SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

Probing into Depression

2009-11-11T13:30:36+00:00

Deep brain stimulation, already established as a treatment for stubborn Parkinson’s disease, may also be useful as a therapy for drug-resistant clinical depression.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-11-10T17:44:34+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

A spacecraft that sets sail on waves of light (source: Nytimes.com)
Yesterday, the Planetary Society, an advocacy organization for space exploration co-founded by the late Carl Sagan, announced plans to test multiple “solar sails” in outer space over the next three years. Solar sails are gossamer-thin membranous spacecraft that use the slight pressure from pure starlight to propel themselves. Since they require no onboard fuel, solar sails could ultimately make interplanetary—even interstellar—travel cheaper and more practical.
Why do leaves fall? (source: Npr.org)
NPR science correspondent Robert Krulwich investigates the science behind one of the simplest questions of autumn: Why do leaves fall off trees? The answer may surprise you.
ET and the Pope walk into a bar... (source: Washingtonpost.com)
This week, the Vatican is holding its first major conference on astrobiology. As this burgeoning field of science brings humanity closer to what seems the nigh-inevitable discovery of extraterrestrial life, thoughtful religious leaders are beginning to grapple with questions such discoveries would raise for their faiths.
Bioengineered genitalia make rabbits even more randy (source: Wired.com)
The art and science of creating replacement body parts through bioengineering has shown amazing progress over the years. First it was soft tissue like ears, then bladders, and now... penises. Using collagen scaffolds and tissue samples, researchers have successfully grown fully functional penises for rabbits. Interestingly, the bioengineered rabbits seemed even more eager than their all-natural counterparts to copulate when given the opportunity. It’s hoped the technique may eventually be useful in humans.
Carl Sagan meets Sigur Rós (source: Scienceblogs.com)
If the late, great astronomer Carl Sagan were still alive, yesterday he would have celebrated his 75th birthday. Though he died in 1996, Sagan’s legacy endures today, not only through his multiple contributions to science, but also through his inspirational, humbling appeals for the entire planet. This goosebump-giving mash-up combines Sagan’s narration of his famous “pale blue dot” soliloquy with haunting images of world news events and the sound of the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós.

Bioplastics Man

2009-11-10T13:30:24+00:00

Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics industry and why both oceans and landfills will benefit.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-11-09T16:42:20+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

Happy Carl Sagan Day! (source: Neatorama)
Carl Sagan was born on November 9, 1934, and to honor the great champion of science, Neatorama has compiled ten interesting tidbits about his illustrious career and fascinating life.
Giant stingray captured on film for the first time (source: BBC Earth)
Though the smalleye stingray was discovered over a century ago, no specimen of this largest variety have ever been documented like this before.
With a nudge, better behavior can be fun (source: Volkswagen)
In a clever combination of behavioral economics and public art, Volkswagen Sweden documents what happens when you inject a little fun into healthier, more sustainable alternatives.
Finding the intersection of Interesting, Easy, Beautiful, and True (source: Information is Beautiful )
David McCandless plots the intersections of four key components of successful visualization—interestingness, integrity, form, and function —and satisfies all four in the process.
A Martian request from the US Navy, 1924 (source: Letters of Note)
When the Earth and Mars neared each other in 1924 (they were a mere 55 million kilometers apart), the Navy sent out a request to astronomers to help them pick up any transmission that might be coming from their Martian counterparts.

Mars: A Teeming Past?

2009-11-09T13:30:51+00:00

Questions of extraterrestrial life rest on theories of Martian history.

What Life Leaves Behind

2009-11-09T13:29:53+00:00

The search for life beyond our pale blue dot is fraught with dashed hopes. Will the chemical and mineral fingerprints of Earthly organisms apply on other worlds?

