As a result of the study, coauthor Tim Spector said, the study “shows fairly conclusively that the idea of a G-spot is subjective.” It didn’t take long, however, for this news to reach the French, who aren’t about to start taking sex advice from across the channel. A group of gynecologists there convened their own conference in Paris to denounce this assault on female pleasure.
The rest.
Trying to iron out all the ways animals sense the earth’s magnetic field, researchers have managed to overturn a “widely held view” about the functioning of certain photoreceptor molecules:
…states Dr. Reppert, “the finding provides the first genetic evidence that a vertebrate-like (photoreceptor molecule) can function as a magnetoreceptor.”
An interesting feature of the team’s work disproved a widely held view about how these proteins can chemically sense a magnetic field.
In your face!!
“These findings suggest that there is an unknown photochemical mechanism that the (photoreceptor molecules) use instead,” says Dr. Gegear, lead author on the paper, “one that we are hotly pursuing.”
Mission: tag and bag all unknown photochemical mechanisms.
Holy crap - they’ve reconstructed the colors of the feathers running down a dinosaur’s back:
Using a powerful electron microscope to look inside the feathers, researchers were able to see microscopic structures called melanosomes, which, in life, contain the pigment melanin.
…
“There’s a very clear rim of feathers running down the top of its head like a Mohican, all the way along its back,” Professor Benton described.Bands of dark and light along the tail can be seen in the fossils. This close examination has shown that the dinosaur’s “Mohican” was russet or ginger-coloured, and that these bands were in fact ginger and white stripes.
“This is the first time anyone has ever had evidence of original colour of feathers in dinosaurs,” said Professor Benton.
…
“This discovery suggests that with more work we may be able to accurately reconstruct colour patterns in some dinosaur species, and begin to understand how those colour patterns may have functioned for camouflage or display.”
This is something like a holy dinosaur grail being discovered.
The Drake Equation’s variables continue their maddening variability:
Frank Drake, who conducted the first organized search for alien radio signals in 1960, said that the Earth – which used to pump out a loud tangle of radio waves, television signals and other radiation – has been steadily getting quieter as its communications technology improves.
Drake cited the switch from analogue to digital television – which uses a far weaker signal – and the fact that much more communications traffic is now relayed by satellites and fiber optic cables, limiting its leakage into outer space.
“Very soon we will become very undetectable,” he said. If similar changes are taking place in other technologically advanced societies, then the search for them “will be much more difficult than we imagined.”
Didn’t think of that in 1960.
Also, just let me say that the absence of Fred Hoyle’s name in this panspermia-heavy article is deplorable.
For decades, scientists have scanned the heavens in search of extraterrestrial life. Perhaps they should have looked closer to home. Variant life forms – most likely tiny microbes – could still be hanging around “right under or noses – or even in our noses,” Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist, told a group of scientists Tuesday.
“How do we know all life on earth descended from a single origin?” he said, speaking at London’s Royal Society, which serves as Britain’s academy of sciences. “We’ve just scratched the surface of the microbial world.”
Here we’ve got Paul fucking Davies saying what Fred Hoyle got ridiculed for saying 30 years ago. At least give the guy a mention. The fact that Hoyle was wrong about chemical evolution doesn’t make him wrong about evolution from space. At least, when Paul Davies says there’s alien microbes in your nose, it sounds great. But Fred Hoyle, not so much.
New study: feathers evolved in tree dwellers for swooping down. Like duh, right?
Some are still convinced that feathers evolved on ground-dwellers for flying up, but those people are stupid. The main reason is that it’s easy to fall down, and so one might expect evolution to hit upon ways of slowing descent, that could then be extrapolated to gliding, then flying.
The other way round, you have to think of evolution looking for a way to go up, and so you’d get … climbing.
Scientists have discovered that 100 years of studies based on incorrect assumptions will have to be rewritten:
A new study by scientists from Oregon State University and the Environmental Protection Agency showed — much to the surprise of the researchers — that soil clings tenaciously to the first precipitation after a dry summer, and holds it so tightly that it almost never mixes with other water.
The finding is so significant, researchers said, that they aren’t even sure yet what it may mean. But it could affect our understanding of how pollutants move through soils, how nutrients get transported from soils to streams, how streams function and even how vegetation might respond to climate change.
