The blog of a boggled nerd

So I can follow my favorite science and news sites.

[earthstory]

Deepening drought

In December, California was hit by an “atmospheric river” event, a storm fed by a stream of moisture directly from the tropics. That storm dumped several centimeters of rain on the entire state over a period of several days, offering some hope that the long drought in the state might be coming to an end.

Unfortunately, January has been much the same as the last year, another month missing the rain. January is on track to be a record dry month for many areas of the state, leading to further depletion of the mountain snowpack that the entire state relies upon for its water supplies during dry seasons. In San Francisco, January 2015 is the first January since records began in 1850 with absolutely 0 rainfall at the official recording station at the airport.

Hope for an El Niño event that could have signaled a break in the drought has faded and the state seems en route to yet another record-dry winter despite the early-season rain. On top of the depletion of water supplies in California, the drought is impacting other areas, with snowpacks in Arizona below average and the demand from California beginning to wear down the supplies of other neighboring states.

-JBB

Image credit: LA Times Graphics http://lat.ms/1GtIYQ3

Read more: http://slate.me/1yGfvL1 http://bit.ly/1LxaMFQ http://tmblr.co/Zyv2Js_P34XM

[sciteachers]

For teaching: environmental science

[theverge]

Human spaceflight to scale

[skunkbear]

Google’s new Periodic Table of Elements is pretty cool - I especially like the electrons tab.

[sciteachers]

For teaching: chemistry

[fuel-for-ignition-deactivated20]

Relationships among Scientific Paradigms

A visualization of science that was generated by clustering citation-based papers

Here’s a description by the developers:

As to what the image depicts, it was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 scientific papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as red and blue circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers. Links (curved lines) were made between the paradigms that shared common members, then treated as rubber bands, holding similar paradigms closer to one another when a physical simulation forced them all apart: thus the layout derives directly from the data. Larger paradigms have more papers. Labels list common words unique to each paradigm.

you can see it at 13,566,672 pixels here

[sciteachers]

For teaching: science!

[wildlife-pirate]

Wildlife corridors

Habitat fragmentation is a major contributor to human-wildlife conflict. Small “islands” of habitat often don’t have the carrying capacity for the animals that are forced to depend on it, which leads them to wander out into human settlements in search of food. Also, in the case of migratory species, when their migration routes are broken up by man-made structures the species will often continue on these routes, and in doing so, come in contact with humans, cars, homes, and farms.

What’s the solution? The real solution is to account for habitat connectivity when planning on where to put villages, farms, roads, and whatever else. But, this future planning can’t help the places where fragmentation is already a problem. For habitat that is already fragmented, one method is to “unfragment” it. Enter wildlife corridors. Wildlife corridors connect patches of habitat. They can be overpasses, underpasses, swaths of land, backyards etc. In most papers their main purpose is stated as aiding in dispersal and genetic exchange between populations. However, an added perk is that increasing habitat connectivity decreases the need for animals to leave their habitat in the first place, thusly decreasing conflict. Designing these corridors is no small feat though. Their design takes careful planning and a thorough understanding of the target species and their movement patterns. Luckily, there are people out there who devote their time to making these corridors happen: 

A Maasai group ranch recently leased some of their land to be designated as a corridor for elephants in Kenya; Panthera has their huge Jaguar Corridor Initiative where they are trying to connect jaguar ranges throughout South America; and a corridor is being planned in California across route 101. And of course there are the hugely successful corridors that have already been trod upon by many paws and hooves. Banff National Park has an overpass and underpass, both shown above (2nd and 3rd pics). In Kenya, a highway underpass as reunited two herds of elephants (bottom picture). There is also the China-Russia Tiger Corridor, established in 2012 for the highly endangered Amur Tiger! 

Image sources HERE, HERE, and HERE.

[txchnologist]

Smartphone Attachment Detects HIV, Syphilis In 15 Minutes

by Michael Keller

A new hand-sized smartphone attachment can diagnose HIV and syphilis in 15 minutes with a single drop of blood. Its Columbia University creators say the low-cost device brings all of the functionality of a medical lab to the patient for the first time.

Their dongle draws all the power it needs from the smartphone to which it is connected to perform a blood test that identifies markers for the two infectious diseases. The entire unit, which uses disposable plastic cassettes to run disease-spotting enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay tests, can be produced for $34. It uses an approach involving microfluidics, which moves the tiny volume of blood in a drop around to interact with different molecules for analysis.

"Our work shows that a full laboratory-quality immunoassay can be run on a smartphone accessory," says biomedical engineer Samuel Sia. "Coupling microfluidics with recent advances in consumer electronics can make certain lab-based diagnostics accessible to almost any population with access to smartphones. This kind of capability can transform how health care services are delivered around the world."

