a meteorite guitar pick, of course. After 4.5 billion years in the making, these guitar picks are custom carved out of real meteorites that crashed to Earth. The picks don't come cheap, however. Prices range from $110 to $135 for a single pick. Click here to find out how well the picks play. The StarMedia Group website also features information and links about meteorites as well as a video of a meteorite that (supposedly) fell to earth and hit a car in New York. (via Popgadget)
Submitted 07/30/06, edited 07/30/06.
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 Until the recent explosion of blogs and internet culture, scientists haven't had many outlets to publicly express the joys and frustrations of living the life of a scientist. LabLit.com, started in March 2005, is an online magazine of both non-fiction and fiction articles written by scientists and graduate students about the daily grind in the lab. Among the current crop of articles Ian Brooks frets about the 'nowhere land' of postdoc life and Dr. Clare Dudman writes about her transition from chemistry to becoming a novelist interested in historical science. There's also a LabLit community forum for chatting about various topics in science and culture. The style of the writing is about on the level of a typical college newspaper or alt weekly, but the articles can be eye-opening for anyone considering graduate school and a career in science.
Submitted 07/26/06, edited 07/26/06.
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 Embryonic stem cell research continues to move forward in the U.S., despite yesterday's highly publicized presidential veto of a bill that would have provided government funding for research using stem cell lines not approved by President Bush in 2001. Bloomberg News reports that research scientists prefer stem cells provided by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute over the existing lines made available by the U.S. National Stem Cell Registry. According to Bloomberg News, "Since 2003, 667 stem cell batches were sent to other labs from Harvard, the biggest private supplier in the U.S. That compares with 246 sent by the cell bank, the main distributor of cells approved by President George W. Bush." Stem cells are provided by the Harvard lab at no cost to scientists, whereas the National Stem Cell Bank charged Larry Goldstein, a University of California-San Diego scientist, $10,000 for just two vials of Bush-approved cells, which are of lower quality because they have been damaged by age. Only 22 of the U.S. cell batches are usable, scientists say, compared to the "more than 60 lines" that President Bush claimed were available in 2001. Bloomberg reports, "The Harvard lines were derived by Douglas Melton, 52, a biologist who began studying embryonic stem cells when two of his children were diagnosed with diabetes. Since 2004, Melton has created 28 of his own lines. The lines were created using funding from the private Howard Hughes Medical Institute based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, one of several U.S.-based charitable foundations contributing millions to stem cell research. Although no one has an overall figure, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation alone contributed $4.8 million to such research in 2005."
Submitted 07/19/06, edited 07/19/06.
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Overheard in the Science Blogosphere
 Bush, Castration, and Stem Cell Research - Fabuloso video blogger Ze Frank covers recent research on castrato singers and reports that "President Bush is studying the effects that castrating science will have on culture as a whole. The hope is that by removing things like stem cell research, science will never fully mature and will start singing about God in high-pitched voices."One Nobel Prize Isn't Enough - Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science blogs about the recent case of a Nobel Laureate and professor at the MIT Department of Biology, who reportedly dissuaded "a rising female star in neuroscience" from joining the MIT faculty because he was threatened by the potential competition. Eleven MIT professors wrote a letter of complaint to the university president accusing Professor Susumu Tonegawa of intimidating Alla Karpova, saying that "he would not mentor, interact, or collaborate with her if she took the job and that members of his research group would not work with her." Like, Gag Me with a Hockey Stick - Chris Mooney asks, "Is anyone else as sick as I am of repeated attacks on the "hockey stick" reconstruction of past temperatures? Joe Barton and cronies are at it again. Just when one would have hoped that the National Academy of Sciences report on this topic would provide some modicum of closure, the "skeptics" have derived yet another seeming line of attack." [See also, straw man argument.]
Submitted 07/19/06, edited 07/19/06.
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 In case you didn't know, the Apple MacBooks, iBooks, and PowerBooks each contain a three-component accelerometer, which can be used to record earthquakes or any sudden bump against your laptop. The SMS is meant to prevent damage to the laptop hard disk in the case of a sudden fall or disturbance. Now, programmer Daniel Griscom has created a handy, free software app called SeisMac that accesses the Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) to display the three component waveforms. You can download the freeware here for Mac OS X. The SMS is not sensitive enough for strict scientific applications, but the SeisMac software could potentially be used as a fun and inexpensive teaching tool in earth science classrooms. (via BB)
Submitted 07/17/06, edited 07/19/06.
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Hot Global Warming Science Links
 Looking for authoritative online information about the scientific research into global warming or, more generally, climate change? Here are a few good links to get you started.
Submitted 07/17/06, edited 07/17/06.
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