2009 September - REALscience

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Geology, Oceanography, Physics and Chemistry, Video on 09 30th, 2009 | No Comments

7.9 Quake hits Indonesia

A day after an 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck the Pacific territory of Samoa, killing 99, a 7.9 temblor flattened buildings, knocked out bridges, damaged an airport and killed at least 75 people in Sumatra, Indonesia. This quake was about 375 miles from and occurred along the fault line that triggered...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Geology, Oceanography, Physics and Chemistry, Video on 09 29th, 2009 | No Comments

Big Quake and Tsunami Strike Samoa

Scientists and officials talk about today’s earthquake and tsunami. An 8.0 magnitude earthquake shook the island of Samoa early today and triggered a tsunami that wiped out villages and has killed about 20 people with many more unaccounted for so far. A tsunami warning for Hawaii and the west...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Featured Articles, Physics and Chemistry, SciClips, SciLebs, Science & Entertainment on 09 29th, 2009 | 2 Comments

FlashForward’s Timely Physics

Cast of ABC Television's Flash Forward, courtesy of ABC When the ABC Television series FlashForward pushed the collective consciousness of the world (in the context of the show) forward six months, the book on which the action-adventure series is based flashed up the Amazon book ranking last week. The...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Consumer Safety, Diseases, Health and Medicine, SciClips, Video on 09 25th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Mouthrinses Awash in Controversy

New research coming from Johnson & Johnson shows that Listerine antiseptic not only kills germs that cause bad breath and gum disease but also could prevent those germs from entering the bloodstream where they can lead to diabetes, heart disease and pneumonia. This follows on the heels of an Australian...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Astrobiology, New Discoveries, Space, Video on 09 24th, 2009 | No Comments

Water on the Moon

Three separate missions examining the moon have found clear evidence of water there. On October 9th, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission will try to detect water directly by crashing a Centaur rocket onto the moon.

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Adaptation and Extinction, Energy, Environment, Featured Articles, Global Warming, Politics and Science, President Obama Science Policy, SciClips, Solar, Video, Wind on 09 23rd, 2009 | 1 Comment

President Obama Vows to Fight Climate Change

President Obama Addresses UN Climate Summit In what could be considered his most strongly-worded warning about the threat of climate change, U.S. President Barack Obama told the United Nations that there is little time to act before permanent environmental damage is irreversible. In a stirring speech,...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Biochemistry, Bioethics, Biofuels, Biology, Diseases, Energy, Featured Articles, Genomics, Health and Medicine, New Species, SciClips on 09 22nd, 2009 | No Comments

Synthetic Biology Takes on a Life of Its Own

A Yeast Cell with Synthetic Genes, courtesy of Dr. Pamela Silver, Harvard Medical School Life is often stranger than fiction. But the direction that biology is heading, synthetic life could be stranger than science fiction. The emerging field of synthetic biology is moving closer and closer to creating...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Astronomy, Engineering, Space, Video on 09 21st, 2009 | No Comments

Hubble Reveals New Cosmic Pics

After being upgraded and outfitted with a new, more powerful camera, the Hubble Space Telescope has begun sending higher resolution and more spectacular photos from deep within outer space. A fully rejuvenated Hubble telescope kicked off its new life on September 9, with a flurry of stunningly clear...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Animals, Biochemistry, Biology, Diseases, Genomics, Health and Medicine, Marine Science, New Species, Oceanography, SciClips on 09 18th, 2009 | 1 Comment

Discovering an Ocean of Medicine

Amy Wright Collects Samples While Diving, courtesy of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University Cures to the most mundane and deadly illnesses have been found deep in the jungles, high in the mountains and hidden in the rainforests. But until recently not many scientists were...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Books, Featured Articles, Physics and Chemistry, Psychology, SciClips, The Brain on 09 17th, 2009 | No Comments

Dan Brown’s Quantum Entanglement

Entangled Photons and The Lost Symbol Avid fiction aficionados have anxiously awaited author Dan Brown’s latest rip-snorting adventure through the mysterious. The Lost Symbol is Brown’s new book, which features the largely unknown field of noetic sciences as a means to move his plot along. Loosely...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Backyard Science, Physics and Chemistry, Podcast, Video on 09 16th, 2009 | No Comments

Backyard Science: Lava Lamp 101

As the school year begins, many Freshmen dorm rooms will have the perennial lava lamp gracing a bookcase or desk. With more students tightening their budgets here is an easy and cost-effective way to build your own lava lamp. See the world’s biggest lava lamp in Soap Lake, Washington.

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Energy, Environment, Geology, SciClips on 09 15th, 2009 | 1 Comment

Drilling for Heat Triggers Quakes

AltaRock Energy Site in California The search for a renewable form of Earth-generated power keeps hitting a snag. The process to create geothermal heat seems to cause earthquakes–a lot of them. After hitting a fault in Basel, Switerland and triggering a 3.4 earthquake that shook the city, Markus...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Biology, Diseases, Health and Medicine, SciClips on 09 14th, 2009 | 1 Comment

Life and Death of Cells

Apoptosis in Action Apoptosis is essentially cell suicide. It is the natural process by which damaged or unfit cells get expelled, making rooms for robust healthy cells. This field of biological study has been around for a long time. But scientists are just starting to unravel the highly complex processes...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Environment, Geology, Global Warming, Video on 09 9th, 2009 | No Comments

Storing Carbon at the North Pole

Scientists on Svalbard near the North Pole are drilling one kilometer into the ground where they hope to store carbon dioxide, given off by a coal-fired power station. The project is part of a new wave of technology designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and combat global warming. This decade’s...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Animals, Biology, Marine Science, Video on 09 7th, 2009 | No Comments

Jaws Appears off Massachusetts Beaches

Massachusetts officials are using high-tech tags to track the movements of two great white sharks near Cape Cod — the first time the fearsome fish have ever been tagged in the Atlantic Ocean. Bringing the scary shark movie Jaws to mind, great white sharks are common in cold Atlantic waters and...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Engineering, Environment, Global Warming, Marine Science, New Discoveries, Video on 09 3rd, 2009 | No Comments

New Ocean Observatory Initiative Gets Funding

The University of Washington is spearheading a giant construction project to create a power and Internet grid along the ocean floor as part of the Ocean Observatories Initiative that will dramatically change the way we do ocean research. The National Science Foundation grant of $126 million is the...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Animals, Featured Articles, Podcast, SciClips on 09 2nd, 2009 | No Comments

Monkey Music

Cotton-top Tamarin, courtesy of University of Wisconsin, photo by Bryce Richter Music is an important part and key ingredient of our culture. But it might also extend to the animal kingdom. New research by University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Charles Snowdon has found that while monkeys...

Posted by Michael Bradbury in Biology, Consumer Safety, Diseases, Health and Medicine, Physics and Chemistry, Podcast, SciClips on 09 1st, 2009 | No Comments

Retractions on the Rise

Hwang Woo Suk's Fake Cloned Human Embryonic Stem Cells Scientific papers are the hallmark of any scientist’s career and achievements. And having a published paper retracted spells trouble. Do rising retraction rates hurt the public trust in science? Or does closer scrutiny signal improved safeguards...