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Rocket scientist was also “world’s best mom”

1 Apr

The venerable New York Times flubbed and thus tipped their cards about how they feel about women. Shame shame.  All humans have the capability to excel in both personal and professional aspects of their life. One would expect “a big fancy obit” to lead to lead with the stellar professional details. This can be interpreted as one of the many things that contributes to “rape culture.”

National Medals of Science & National Medals of Technology and I

Stroganoff and rocket science: For Yvonne Brill’s obit, Douglas Martin must be punished

Posted by Melinda Henneberger  | March 31, 2013  |  www.washingtonpost.com

Gentle reader, do not take the above headline too literally, as its intent is not, in fact, to argue for punishment in the case of the Internet v. Douglas Martin, the New York Times writer who stands accused of you-gotta-be-kidding sexism. Only, the way I read him, he was kidding — yes, in an obit — but his attempt to be light sailed straight into space.

His obituary for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill attempted to underscore her accomplishments by placing them in the context of other 88-year-old women who followed husbands around the country and stayed home to raise children for long stretches

It began this way: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.

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Sea slug sheds penis after mating and grows a new one

16 Mar

Peculiar indeed.

Sea slug, Chromodoris reticulata, discards its penis after sex and grows another. Image Alamy


Sea slug, Chromodoris reticulata, discards its penis after sex and grows another. Image Alamy

 

Sea slug sheds its penis after sex, scientists find

By John-Paul Ford Rojas   |  13 Feb 2013  |  www.telegraph.co.uk

As a post-coital ritual it has been described by researchers as “extremely peculiar” even among the often surprising behaviours of the animal kingdom. Scientists have discovered that the love life of a sea slug involves more than just losing its heart.

A study of the thumb-sized animal by Japanese biologists has revealed how it sheds its penis after sex, before growing a new one.

“No other animal is known to repeatedly copulate using such ‘disposable penes’,” they wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

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Guam pins hopes on poisoned mice wearing parachutes

4 Mar

I love creative solutions. Hopefully, this will work.

Image davidbenardo, flckr http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbenardo/7108492583/

Image davidbenardo, flckr http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbenardo/7108492583/

Parachuting poison mice combat Guam tree snakes

www.islandsbusiness.com  |  Thu 28 Feb 2013

HAGATNA, Guam— The US Department of Agriculture will drop mice laced with a sedative deadly to brown tree snakes around the island’s Andersen Air Force Base over the next couple of months.

Daniel Vice from the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services has told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat the snake is a serious threat to wildlife.

“Virtually all of the tropical west Pacific is potentially at risk from brown tree snakes,” he said.

“We’ve had them turn up on virtually every island in Micronesia associated with some sort of transportation from Guam.”

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First Grader Zora Ball Youngest Person to Create Mobile App Video Game

20 Feb

I love everything about this story, everything.

Zora Ball. Image www.techyville.com

Zora Ball. Image www.techyville.com

Zora Ball, with her parents, Curtis and Jackie. Image Cherri Gregg

Zora Ball, with her parents, Curtis and Jackie. Image Cherri Gregg

First Grader Zora Ball Becomes Youngest Person to Create Mobile App Video Game

Pint-size programmer develops app

by Janel Martinez  |  www.blackenterprise.com  |  February 15, 2013

Think back to your first grade days when your innovative thoughts inspired the creation of gold-sprayed macaroni collages, paper mâché pieces and indoor cardboard box castles. If you haven’t noticed, the creative process has changed a bit–especially with school-age children having access to technology, namely mobile devices.

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Hundreds injured in Russian meteor explosion

15 Feb

Oh wow. Truly amazing event captured by average people on a variety of devices. I cannot imagine how massive the shockwave was. Video of this event is great because you can hear the strange sounds, enormous boom, wonder, and confusion.

The latest reports state that close to 1,000  people have been injured and chunks of the meteor have been found in a local lake.

I may be updating this information several times today as the story evolves.

Map

Suspected landing site of the meteor. The fact it is underwater will make recoverey slower, more dangerous and hopeuflly discourage black market trade in the highly valuable meteorite. Image from http://t.co/9k5ZrKRF

Suspected landing site of the meteor. The fact it is underwater will make recovery slower, more dangerous, and hopefully discourage black market trade in the highly valuable meteorite. Image from http://t.co/9k5ZrKRF

 Meteor Fragments Are Said to Rain Down on Siberia

By ELLEN BARRY and ANDREW E. KRAMER  | February 15, 2013  |  The New York Times

MOSCOW — Bright objects, apparently debris from a meteor, streaked through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, accompanied by a boom that damaged buildings across a vast territory. Russia’s Interior Ministry said more than 1,000 people were hurt, 200 of them children, mostly from shards of glass that shattered when the meteor entered the atmosphere.

Many of the injuries were suffered by residents of the city of Chelyabinsk, about 950 miles east of Moscow, in a region where many factories for defense, including nuclear weapons production, are situated. But there was no indication of damage that resulted in any radiation leaks, officials said.

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Rabies vaccine airdropped in wildlife areas

30 Jan

Apparently airdropping rabies vaccine is a common and established practice but it is new and startling idea to me. Personally, I like the idea of vaccines and the theory of herd immunity makes sense to me.  Before vaccinations communicable illnesses would literally decimate civilizations. However, others disagree and attribute everything from autism to diseases being created to line corporate pockets.

Bottom line, if you had pets and lived near these areas would you rather Fido ate yummy fish flavored rabies vaccine they found on the ground or  your face?

The DSHS Prepares for Aerial Rabies Vaccination Drop 01/02/12

News Staff  |  January 2, 2012  |  www.cbs7kosa.com

The Texas Department of State Health Services will make its annual rabies vaccine airdrop this week.

