Element FYI

Google ads are a bit funny. No matter what the ad is actually for, if an advertiser bids enough for certain keywords, like say, "Darwin" or "science research," pretty much any advertisement could show up in our little Google ads space. Nevermind whether Element List readers, typically academic researcher types, own a European automobile or care about the latest creationist buzz. We've been bombarded lately by creationist and intelligent designs ads in particular. If we can't figure out a way to get rid of the ads, the least we can do is click on the ads until their Adwords account reaches its limit blog about them. Heh-heh. So we're creating a new game called Find the Creationist Google Ad. (Hmm, doesn't quite have the same ring, but we're open to suggestions.) So click away happy Element Listers. Click any creationist ads that you find here and post a comment on any sites you find interesting or at least humorous.

Members of the National Academies are top scientists in their fields from across the country and provide expert advice on science, technology, and health policy to the federal government and the public under a congressional charter. The National Academies consist of four separate groups: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. Reports from the National Academies frequently make headlines because of the national importance of the subjects they review and the professional stature of the committee members. The reports are available for free downloading from the National Acadamies Press website, along with special webpages containing collections reports and links for additional reading. You can also download official podcasts, which provide access to National Academies public briefings and news conferences. A few of the more high-profile topics covered by the National Academies include:

• Evolution - Do you have a big debate scheduled with your local schoolboard on creationism? If you can't move out of Kansas, you at least can download these free resources on evolution from the National Academies.
• Stem Cell Research - What are stem cells? Why are some people so opposed to their use, while others claim they could be the source of cures for diseases like Alzheimers and diabetes? For an overview of the science and issues surrounding stem cell research, read Understanding Stem Cells from the NAS Stem Cell summary page.
• Global Warming and Climate Change - Choose from fifteen publications by the National Academies available for download on the Global Warming and Climate Change page on a range of topics from Understanding Climate Change Feedbacks to Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Also, individual science board homepages such as the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate contain free reports online.

The next time you're looking for a good science book, check out the National Academies Press website. You won't find these titles at your typical local bookstore.

• Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Possibilities, by Jeffrey Rosenthal - Description: From terrorist attacks to big money jackpots, Struck by Lightning deconstructs the odds and oddities of chance, examining both the relevant and irreverent role of randomness in our everyday lives.
• The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World, by Phillip Schewe - Description: The electrical grid goes everywhere it s the largest and most complex machine ever made. Yet the system is built in such a way that the bigger it gets, the more inevitable its collapse.
• Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere, by Peter Ward - Description: For 65 million years dinosaurs ruled the Earth until a deadly asteroid forced their extinction. But what accounts for the incredible longevity of dinosaurs? A renowned scientist now provides a startling explanation that is rewriting the history of the Age of Dinosaurs.

Professors John Selegue and James Holler at the University of Kentucky Department of Chemistry have created a fun and interesting website that uses comic books to teach about every element in the periodic table. The element references come from popular comic book series like DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Walt Disney. The site is intended to combine education and popular entertainment. Just click on any element in the table on the homepage, and you'll be taken to a page of comics that reference that element. The element mercury is referenced in the comic at right from the 1962 edition of Showcase as well as several other comics from the era, including a comic called Metal Men.

If you've never had the opportunity to attend a lecture at Harvard, now is your chance. Harvard@Home is an online collection of videos covering Harvard lectures and events going back to 2001, which you can watch from your home, office, cafe, or wherever. There is also a special site, StudioSKG, which covers conferences, lectures, and special events from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Here are just a few of the science and math videos available on Harvard@Home:

• Changing Habitats... Vanishing Species: This symposium, a presentation of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, is a scientific discussion of how environments are changing, why species are being lost, and the long-term ramifications for human society.
  
• Socks Before Shoes: Unraveling Cell Division: Professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, Andrew Murray, describes the mysterious process that lines up chromosomes prior to cell division and offers clues to understanding chromosomal abnormalities.
  
