Scientific American

#SciAmBlogs Friday - Kirk vs. Spock, bridge failure, elephant seals, chemical intuition, predatory journals, sleep learning, and more.

Fri, 24 May 2013 22:47:00 EST

- Jag Bhalla - The Cognitive Science of Star Trek [More]

E-Tailers Want Amazon and Apple To Set Readers Free

Fri, 24 May 2013 16:26:08 EST

At this early stage in the history of electronic books, there’s Amazon, there’s Apple, and then there’s everyone else. Amazon and Apple want to keep it that way, which is why you can’t just download any old e-book to your Kindle or iPad.

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It's not about predators, it's about journal quality

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:32:00 EST

In the past, a journal title that was unfamiliar to a researcher would be an automatic red-flag for journal quality - if I haven't heard of it, it must not be very good. As the number of journal titles increases exponentially (Larsen and von Ins, 2010), scholars have turned to a wide variety of tools to help separate quality publications from the rest. Journal metrics like the impact factor (Garfield, 2006) and a journal's h-index have been used (and mis-used) extensively. And in recent years, librarian Jeffery Beall has put together a list of the worst journals of all, so-called " predatory publishers ."[caption id="" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Not this kind of predator. CC-BY Image from Flickr user Dimitry B"] [/caption] [More]

Net Loss: How We Continually Forget What the Oceans Really Used to Be Like [Excerpt]

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:00:00 EST

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Khalil's Picks (24 May 2013)

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:43:00 EST

The Oklahoma tornado disaster was chilling in terms of sheer power and devastation caused. In this week's picks, I highlight two articles about tornadoes. The first one, by Douglas Main , examines the underlying causes of such destructive tornadoes and the second one, by Adam Kucharski , looks at the challenge in forecasting seemingly unpredictable tornadoes.

On a more joyous note, this week's picks comprises numerous blog posts from Scitable blogs, which just relaunched this week [full disclosure: I am the Community Manager of Scitable blogs]. The blog posts span a variety of topics including physics, cosmology, evolution, psychology, geology, oceanography among others. Scitable bloggers highlighted this week are: Thomas Nguyen , James Keen , Sedeer el-Showk , Jon Tennant , Jane Robb , Sara Mynott , Bruce Braun , Dana Smith and Kate Whittington .

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3-D Printed Windpipe Gives Infant Breath of Life

Fri, 24 May 2013 05:00:00 EST

Kaiba Gionfriddo was six weeks old when he suddenly stopped breathing and turned blue at a restaurant. Kaiba’s parents quickly rushed him to the hospital where they learned that his left bronchial tube had collapsed because of a previously undetected birth defect. During the next few weeks the life-threatening attacks recurred, increasing in number until they became everyday events. Physicians and researchers, however, used some of the most sophisticated bioengineering techniques available to 3-D print a synthetic tube to hold the baby's airway open. Kaiba had the surgery in January 2012 and hasn’t suffered an airway collapse since.

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#SciAmBlogs Thursday - science diagrams, mental illness art, beavers are fish, amphibian decline, cicadas, and more.

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:04:00 EST

Check out the new Video of the Week . [More]

Hip Hop Evolutionary Tales

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:07:00 EST

Video of the Week #93, May 23th, 2013: [More]

A New Way Has Been Found to Make Truck Emissions Testing More Accurate and Less Costly

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:02:00 EST

"I have to take my car in every year for an expensive and inconvenient emission test which I pass. What are you doing about all those trucks?" This question is posed to many air pollution control authorities. There is an emission measure for trucks called the Society of Automotive Engineers J1667 test, also known as the "snap idle" test. It is widely disliked and inaccurate. The truck must be pulled over and stopped with the engine idling. The tester mounts an opacity monitor on the hot exhaust pipe, then persuades the driver to floor the accelerator and allow the motor to go to its maximum allowed RPM. Too much light absorption (opacity) and the vehicle fails. The test only determines smoke opacity. The government standard for pollution, by contrast, is in units of smoke mass and the two do not correlate well. Oxides of nitrogen, an important component of diesel exhaust, are not measured at all. And the driving mode is one that never occurs under normal circumstances. [More]

Thrifty Thursday: A common dandelion, a common sunset, a common phone camera

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:13:00 EST

Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500. [iPhone 4S - $330 ] [More]

The Art and Science of the Diagram: Communicating the Knowledge of the Heavens, the Earth and the Arcane, Final Part

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:23:00 EST

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#SciAmBlogs Wednesday - niche construction, cicadas, ageing, Moon, pirates' dodo, sick caecilians, hurricane forecasts, and more.

