Author Archives: Guest Post

‘The Philosophical Child’: A book for when your child asks, ‘Why are we here?’

By Guest PostJanuary 10, 2013Generalambassador, blog, cascadia community college, children, co inquirer, david shapiro, jana mohr lone, meaning of childhood, michael rosenthal, natural philosopher, Nature, new book, philosophical discussion, philosophical self, question, sara goering, the philosophical child, university of washington

Children are natural philosophers, says Jana Mohr Lone of the University of Washington Department of Philosophy.

Lone, an affiliate faculty member and director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children, says she wrote her new book, “The Philosophical Child,” to help parents, teachers and other adults conduct conversations with children about life’s mysteries.

The center was founded in 1996 and became affiliated with the UW in 1999. In 2008, Lone started writing a blog titled “Wondering Aloud: Philosophy with Young People,” that she still maintains, often analyzing children’s books for their philosophical content. (more…)

Chipping Away at the History of Plaster in Sculpture and Medicine

By Guest PostJanuary 10, 2013Cultureage of industrialism, angel, art historian david bindman, birmingham, british sculptor, casting process, countess spencer, death mask, exhibition, funerary memorial, georgiana, great ormond street, hospital collection, ikon gallery, john flaxman, line to contour, marble, mourning figure, murderer, neo classical artist, pathological specimen, plaster, sculpture model, ucl art museum

A new exhibition about plaster and the casting process, highlighting the sculpture models of the neo-classical artist John Flaxman (1755-1826), starts at the UCL Art Museum this month.

Shown alongside Flaxman’s art will be more unusual applications of plaster pulled from UCL’s stored collections, including Victorian death masks used for the early study of eugenics and casts of human pathological specimens, including the cast of a seven year old’s leg with rickets from the Great Ormond Street Hospital Collection. Many of these macabre objects highlight the efficiency of plaster and its unique ability to capture fleeting moments in time. (more…)

Magma in Earth’s Mantle Forms Deeper Than Once Thought

By Guest PostJanuary 10, 2013Environmentananya mallik, anthony withers, brown university, carbon dioxide, carbonated rock, convection, crust, deeper magma, density, earth, earthquake, express lane, geologist, greg hirth, high pressure, jennifer wade, kyusei tsuno, magma, mantle, marc hirschmann, national science foundation, non carbonated rock, ocean floor, peridotite, rajdeep dasgupta, rice university, rock, seafloor, seismic wave, silicate rich mantle, temperature, university of minnesota, volcanic eruption, within the earth

Study simulating pressures in mantle beneath the ocean floor shows that rocks can melt at depths up to 250 kilometers

Magma forms far deeper than geologists previously thought, according to new research results.

A team led by geologist Rajdeep Dasgupta of Rice University put very small samples of peridotite, rock derived from Earth’s mantle, under high pressures in a laboratory.

The scientists found that the rock can and does liquify, at least in small amounts, at pressures equivalent to those found as deep as 250 kilometers down in the mantle beneath the ocean floor. (more…)

Invading Species Can Extinguish Native Plants Despite Recent Reports

By Guest PostJanuary 10, 2013Environment, Naturebenjamin gilbert, california, colonization, ecologist, eeb, effect of invasion, eth zurich, extinction dynamics, federal institute, habitat, initial invasion, invaded ecosystem, invading exotic plants, invasive grass, james cornwell, jonathan levine, local extinction, native biodiversity, native habitat, native plants, non native species, pnas, quantitative model, sea of exotics, species, species to extinction, swiss, technology zurich, university of toronto, wild

TORONTO, ON – Ecologists at the University of Toronto and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) have found that, given time, invading exotic plants will likely eliminate native plants growing in the wild despite recent reports to the contrary.

A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reports that recent statements that invasive plants are not problematic are often based on incomplete information, with insufficient time having passed to observe the full effect of invasions on native biodiversity. (more…)

Cassini Suggests Icing on a Lake

By Guest PostJanuary 9, 2013Scienceair on titan, atmosphere, cassini mission, change, cornell university, cycle of precipitation, ethane, evaporation, floating ice, hydrocarbon ice, icing, ithaca, jason hofgartner, jonathan lunine, lake, linda spilker, liquid hydrocarbon, liquid methane, methane, model, moon, NASA, nitrogen gas, northern hemisphere, organic molecule, origin, pasadena, radio energy, saturn, sea, sea ice, southern hemisphere, surfaces of lakes, temperature, terrestrial life, titan, water

It’s not exactly icing on a cake, but it could be icing on a lake. A new paper by scientists on NASA’s Cassini mission finds that blocks of hydrocarbon ice might decorate the surface of existing lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbon on Saturn’s moon Titan. The presence of ice floes might explain some of the mixed readings Cassini has seen in the reflectivity of the surfaces of lakes on Titan.