• Evolutionary Dynamics: Professor Martin Nowak discusses recent advances in our understanding of evolutionary dynamics and its application to genes, quasispecies, games, cooperative behavior, and human language.

As the internet buzzes with talk of NASA's latest finding that the Greenland ice sheet is shrinking faster than expected, an article in today's New York Times quotes Max Maisch, an expert on glaciers at the University of Zurich, lamenting the shrinking state of Switzerland's glaciers. This year was a terrible year for the glaciers, said Max Maisch,... July was very hot, though August was cool; but September was the warmest in 140 years. Many glaciers are collapsing on the edges. Maisch's observation of warm September temperatures in Europe flies in the face of a recent NOAA report, discussed here last week, which emphasized that September was cooler in the U.S. relative to the precending several months, while stating in the same new release that the "January-September 2006 combined temperature is the warmest on record." While temperatures may have been briefly lower in the U.S., clearly not everyone on the planet was enjoying a cool September this year.

Ever wonder what it would be like to be locked inside of a science museum after hours? Now, for the price of $70-79/night per person, families and children ages 8-12 can spend the night in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City: "Find yourselves in the Hall of North American Mammals, staring down a herd of wild buffalo. Climb some stairs and you're in the Age of the Dinosaurs, standing beneath a 65-million-year-old T. rex. Travel to the outer reaches of the cosmos in the Hayden Planetarium, where you'll witness entire galaxies collide. As the night comes to a magical close, settle down in the serene Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, beneath the 94-foot-long blue whale or in front of a favorite seascape diorama." The program runs from approximately 6 PM to 9 AM, and an evening snack and light breakfast are included. At least one adult chaperone is required for every three children. There is no mention, however, of how many kids are required per adult!

The U.S. National Park Service homepage has a handy new feature for finding national parks all around the country, sorted by name, location, activity (e.g., hiking, camping), and topic (e.g., caves, Civil War, coral reefs). The handy scroll-down menu has a popup feature with thumbnail images of each park and links to directions, hours, reservations, etc. as shown in the picture at right. There's also a special section for nature and science-related topics, which currently features a link to the Canon National Parks Science Scholars Program, which will be awarding eight $80,000 scholarships to Ph.D. students to "conduct research critical to conserving the national parks" in the U.S. Research projects in the biological, physical, social and cultural sciences are eligible, as well as projects in technology innovation in support of conservation science. Applications must be received by 3 May 2007. If you are so inclined, find a park on the website, write a research proposal, and spend the next few years getting paid to camp and hike. Not a bad life, huh?

The Scientists and Engineers for America seem to think so.

Academic research at the highest levels is as much a game of popularity as it is one of academic excellence. Everyone is smart. Everyone is accomplished. Finally, what separates one researcher from another is how he or she plays the game: how much grant money they raise, how many students and postdocs they employ, how many other scientists benefit from sharing grant money or authorship on publications. Eric Poehlman (pictured at right) knew how to play the game, even when that meant conducting scientific fraud in the process. In an article appropriately titled "An Unwelcome Discovery," this week's New York Times Magazine presents the story behind the criminal conviction of the former tenured faculty member at the University of Vermont. Poehlman was convicted to a year and a day of prison and two years of probation for using fraudulent data to obtain millions of dollars in federal grant money from the National Institutes of Health. What's particularly interesting about the Poehlman article is what it reveals about the inner workings of academic research and how the system permits such fraud to be committed over years or even decades. The article paints a picture of Poehlman as one who is an expert at telling people what they want to hear - even going so far as to falsify data to fit the hypothesis. Though ironically, it's when data doesn't fit the hypothesis that new scientific discoveries are made.

We really hate to dis a sister science blog site, but it would seem that science blogging has totally gone to the dogs at ScienceBlogs. Wordburst (above) lists the five words "appearing with unusual frequency" on the Seed ScienceBlogs site as of Saturday beginning with "stupider." Be our cat's paw. Write a science joke or even a sentence using these five words and receive a free Element List mug! If the winner is a Seed blogger, we'll even throw in an Element List T-shirt!! Post your joke in the comments or email it to info@elementlist.com.