Sad Sacks

2009-11-06T13:25:04+00:00

As a UK adviser is fired over politically unpalatable advice and an English teacher is suspended over an article about animal sexuality, the fate of facts is on the line.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-11-05T22:33:25+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

The ultimate experiment in financial forecasting (source: The Arxiv Blog)
Swiss econophysicist Didier Sornette has had some surprising success predicting market bubbles--but now, to test if his forecasts are truly bona fide, he's sealing them in an electronic envelope and entrusting them to the arXiv, to be opened next May.
Threatened by fault lines, Iranian capital to be moved (source: Highly Allochthonous)
When geology meets policy, the results can be radical. Iran has rubber-stamped plans to move the nation's capital to a brand new or existing city in an area less threatened by deadly quakes, as Tehran, the current capital, sits at a nexus of faults: Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous lays out the tectonic map for readers and muses on whether a stringent quake code might be more effective.
Brain disease stopped in its tracks (source: ScienceNow)
Experts say a landmark study is the most promising stride in years for gene therapy, the practice of treating genetic disease with biotechnology. Scientists have halted the progress of a degenerative brain disease in two seven-year-old boys, adding genes for missing proteins into their cells with a modified virus.
Why smart people get a simple question wrong (source: Via Cosmic Variance)
Anne is looking at George, but Jack is looking at Anne. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? The latest Scientific American logic puzzle is harder than you think.
'How a bunch of nobodies created the world's greatest encyclopedia' (source: Boston Review)
Andrew Lih, who joined Wikipedia in its infancy, has written the first popular history of the internet phenomenon. But, says one reviewer, he may be as in the dark as everyone else as to why Wikipedia, a mysterious synergy of nerdiness and philosophy, works.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-11-05T17:34:57+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

Where’s the beef? (source: The New Yorker)
Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the best-selling novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, tackles the very non-fictive subject of industrial animal farming in his latest book, Eating Animals. Reviewer Elizabeth Kolbert praises Foer for challenging us to change our “sentimental,” carnivorous ways. And yet, she wonders whether vegetarianism is enough to counteract the “death and destruction” that is embedded in just about all that society does.
Giant jellyfish takes down boat (source: The Telegraph)
Jellyfish weighing upwards of 200 kilograms are proliferating in the coastal waters of Japan, say scientists, damaging fishing equipment and in this case, threatening the lives of fishermen.
Are scientists addicted to predictions? (source: The Scientist)
Scientists seem more prone to exaggerate the promises of their work; and the more ominous or hysterical their predictions, the better. Science didn’t used to be like this, says Stuart Blackman. What’s going on?
Fluid mechanics + an Asian aesthetic begets fine art (source: Segami Studios)
Artist and engineer Amy Lee Segami paints on water in a contemporary version of the ancient Asian art form, Suminagashi, dripping acrylic paint on the surface of water and then using a variety of tools, such as traditional Chinese brushes, feathers, and acupuncture needles to create turbulent and laminar flow patterns. Check it out in this online gallery.
Healthcare is like… Paul Cezanne (source: Times Online)
Healthcare in the UK is going full throttle into the information age, with the digitization of personal medical records, emailed prescriptions, and online insurance services. According to Malcolm Gladwell, that master of the far-flung metaphor, healthcare overhaul will be less like the radical Pablo Picasso and more like Paul Cezanne, a slower, more deliberative revolutionary.

A Miniature Miscellany

2009-11-05T13:30:11+00:00

In their newest collaboration, Felice Frankel and George Whitesides explore the nanoscale world, meandering from molecules to quantum dots and pondering what science has in store for the future.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-11-04T19:48:30+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

