Code for life

Upcoming popular lectures by Professor Lawrence Krauss

Grant Jacobs • Mar 10, 2010

• news,
• public lecture,
• science communication,
• universities,
• University of Otago

The Psychology Department of the University of Otago is sponsoring two talks by leading physicist Professor Lawrence Krauss next week. If you’re in town, be there! Among his popular science books are Hiding in the Mirror (2005) and The Physics of Star Trek (1995). Hiding in the Mirror is subtitled: The Quest for Alternate … Read More

For success, create the conditions for creativity?

Grant Jacobs • Mar 10, 2010

• Science policy,
• student support,
• TED lecture,
• universities,
• video

Annually the TED (Technology, Education and Design) conference is held at Long Beach, California. Devoted to ’ideas worth spreading’ smaller TED events are now being hosted in other centres through a range of programs. A event making it’s way around the internet again was a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson at Vancouver, Canada, in … Read More

Molecular biology in museums

Grant Jacobs • Mar 09, 2010

• DNA sequencing,
• genomics,
• molecular biology,
• museum,
• science communication

The past fifty years has seen the rise of molecular biology. Many museums have little to represent molecular biology and it’s impact on medicine, perhaps because the objects studied in molecular biology are usually visualised indirectly, whereas museum visitors traditionally go to view objects with their own eyes. [caption id="attachment_1573" align="alignright" width="350"] Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand. Note … Read More

An horrific case of natural health treatment of cancer

Grant Jacobs • Mar 08, 2010

• iridology,
• media,
• medicine,
• natural health remedies,
• news,
• TVNZ

Some of my local readers will have seen last night Lorelei Mason of TVNZ (Television New Zealand) present an horrific case of an iridiologist treating a skin cancer on the scalp which went on to invade the patient’s skull, eventually requiring major surgery. [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="(Source: wikipedia.)"][/caption] You can read a text … Read More

137 years of Popular Science back issues, free

Grant Jacobs • Mar 08, 2010

• book review,
• google books,
• magazine,
• popular science,
• science communication

One-hundred and thirty-seven years of back issues of the monthly magazine Popular Science are now available on-line free. [caption id="attachment_1598" align="alignleft" width="350" caption="Popular Science cover, October 1977. (Source: Google books)"][/caption] You can either search the Popular Science archives, or access issues via Google books. It does not appear to be possible to download … Read More

Sunday reading links: More on Ida, YouTube captions (again), newspaper horders, books on the iPad, swine flu

Grant Jacobs • Mar 07, 2010

• captioning,
• H1N1,
• Ida,
• iPad,
• Onion news,
• swine flu,
• video

Sunday reading picks from the science blogosphere and in the media. (This may be lazy of me, but it’ll keep you busy!) ’Paul Revere’–not a real name–at Effect Measure has presented a graph from CDC data showing childhood deaths to H1N1 (aka ’swine flu’) over the past … Read More

Chiropractic libel suit snagged by its own ruling body?

Grant Jacobs • Mar 06, 2010

• Chiropractic,
• media,
• medicine,
• news

The UK’s ruling body for chiropractors, the General Chiropractic Council (GCC), has declared the same claims that the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) have charged science writer Simon Singh as falsely claiming as ’bogus’ are contrary to evidence. Or, some would say, actually bogus. According to the GCC’s ’What is the GCC’ page, ’it is a … Read More

New Zealand, a tsunami breakwater for Australia, teenage brains and other tales

Grant Jacobs • Mar 05, 2010

• Air traffic control,
• airport traffic control,
• brain,
• earthquake,
• humour,
• New Zealand,
• teenaged

Time for a lazy Friday post. A round-up of titbits read, ’heard on the wires,’ over the past few days. NZ a tsunami breakwater for Australia? This excellent graphic of a preliminary calculation of the tsunami potential from NOAA’s West Coast and Alaska Warning Center been circulating the internet: … Read More

The inheritance of face recognition (should you blame your parents if you can't recognise faces?)

Grant Jacobs • Mar 03, 2010

• Disability,
• face recognition,
• genetics,
• inheritance,
• medicine,
• prosopagnosia

You’d think that recognising faces is one of those things that we all do well, or at least the vast majority of us do, yet in practice our ability to do this varies. Recent twin studies present evidence that face recognition is heritable and is a distinct cognitive task in it’s own … Read More

Enabling deaf people to text emergency calls to 111

Grant Jacobs • Mar 02, 2010

• deafness,
• media,
• New Zealand,
• news

On occasion I write about disability-related issues. I’d like to briefly step aside from science and share my reaction to a recent announcement that deaf people in New Zealand will soon be able to text emergency calls, reported in an article from The Dominion Post by Claire McEntee. My initial reaction was surprise that it hasn’t … Read More