“One of the most intriguing questions about these lakes and seas is whether they might host an exotic form of life,” said Jonathan Lunine, a paper co-author and Cassini interdisciplinary Titan scientist at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. “And the formation of floating hydrocarbon ice will provide an opportunity for interesting chemistry along the boundary between liquid and solid, a boundary that may have been important in the origin of terrestrial life.” (more…)

How Computers Push on the Molecules They Simulate

By Guest PostJanuary 9, 2013Scienceacceleration, albert einstein, algorithm, analytical results, artifacts, atoms and molecules, behavior, Berkeley, berkeley lab, calculation, california, california institute, chemical fuel, collide, computer method, conserve energy, david sivak, digital representation, digitize time, dna repair, driving force, effective friction, energy dense, equation, error, finite time steps, fluid, french physicist, gavin crooks, john chodera, langevin dynamics, model brownian motion, modeling molecular system, modern computer, molecular machines, molecular scale motion, molecule, momentum, natural system, nonequilibrium driving force, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, particle, passage of time, paul langevin, photosynthesis, pollen grain, qb3, quantitative biosciences, quantum mechanics, real world, simulation, source, tenacious errors, theoretical method, thermal energy, toy models, university, velocity, water, water molecules

Berkeley Lab bioscientists and their colleagues decipher a far-reaching problem in computer simulations

Because modern computers have to depict the real world with digital representations of numbers instead of physical analogues, to simulate the continuous passage of time they have to digitize time into small slices. This kind of simulation is essential in disciplines from medical and biological research, to new materials, to fundamental considerations of quantum mechanics, and the fact that it inevitably introduces errors is an ongoing problem for scientists.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have now identified and characterized the source of tenacious errors and come up with a way to separate the realistic aspects of a simulation from the artifacts of the computer method. The research was done by David Sivak and his advisor Gavin Crooks in Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and John Chodera, a colleague at the California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at the University of California at Berkeley. The three report their results in Physical Review X. (more…)

Previous Studies on Toxic Effects of BPA Couldn’t be Reproduced, says MU Research Team

By Guest PostJanuary 9, 2013Environmentagouti, agouti signaling protein, animal numbers, asip, bpa, cheryl rosenfeld, controversial chemical, dietary supplement, equal ratios, estrogenic compound, exposure, famine, fat tissue, frederick vomsaal, gene, genistein, humans, metabolic disorders, mice, obesity, obesity related disease, offspring, pancreas, plants, plastic bottles, replicate, reproduce, soy beans, thrifty genotype, type 2 diabetes, university of missouri, uterine environments, womb, yellow coat color

The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible.

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Following a three-year study using more than 2,800 mice, a University of Missouri researcher was not able to replicate a series of previous studies by another research group investigating the controversial chemical BPA. The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible. The MU study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also investigated an estrogenic compound found in plants, genistein, in the same three-year study.

“Our findings don’t say anything about the positive or negative effects of BPA or genistein,” said Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor of biomedical sciences in MU’s Bond Life Science Center. “Rather, our series of experiments did not detect the same findings as reported by another group on the potential developmental effects of BPA and genistein when exposure of young occurs in the womb.” (more…)

Legal Options for Medical Malpractice Victims

By Guest PostJanuary 9, 2013Healthcarlos, correct treatment, doctor, lawsuit, legal options, medical malpractice, medical professional, new jersey, nurse, seasoned legal blogger, statute of limitations, unnecessary suffering, victims

As a patient, it is extremely important that you are aware of how a doctor, nurse, or any other medical professional is treating you at all times. Medical professionals are expected to adhere to the established standards of their profession when providing care, and if they do not, and you suffer harm as a result, you could take legal action. If a doctor, surgeon, or other practitioner acts in a negligent manner, either through an action he or she took or an action he or she failed to take, medical malpractice may have occurred and the victim may be able to pursue a lawsuit.

From failing to appropriately diagnose your condition to not providing you with the correct treatment in a timely manner, reckless actions from medical professionals can cause serious damage. Fortunately, victims may be able to secure compensation to help cover the costs associated with their unnecessary suffering. (more…)