Home
Add Site
Generate Citations
Posts
Groups
Index
Help
About
API
Contact

Posts

May 29, 2012

9:09 PM | Researchers Discover Hacker-Ready Computer Chips

A pair of security researchers in the U.K. have released a paper [PDF] documenting what they describe as the “first real world detection of a backdoor” in a microchip—an opening that could allow a malicious actor to monitor or change the information on the chip. The researchers, Sergei Skorobogatov of the University of Cambridge and [...]

Scientific American - Guest Blog

General Science

April 12, 2012

6:37 PM | What is a Drone, Anyway?

At a time when drone aircraft have become a daily feature of the news and are about to proliferate in U.S. airspace, it’s a good idea to take a step back and examine a very basic and very important question: What, exactly, is a drone? The answer turns out to be more complex than might [...]

Scientific American - Guest Blog

General Science

February 24, 2012

4:18 PM | High-Altitude Surveillance Drones: Coming to a Sky Near You

Last week President Obama signed a sweeping aviation bill that, among other things, will open the skies to “unmanned aircraft systems,” more commonly known as drones. Much of the discussion regarding the coming era of domestic drones has been focused on the many important questions regarding their use at low altitudes. To what extent will [...]

Scientific American - Guest Blog

General Science

November 08, 2011

7:08 PM | Supreme Court Considers GPS Cases and the Future of Privacy

If, in the early 1980s, the U.S. government had proposed a new crime-solving program requiring every adult to carry a small device that not only performed location tracking but also recorded the phone numbers of all recent contacts, opposition would have been swift and indignant. Such a proposal would have been socially, politically and legally [...]

Scientific American - Guest Blog

General Science

4 Results

Sidebar

Filters

Posts with Citations

Some Quantized Flux History

In 1961, William Fairbank and Bascomb Deaver experimentally verified that magnetic flux can be quantized. This week I read an excellent paper on the history of the experiment[1]. For those who aren't close to a library with access to the journal, (and for my own notes), here are a few of the highlights. For more info on the Fairbank/Deaver experiment see[4] .The Other ExperimentThe first interesting thing you should know is that there was a similar experiment […]

Einzel D. (2011). 50 Years of Fluxoid Quantization: 2e or Not 2e, Journal of Low Temperature Physics, 163 (5-6) 215-237. DOI: 10.1007/s10909-011-0349-x

Doll R. & Näbauer M. (1961). Experimental Proof of Magnetic Flux Quantization in a Superconducting Ring, Physical Review Letters, 7 (2) 51-52. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.7.51

Byers N. & Yang C. (1961). Theoretical Considerations Concerning Quantized Magnetic Flux in Superconducting Cylinders, Physical Review Letters, 7 (2) 46-49. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.7.46

Copasetic Flow

Physics

Citation

‘Is ‘cloning’ mad, bad and dangerous?’ – an argument revisited

Seven years ago, to mark the then tenth anniversary of the announcement of the birth of the folkloric Dolly the sheep, and in the still reverberating wake of the South Korean cloning scandal, I practiced my fledgling/intermittent/debatable/wanton science communication skills with the penning of an article on the issue of ‘cloning.’ It being an anniversary with a ’0′ on the end, combined with topical relevance, suggested I might be lucky enough to get it published. And I was thus very... […]

Tachibana, M., Amato, P., Sparman, M., Gutierrez, N., Tippner-Hedges, R., Ma, H., Kang, E., Fulati, A., Lee, H., Sritanaudomchai, H. & Masterson, K. (2013). Human Embryonic Stem Cells Derived by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.006

The Mawk Moth Profligacies

Religion and Atheism | Social Science

Citation

Homeostatic platsicity in a thorny situation

Synapses, the connections between neurons can strengthen and weaken depending on the specific activity at that synapse. This is called synaptic plasticity, and we've talked about it a lot on this blog (here, here, here and here).the strengthening and weakening of synaptic connections corresponds to the spine growing or shrinking (Matsuzaki 2007)However, there is another kind of plasticity that can occur at synapses. This is called homeostatic plasticity. And instead of the synapse strengthening […]

Lee KJ, Queenan BN, Rozeboom AM, Bellmore R, Lim ST, Vicini S & Pak DT (2013). Mossy fiber-CA3 synapses mediate homeostatic plasticity in mature hippocampal neurons., Neuron, 77 (1) 99-114. PMID: 23312519

TheCellularScale

Cell Biology | Neuroscience

Citation

Ocean heat puts pressure on poorest fisheries

The first evidence that climate change has affected fishing catches, revealed by William Cheung from the University of British Columbia and his team, shows tropical countries are set to be hardest hit.

Cheung, W., Watson, R. & Pauly, D. (2013). Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch, Nature, 497 (7449) 365-368. DOI: 10.1038/nature12156

Payne, M. (2013). Fisheries: Climate change at the dinner table, Nature, 497 (7449) 320-321. DOI: 10.1038/497320a

Simple Climate

Climate Science

Citation

Darth DSM-5 and autism

Blue Harvest @ Wikipedia @ Family GuyI need to create a suitable atmosphere for this post, so try this music for size and think Blue Harvest...Right. The wait is over. The discussions / arguments / objections / agreements are all confined to history. Drum roll, spotlight centre-stage... enter DSM-5 and into unknown territory we all go, particularly with autism, sorry.. autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in mind.As you can see from the link above to the new diagnostic guidelines from the […]

Lai M-C, Lombardo MV, Chakrabarti B & Baron-Cohen S (2013). Subgrouping the Autism “Spectrum": Reflections on DSM-5, PLoS Biology, Other: Link

Questioning Answers

Psychiatry | Psychology

Citation