| PART I OF VI
JULY 11, 2005
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IT'S ALL ABOUT PROMOTION BABY.
Dear Reader,
We are pleased to say that we feel we are now in a comfort zone. Not fuzzy by any means, but let us call it a place of safety - a luxury given to us with the successful launch of our first issue. Now that we essentially know this experiment might work afterall, we are in spin mode. This is not in reference to physical forces, quantum considerations or even subtle drosophila mutants. No, we're talking about spreading the word, we're talking about maybe giving you a chance to win an iPod, and yes, we're talking about spending a little more effort in playing the field that is the web. Wanna play?
DOLPHINS SHOW SOME CULTURE.
By David Secko
See a dolphin swimming through the water and you’re not just looking at a sleek and playful marine creature, you’re also seeing an animal with culture.
Indeed, dolphin culture has recently been spotted off the coast of Australia, says new research from a group of international marine biologists studying bottlenose dolphins.
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HOLLYWOOD VS. SCIENCE: HOW FAR ARE WE FROM INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL?
By James Weldon
Virtually all Hollywood science fiction - from Star Trek to Total Recall to the Alien franchise - agrees on one basic point: sometime in the near future, humanity will soup up its spaceships, stock them with silver jumpsuits, and get itself beyond the confines of our solar system.
So, in no time at all, humanity will reach other worlds, says Hollywood. We may meet new species, and someday, God willing, we’ll all get the chance to have aliens hatch out of us at breakfast.
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SEXY UNIVERSE.
By Ronnie Cordova
You are fine, what did you say your name is again? Mm. You got a way aboutcha, no lie. I like the way you cuuuuuuuurve so seductively around massive objects, baby, and I am dying to see how much you curve around this. You give me different looks, I like that, always something new to discover about you. I feel I can dig pretty deep into your mysteries and oh lordy do you have mysteries. You're charming but you've also got depth, underneath the surface there's something so consistent about you.
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INTRODUCING: BABY TALK.
By Russell Bradbury-Carlin
Most parents are anxious to know the meaning of the various cries, groans, and sounds their child makes. Recently a Spanish electronic engineer named Pedro Monagas created a battery-powered device called "Why Cry". This instrument about the size of a calculator is reportedly able to tell a parent whether their baby's cry is indicating hunger, sleepiness or tiredness. Mr. Monagas states that his "Why Cry" is 98% accurate.
Well I, myself, am considered a kind of "tinkerer". And, as a new parent I often wonder what all the sounds that my baby makes might mean, not just his crying. So, I gathered together some random things lying around my basement: a bike frame, a tube of caulking, some bits of string that I keep in a metal tub, the metal heads from golf clubs I found, amongst other things and started to put together my own device.
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MICROBIAL FUEL CELLS FROM RHODOPHERAX FERRIREDUCENS.
By Mario Jardon
Novel microbial fuel cells.
A recently isolated microorganism has been reported to have a remarkable potential for electricity generation in microbial fuel cells. Rhodoferax ferrireducens, an iron-reducing microorganism, was isolated from subsurface sediments in Oyster Bay, Virginia, USA. Microbial fuel cells composed of this microorganism exceed the performance of previously described microbial fuel cells and even show some clear advantages over existing transition metal-catalyzed fuel cells.
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DESPARATELY SEEKING A MATE FOR GROVER.
By Angela Genusa
Concerned over the failing health of Grover, PBS is in a frantic search for a mate for the rare blue species. Grover is presently in poor health. It is, incidentally, the country's lone blue Grover held in captivity.
The rare animal is caged in a pen inside the muppet animal research center in Alexandria, Va., and has been for the past 36 years since his birth. For reasons shrouded in mystery, Grover has shunned mating since he attained adulthood.
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PAT THE DEAN.
By Eric Schulman and Caroline V. Cox
Here are Robert and Virginia.
They are interviewing for faculty positions at a small liberal arts college.
YOU can interview for a faculty position at a small liberal arts college, too.
Robert can talk with Pat the Dean about research with undergraduates.
Now YOU talk with Pat the Dean about research with undergraduates.
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ELSEWHERE AND OVERHEARD
By Caitlin Dowling
Overheard
"These men believe they are the head of the family but in fact they're not.”
Dr. Nicolae Vlad, head of Botosani's Psychiatry Hospital, Romania, on the mental struggle for men living with their mothers-in-law. Bless. (ananova.com)
"Failure to do so may mean that there is no place in the oceans of the future for many of the species and ecosystems that we know today."
The effects of CO2 emissions on the ocean, according to John Raven, from the University of Dundee. (Guardian)
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May 8th, 1988
I encounter science for the first time during recess. As my friends and I are busy using the magnifying lens that Billy Stewart had gotten for his eighth birthday to burn some sticks, she breaks off from the pack of girls she usually travels around the schoolyard with to tell me that she likes my shoes. I don't understand how anyone could possibly dislike my shoes as they are brand new and have little zippered compartments where I have carefully secreted away the coins I will later use to buy myself some Gobstoppers, so I'm a little befuddled as I return to the sticks. Achieving only faint smoke from the wood we foolishly move on to try, using the same techniques, to freeze a small puddle.
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JOURNAL CLUB SELECTION.
Found by David Ng
The all pervasive principle of repetitious recurrence governs not only coding sequence construction but also human endeavor in musical composition. (1986) Immunogenetics 24(2): p71
In which Chopin, the bastard, apparently pilfered his material from genetic sequences.
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| | | | Issue One
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