More cat owners 'have degrees' than dog-lovers	blinded by science
Link #149577 submitted by johnny2000 on Feb 9, 2010 04:47am.   (+400XP) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8501042.stm
People who own a cat are more likely to have a university degree than those with a pet dog, a study by Bristol University suggests.     The study said longer hours, possibly associated with better qualified jobs, may make owning a dog impractical.     It also found that UK pet ownership was much higher than previously thought.     Cat and dog numbers were last estimated in a scientific peer-reviewed journal in 1989, which said there were 6.2 million and 6.4 million respectively in the UK.     But according to Bristol's Department of Clinical Veterinary Science, the populations today are likely to be about 10.3 million and 10.5 million. Comments: 0   Hits: 20   Points: 202220   Rating: 10.0 / 6   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

7 Insane Ways Music Affects The Body	blinded by science
Link #149576 submitted by johnny2000 on Feb 9, 2010 04:41am.   (+200XP) http://www.cracked.com/article_18405_7-insane-ways-music-affects-bo...
The world is chock full of ear hurt that some people willingly refer to as music. The Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Conway Twitty; they all produce high quality records and 8-tracks for our enjoyment whether we like it or not.     But music--even terrible music--has a stunning amount of power over our bodies. For instance science says music can... Comments: 0   Hits: 63   Points: 202158   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Cassini detection adds to Enceladus liquid water story	blinded by science
Link #149566 submitted by lola_ice on Feb 8, 2010 07:03pm.   (+100XP) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8495663.stm
"Scientists working on the Cassini space mission have found negatively charged water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus. Their findings, based on analysis from data taken in plume fly-throughs in 2008 and reported in the journal Icarus, provide evidence for the presence of liquid water, which suggests the ingredients for life inside the icy moon. The Cassini plasma spectrometer, used to gather this data, also found other species of negatively charged ions including hydrocarbons." Comments: 0   Hits: 48   Points: 196146   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

ultra-precise quantum clock puts old atomic clock to shame	blinded by science
Link #149546 submitted by lola_ice on Feb 6, 2010 01:08pm.   (+290XP) http://www.rdmag.com/News/2010/02/General-Science-Physics-The-World...
"Scientists have built a clock which is 100,000 times more precise than the existing international standard.     The quantum-logic clock, which detects the energy state of a single aluminum ion, keeps time to within a second every 3.7 billion years. The new timekeeper could one day improve GPS or detect the slowing of time predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.     "It could it be a real contender for the next frequency standard, or next timekeeper", said physicist Chin-wen (James) Chou of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, lead author of a study to appear in a forthcoming Physical Review Letters." Comments: 0   Hits: 105   Points: 162768   Rating: 8.8 / 5   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Death of the battery	blinded by science
Link #149540 submitted by kid-ney on Feb 6, 2010 12:42am.   (+350XP) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1248829/The-end-batt...
-- The battery, which has powered our lives for generations, may soon be consigned to the dustbin of history.     British scientists say they have created a plastic that can store and release electricity, revolutionizing the way we use phones, drive cars - and even wear clothes.     Comments: 0   Hits: 229   Points: 155180   Rating: 10.0 / 5   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Ocean Drilling Records Set in the Canterbury Basin	blinded by science
Link #149534 submitted by dorian on Feb 5, 2010 11:55am.   (+230XP) http://geology.com/press-release/deepest-hole-in-oceanic-crust
For eight weeks beginning in November 2009, off the coast of New Zealand, an international team of 34 scientists and 92 support staff and crew on board the scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution were at work investigating sea-level change in a region called the Canterbury Basin. It proved to be a record-breaking trip for the research team.     At present 10 percent of the world's population lives within 10 meters of sea level. Current climate models predict a 50-centimeter to more than one-meter rise in sea level over the next 100 years, posing a threat to inhabitants of low-lying coastal communities around the world.     To better understand what drives changes in sea level and how humans are affecting this change, scientists are "looking to our past for answers and digging back as far as 35 million years into the Earth's history to understand these dynamic processes.   Comments: 0   Hits: 54   Points: 147042   Rating: 9.3 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Hubble reveals best pictures yet of Pluto	blinded by science
Link #149525 submitted by lola_ice on Feb 5, 2010 07:25am.   (+400XP) http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-sci-pluto5-2010feb0...
"The latest set of pictures from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope provide the most detailed images yet of Pluto.     They show a dark, icy mottled world that is undergoing seasonal changes in its surface color and brightness.     Pluto has become much redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter. These changes are probably caused by surface ice sublimating on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle.     The dramatic change in color apparently took place in a two-year period, from 2000 to 2002." Comments: 1   Hits: 187   Points: 144404   Rating: 10.0 / 5   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