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:33:00 EST

- David Rothenberg - Discover the Secret of the 17-Year Cicada, But It Won't Get You Tenure [More]

Recipe for a Photograph #2: Bee in Flight

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:25:00 EST

[caption id="attachment_2239" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="A male Xylocopa virginica carpenter bee hovers in an Illinois forest, keeping an eye on his territory."] [/caption]Few insects so conspicuously mark the arrival of late spring in North America as Xylocopa virginica carpenter bees. Males are especially visible as they raucously guard territories around females' wooden burrows. Because carpenter bees are common, nearly an inch long, not easily spooked, and tend to hover in place, they make ideal subjects for dramatic photographs of insects in midair. [More]

How to Use the Bathroom on a 20-Hour Plus Solar Airplane Flight [Video]

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:13:00 EST

In a bid to set the record for longest distance solar flight, Andre Borschberg will pilot the Solar Impulse airplane from Phoenix to Dallas. Total flying distance, barring route deviations due to weather or other factors, would be nearly 1,400 kilometers, or more than 200 kilometers farther than the previous longest flight set in 2012.On May 3, in just under 20 hours, the Solar Impulse airplane flew from Moffett Field near San Francisco to Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. After the long, slow flight, the solar airplane still had 75 percent of its battery power remaining when pilot Bertrand Piccard, who previously circumnavigated the globe in a balloon, landed the unwieldy aircraft just after midnight local time. A full breakdown of the technology that makes the manned solar airplane possible is here , including a slide show . [More]

The Moon has it all: Explosions, Water, and Clues to the Grand Tack

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:51:00 EST

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Why You Should Care about Pentagon Funding of Obama's BRAIN Initiative

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:35:00 EST

In two recent posts ( here and here ), I complained that the big new BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, to which Barack Obama has committed $110 million next year and possibly billions over the next decade, may be premature. I stupidly neglected to mention an important reason to look askance at the initiative: its biggest funder is the Pentagon, more specifically the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. According to the White House , Darpa is putting up $50 million, more than the National Institutes of Health ($40 million) and National Science Foundation ($20 million). [More]

The Wheels Come Off Kepler Planet-Finding Mission

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:00:00 EST

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is not only the most prolific exoplanet detector ever; it is -- or was -- a marvel of engineering. Its 1.4-meter mirror funnels starlight to a 95-megapixel camera, capable of discerning dips in brightness as small as 10 parts per million -- clues to the mini-eclipses caused by an exoplanet crossing the star’s face. Yet on 14 May, the US$600-million craft was derailed by the failure of one of its only moving parts -- a roughly $200,000 device akin to a child’s gyroscope.

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Google CEO s Condition Spotlights Vocal Cord Paralysis and Its Treatment

Wed, 22 May 2013 07:30:00 EST

When Google CEO Larry Page blogged about his struggles speaking and, at times, breathing last week on his Google+ page he spotlighted a rare condition, bilateral vocal cord paralysis , which leaves sufferers short of breath and with few viable treatment options. This is likely to change in coming years. Page has deep pockets and has promised to fund research into the disorder via the Voice Health Institute . In the meantime scientists are experimenting with electrical stimulation technologies to enhance existing voice therapy as well as surgical treatments. [More]

#SciAmBlogs Tuesday - Oklahoma, cervical cancer, Weil's postulate, immunity and reproduction, global energy, UK wallabies, and more.

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:06:00 EST

Take a look at the newest Image of the Week ! - Hilda Bastian - Dissecting the controversy about early psychological response to disasters and trauma [More]

Why Are Barns Red?

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:57:00 EST

Image of the Week #92, May 21th, 2013: [More]