Tag: science
“The US Secretary of Energy finally nullified the 1954 revocation of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance…
“The US Secretary of Energy finally nullified the 1954 revocation of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, acknowledging that the controversial decision resulted from a ‘flawed process’ that violated its own regulations.”
I love the fact that we can actually *use* gravitational lensing to see things in …
I love the fact that we can actually *use* gravitational lensing to see things in space even more distant than our telecopes can, almost as far out as the edge of the observable universe. (i.e. before things are too far for light to have reached us yet at all.)
And find surprises, like this early, early galaxy that looks like it had already started rotating 13.3 billion years ago.
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-alma-observations-galaxy-jd1-rotating
#space #astronomy #science
Stumbled on this again after seeing it a long time ago: Photo-realistic renderings of Earth …
Stumbled on this again after seeing it a long time ago:
Photo-realistic renderings of Earth as it might have appeared from space during various prehistoric eras, with different continental arrangements, climate and vegetation (or lack thereof, as in the case of pre-multicellular-life Rodinia).
New round of #introductions for all the new people joining the Fediverse!Hi, I’m Kelson …
New round of #introductions for all the new people joining the Fediverse!
Hi, I’m Kelson (he/him), a computer programmer in the Los Angeles area. I talk about all kinds of things here: #scifi/#fantasy, #books, actual #science, #tech, #history, #linguistics, random day-to-day stuff, etc.
I also post photos – mostly cityscapes/landscapes, nature, random interesting stuff I’ve spotted IRL – on Pixelfed (@KelsonV) and more “serious” photos on photog.social (@kelsonv)
Scientists taught these adorable rats to play hide and seek
Scientists taught these adorable rats to play hide and seek – Los Angeles Times
Article by Phil Plait explaining the science behind the Event Horizon Telescope’s ground-breaking image of …
Article by Phil Plait explaining the science behind the Event Horizon Telescope’s ground-breaking image of the supermassive black hole in M87 – the world’s first-ever actual image of the event horizon (or, more precisely, silhouette) of a black hole.
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-first-image-of-the-event-horizon-of-a-black-hole
Birdsite thread by @AstroKatie on how the image was produced and why the ring looks the way it does, plus simulations of different viewing angles.
First ever direct image of a black hole! The supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 — 6.5 billion times as massive as the Sun! #EHT #BlackHole The image is better than I expected! pic.twitter.com/Tv7I36v4xQ
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) April 10, 2019
Apparitions & anxiety in a lab are traced to infrasound from a fan…
I stumbled on a reference to this story recently. Just as fascinating this time as when I first read it.
TL;DR: Apparitions & anxiety in a lab are traced to infrasound from a fan producing a standing wave resonating at the frequency of the human eye. Vic Tandy went on to investigate whether the same waves were present in at least some sites with haunted reputations.
He died in 2005. I couldn’t find much follow-up research in a quick search.
Ghost buster: Chris Arnot explains why Vic Tandy of Coventry University is doing time in a cellar
Apparently tomatoes have inactive genes for producing capsaicin, so scientists are trying to use CRISPR …
Apparently tomatoes have inactive genes for producing capsaicin, so scientists are trying to use CRISPR to activate the genes & create a spicy tomato, figuring it’ll be easier to grow than peppers.
Weird, I was just talking about this a few days ago. When Researchers Used IHOP to Determine if Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake via @atlasobscura
Weird, I was just talking about this a few days ago.
When Researchers Used IHOP to Determine if Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake via @atlasobscura
Mastodon’s been trending again
So I noticed Mastodon’s been trending again & figured I’d take another look. I don’t need another time sink, but I figured it might be worth jumping in this time. Now to replicate just the good parts of that other network…
I should probably figure out what I want to talk about here before I try to figure out who to follow, huh? I mean, I’ll probably end up cross-posting photos & blogging (yes, I still blog), but other than that, do I want to talk about…tech? politics? comics? sci-fi/fantasy? I don’t think anyone I know IRL is here, so it’s a matter of topics for now.
