The BBC reminds me that it’s time to give a tip of the hat to one of history’s greats.   Hulton Archive photo c. 1840   Augusta Ada Byron was born in 1815, the daughter of Lord Byron she is now known simply as Ada Lovelace. A skilled mathematician she wrote the world’s first computer programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Years ahead of her time she realised that the Analytical Engine “might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.” She died, aged only 36, on 27th November 1852. Technorati Tags: Ada Lovelace, […]

This is beautiful beyond words. Admire it, or also get extra points if you know what it is. Answer here. There’s also a video, which I can’t stop re-running. (Give it some time. It seems that nothing is happening for quite a while.)

The global warming news is grim. Just two recent headlines: Acid oceans need urgent action and Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions. If you follow anybody’s writing on the topic (e.g. mine 2005 and 2007) you know all too much about the grimness. But where we make our mistake, you and me, is assuming that once the slower people finally recognize the facts, they’ll want to stop poisoning the planet. Ha. Now that they’re finally noticing that we’re headed to a hot place in a handbasket, they have a better answer. Geoengineering! We’re so good at controlling planetary […]

Three stories, the first more interesting, the next two much better than all the other depressing stuff smothering the news. (None of these are up-to-the-minute. I’ve been offline, not to say out of it, for a while.) (J. Pathol., abstract, and ScienceDaily.) Professor Ruth Itzhaki and her team at the University [of Manchester’s] Faculty of Life Sciences have investigated the role of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1) in [Alzheimers Disease] …. Most people are infected with this virus, which then remains life-long in the peripheral nervous system, and in 20-40% of those infected it causes cold sores. Evidence of […]

A group of Princeton chemists, publishing in Physical Review Letters (which, as you might guess from the name, is not a biological research journal), feel they’ve found a mechanism that shows proteins direct their own evolution based on environmental conditions. Or something like that. Evolution’s new wrinkle: Proteins with cruise control provide new perspectiveA team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution. The quote is from the press release, there’s no citation to the actual article, but, Google being my […]

NASA – Scientists Detect Cosmic ‘Dark Flow’ Across Billions of Light Years Using data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), scientists have identified an unexpected motion in distant galaxy clusters. The cause, they suggest, is the gravitational attraction of matter that lies beyond the observable universe. “The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe’s expansion and does not change as distances increase,” says lead researcher Alexander Kashlinsky Hot gas in moving galaxy clusters (white spots) shifts the temperature of cosmic microwaves. Hundreds of distant clusters seem to be moving toward one patch of […]

I’m sorry. I just can’t take it any more. I’m going to stop the world and get off. Yes, that’ll make the oceans slosh and drown everyone else. You should have thought of that before you bored me. Okay, you ask. What is it now? Drivel framed in drivel. (No, I don’t have a link to the original. I can’t be arsed. It’s in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.) Study: men with genetic variant struggle with commitment Or this one from the New Scientist: Monogamy gene found in people What if you could tell whether a man […]

Your Blogscientist has been falling down on the job. A few days ago I saw plenty of headlines about new nanoscale batteries. Everything’s nano-whatnot these days. I figured I’d read about it later. No doubt somebody had an extra 5% improved energy yield or something. Turns out, no, this is really new. A team at MIT has genetically engineered bacteriophages — a kind of virus that normally attacks bacteria — to assemble batteries. Put them in a soup with the right ingredients and they pull out what they need to assemble anodes, cathodes, and, in short, batteries. (Abstract of Proceedings […]

Via Slashdot I found this Science News article which links to a mathematics site that’ll blow your mind up like bubble gum. It’s visualizations by mathematicians and graphic artists of four- and more-dimensional shapes. Plus, if you have any mathematical ability, in other words if you’re not like me, you may even understand what they’re talking about. But understanding isn’t needed to feel your mind expand.

My issue of the Royal Horticultural Society Garden magazine arrived today, and the first thing I saw was: Competitive gooseberry growing in northwest England has a long and distinguished history. With a blurb like that, how could I not read the article? (Web version, which differs from the print one.) So I learned that growing the gooseberry supreme requires “pens” where the bushes can be protected from birds, shaded from excessive sun (In northwest England? You’re kidding me, right?), as well as excess rain which can burst the fruit. In the old days, a rhubarb leaf was inverted over the […]

This is another story in the category of “We’re from the government. We’re here to help.” The reporting makes me want to bang my head against the desk, but I can’t because I’m writing this from a lawn chair in my back garden. All the stories stress how safe the process is. That is not the point. Not . . . the . . . point. FDA to allow radiation of spinach and lettuce Health regulators have approved the use of ionizing radiation for fresh spinach and lettuce, saying the technique already approved for other foods [ can help control […]

The annoying thing about all the clean energy technologies is that we can’t buy them and use them. Breakthroughs keep being reported, and then . . . nothing. If I had a solution to that problem, I’d be a lot richer than I am, but I’m a dreamer like everyone else. So, just to give you some more things to dream about, here are three advances on the energy front. (Life happened, so this is a few weeks past due, as usual for me.) First is the discovery of how to channel light so that any window can act as […]

Interesting times. From universetoday.com (via Slashdot): The White House is Briefed: Phoenix About to Announce “Potential For Life” on Mars It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more “provocative” than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface. … Whilst NASA scientists are not claiming that life once existed on the Red Planet’s surface, new data appears to indicate the “potential for life” more conclusively than the TEGA water results. Apparently these new results are being kept under wraps until further, more detailed analysis can be carried out…. […]

I was at the Santa Barbara Orchid Fair last weekend. (It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.) One of the huge growers there, SB Orchid Estates does an open house at the same time. This striking species caught my eye: Platystele misera And this one: Stanhopea tigrina cultivar The Central and South American Stanhopea and Catasetum orchids produce what amounts to perfume used by male euglossine bees to communicate with female euglossine bees. Everybody wins. The orchids get highly specific pollinators who find them from, literally, miles away. And they get that at very little cost in […]

This time it really is a Friday, but the picture isn’t a photo, no matter how much it looks like one. It’s one of Kees Veenenbos’s amazing renderings of other worlds based on the available data from space flights. His work has appeared in National Geographic (print edition ). Go to Veenenbos’s site and lose yourself. To give you an idea of what you’ll be missing if you don’t go, here’s a picture of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, based on data from the Voyager Imaging Team. [Update, 2009-09-27: not currently posted on that site.] space, art, Veenenbos

Photovoltaics do take energy to make and use toxic elements that can cause nasty pollution unless they’re contained. We knew that. But what I didn’t really bother to think about is that those same rare elements that are toxic are also, well, rare. We’re using them like they’re not rare. So . . . doh! . . . they’ll run out soon. Meaning soon. Times like “five years” and “2017” come out of the number-crunchers. From New Scientist, reporting on Gordon, Bertram, and Graedel’s recent paper (abstract, pdf). It’s not just the world’s platinum that is being used up at […]