Sia recently spoke with Txchnologist about his groundbreaking work delivering advanced medical diagnostic tools to people.

Read More

[platypusking-deactivated2016072]

A raven stretches its wings as it sits on a post inside the 30 km (18 miles) exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near the village of Babchin, Belarus on December 23, 2009. The sign reads: “Radiation hazard”.

[nerdboggle]

Naturally-occuring Gothness. Quoth the raven, "Forever store."

[mothernaturenetwork]

The health benefits of Granny Smith apples Research links the tart fruit to compounds that can help prevent obesity and its associated problems.

[nerdboggle]

I eat one of these almost everyday, chopped and microwaved with oatmeal. But I'm still fat.

[wolverxne]

[nerdboggle]

Foxes are the cattiest canines.

[translucentmind]

Space Fantasy Painting #1 // Dean Ellis

[angels-are-watching]

Can we please talk about how our history teacher sent a barbie to the smithsonian as proof of the presence of man two million years ago

[bonequeer]

pleas,e for the love of God read the whole letter, there are tears streamign down my face rn

[hemipelagicdredger]

this…this is fantastic

[brookhavenlab]

We use massive electromagnets to steer and track particles, and we’ve got a 40,000-pound beauty headed our way. The magnet left SLAC Lab on Friday, Jan. 16, after a raucous run at the heart of the BaBar experiment.

The tech is similar to an MRI—both use strong, uniform magnetic fields surrounding a target—but we’re mapping the building blocks of matter. And while an elephant could technically fit into this solenoid stunner, it’ll be used exclusively on smashed atoms. Plus, the weight of an elephant would ruin all the crucial precision engineering.

[sciteachers]

Brookhaven RHIC and CERN Large Hadron Colider (LHC) both set to resume operations in 2015!

LHC analyses particle physics, RHIC is used for high-energy nuclear physics, so they study fundamentally different phenomena (with limited overlap).

- How the RHIC works

- How the LHC will go beyond the Standard Model of particle physics in 2015

- Learn how Brookhaven and the LHC each contribute to our understanding of particle physics and the early conditions of the universe.

For teaching: physics

[planned-planethood]

Wow. Elon Musk has named his autonomous drone ships (where the SpaceX rockets attempt their landings) after some things from the novels of Iain M. Banks, who died recently of cancer.

These names are “Just Read the Instructions” and “Of Course I Still Love You”.

I’ve been involved in the science fiction community for a while (mostly as a fan) and was going to travel to London last year in order to meet Mr. Banks.

If you’re not much for science fiction (you should be! 😊) then you might be interested in Bank’s novel the Wasp Factory. Only if you’ve got an iron stomach though, it’s not for the faint of heart.

An interesting quirk Banks had was his fearlessness in the face of criticism:

He’d put the worst reviews of his books on the covers.

On the Wasp Factory:

"There’s nothing to force you, having been warned, to read it; nor do I recommend it." - The Scotsman "Rubbish!" - The Times (London) "A literary equivalent of the nastiest brand of juvenile delinquency." - Times Literary Supplement 

Rest in peace.

[compoundchem]

This week, scientists unveiled the first ever silicene transistors. Silicene is the silicon-based analogue of graphene; its existence was debated as little as two years ago, but this illustration of its use in transistors could pave the way for eventual use in commercial electronics. Featured in this week’s 'This Week in Chemistry'.

[compoundchem]

South Korean researchers have produced a strengthened, lightweight steel stronger than titanium alloys. Featured in this week’s 'This Week in Chemistry'.

[nerdboggle]

The mysteries of chili heat: Why people love the pain

This is the first article I remember having read about hot peppers that explains how a pepper's Scoville Units are determined.

In 1912, there was no simple chemical test to detect capsaicin—only the sense of taste. Scoville ground up dried peppers and prepared extracts of different strengths. He assembled a panel of five lab colleagues. If a sample tasted hot, he diluted it repeatedly until no heat could be detected. The more dilution required to eliminate the last trace of burn, the hotter the pepper was.

Scoville had found a way to quantify a subjective sensation, an important achievement. He called it the Scoville Organoleptic Test, with heat measured in Scoville units. A rating of one million Scoville units meant that the extract had to be diluted to a concentration of one part per million before its heat disappeared. This approach was somewhat imprecise, because people have varying sensitivities to heat just as they do to other flavors, which is why today, the absolute concentration of capsaicin in a pepper is measured with a chromatograph and then converted to Scoville units.

[compoundchem]

It’s Dmitri Mendeleev’s birthday tomorrow - here’s a refresh of an old graphic on trends in various properties across the periodic table: http://wp.me/p4aPLT-54