Observations
Masks and Emasculation: Why Some Men Refuse to Take Safety Precautions
They think it makes them look weak, and avoiding that is evidently more important to them than demonstrating responsible behavior
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Observations
How a Landmark Physics Paper from the 1970s Uncannily Describes the COVID-19 Pandemic
Phil Anderson’s article “More Is Different” describes how different levels of complexity require new ways of thinking. And as the virus multiplies and spreads, that’s just what the human race desperately needs...
Observations
The Fight against COVID-19 Threatens to Cause Collateral Health Damage
The pandemic is no excuse to abandon chronic disease management and prevention
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The Scicurious Brain
Friday Weird Science: how much wood could a woodchuck chuck?
...if a woodchuck could chuck wood? There's actually an answer to this question. Or at least, there's an answer to this question involving hungry woodchucks and 2 x 4s.
The Primate Diaries
Ayn Rand on Human Nature
“Every political philosophy has to begin with a theory of human nature,” wrote Harvard evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin in his book Biology as Ideology .
The Scicurious Brain
ADHD and circadian rhythm
And we're BACK to our regularly scheduling blog-gramming. The Ignobels were fantastic fun, but now we need to wait yet another sad, solemn year before we celebrate the scientifically entertaining...
Context and Variation
Under the Influence: Naomi Wolf, Biology, and Why We Are More Than Our Vaginas
Readers of this blog are likely already aware of Naomi Wolf’s book Vagina: A New Biography . I’m late to the party, because it just seemed wrong to pile on a feminist more senior to me who, though misguided, is at least working towards equality for women...
The Thoughtful Animal
Cricket Fight Club: How is a Cricket Like a Rat?
When my brother and I were young, we were very careful to share the last bit of dessert equally. It's not that we were particularly magnanimous. In their wisdom, my parents instituted a rule in our house: one of us would divide the snack in half, and the other would select his half...
Brainwaves
To Combat Alzheimer's, Scientists Genetically Reprogram 1 Kind of Brain Cell into Another
We all lose brain cells as we get older. In people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's, neurons shrivel and die at alarming rates—perhaps three to four times faster than usual in Alzheimer's, for example...
A Blog Around The Clock
Stumped by bed nets, mosquitoes turn midnight snack into breakfast
One of the most effective methods for the control of spread of malaria is the use of bed nets infused with insecticides. Most species of mosquitoes (the Anopheles genus) that carry the malarial parasite ( Plasmodium falciparum ) are considered to be strictly nocturnal - they are active only during the night.Thus, sleeping under the net provides protection against getting bitten by the insect vectors of the disease...
Observations
Super-Toxic Snake Venom Could Yield New Painkillers
A bite from the black mamba snake ( Dendroaspis polylepis ) can kill an adult human within 20 minutes. But mixed in with that toxic venom is a new natural class of compound that could be used to help develop new painkillers.Named "mambalgins," these peptides block acute and inflammatory pain in mice as well as morphine does, according to a new study.Researchers, led by Sylvie Diochot, of the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at Nice University, Sophia Antipolis in France, purified the peptides from the venom and profiled the compounds' structure...
Video of the Week
The Most Amazing Lego Contraption Ever
Video of the Week #63 October 3rd, 2012: From: Watch the Most Amazing Lego Contraption Ever by Michael Moyer at Observations . Source: Akiyuki First there was the video of the LEGO version of the Antikythera Mechanism--an ancient Greek computing device found in a shipwreck in 1901 used to calculate the positions of astronomical bodies with extraordinary precision...
The Thoughtful Animal
ScienceSeeker Editor's Selections: Kid Scientists, Social Psychology, M&Ms for Rats
Here are my Science Seeker Editor's Selections for the past week:Science is really just kids play. Well, sort of. It turns out that when kids play, they "come up with general principles, akin to scientific theories, based on the data of their daily lives." Find out more at Discover Magazine's 80 Beats blog, where Ashley P...
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