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Actually, what *is* the etiquette for cross-posting here?
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So, the 5-7 interests meme (this feels like early 2000s LJ): #comics #scifi #space #computers #science #art #photography
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Hmm, looks like I may want to check out wandering.shop for scifi/fantasy and photog.social for photography…
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OK, so I’ve set up @kelsonv@photog.social for photography posting. I’ll probably keep this one for other stuff.
I’m all for looking for deeper context. Dietary headlines are pretty much always overly simplistic,…
I’m all for looking for deeper context. Dietary headlines are pretty much always overly simplistic, and it’s important to consider scale (doubling a tiny risk is still tiny), interactions, and trade-offs (avoiding one ingredient and increasing another beyond healthy levels isn’t going to help).
But ridiculing an organization for saying that sunlight and air pollution can cause cancer? That’s so blatantly dishonest I thought I was reading a satirical quote from the Onion.
Also: Treating the various categories as if they’re all the same. Quick reference: Group 1 means there’s sufficient evidence that something causes cancer. Group 2A and 2B mean there’s limited evidence, so they’re not saying they’re sure. Group 3 means that there’s no indication that it causes cancer, but they haven’t ruled it out.
If anybody tells you something is dangerous because it’s a Group 3 carcinogen, they are either mistaken or lying to you. It might very well be dangerous for other reasons, but Group 3 specifically means they looked at it and didn’t see enough evidence either way.
(I recently saw someone claiming bananas were carcinogenic because of the ethylene gas used to ripen them after they’ve been picked. Ethylene is in Group 3. It’s also given off naturally by plants to do things like…ripen fruit.)
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https://www.iarc.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr240_E.pdf
Here’s the actual IARC press release. It still doesn’t describe the scale of the effect they found, but it does at least define what they consider to be “processed meat” (basically anything cured, smoked, etc. so I guess that does include cold cuts). It’s worth noting that they don’t suggest people *stop* eating red & processed meat, but *limit* it, and that that risk/benefit analysis needs to be done to determine the best guidelines.
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https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9617928/iarc-cancer-risk-carcinogenic
Aha! Some numbers to indicate the actual *scale* of the risks involved: “In the United States, a person’s lifetime risk of getting colorectal cancer is roughly 5 percent. The IARC says that eating 50 grams of processed meat per day (about one hot dog’s worth) will boost that to about 6 percent.” For comparison, the article cites the lifetime risk of lung cancer at 1.3% for non-smokers and 17.2% for regular smokers – a *much* bigger difference!
I’d seen the 18% increase stat in several articles, but this is the first place I’d found the baseline rate, which is an important piece of information.
It’s an 18% increase for each daily serving, basically. If you assume the average American eats say, three servings of red/processed meat a day (I don’t know) for that 5% risk, then eating four servings daily brings you to 6%, five daily servings would bring you up to 7% and so on. Presumably going veggie or sticking to poultry would drop it to 3%. And that’s not considering confounding factors.
I understand reporting the findings primarily in terms of ratios since different cultures eat different amounts on average and will have different average rates…but at the same time, if you’re in science you’ve got to know that science reporting — and worse, health reporting — is pretty much worthless at trying to find the context. A few countries’ average consumption and cancer rates should have been in the press release.
You know the stories about how McDonald’s burgers don’t rot…
You know the stories about how McDonald’s burgers don’t rot, and therefore must not really be food? Someone did an actual controlled experiment on this to figure out why, and it turns out that it only works with the smallest, thinnest burgers, because they dry out before they start to decay. It’s burger jerky. Try it with a thicker McDonald’s burger, or put it in a plastic bag, and it’ll decay just like “real” food. Homemade burgers behave the same way.
How we know the fireballs over Calif. & Cuba weren’t related to the Russian meteorite or the asteroid flyby. #SCIENCE
How we know the fireballs over Calif. & Cuba weren’t related to the Russian meteorite or the asteroid flyby. #SCIENCE
(For one thing, fireballs like that happen once a week somewhere.)