Sunday, August 21, 2011

Scientific images: beautiful, important, and/or iconic (a vote): « Why Evolution Is True

Scientific images: beautiful, important, and/or iconic (a vote): « Why Evolution Is True

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Are We Ashamed of Lunch? | Anthropology in Practice, Scientific American Blog Network

Trickle of Salt Water -- on Mars

Streaking (enhanced here with color) on Mars' Horowitz Crater may have been created by seasonal water, say scientists. Click to enlarge this image. 
Science/AAAS




THE GIST
  • A NASA orbiter has found possible evidence for water on the surface of Mars that flows seasonally.
  • Follow-up laboratory experiments should prove or disprove theory.
  • The water likely would be salty, in keeping with the salty Martian environment.

Women's quest to be 'romantically desirable' can conflict with scientific pursuits, study suggests

Four new studies by researchers at the University at Buffalo have found that when a woman's goal is to be romantically desirable, she distances herself from academic majors and activities related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

The studies funded in part by the National Science Foundation, were undertaken to determine why women, who have made tremendous progress in education and the workplace over the past few decades, continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of STEM.


The research is described in the article, "Effects of Everyday Romantic Goal Pursuit on Women's Attitudes toward Math and Science," to be published in the September issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"Gender scripts discourage women from appearing intelligent in masculine domains, like STEM," Park says, "and in fact, studies show that women who deviate from traditional gender norms, such as succeeding in male-typed jobs, experience backlash for violating societal expectations. On the other hand, men in gender-incongruent occupations don't experience the same degree of backlash as women do", says the lead author Lora E. Park.

Overall, the findings from these studies show that women's romantic goal strivings, which can be triggered by environmental cues or by personal choice, have important implications for the gender gap in attitudes and interest in math and science. Read more in a review on these studies.

I cannot fathom to what extent such kind of studies can unravel these gender conflicts, but that's the quest and zeal of human curiosity which goes on experimenting to find the truth.





Incredible Shade Illusion


This is an amazing video of how our visual perception captures shadows! Simple yet very effective way of demonstrating :)

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Increase in public health spending results in healthier people, study suggests

Increase in public health spending results in healthier people, study suggests

Male Frogs Woo Females With Disco : Discovery News

Singing male tĂșngara frog in Gamboa, Panama; Credit: H.E. Farris

Male frogs woo female frogs by singing to them so lovely, you should listen to this: frog song

Also compare this with this early 70's disco song, you will be amazed when you hear it mixed in the beats! Just awesome.



You can also look into this for evolution of mating songs among frogs and bats. 


Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Will Climate Change Make Life Harder for Girls?



Girls interviewed in Bangladesh and Ethiopia for a new report suggest that climate change is making their lives even harder.Image: Syed Touhid Hassan/Wikimedia Commons

Girls! Always exploited, even if you look at how evolution has treated this gender! Now, with all that a new report from a study conducted by a nonprofit Plan U.K and U.K Department for International Development suggests that climate change makes the lives of adolescent girls even more difficult and hazardous in the developing countries. The study focused on 500 million adolescent girls in the developing countries with their vulnerabilities towards disastrous risk for a bad life. 
The report includes private interviews with 60 adolescent girls between the ages of 13 and 18 in flood and cyclone prone areas in Bangladesh and drought prone areas of Ethiopia. Living on the front lines of climate change the girls share common experiences. For example, they are the last to leave their houses since they are  responsible for livestock and the household, when a cyclone or other disaster hits. 

There is an increasing amount of interest growing among academicians and researchers towards the relationship between this gender and climate changes. This report focuses exclusively on that issue and reports that women and girls accounted for 90% of  deaths from a 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh and 80% deaths from 2004 tsunami in Asia. Across Africa, about 75% of women and girls of 1.5 million were left homeless during rains and flooding of 2007.

Crowned with all this extra burden adolescent girls will have to bear the excess workload which likely will increase in the coming days because of scarcity of water and timber produced due to rise in global temperatures. If you take time to read this report you will find so many circumstances described by these girls  where they have to wake up at midnight to walk for miles to get water or timber or stay day long at market to sell them missing their schools and what not!

As the report concludes that climate change and gender should not be looked in isolation, it strikes us at our face shockingly that even a climate change exploits women more!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

What Lives Inside Your Navel? : Discovery News

THE GIST
  • If a person has an "innie" belly button, this moist, warm space can be home to well over 100 different organisms.
  • Bacteria, fungi and yeasts are among the different types of belly button organisms.
  • Microbial mixes differ between individuals, but benefit all of us by helping to fight off pathogens.
  • Read More

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported LicenseCreative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.