What's wrong with this headline from NOAA? Could it be that the Bush Administration science spin doctors are at it again? The official headline for the summer temperature round-up report pictured above emphasizes that September was cooler than usual, while the color-coded map below clearly shows that temperatures ranged from above normal to record warmest in every mainland state in the nation. As the news release reveals in the less important second and third paragraphs, the summer overall was the second warmest on record and the "January-September 2006 combined temperature is the warmest on record." The previous January-September combined temperature record was set in 2000. The red and orange in the map above should be enough to dispel any notions that it's getting any cooler in the U.S., but someone apparently thinks September is more important, perhaps because it's just weeks before the elections and all.

After we polled a few geology bloggers, Chris at Highly Allocthonous bravely took on the challenge of proposing a possible tectonic explanation for Sunday's large earthquake in Hawaii. Chris noted (a) that the epicenter was northwest of the current volcanic source point that lies on the southeastern side of the Big Island, where most events associate with volcanism have been occurring on a regular (daily) basis; and (b) that the Molokai Fracture Zone (labeled OFZ in a slightly modified version of Chris' excellent map at right), happens to pass in the regional vicinity of the epicenter. Chris also pointed out that the newly revised depth for the earthquake by the USGS is 28 km, not 38.9 km as reported earlier. Twenty-eight kilometers is still deep considering that most oceanic crustal earthquakes are less then 10 km deep.

The USGS website has a good explanation of earthquake focal mechanisms represented by the red and white beachball. While OFZ in particular lies a bit northwest of the epicenter and trends west-southwest, the fracture zones do in fact roughly parallel the east-west trending nodel plane of the earthquake focal mechanism calculated by the USGS. Further, if you look closely, there is a more east-west trending fracture zone just south of OFZ that more closely parallels the east-west nodal plane. If the earthquake occurred on one of the fracture zones, it would've been a left-lateral strike-slip event. However, as most tectonics students learn, fracture zones aren't typically active away from the spreading center in a strike-slip sense. It could be that thermal weakening of the crust and mantle near the hotspot have permitted preexisting fracture zones to slip in response to intraplate stresses. (Thanks, Chris!)

Rainy days don't have to be a drag any more with the Pileus Umbrella and WebService system. With the Pileus System, you can take a picture with a camera mounted on top of the umbrella, which is then uploaded to Flickr or YouTube through the Pileus WebService with an image tag defined by your screen ID. Then, when you twist a grip on the umbrella, it will search for your images according to your screen ID and display the contents with a projector aimed at the underside of the umbrella. The system was presented at the Eighth International Conference on Ubiqitous Computing this year in Orange County, California by students from Keio University in Japan. (via We Make Money Not Art)

A magnitude 6.6 strike-slip earthquake hit about 15 km (10 miles) north-northwest of the Big Island of Hawaii at 7:07 AM local time. The estimated hypocentral depth of the quake is 38.9 km (24.2 miles). That's VERY deep considering that the thickness of the oceanic crust is not more than 10 km, though it's thicker near the islands. The picture at right by konaboy shows the dust cloud that followed a large rockfall at Kealakekua Bay a few minutes after the quake. The fact that the fault motion was strike-slip explains why there wasn't a tsunami despite the large magnitude of the mainshock. But a strike-slip focal mechanism doesn't seem to make sense for this area since there aren't any obvious lateral faults - unless old transform faults count. Anyone have an idea about what caused the quake?

Flickr Photos of the Hawaii Earthquake

US Geological Survey Earthquake Information on the Hawaii Earthquake

USGS Earthquake map for Hawaii

Strike-Slip NEIC Moment Tensor Solution for the Hawaii Earthquake

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Information Statement