SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

Sad Sacks

2009-11-06T13:25:37+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.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-10-28T16:58:08+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

Make things move with your mind! (source: Mind Hacks)
When we stare at something like a waterfall that constantly moves in one direction, and then turn our gaze to a motionless object, that object will appear to move in the opposite direction, a classic effect known as the “waterfall illusion.” Psychologists have now shown that, in fact, we only have to first imagine looking at something constantly moving in order to trigger the waterfall effect.
Yet another reason to kiss Grandma (source: New Scientist)
Scientists have been trying to understand why women evolved to live long after their childbearing years. New research supports what is called the grandma hypothesis, which suggests that women stick around to raise their grandchildren.
An artist explores the fabric of space—literally (source: Jimmy McBride)
Artist Jimmy Mcbride creates quilts inspired by stunning images of galaxies and black holes. The result is some truly incredible bedspreads.
The Trojan horses of the future are going digital (source: New York Times)
American companies now manufacture only 2 percent of integrated circuits used in US military equipment. The government fears that this leaves many of our defense and communications systems vulnerable to enemy tampering.
Harness the power of your unconscious (source: LiveScience)
New research suggests that there might be some wisdom behind the old saying, “Sleep on it.” Scientists have found new evidence to corroborate the idea that unconscious mind may actually be better at dealing with complex decisions.

Overhyped Placebos of Doom?

2009-10-28T12:30:16+00:00

Despite centuries of investigation, scientists still have much to learn about the origins and meaning of the placebo effect.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-10-27T16:52:24+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

What happens when galaxies collide? (source: io9)
In this quirky outreach video highlighting findings from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the actress Felicia Day explains the details of the coming cosmic fender bender between our Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy. The video also includes a special guest appearance by Sean Astin.
Sometimes, defending science can get very ugly. (source: Cosmic Variance)
Author Amy Wallace has come under fire from anti-vaxxers for her pro-science feature in the latest issue of WIRED. She's started fighting back by documenting the attacks on her Twitter feed. Now, posts from science bloggers at Discover and ScienceBlogs have further fanned the flames. Go read them, and join the conversation if you'd like.
Watch the evolution of a self-replicating machine. (source: Accelerating Future)
The RepRap project, an effort to build low-budget 3D printer that can manufacture essentially any objects (and even make copies of itself) will soon reach another milestone. After the successful release of the first RepRap version, codenamed "Darwin," the team is now ready to debut RepRap 2.0, the smaller, streamlined "Mendel." Ready, set, replicate!
Scientists find a room with a view—on the Moon! (source: The Planetary Society)
Before it was deliberately crashed into the Moon this summer, the Japanese lunar probe Kaguya delivered amazing high-definition images of the lunar surface that revealed, for the first time, an opening to a lunar cavern. Such sites will likely be prime real estate for habitats when—and if—humans return to the Moon.
Christopher Hitchens is an equal-opportunity infidel. (source: Slate)
Christopher Hitchens, the most entertaining member of the "New Atheist" clique, has been traveling the country since 2007 debating anyone he can about the existence of God and the benefits of religion. The results of his jousting with various keepers of the faith have been documented in new film, Collision, opening this weekend in select theaters. In this Slate column, Hitchens explains what he's learned from the experience.

The Environmental Revival

2009-10-27T12:01:26+00:00

Which modern enviro concepts are throwbacks to the past? Four experts discuss the technologies, laws, and states of mind that have their roots in the first wave of the environmental movement.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

2009-10-26T16:52:27+00:00

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

Espionage investigation underway at Los Alamos—again (source: The Great Beyond)
A scientist working on a Los Alamos laser fusion project, P. Leonardo Mascheroni, has joined the list of high-profile researchers who have had recent run-ins with the laws on international security-related allegations.
Trace your food’s history on your iPhone (source: ReadWriteWeb)
Localvores rejoice: IBM’s new iPhone app, Breadcrumbs, allows you to check your groceries’ food miles with a barcode scan. Welcome to the "Internet of Things.”
Baby Einstein videos won’t make your child a genius (source: Slate)
Despite pediatricians warnings that screen-based media could be developmentally harmful for children under age two, the “Baby Einstein” video series has been a tremendous hit. Now, Disney is offering parents refunds due to a backlash over deceptive marketing.
In a rare success, gene therapy trial treats blindness in children (source: ScienceNOW)
After decades of setbacks and disappointments, one bright spot in gene therapy trials has been in improving vision. Watch as a vision-impaired nine-year-old successfully navigates an obstacle course, three months after receiving an ocular injection of a rhodopsin-producing gene.
A new statistics model proves Derek Jeter is a bad shortstop (source: ScienceLine)
Baseball has always been statistician’s favorite sport. Now, a new model for measuring fielding success is calling into question the chops of some award winners and fan favorites.

A Natural Obsession

2009-10-26T12:30:32+00:00

Organic foods are exploding in popularity. But fears of biotechnology—and a widespread mistrust of science—won’t help efforts to create a truly sustainable agriculture.