10 Bizarre Psychological Experiments	blinded by science
Link #149513 submitted by dorian on Feb 4, 2010 03:34pm.   (+220XP) http://www.weirdworm.com/10-bizarre-psychological-experiments
Magicians, hypnotists and needy women aren’t the only ones who enjoy playing mind games. Scientists quite like to screw with our heads too and over the years they’ve found some pretty strange ways of doing just that. Comments: 0   Hits: 189   Points: 134537   Rating: 9.0 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

The Real Rules for Time Travelers	blinded by science
Link #149512 submitted by dorian on Feb 4, 2010 03:14pm.   (+230XP) http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/02-the-real-rules-for-time-tra...
Time travel may in fact be possible, but it wouldn't work like in Back to the Future. (For one thing, you don't have worry about your parents failing to create you—you already exist.) Comments: 0   Hits: 150   Points: 134291   Rating: 9.3 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

This column will change your life	blinded by science
Link #149511 submitted by dorian on Feb 4, 2010 02:52pm.   (+610XP) http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/30/change-your-life...
Ever wondered why your friends seem so much more popular than you are? There's a reason for that     This is going to be ­awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it may as well be me: you're kind of a loser. You know that feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you, and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well, they are. If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated – what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you recall thinking the other person was more romantically experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.     The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's a ­bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer friends than our friends, more flab than our ­fellow gym-goers, and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault: it's just maths. Comments: 3   Hits: 172   Points: 134131   Rating: 9.5 / 8   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Is a happy anthropologist a good anthropologist?	blinded by science
Link #149507 submitted by dorian on Feb 4, 2010 02:27pm.   (+230XP) http://www.anthropologymatters.com/index.php?journal=anth_matters&p...
How do we deal, as ethical but also politically motivated human beings, with responses or actions which make us cringe, make us afraid, confused or unhappy? How do we reconcile our own moral, ethical and political perspectives with those of individuals who hold very different perspectives in the field? A Weberian tradition has legitimated research programmes that attempt to equate objectivity with an attitude of emotional disengagement, cognitive objectivity and moral indifference. When faced with anger, fear or depression, a sense of "passionate detachment" was often a desired state for me; however, it was a desire that proved to be part of the very fabric of fieldwork and a result of the "self" which I brought into the field. Comments: 0   Hits: 40   Points: 133702   Rating: 9.3 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Audiophoolery: pseudoscience in consumer audio	blinded by science
Link #149506 submitted by johnny2000 on Feb 4, 2010 02:22pm.   (+250XP) http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-01-06
In my 35 years as a professional audio engineer and musician, I’ve seen some of the most outrageous pseudoscience sold to consumers, and even to other audio pros who should know better. Not unlike claims for alternative medicine, nonsense is shrouded in scientific-sounding jargon to confuse the uneducated, or a sales pitch will cite science that is legitimate but irrelevant. The result is endless arguments among audiophiles over basic scientific principles that have been fully understood for fifty years or more.     As a consumerist, it galls me to see people pay thousands of dollars for fancy-looking wire that’s no better than the heavy lamp cord they can buy at any hardware store. Comments: 0   Hits: 111   Points: 133721   Rating: 10.0 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Knowing When to Stop	blinded by science
Link #149503 submitted by johnny2000 on Feb 4, 2010 01:50pm.   (+250XP) http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.5783,y.2009,no.2,content...
How to gamble if you must—the mathematics of optimal stopping     Suppose you decide to marry, and to select your life partner you will interview at most 100 candidate spouses. The interviews are arranged in random order, and you have no information about candidates you haven’t yet spoken to. After each interview you must either marry that person or forever lose the chance to do so. If you have not married after interviewing candidate 99, you must marry candidate 100. Your objective, of course, is to marry the absolute best candidate of the lot. But how?     This problem has a long and rich history in the mathematics literature, where it is known variously as the marriage, secretary, dowry or best-choice problem. Certainly you can select the very best spouse with probability at least 1/100, simply by marrying the first person. But can you do better? In fact, there is a simple rule that will guarantee you will marry the absolute best more than one-third of the time. And the rule can be transferred to other scenarios. Comments: 0   Hits: 97   Points: 133376   Rating: 10.0 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

ancient mongolian tomb holds skeleton of western man	blinded by science
Link #149500 submitted by lola_ice on Feb 4, 2010 08:02am.   (+160XP) http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/mongolian-tomb-western-skelet...
"Dead men can indeed tell tales, but they speak in a whispered double helix.     Consider an older gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more than 200 tombs recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in eastern Mongolia, near China's northern border. DNA extracted from this man's bones pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia's Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues." Comments: 0   Hits: 78   Points: 129735   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

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