Even some of nature’s most legendary antagonists have a soft side. (source: Physorg.com)
A new study discovers some surprisingly altruistic behavior among army ants: When the queen of an army ant colony dies, the orphans she leaves behind are adopted by neighboring colonies.
Does true love thrive on cyberspace? (source: The Primate Diaries)
Anthropologist Stefana Broadbent argues in a TED Talk that, contrary to popular thinking, the internet allows us to build more intimate connections with one another than ever before.
An offbeat designer goes couch surfing on brainwaves. (source: Mind Hacks)
The Brain Wave Sofa, built by artist Lucas Maassen, is a truly original piece of furniture designed using EEG (or brain wave) data.
Good guessers make for good scientists. (source: New York Times)
According to Olivia Judson, science is usually presented to students as “as a body of knowledge—facts to be memorized, equations to be solved, concepts to be understood, discoveries to be applauded.” In her latest blog post she argues that this view undervalues the importance of speculation and creativity to scientific discovery.
Did we have sex with the Neanderthals? (source: LiveScience)
LiveScience counts down 10 of the most interesting questions still unanswered about human evolutionary history.

Sweet Obesity

2009-11-04T13:30:21+00:00

As obesity rates soar, Americans are consuming more low-calorie artificial sweeteners. But do artificial sweeteners actually help people lose weight?

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-11-03T17:12:30+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

How habitable is the Earth? (source: Antipope.org)
In the tradition of thought experiments like Schrödinger’s cat and Einstein’s falling elevators, science fiction author Charles Stross speculates on how an alien space probe might rate Earth’s habitability—with surprising results.
URL-shorteners threaten the internet! (source: Openthefuture.com)
In this essay, Jamais Cascio argues that URL-shorteners, services that compress a web address into a shorter string of characters, are a double-edged sword. Though crucial for text-limited services like SMS and Twitter, URL-shorteners also pose threats to online resiliency—in other words, when they create broken links there is no easy or clear way to fix the problem. Fortunately, Cascio suggests several possible solutions. The question is, are any relevant tech companies listening?
New project timestamps lava flows. (source: Longnow.org)
A short film called The Lava Project Documentary follows a group of artists, the White Elephant DesignLab, as they clamber across fresh lava flows at the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. Using an aluminum and hardwood stamp, the team imprinted “02009” on cooling lava, which will now display its “born on” date for geological posterity. The project, the group says, is an exercise in long-term thinking.
Grab a God’s-eye view of the breathing Earth. (source: Breathingearth.net)
In this sobering simulation from the artist David Bleja, observe each country’s estimated carbon emissions in real time, along with each country’s rates of human births and deaths. Though doubtlessly a crude approximation, Bleja’s simulation still speaks with urgency about the pressing need for real action in the face of anthropogenic climate change.
Witness the illumination of Mark Twain. (source: Kottke.org)
Though it has been explored in several works of fiction and non-fiction, the friendship between the author Mark Twain and the inventor Nikola Tesla remains one of the most curious and fascinating science/culture tales from 19th-century fin de siècle. This photograph of Twain in Tesla’s lab dates from 1894, and originally appeared in an 1895 article about Tesla’s inventions. Tesla himself can be seen as a mustachioed blur in the background.

A Man on the Edge

2009-11-03T13:30:04+00:00

A new biography explores Jacques Cousteau’s strange and colorful life but struggles to uncover why he has been so quickly forgotten.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-11-02T17:21:40+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

Zoom in on a carbon atom (source: Learn.Genetics)
Shades of Ray and Charles Eames’ Power of 10 are on display in this slickly-produced graphic from the University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Center.
Cloud seeding results in Beijing snow (source: BBC News)
Weather control was a hot topic leading up to the Beijing Olympics, but Chinese scientists have again shown they can make it precipitate at will.
A unified theory of Superman’s powers (source: i09)
Everyone knows that Earth’s yellow sun is what supercharges Superman’s superpowers, but how does the same guy shoot lasers from his eyes and frozen breath from his mouth? A clever trick of physics could explain it all.
Mapping movie complexity (source: XKCD)
Randal Munroe picks up where Steven Johnson left off in Everything Bad is Good for You with this series of charts. Comparing the complexity of character interactions of 12 Angry Men and Lord of the Rings, is the latter actually the smarter movie?"
Fired British science adviser fires back (source: Nature News)
After publicly disagreeing with the UK’s hard-line stance on the dangers of ecstasy and cannabis, David Nutt was fired from his post as the top British drug adviser. He’s now speaking out about as what he sees as the decline of “evidence-based government.”

