Science Popularis

The science blog with all the science you need to know. Keep up to date with the latest news in the science world, from evolution to the environment, Science Popularis has it covered.

[sciencepopularis-blog]

Curiosity's Journey Mapped in One Incredible Image

At the far left you can see the burn scar present at the landing site, away from which leads the tracks which tell curiosity's journey thus far.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL

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Why Does Being Well-Read Mean Shakespeare and Not Science?

A really interesting read from Sylvia McLain - Why is it that culturally, we don't expect scientific literacy, despite it being the heart of many aspects of modern life? What do you think? Personally I think that everyone should stop banging on about Brian Cox.

[sciencepopularis-blog]

The interior of the space shuttle Endeavour - signed by everyone who worked on it, Ronald Reagan and Clint Eastwood

Photo credit: Ben Cooper

[sciencepopularis-blog]

How the Whale Got His Throat - The science behind Rudyard Kipling's children's stories

BBC Radio 4 are currently running a series on Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories' which explains the science behind the stories ponderous questions including 'How the Camel Got His Hump' and 'How the Whale Got His Throat'.

The programmes run all this week on BBC Radio 4.

[sciencesoup]

The Ig Nobel Prize

Everyone needs to pause for a moment and appreciate the existence of the Ig Nobel Prize. These annual awards are organized by the scientific humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research and are basically the Nobel Prize’s bastard little brother, awarded to bizarre, imaginative and seemingly pointless scientific achievements. Fantastic achievements in science are often also fantastically absurd, and the Ig Nobel Prize honours these in a good-humoured, tongue-in-cheek way, aiming to “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” Some of my favourite awards from the last few years include:

2012 Neuroscience Prize: For testing out MRI on a dead salmon to show that brain researchers can see meaningful brain activity in nearly anything.

2012 Literature Prize: For a report issued about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.

2012 Medicine Prize: For advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance of their patients exploding.

2011 Peace Prize: For demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armoured tank.

2010 Engineering Prize: For perfecting a method to collect whale snot using a remote-control helicopter.

2009 Public Health Prize: For inventing a bra that can be converted into two protective face masks in an emergency.

2008 Cognitive Science Prize: For discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.

2007 Peace Prize: For research into a chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.

See more winners here!

[kny111]

[sciencepopularis-blog]

ikenbot:

Nile-Like River Spotted on Saturn Moon Titan

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured a crisp image of a long river cutting across Saturn’s huge moon Titan.

Image: A river near the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan, imaged by the Cassini spacecraft on Sept. 26, 2012. The river valley stretches more than 250 miles from its ‘headwaters’ to a large sea and likely contains hydrocarbons. Credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/ASI

The hydrocarbon-filled river stretches more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) from its source to a large sea near frigid Titan’s north pole. Cassini’s radar image is the first high-resolution shot ever taken of such a vast river system on a world beyond Earth, researchers said, and scientists are comparing it to Earth’s Nile River in Egypt.

“Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea,” Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University, said in a statement.

[thescienceofreality]

[sciencepopularis-blog]

thescienceofreality:

Throw-Away Photographs Shot During Neil Armstrong’s Visit to the Moon.

“Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin snapped a total of 122 70mm color photographs using modified Hasselblad 500EL cameras during their short visit on July 21, 1969. However, not all of them were pretty.

American Photo magazine writes that the photographic record left by those two men shows a very human picture of that first landing. Some of the “dud” photos show accidental shutter preses, focusing errors, lens flare, and even photobombed landscape shots.” [x]

You can find the entire collection of 122 photographs on this NASA website, listed in chronological order.

[wespeakfortheearth]

[sciencepopularis-blog]

wespeakfortheearth:

Ready to Crack

A massive crack in the ice may herald an enormous rift in the ice of the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica.

Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Satellite images suggest that the glacier is poised to calve off an iceberg or icebergs that size of New York City. Sea ice has kept the unstable region locked in, but as this Oct. 26, 2012 Landsat 7 image reveals, the spring melt has cleared the sea in front of the glacier’s calving face.

[kny111]

[sciencepopularis-blog]

ikenbot:

Horsehead Nebula Could Be Giant Petroleum Refinery

Molecules discovered in the Horsehead Nebula hint that the region may function as a kind of gigantic, natural petroleum refinery.

Observations made using the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy’s (IRAM) 30-metre telescope have detected the presence of hydrocarbon molecule C3H+ in the Horsehead Nebula, which sits around 1,300 to 1,500 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion.

Jérôme Pety and his team at the IRAM facility in the Spanish Sierra Nevada were surveying the nebula, a dense cloud of gases and dust, to discover more about its chemical content. Among the data they found unexpectedly high levels of the propynylidyne ion C3H+, which is one of the molecules that makes up oil and natural gas on Earth.

