Interesting scientific stuff

Fascinting images bagitha. A tad confusing at first as they are a mixture of imaging, artwork and half and half. e.g. the cancer cell one is purely imagined artwork and this is the one I liked least. The mouses retina cross section is beautiful. and the metal one looks like a cliff in the desert.

I find it particularly interesting that Kumar will be looking at group cohesion where long periods of time are spent in a place of such isolation that no outside interaction is available. Exploring the dynamics of this, through quality of sleep, activity and performance of skills must be very difficult, when one is right in the midsts of it.
Fascinating! I wonder how I'd manage.....

There JessM ...that just shows that "art is in the eye of the beholder"!

Indeed Jacey.

When you consider how long it took to build and then erode these sea stacks, the human timeline seems puny:

epod.usra.edu/blog/2012/02/sea-stacks-of-accreted-terranes-along-the-southern-oregon-coast.html

Thank you flagging up this site Bagitha ...found this will there

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ForestCarbon/?src=features-hp

It made a good link to last night's programme on 'How to grow a planet' ...did you see it?

pity about typos!! Seems brain, eyes and fingers are not very well linked!!

No, we don't have a telly. I'll check out your link though, jacey.

This picture of folded layers of rock in Utah is awesome. At least, I think it is.

epod.usra.edu/blog/2012/02/san-juan-river-at-raplee-monocline.html

Nature is stupendous. The scenery on the left of the photo reminds me of the Grand Canyon - awesome there,too!

Wow! What I used to like about sailing along the Jurassic coast were the rock formations

Seems those neutrinos from CERN that were supposed to have travelled faster than light did not. It was a loose wire. Chuckle. Mind you, the physicists thought it was fishy all along, which is why they published early and asked other groups to try and replicate the experiment. Nice to see science being done as it should be done.

It was quite reassuring to hear this news and such a simple reason.

Liked your "Nice to see science being done as it should be done." bagitha

Have never forgotten reading the 'Double Helix' back in the 70s ...when there was a race to understand the mechanics of genetics. No one shared anything with any one ...all findings were kept secret as each scientist wanted the kudos of discovery.
it really saddened me as had always thought that scientists were working for the good of the people ...not their own glory.

It left such a strong impression that have always, now, wondered about the research into our understanding of/cure for cancer ...whether all the pieces are out there... but that pieces of the puzzle need to be shared??

wind blown formations on Mars , European Space Agency

I hope this new research, described in the Indie, into the relief of chronic pain and perhaps a cure for addiction makes good strides forward. What a difference to quality of life it could make!

When people in a study were told to choose the best looking people from photos, they chose the ones whose features were the most symmetrical.
I love number patterns and spotting symmetry in nature.
Bagitha, do you have a DVD player? If so, have you seen David Attenborough's series? I am fascinated by the undersea world (I think we would have got much better returns from exploring the seabed than from wasting time on the moon) and I had not known that there is life which is not dependent on the sun.
I am working my way through your links and really enjoying them.
Scientists throughout history have been a contentious lot but I think it is only by peer pressure that advances will be made.

Yes, we have all the Attenborough series on DVD except the latest one, which we'll no doubt acquire soon. They are fascinating.

Stunning image of sunrise and Aurora Borealis!

www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2212.html

Very lovely.

Report from the Roal Astronomical Society about Henrik Svensmark's new paper about the effect of supernovae on biodiversity here on Earth. Fascinating.

www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive

NASA are going to send 'Global Hawk' unmanned aircraft over storms this year to suss out hurricane strength. The project looks really interesting. Here is the article

Beautiful picture of soil moisture anomolies (departure from 'average' or 'normal' for the time of year). It is actually part of the video of changing soil moisture content and has been stopped at the 2010 Russian heatwave, which shows up clearly.

www.tuwien.ac.at/fileadmin/t/tuwien/fotos/pa/download/2012/47_2012/Soil_Moisture_Anomaly.jpg

A commenter who goes by the name of "henrythethird" gives a precis of a paper published in 2009 in the Journal of Climate. To paraphrase: a group of scientists looks at the theory that we should be seeing a pattern of increased drought across the world. They analysed drought patterns across the globe from data available between 1950 and 2000. They found no evidence to support claims of an increasing incidence of drought.

The very 'cool' video I referred to can be seen here, scroll down a bit if you don't want to read the article. It's really beautiful quite apart from its scientific value.

wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/19/30-years-of-soil-moisture-imaged-from-satellite-data/#more-65923

Here's an interesting (read slowly!) article by Duncan Steel about how the extremes of Earth's orbit vary over time and the difference it makes to the starts, finishes and lengths of seasons.

Steel is a British astronomer currently living and working in Australia. Robot Steel in Arthur C Clarke's book The Hammer of God is named after him. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a member of the International Astronomical Union.

That's a fascinating article Bags. Doesn't lend to skim-reading, as you say - I had to keep reading the paragraphs again but it's very readable. Great to read an astronomer's perspective that analyses how the seasons vary. Thanks