Dance Your PhD Finalists 2013

Females of the red jungle fowl mate with multiple males, which can create competition between sperm of different males in order to fertilize the egg. In my PhD thesis, I explored the effect of brotherhood on sperm competition and female choice. Interestingly, the brother of the first male that the female has mated with invests more sperm in the female than the non-brother of the first male mate. However, the female ejects a higher proportion of sperm from the brother of the first mate and favours the sperm of the non-brother, facilitating a higher fertility by the non-brother’s sperm ... Inspired by various sports, the dance movements in this video reflect the competitive nature in the sperm world.

Every year, Science's Dance Your PhD competition challenges grad students past and present to convey their dissertations with interpretive dance.

Link to the finalists' videos via io9

Alexander Arrangement | 3D Periodic Table

Click image to enlarge

From Theodore Gray:

The Alexander Arrangement is a three-dimensional paper sculpture of the periodic table designed by Roy Alexander, with whom I collaborated on this version. For the first time this clever form of the table has been combined with my photographs of real element samples, resulting in a quite lovely object.

The Alexander Arrangement deals with the fundamental problem of gaps in the traditional arrangement of the periodic table by wrapping the transition metals and the lanthanides/actinides into loops, so all the elements that are supposed to be next to each other actually are next to each other. You can read it as a complete spiral loop through all the elements without any gaps.

The table is printed on top-grade, heavy paper printed on both sides, and includes detailed instructions for assembly. The result is a sturdy object you can carry around, put on a table, hang as a mobile, or, if you're like me, use as a tree-topper for a festive seasonal science tree. "It takes about 10 minutes to put together if you don't read the instructions," Theodore tells us. "No idea how long if you do read them, that's not the kind of thing I would stoop to."

Via BoingBoing

Are You Scientifically Literate?

Source

From The Christian Science Monitor's online Science section:

You may have an opinion on climate change, evolution education, stem-cell research, and science funding. But do you have the facts to back up your opinion?

This 50-item quiz will test your basic scientific literacy.

Ms. Lanny-yap got 40 out of 50 right and is disappointed with her performance.

Tom Lehrer | Periodic Table Of The Elements Song

YouTube

When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer

I've been watching the third season of the excellent AMC drama Breaking Bad and was moved by Gale's recitation of this poem while he and Walt were bonding in the new meth lab. Both are men of science and believe that "chemistry is magic." I've always thought that the poem means that man cannot control nature, that each being perfects him- or herself through communion with nature, and that the rigidity and precision of science can suck the beauty right out of the natural world.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman (1864)

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Whitman wrote this poem in 1864. It was published in the 1881-82 edition of Leaves of Grass.

Never Dust Again | Dead Skin Cells Help Clean Indoor Air

Colored scanning electron micrograph of flakes of dead skin

C001/1723 | Science Photo Library

The dead cells that slough off your skin every day pile up in the dust that collects around your home. But this grimy-sounding stuff actually helps clean the air indoors, according to new research.

Oil associated with dead skin cells removes the pollutant ozone, a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms. In fact the oil, squalene, reduces indoor ozone levels by about 2 to 15 percent. Its molecules contain six double bonds between carbon atoms, and these bonds interact with — and break apart — ozone ... So, the roughly 500 million skin cells you shed every day are being put to good use.

... Previous research within a simulated aircraft cabin indicated reactions with passengers' exposed skin, hair and clothing were responsible for half of the ozone removal that occurred. And another study, this time in a simulated office, found that one person removes 10 to 25 percent of the ozone in a typical 1,059 cubic foot (30 cubic meter) room.

Read more at LiveScience.

Via The Awl

io9 | 25 Great Books By Legendary Scientists

#1. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Alasdair Wilkins writes:

... here are twenty-five amazing books written by world-famous scientists. These are legendary texts, popular science explainers, personal memoirs, and controversial new theories, and they're all enduring monuments to the power of science.

The list includes books by James Watson, Jonas Salk, Richard Feynman, Margaret Mead, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins, Mary Leakey, and Primo Levi. The only nits I have to pick are the inclusion of The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud [I would nominate the two-volume Principles of Psychology by William James instead] and the absence of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Read the article and see the complete list at io9.