…”We used to believe that when new precipitation entered the soil, it mixed well with other water and eventually moved to streams. We just found out that isn’t true.”"This could have enormous implications for our understanding of watershed function,” he said. “It challenges about 100 years of conventional thinking.”
One might have thought that something as close to home as soil hydrology would be well understood by now. Findings like this illustrate that many scientific surprises lie in store, even in very well-established fields.
The conventional thinking about conventional thinking should be that one might fruitfully expect it to be wrong. Scientists such as Fred Hoyle and Tommy Gold made that their bread and butter, and while it often embroiled them in controversy, their greatest contributions were arguably made by rejecting the criteria of conservatism and standing the conventional theories on their heads. It’s not a surefire method - but as in the case of soil hydrology, it sure helps to consider that the conventional assumptions might be only, you know, assumptions.
I’ve read so much debunking of the idea that meteorites are rubble-piles, instead of solid rocks, that I am generally skeptical of theories that rely on the rubble-pile concept, like this so-called solution to the meteorite color mystery:
The Earth “changes the colour” of asteroids by shaking them up as they pass, according to scientists.
Researchers report that this solves the mystery of why the meteorites that land on the Earth often do not match the colour of asteroids in space.
…
Dr Clark Chapman, an astronomer from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in the US explained that these asteroids were “not monolithic, solid bodies”, and were more like “rubble piles”.
So on the surfaces of these rubble piles, rocks are shaken and turned over, to reveal a fresh, unweathered surface underneath.
I’m not sure asteroids must have a rubble pile structure to match the data - could it be that they’re solid bodies, but covered with loose debris and dust, as explained in Tom Van Flandern’s NEAR Challenge below, which he won?
The exploded planet hypothesis (as described in Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets) implies that all asteroids and comets are formed as debris clouds during the explosion of planet or moon-sized bodies at astronomically recent epochs. Only those asteroids involved in collisions will have their orbiting debris removed, forming families (in the case of long-ago collisions) or jet streams (in the case of recent collisions). For most “loner” asteroids and comets, the original debris clouds around the primary nucleus should still be intact. The debris would consist of material of all sizes from dust to near-primary-nucleus size. Normal evolution of such debris clouds under tidal forces would tend to concentrate much of the debris into the orbital plane, and to collect some of that planar debris in an equatorial ring at the synchronous satellite orbit location (typically 1-2 radii above the asteroid surface). Debris inside the synchronous orbit should be cleared out by tidal forces and mostly found now lying on the surface of the primary asteroid.
Besides, I thought this rubble-pile idea was put to bed already - hasn’t every actual observation of both asteroids and comets turned up solid bodies, as below? Just sayin - I know the theory is that they’re rubble piles, but the observations actually support solid bodies at least as well:
Swift’s Take on Deep Impact http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/swift_take_deep_impact.html?672005
Summary - (Jul 6, 2005) Scientists monitoring NASA’s Swift satellite had a good view of Deep Impact’s collision with Comet Tempel 1. … One of its most important observations from the impact is a quick rise in ultraviolet light. This means that the impactor struck a hard surface, as opposed to something soft and snowy.
…The Deep Impact team also mentioned “layers”, with the higher material rough and the lower portions of the surface smooth. This suggests a geologically evolved object rather than a primitive one.
Facebook page for our fiction project, “Novelty Theater”:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Novelty-Theater-by-Allen-and-Jim-Richardson/264250088092
Become a fan if you … are one. Warning: adult situations.
The unfortunately named Professor Nutt, fired from the UK govt for his sensible drug policy positions, has formed an independent drug advisory panel, that in his words will try and “take over” from the official panel. Plainly put, he’s here to kick ass and eat caviar and he’s all out of caviar.
More here on the Nutt controversy.
More independent science please!
It’s about fucking time. $30 million to study potential health effects beats a poke in the eye:
…the drug agency asked an independent panel of scientific advisers to review its draft report, and the panel gave it a scathing review. It accused the F.D.A. of ignoring important evidence and giving consumers a false sense of security about the chemical. The drug agency promised to reconsider BPA, and the announcement on Friday fulfilled that pledge.
Amazing the effect an independent scientific panel can have. Now if they could only start listening to independent scientists about genetically modified food…
Tests on stingrays reveal they are smart as shit, with tool use (manipulating water flow as tool) and other cognitive abilities.
