Science Guide

Below is a thermogravimetric (TG) scan of commercial grade sucrose. Over the course of the experiment, the compound is quite stable to decomposition to the gas phase under N2 up to the onset temperature of ~226 C. This is indicated by the constant temperature line leading up to the onset.  Above 226 C it begins to evolve gas or aerosols.

The furnace temperature ramp is 10 C/minute, the purge gas is nitrogen, and the crucible is platinum. The software that presents the data determines an onset and offset temperature by intersecting lines extending from the slopes of the lines at points chosen by the operator. In this way, the computer "squares" the broad curves and reports a temperature at that point.

I'm in Houston for GSA! It's my first GSA ever. I will only be at the meeting for two days (I have a thesis to write and classes to teach, so I can't stick around), but I'm excited to finally get to see this meeting. It's other side of the geology community, the people who only rarely come to the ginormous AGU meetings that take over San Francisco. GSA is more of the small college, paleo, Earth history, and honest-to-god straight-up geology crowd. I'm here in part to help out with our department search, and in part to see the meeting. Conveniently, there is a certain special someone that lives in this city that I get to see while I'm here!

I've been paying attention to Canadian politics as I look forward to exercising my democratic rights ina couple of weeks.  I've never been seriously interested in the NDP, for the simple reason that they never seemed to be in a position to take power, but with the Liberals melting down in the polls recently, I've come to view the NDP as a serious contender for (at least) the opposition.  Since I would normally vote Liberal, this now leaves me pondering my choices more carefully.

To help figure out what I'm going to do, I sat down tonight to review the platforms of both the Liberals and the NDP.  Mr. Layton's was interesting, with many ideas on important issues like climate change, the economy, and so on.  But if you've read this blog for any time at all, you'll know that I'm a Ph.D student in Biology, and that science is very important to me.  So what is the NDP stance on science and scientific research in Canada, you ask?

Beats me.

I typically love election years because of all of the teaching opportunities they provide.  Teaching students about electoral votes, the electoral process, and the candidates' platforms always sparks interesting conversations.  Students always wonder why the vote isn't just a popular vote, and they tend to have fun picking a favorite candidate for whom they are rooting throughout the whole process.

This year, however, I'm glad I don't teach older students.  With my third graders, I can keep things light, and we'll focus largely on the fact that we'll have either our first non-white president or our first female vice-president.  If I taught high school, the discussion might very well get much uglier.

How do you talk to high school students about the 700 billion dollar bailout without admitting that we've mortgaged their future?

DO YOU KNOW   ??

tHE qURAN SAYS;

6- ...He creates you, in the wombs of your mothers, in stages, one after the other, in three darkness.
39-The Throngs, 6

The fetus in the mother’s womb is a fragile thing. If it were not protected well, heat, cold, temperature variations, impacts or even the mother’s sudden movement might kill it or cause it irreparable damage. The three zones within the mother’s womb protect the fetus against all sorts of dangers. These are:

1- The abdominal wall,
2- The uterine wall, and
3- The amniotic sac.

Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Storyby Loreen Leedy is the newest book by this very fun author. I first became familiar with Leedy while using her book Postcards from Pluto as a mentor text (way back before I even knew what they were) for writing our own postcards and books about the planets when that was part of my science curriculum.  Since then I have had the opportunity to meet her at the now defunct The Ohio State University Children's Literature Conference (boy I miss that opportunity to see so many great authors) and she has now written around thirty books.

Ultrasound forcefields are used here to create invisible yet tactile 3D objects in space with the entire interaction rendered in computer displays.   So one can reach out and 3D objects without the use of gloves or sensors.   This has weird and interesting ramifications for art, gaming, education, human-computer interface, and of course, ero-tech.

"The team is working to adjust how the transducers are driven in order to produce realistic textures as well as shapes."

--The show Sanctuary debuted on October 3rd on the SciFi channel.  Previously seen only in "webisodes," the show centers on 157-year-old psychiatrist Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping), who seeks to track down, study, and protect the strange and often terrifying creatures that secretly populate our world and live among us.  One of them is, yes, Bigfoot; there is also a young boy with a kind of tentacle attached to his chest.

Cryogenics has been the subject of science fiction for as long as I can remember, but it has now become an accepted science in many ways.

Cryogenics is now commonplace for use in fertility health. It is quite common now for people to store eggs or embryo's for future implantation. Organisations like Fertility Associates in New Zealand have had success with freezing sperm, eggs and much more.

More and more people are starting to freeze the umbilical cord of newly born babies with a view to being able to use the cells to aid in treating serious immune conditions such as cancer with a guarantee of acceptance of the cells by the person, because they are in fact their own genetic matter.

Apparently the French have found that Mac Pros emit benzene. What the article doesn't mention is that benzene is not only poisonous, but is classified as a carcinogen.

You'd think Steve Jobs would get right on that...