I’m sure everyone is familiar with Shrodinger’s Cat, the infamous quantum-mechanical thought experiment (apparently, it was first posited as a sort of laughing attempt to put in real terms some of quantum mechanics’ more…interesting…theories). We…
Posts by aimee
Nature's data-sharing issue
Nature has published their special data-sharing issue, which can be found here. An extremely timely issue, I might add, give how topical the subject is (see here and here).There’s a lot of interesting stuff in here, including articles about what seems…
Peer Review Survey 2009 - the system's worth keeping, but could use some work
Sense about Science, a UK not-for profit organisation dedicated to improving the understanding of science issues, has released the prelim findings of its Peer Review Survey (full details out in November). The results were released early this morning, …
Reflexology quickie
I don’t have access to the full article, sadly (aaarg), so this tiny tidbit from the Medical Journal of Australia will have to do.In essence, it says that the evidence for reflexology working is, well, not there. Yes, the foot rub is quite cool (apart…
Name-dropping makes you obnoxious
“But”, I hear you murmer, “we knew this already!”And yes, intuitively, I guess many of us do. Despite this, it still doesn’t stop many people doing it, on a regular basis. Some might even say that networking somewhat encourages it. Well, networking …
The travelling salesman problem and bacterial computers
This post was generated by the marvellous webcomic, below, from David Malki’s Wondermark (a fascinating project in and of itself).As usual, click on the image to make it legible. Weblink here.Witticisms aside, the first thing that came to mind was the…
Magnetic monopoles?
Oh, this is too, too good.Only 2 days after a New Scientist article discussing some 13 phenomena that science is still unable to understand - including the fact that magnets don’t seem to come in a fashionable, slinkier ‘monopole’ - it’s been announced…
Cows and…seaweed?
The discussion of how to deal with ruminant emissions is now as pervasive as the emissions themselves, it seems.Here in NZ, we have the PGgRC, which has been set up to deal specifically with the issue. After all, something like a half of NZ’s emission…
The geoengineering debate
Geoengineering. Yes. Likely to spark heated (haha) debate, because if people are uncomfortable with the idea of tweaking living organisms (GM), then people are definitely going to be uncomfortable with slinging giant mirrors into space, and injecting…
Jellyfish, continued
The BBC’s posted this beautiful set of photographs of deep-sea jellyfish (honestly, I’m beginning to think I have a thing about these creatures).(I couldn’t use one of the beeb’s pictures, so have put in another cool jellyfish photo.)I think I like the…