You are browsing the archive for Science.

by Stephen

Google Celebrates the 400th Anniversary of Galileo’s Telescope

August 25, 2009 in Google, History, Science by Stephen

by Stephen

Perseids Meteor Shower

August 12, 2009 in Current Affairs, Google, Science by Stephen

Google celebrates this annual event. Anybody going to do a lot of watching?

by Stephen

Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

August 1, 2009 in Music, Science, Video by Stephen

Thanks to Rick for this one.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

by Stephen

How would today’s media cover Apollo 11?

July 20, 2009 in Current Affairs, Humor, Science, Social Media, Tech, Twitter, Web by Stephen

Pretty good stuff here.

by Stephen

Google Celebrates Apollo 11

July 20, 2009 in Google, Science by Stephen

by Stephen

July 20th, 1969

July 20, 2009 in History, Science, Web by Stephen

apollo11

Head over to the NASA Apollo 40th Anniversary Page!

by Stephen

NASA Releases Restored Apollo 11 Moonwalk Video

July 16, 2009 in Photography, Science, Video by Stephen

apollo11

More amazing stuff from NASA.

A team of Apollo-era engineers who helped produce the 1969 live broadcast of the moonwalk acquired the best of the broadcast-format video from a variety of sources for the restoration effort. These included a copy of a tape recorded at NASA’s Sydney, Australia, video switching center, where down-linked television from Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek was received for transmission to the U.S.; original broadcast tapes from the CBS News Archive recorded via direct microwave and landline feeds from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; and kinescopes found in film vaults at Johnson that had not been viewed for 36 years.

“The restoration is ongoing and may produce even better video,” said Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who oversaw television processing at the ground tracking sites during Apollo 11. “The restoration project is scheduled to be completed in September and will provide the public, future historians, and the National Archives with the highest quality video of this historic event.”

See them all here!

by Stephen

Twittering from Space

July 15, 2009 in Science, Social Media, Tech, Twitter, Web by Stephen

Astronaut Mark Polanksy is Twittering from the Space Shuttle.

http://twitter.com/Astro_127

I don’t care if you have a Twitter account yourself, or even if you hate Twitter. This might change your mind.

by Stephen

Making gains with ExPreSS

July 7, 2009 in Education, Georgia, Science, assessment, social studies by Stephen

High school students in Georgia have long feared the science and social studies portions of the High School Graduation Test. This new program has helped a lot more of them pass this year.

Nearly 1,400 students are a big step closer to graduation thanks to an innovative partnership between the state and local school districts.

The Exam Preparation for Science and Social Studies (ExPreSS) program was a state-funded effort aimed at students who had not passed the Georgia High School Graduation Tests (GHSGT) in Science or Social Studies. More than 2,000 students received two weeks of intensive instruction June 8-18 and then had the opportunity to retest on June 19.

The overall pass rate on this retest was 68 percent; more than double last year’s pass rate on GHSGT retests in science and social studies.

There were 2,043 students from over 100 school districts that attended the ExPreSS program – 1,072 for social studies and 971 for science. The instruction took place at 29 sites around the state. The classes were led by 180 educators: 89 science teachers and 91 social studies teachers.

In social studies, 73 percent of the ExPreSS participants passed the retest. By comparison, the 2008 summer retest pass rate on the Social Studies GHSGT was 27 percent.

In science, 63 percent of the ExPreSS participants passed the retest. By comparison, the 2008 summer retest pass rate on the Science GHSGT was 29 percent.

Read the rest here.

by Stephen

Stem Cells Helping People to See

June 5, 2009 in Current Affairs, Science by Stephen

This is great news for people who are in real need.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYDSPFuWFDM

by Stephen

Interesting Google Logo

May 20, 2009 in Current Affairs, Google, Science by Stephen

Here’s the story.

by Stephen

Giovanni Schiaparelli

March 14, 2009 in Google, Science by Stephen

Google celebrates his birthday.

In 1890, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli drew this map of Mars. Today, on his 174th birthday, we are excited to include his work with many other new features for Mars in Google Earth.

We salute Schiaparelli’s pioneering spirit, his drive to explore, and his desire to understand the universe. His observations impacted the way humans viewed Mars for nearly a century and started a revolution in Astronomy.

More here.

by Stephen

Music-Memory Connection Found in Brain

February 24, 2009 in Education, Music, Science by Stephen

I used to play a lot of music when I was a classroom teacher. Most of the students seemed to enjoy it once they got used to it. Maybe it was even more beneficial than I thought.

People have long known that music can trigger powerful recollections, but now a brain-scan study has revealed where this happens in our noggins.

The part of the brain known as the medial pre-frontal cortex sits just behind the forehead, acting like recent Oscar host Hugh Jackman singing and dancing down Hollywood’s memory lane.

“What seems to happen is that a piece of familiar music serves as a soundtrack for a mental movie that starts playing in our head.” said Petr Janata, a cognitive neuroscientist at University of California, Davis. “It calls back memories of a particular person or place, and you might all of a sudden see that person’s face in your mind’s eye.”

Read the rest here.

by Stephen

Google Celebrates Charles Darwin’s 200th Birthday

February 12, 2009 in Google, Science by Stephen

by Stephen

35 Stunning Hi-Res “Public Domain” Astronomy Images

February 11, 2009 in Photography, Science by Stephen

Outstanding stuff!

This is the coolest picture of Venus I’ve ever seen.

venus

See the rest here!

by Stephen

EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids.

December 6, 2008 in Education, Science by Stephen

Wow…this is sure to be felt in a lot of places.

University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown for the first time that the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids.

In a study recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists at UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Public Health report that normal 9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.

Brain function was measured by means of an electroencephalograph (EEG) – basically, a cap fitted with electrodes to measure electrical activity in the brain – like that used to assess epilepsy, sleep disorders and brain tumors.

“Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult,” said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. “We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response.”

Previous studies have shown a possible link between frontal lobe function and behavioral differences in children from low and high socioeconomic levels, but according to cognitive psychologist Mark Kishiyama, first author of the new paper, “those studies were only indirect measures of brain function and could not disentangle the effects of intelligence, language proficiency and other factors that tend to be associated with low socioeconomic status. Our study is the first with direct measure of brain activity where there is no issue of task complexity.”

Read the rest here.

by Stephen

Playing the Banjo during Brain Surgery

October 18, 2008 in Banjo, Music, Science by Stephen

Yes, that’s exactly what Eddie Adcock did.

A musician who underwent brain surgery to treat a hand tremor played his banjo throughout to test the success of the procedure.

Eddie Adcock is one of the pillars of Bluegrass Music and realised his tremor could threaten his ability to perform professionally.

Surgeons placed electrodes in Mr Adcock’s brain and fitted a pace maker in his chest which delivers a small current which shuts down the region of his brain causing the tremors.

A surgeon filmed the operation at the Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Click here for the video.

by Stephen

Planets and Stars in Scale and Size

September 22, 2008 in Education, Science, Video by Stephen

Very well done!

by Stephen

NASA remembers 9/11

September 11, 2008 in Current Affairs, Photography, Science by Stephen

“The world changed today. What I say or do is very minor compared to the significance of what happened to our country today when it was attacked.” So said Expedition 3 Commander Frank L. Culbertson, upon learning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.

Larger version here

by Stephen

Ode to Joy – As Performed by Beaker

July 21, 2008 in Education, Humor, Science, Video, Weird by Stephen

Bravo!!  Be sure to say for the end!