“We are seeing the operation of a natural refinery of petroleum on a giant scale,” said Pety of the results.

You can get an idea for just how giant the intergalactic hydrocarbon resource is thanks to astronomer Viviana Guzman, who adds that the nebula “contains 200 times more hydrocarbons than the total amount of water on Earth”.

The discovery of the molecule is evidence that a giant interstellar refinery exists within our galaxy, as C3H+ is created when polyaromatic hydrocarbons (commonly found in coal, tar and petroleum products) are broken down by radiation. In the case of the Horsehead Nebula, the nebula would provide the gas while nearby stars offer the required radiation.

[doublechocolatemilk]

[sciencepopularis-blog]

Wellcome Image Awards 2012

doublechocolatemilk:

Three of the 16 photos selected for the Wellcome Image Awards of 2012. The first is of Xenopus laevis oocytes, taken by Vincent Pasque. The second is of Psychodidae (or a Moth Fly), and was taken by Kevin Mackenzie. The final image is scanning electron micrograph of a microneedle vaccine, and was taken by Peter Demuth. 

[sciencepopularis-blog]

Cheer up Pithecia pithecia, it's Friday!

Credit: Left4Cookies

[neurosciencestuff]

[sciencepopularis-blog]

neurosciencestuff:

Nose cell transplant enables paralysed dogs to walk

Scientists have reversed paralysis in dogs after injecting them with cells grown from the lining of their nose.

The pets had all suffered spinal injuries which prevented them from using their back legs. The Cambridge University team is cautiously optimistic the technique could eventually have a role in the treatment of human patients. The study is the first to test the transplant in “real-life” injuries rather than laboratory animals.

In the study, funded by the Medical Research Council and published in the neurology journal Brain, the dogs had olfactory ensheathing cells from the lining of their nose removed. These were grown and expanded for several weeks in the laboratory.

[sciencepopularis-blog]

Paradise Lost, The island that cannot be found

A South Pacific island, shown on marine charts and world maps as well as on Google Earth and Google Maps, does not exist, Australian scientists say.

[sciencepopularis-blog]

Early birds, genetics and death: A question of variants

An amazing tale of how a single base change in our DNA effects what time we wake up and what time we die.

A figure depicting death adorns the frame of Prague's Orloj (astronomical clock) and beats his drum upon the hour. The historical references encapsulating our deaths and our favourite timekeeping piece are numerous, but as science has progressed a third party has come to the table; genetics.

The genetics of death is becoming increasingly understood due to research in clinical genetics and ageing. However, it's role in the biological timepiece present within all of us, the so called circadian rhythm, is only beginning to be unwound.

Research has shown that a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) near the gene PER1 can alter an individual's sleep pattern by an average of 67 minutes. Incredibly this genetic variant was also effected the mean time of death with a difference of 7 hours between GG homozygotes and AA/AG inividuals. This SNP, which occurs outside of the coding region of the gene, could lead to these drastic variabilities by altering expression levels of the gene PER1. 

Primary research

[rcruzniemiec-deactivated2013020]

[sciencepopularis-blog]

rcruzniemiec:

Science, Art and Food

Artist Caren Alpert takes these photographs of food under an electron microscope showing us what is there up close that we rarely get to see: hidden landscapes, patterns and textures.

terra cibus no.12: cake sprinkles

terra cibus no.39: red cabbage

terra cibus no.6: red licorice

terra cibus no.32: shrimp tail

terra cibus no.2: chocolate cake 2

[sciencepopularis-blog]

Newcastle Science Central set to become a flagship location for science and technology

Located in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne city centre, Newcastle Science Central (NSC) is being developed as a public space which will accommodate business, industry and research. The development has been dubbed the "jewel in the crown" of Newcastle's 'most sustainable UK city' award. NSC will also accommodate retail, restaurant and sustainable living spaces. This represents a great opportunity to integrate research into an attractive public environment. 

The development's progression is setting the foundation for sustainability by offsetting the carbon intensive development through soil engineering. This will help the site to capture a potential 65,000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. Not only is it a green development, it's only 5 minutes walk from my house; something I'm sure you are all very excited about......

[sciencepopularis-blog]

Genome sequencing tracks MRSA infection source

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a species of bacterium which has become particularly persistent in hospitals. The infections caused by the bacterium are difficult to treat because of its drug resistance. It's a pesky bugger.

For the first time, scientists have tracked an individual hospital outbreak back to the source by sequencing staff and patient genomes. This has allowed them to treat the carrier individual and prevent further spread. Reminiscent of CSI but with less sports cars and bogus science.

Research Paper