It reveals that the fish, once thought a “simple reflex animal”, has cognitive abilities to rival birds, reptiles and mammals, scientists say.
… In the past, scientists have assumed that such cartilaginous fish have limited cognitive abilities, in part because they have been difficult to study, says Dr Michael Kuba from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel who undertook the latest study.
You got that? Because (in part) they were difficult to study, scientists assumed they had limited cognitive abilities. Absent any data whatsoever, the default scientific belief is that a given animal has limited cognitive abilities.
That illustrates nicely how anthropomorphism is underrated. Because the default belief of anthropomorphism is that well, any given animal is probably a lot like us. And time and time again, as in this case, it’s the anthropomorphic position that is correct, or at least, not surprised.
Terence McKenna on Novelty Theory part 1
Enjoy this scintillating analysis of what would happen in a Hulk vs Juggernaut fisticuffs. Geektacular.
Then, thrill to this episode of the animated Hulk series. Clip 1 . Clip 2. It’s got it all. Themes of science run amok pervade the Hulk mythos. Plus, see if you don’t get misty-eyed when Rick Jones and Betty Ross are forced to break the Hulk’s heart in order to save his life.
Part of the documentary of extreme experience, “Touching the Void”, about two men caught in a fractal metaphor for the human condition. Screened the whole thing last night at Gonzo Science HQ - more horrifying in its way than the “Alive!” film - which is plenty horrifying itself and which also takes place in the Andes. But these two chaps here just have no luck AT ALL, confronted at every turn with impossible options and mindbending choices. And after this existential scene, it gets worse.
Regarding video formatting issues, for the time being most youtube videos seem to display best in firefox.
Circa 1925, Percy Harrison Fawcett said he’d found evidence of ancient cities in the Amazon jungle:
…he reported finding large earth mounds filled with ancient and brittle pottery. Buried under the jungle floor, he claimed, were also traces of causeways and roadways. Based on this and other evidence, he insisted that the Amazon once contained large populations and at least one, if not more, advanced civilizations. Despite being dismissed and ridiculed as a crank, he set off in 1925 to find the place, which he christened the “City of Z.” He and his party, including his twenty-one-year-old son, Jack, then vanished forever—a fate that seemed to confirm the madness of such a quest.
Over the past several years, however, there has been mounting evidence that nearly everything that was once generally believed about the Amazon and its people was wrong, and that Fawcett was in fact prescient. When I followed Fawcett’s trail into the Xingu area of the Brazilian Amazon, in 2005, I met up with the archeologist Michael Heckenberger. In the very area where Fawcett believed he would find the City of Z, Heckenberger and his team of researchers had discovered more than twenty pre-Columbian settlements. These settlements, which were occupied roughly between 800 and 1600 A.D., included houses and moats and palisade walls. There were geometrically-aligned causeways and roads, and plazas laid out along cardinal points, from east to west. According to Heckenberger, each cluster of settlements contained anywhere from two thousand to five thousand people, which means that the larger communities were the size of many medieval European cities.
In your face!!
News video report at this link.
This is of particular interest to us at Gonzo Science as reports of BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) phenomena have multiple scientific explanations.
Zeitoun was previously the scene of some famous BVM reports (over a Coptic Church as in the current flap). They were correlated to distant seismic phenomena by Michael Persinger, which seemed to support his Tectonic Strain Theory (TST)of the paranormal (wierd lightshows and psychological effects from geophysical-electromagnetic causes). The TST was later retrofitted by Paul Devereaux into the Earth Lights theory.
This current BVM report makes a pretty good case for a simple mass hysteria explanation, however - certainly not unheard of in these cases and we have a first-hand witness of BVM mass hysteria in our Black Casebook. At any rate, it looks like the so-called “doves” that appear to luminously accompany the Virgin in these reports may simply be disregarded as white pigeons flying around. And the one piece of footage here of the glow that is reportedly the Virgin is not even in the air - it’s easily seen as a light source sitting on top of the church.
If this is the same thing that happened the first time around, Persinger may have been correlating it with seismic data for nothing, and the criticisms of him overreaching may have some merit.
The Gonzo Science CD has a pro-TST track about this, number 3 at this link, and yes that’s “Sweet Jane.”
Rupert Sheldrake on The Extended Mind.
Documentary on geoengineering and weather control.