Books to Read Now

2009-11-02T12:30:28+00:00

November releases feature the mysteries of Grigori Perelman, the evolutionary origins of reading, and strategies for containing strains of flu.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-10-30T12:47:48+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

Bipedal bot marches toward military applications (source: Technology Review)
Military roboticists have constructed an eerily human set of legs that they plan to use for testing chemical protection suits. The robot legs, known as "Petman," will even be able to sweat in order to simulate real conditions. Check out the video of Petman striding along a treadmill, adjusting when pushed and demonstrating its human-like heel-toe walk.
[Video] Why does e=mc²? Brian Cox on the Colbert Report (source: Colbert Nation)
Superstar physicist Brian Cox discusses why relativity is the basis of our understanding of the universe, how the Higgs Boson could help you lose weight, and dishes with Colbert on being named one of People magazine's sexiest men alive—and still manages to get in a jab at string theory.
Do the math: Why modelling is the next anti-cancer (source: Plus)
Mathematical models of cancer may provide a way to forecast its spread in individuals, says a team that's just received more than a million euros to begin constructing such a program. As the same cancer can have radically divergent outcomes in different people, being able to tweak all aspects of a comprehensive model will offer huge benefits for patients and doctors.
Teacher suspended over Seed gay animal kingdom article (source: Jacksonville Journal Courier)
An Illinois school district has suspended a teacher who had his students read an article about homosexuality in animals. The article, written by Jonah Lehrer and published in Seed, discusses Stanford University research that documents homosexuality in hundreds of species.
How SuperFreakonomics botched its climate change discussion (source: Real Climate)
In an open letter to "rogue economist" Steven Levitt, the scientists at Real Climate lay out how the bestselling sequel to Freakonomics got climate science wrong and relied on inexpert opinions to make faulty claims.

Pushing a Power Portfolio

2009-10-30T12:30:19+00:00

As alternative energy funding plans are rolled out, a long-running debate over nuclear rages on Earth and in space.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-10-29T16:12:31+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

Crowdsourcing the brain (source: wholebraincatalog.org)
Traditionally, brain researchers work in their own isolated areas: Molecular neuroscientists study DNA and RNA, while cognitive specialists study behavior. They also produce more data than any single lab can handle. Now Mark Ellisman and colleagues at UC San Diego have unveiled their proposed solution: the Whole Brain Catalog, launched at last week's annual convention of the Society for Neuroscience, integrates all those data sets into a "virtual brain," allowing scientists to share information.
Move over, C-3PO (source: The New Yorker)
Social robots are getting smarter. While, say, medical robots are used primarily as tools to enhance a doctor’s or a therapist’s techniques, Maja Matarić’s bots have built-in cognitive models. They are designed to tackle a much harder problem: “how to motivate people,” leaving skeptics to wonder if they are also intended to replace people.
Save the salmon! (And your brain!) (source: New Scientist)
The FDA has deemed as "safe for human consumption" a soybean genetically engineered to produce oil rich in omega-3 fatty acids---the first approval of GM crop that will benefit consumers and not just producers. The fortified soy could reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke, say scientists, as well as ease the burden on fish stocks, currently the principle source of omega-3s.
Flu vaccine stuck in the technological Stone Age (source: Science Insider)
A video produced by the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism critiques our reliance on egg-based vaccine technology to produce the nation’s annual influenza stock. This “technique” is more than 50 years old.
New literary genre replaces mere wackos with those driven by bad brain chemistry (source: n+1)
From Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn to John Wray’s Low Boy, literature is moving away from Freudian theories of personality and toward the study of brains themselves. Read n+1’s take on the new “neuronovel.”

Lo and Behold: the Internet

2009-10-29T12:30:31+00:00

On the 40th anniversary of the first internet connection, a look back on how a flash of insight and a 20-minute meeting got it all started.