Media and Entertainment
Steroid use by a Major League Baseball slugger may produce only modest increases in muscle mass and bat and ball speed but still boost home run production by 50 percent or more, according to a new study by Tufts University physicist Roger Tobin.
As a scientist who has morphed into a full-time writer, I care deeply about both the substance and communication of science to the general public.
I'm sure American University Communications Professor Matt Nisbet shares my concerns, but I have to admit a rather large degree of discomfort with his advocacy of an approach he calls "framing science."
THE SCIENCE SHELF NEWSLETTER
News about the Science Shelf archive of book reviews, columns, and comments by Fred Bortz
Issue #23, Back-to-School 2007 edition
Academic conferences involve a lot of long speeches. To liven things up, the Vision Sciences Society always has a visual illusions night. If you can't make it to their conference, I want to direct you to an incredible Web compendium of illusions.
The new issue of Nature Neuroscience carries work from David Amodio's group at New York University titled "Neurocognitive Correlates of Liberalism & Conservatism." It's a solid piece of basic cognitive neuroscience. The study's claim to fame is that it "is the first study connecting individual differences in political ideology to a basic neuro-cognitive mechanism for self-regulation." The paper is on very solid empirical grounds and makes very limited claims.
This did not stop William Saletan of Slate from publishing a sarcastic rebuke ("Liberal Interpretation: Rigging a study to make conservatives look stupid") that is misleading, irresponsible and simply a bad piece of reporting. To find out what the research really says -- and to understand what makes Saletan's article such an embarassment to him, to Slate and to its readers -- read on.
All right, I admit it. The title is intended as "hype," but neither one of these events, a fireball in the skies over New Mexico and a book talk about the history of Physics in suburban Pittsburgh, is a mere "flash in the pan."
The corpses of James Brown, Anna Nicole Smith and Saddam Hussein were voyeuristic spectacles for a public greedy for a last look at celebrity lives, according to an academic speaking at the Death, dying & disposal conference organised by the University of Bath.
Rock and pop stars are more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to die an early death, and within a few years of becoming famous, reveals research published ahead of print in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Rediscover Physics through the lives of ten remarkable individuals as yours truly, Science Blogger and author Fred Bortz, speaks on "Ten Decades, Ten Physicists: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century" on September 19, 2007 at the Monroeville (PA) Public Library from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.
News junkies might start up their web browser day any number of ways. There are those who prefer the Post to the Times. Those with a business mind might start with the Journal. On the West Coast, there are those who swear by LA's daily. I myself start with Slate.
However, I can state with little fear of correction, that the website of record for die-hard language buffs is the Language Log.
A film that wins critical acclaim is likely to be an R-rated drama, adapted from a prize-winning play or book and based on a true story, with the original author or director involved in writing the screenplay.
I've added two titles to my Science Shelf book review archive:
The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You by Mark Buchanan;
and
A Contract With The Earth by Newt Gingrich and Terry Maple.
I've also got some interesting titles in my to-review stack.
Click "Read more" for the full update.
Umpires for Major League Baseball are more likely to call strikes in favor of pitchers who share their race or ethnicity, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin.
Computer scientists from UC San Diego have developed a way to generate images like smoke-filled bars, foggy alleys and smog-choked cityscapes without the computational drag and slow speed of previous computer graphics methods.
Panasonic today expanded its LUMIX family of digital still cameras with the introduction of the LUMIX DMC-FZ18, an 8.1 Megapixel compact camera with an impressive 18x optical zoom.