Planes will take off from the Alpine- Casparis Municipal Airport around dawn on Wednesday, January 4, to drop approximately 1.8 million doses of the rabies vaccine in West Texas, as part of the DSHS Oral Rabies Vaccination Program.

Counties in the vaccination drop area include: Brewster, Crockett, Culberson, Edwards, Jeff Davis, Kinney, Maverick, Pecos, Presidio, Reeves, Terrell and Val Verde.

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“Demntia Village” radical new approach to senior living

20 Jan

I love everything about this concept and it is one of those things that make me want to relocate to another country. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this concept spreads?

 

The village where people have dementia – and fun

27 August 2012  |  guardian.co.uk

How is society to look after the ever-growing number of people with dementia? A curiously uplifting care home near Amsterdam may have the answers.

Jo Verhoeff twinkles; there’s no other word for it. She bounces from her sofa beaming, and takes your hand. Welcome, she says. It’s nice here; you’ll like it. The people are friendly and there’s so much to do: shopping, cooking, bingo, the classical music club.

So it’s a nice place to come and visit, once in a while. Jo comes quite often when she’s not at work; she’s a secretary in an office, you see, in Amsterdam. Lives with her parents in Diemen, not very far from the city. Her father’s a bookkeeper.

Except … wait. She has a husband, hasn’t she? And two children, still small. Darlings, both of them. How can that all work? Especially since – now she comes to think of it – she actually sleeps here, sometimes. Doesn’t she? She certainly eats meals here; very tasty.

But never mind. “You really must,” says Jo, pushing this unwanted rush of apparently irreconcilable realities firmly to one side, “come and meet my family. All of them. They would love it, I’m sure. If you like, one day next week you can come to my house and have coffee. Would you like that?”

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Swim faster Misty, Chincoteague is sinking

18 Jan

Christmas 2013 “miracle” comet predicted

14 Jan

The most miraculous thing to me is that this stupendous, amazing comet was only recently discovered.

Christmas ‘miracle’ comet could be as bright as the full moon

Bryan Nelson  |  Tue, Oct 09 2012  |  mother nature network

A newly discovered comet could offer a once-in-a-civilization night-sky viewing opportunity that may not come again in our lifetime.

Currently a faint spec in the night sky, Comet ISON (C/2012 S1) was only just discovered. But as it emerges from the haze of the distant Oort Cloud and makes a close pass around our sun late next year, it could turn into the brightest comet anyone alive has ever seen, reports Sky & Telescope. During its closest approach to the Earth, in the weeks leading up to Christmas in 2013 it could even be as bright as the full moon.
The comet will be made even more spectacular due to its close pass around the sun. At perihelion, or its closest approach, ISON will only have about 1.16 million miles between it and the sun’s surface. This will cause an extreme melt-off of its ice, which will release gas and dust and form a gloriously long, splendid tail.
It will then make a relatively close swing past Earth just a few weeks after perihelion. At its closest, about 40 million miles from our planet, the sky should be moonless, which will only add to the comet’s glow. Since all of this is set to occur around Christmas time, it could be viewed as a miracle by some.

High School kids send Rubber chicken into space

14 Jan

Kids these days.

 

High School Students Send Rubber Chicken Into Space

High school students in Bishop, California sent a rubber chicken, named Camilla Corona, into space during last month’s intense radiation storm. Camilla was exposed to high-energy solar protons at an altitude of nearly 120,000 feet. The students equipped Camilla with sensors to measure the radiation for an astrobiology project. Camilla’s payload also included insects and sunflower seeds, so they kids could see how they responded to the journey. You can read more about the experiments here. Camilla is NASA SDO’s mission mascot. She can be found on Twitter, @Camilla_SDO.

Here is a video of Camilla at 119,000 feet after her propulsion system (helium balloon) burst and she was sent plunging back to Earth. Fortunately, Camilla had a parachute. Take a look:

Science finds protein that makes human the smartest earth critter

21 Aug

I like that particle is named DUF1220, which has the same Latin root as doofus. Ok, not really.

“The one over-riding theme that we saw repeatedly was the more copies of DUF1220 in the genome, the bigger the brain. And this held true whether we looked at different species or within the human population,”

 

A protein particle that made humans most intelligent found

www.phenomenica.com  |  August 20, 2012

Scientists have discovered that a tiny particle within a protein allowed humans to become the most intelligent creatures on the planet.

Researchers from the University of Colorado found that the protein domain issue known as DUF1220 holds the key to understanding why our brains are so much bigger and more complex than any other animal, the Daily Mail reported.

DUF1220 is a protein domain of unknown function that shows a striking human-specific increase in copy number is considered important to human brain evolution.

Humans have more than 270 copies of DUF1220 encoded in their DNA, far more than other species.

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Mutant butterflies found near Fukushima Japan

18 Aug

As one headline stated, what do deformed butterflies mean for the people living near Fukushima?

This handout photo, released Tuesday, shows a healthy adult pale grass blue butterfly (top) and a mutated variety (bottom). Severe mutations were found in butterflies collected near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Image Joji Otaki / EPA

Study: Japan nuclear disaster caused mutated butterflies

By Arata Yamamoto |  NBC News

TOKYO — Researchers in Japan have found signs of mutation in butterflies, signaling one of the first indications of change to the local ecosystem as a result of last year’s nuclear accident in Fukushima, according to one of the first studies on the genetic effects of the incident.

Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, who led the research, collected 144 commonly-found pale grass blue butterflies two months after the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

Initial results indicated that roughly 12 percent of the butterflies showed signs of abnormalities, such as disfigurement in their antennas, smaller-sized wings, change in color patterns and indented eyes, Otaki said.

Even more alarming, when he collected another 238 samples six months later he found that those abnormalities had increased to 28 percent and the mutations had doubled to 52 percent in their offspring.

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