The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Dreams of sex and horror.

LiveScience pulls the cover back on another battle of the sexes with a study that shows men and women dream differently:

Parker corroborated participants’ dreams with actual life experiences and found that the anxieties about past occurrences reoccur many times as “emblem” dreams.

“It is these emblem dreams that are particularly significant,” Parker said. “If women are asked to report the most significant dream they ever had, they are more likely than men to report a very disturbing nightmare. Women reported more nightmares and their nightmares were more emotionally intense than men’s.”

…

Men’s dreams contained more references to sexual activity, Parker said, and men reported more actual intercourse, while women reported more kissing and sexual fantasies about other dream characters.

I’m imagining this all comes down to the way hormones mess with our emotions.

Entered on 30 January 2009 at 6:12 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Cyber-insects taking off.

Wired’s Danger Room blog now has me imagining what it would be like to come under attack from a buzzing swarm of remote-controlled rhinoceros beetles:

Researchers hooked a series of six electrodes up to the brain and muscles of the insect. Then, during a demonstration at the MEMS 2009 academic conference in Sorrento, Italy, “they equipped the beetle with a module incorporating a circuit to send signals to the electrodes, wireless circuit, microcontroller and battery. The university has so far succeeded in several experiments of electrically controlling insects, but it used a radio control system this time.”

You just gotta see the diagram.

Tech-On (the source of Wired’s report) has an interesting perspective on why we are turning beetles into toys:

Setting aside the question of whether it is morally right or wrong to use a living creature for such a purpose, we must think about the “production efficiency” to create “cyborgs” that are beneficial to mankind. Commenting on this, the university said it can produce the cyborg in a short period of time because the positions of the electrodes worn by a beetle need not be so precise.

That’s a Japanese publication, and it’s no surprise they’re taking an interest in this UC Berkley project. Rhinoceros beetles are much more charismatic than the Japanese robo-roaches.

Entered on 29 January 2009 at 19:37 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Pleistocence Park?

Not dinosaurs, but mammoths. I’d like to ride a mammoth. Wouldn’t you? New Scientist teases us with the possibility we can soon ride mammoths… or race glyptodons… or watch saber-tooth tigers from a safe distance:

Even in ideal conditions, though, no genetic information is likely to survive more than a million years – so dinosaurs are out – and only much younger remains are likely to yield good-quality DNA. “It’s really only worth studying specimens that are less than 100,000 years old,” says Schuster.

The genomes of several extinct species besides the mammoth are already being sequenced, but turning these into living creatures will not be easy.

“Not easy” is not the same as “impossible.” New Scientist’s list also includes the dodo, short-faced bears, Tasmanian tigers, woolly rhinoceroses, Irish elk, moas, giant ground sloths, giant beavers and Neanderthals.

Be fun to sit in on the ethics debates over that last one, eh?

Although the article links to the ongoing mammoth genome project, it doesn’t mention the real Pleistocene Park that’s already up and running in Siberia. Then again, Yakutian ponies and marmots are less thrilling than mammoths. Big, woolly mammoths.

Entered on 28 January 2009 at 6:08 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Jammed.

PhysOrg reveals the high cost of gridlock. All that congestion blocks job growth as well as cars:

A new UC Irvine study found that places with sluggish commutes – usually an indication of economic prosperity – tend to have slower subsequent job growth. The findings suggest that more efficient public infrastructure projects, while costly, can spur local economic growth.

…

Kent Hymel, a UCI doctoral candidate in economics… found that if freeway capacity in the Los Angeles metropolitan area (including Long Beach and Orange County) had increased by 10 percent in 1990, an additional 50,000 jobs would have been created in the region by 2003.

…

“Workers cause traffic jams just by driving to work every day, but at the same time, congestion discourages job growth by raising the cost of doing business,” Hymel said. “Individuals will demand higher wages to compensate for longer commutes. Also, slow traffic harms businesses by increasing the cost of shipping goods.”

Entered on 27 January 2009 at 16:07 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: The Dry Frost of Mars.

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On Mars, the polar ice caps grow and shrink with the seasons, just like on Earth.

But unlike Earth, the Martian ice cap is made of CO2.

Image from the Electron Microscopy Unit of the USDA Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, captured as part of an experiment in filming Martian frost.

Entered on 25 January 2009 at 6:37 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Song delayed: penitential cover will be forthcoming.

I’m blowing this month’s deadline in a big way, I think – moving out of my house this week. Many things in boxes. Phone & internet going down.

But the finished thing should be interesting. And a penitential cover song about science. Not sure which to choose, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

Entered on 23 January 2009 at 15:53 in the Guild Affairs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

The jitters. The voices. Freshen your cup?

SciAm launches a new volley in the war on drugs – specifically an exotic plant known to some as “Psychotria.” On the street, it’s likely to be called “java” or “joe” and, according to a study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the popular, bitter brew can trigger hallucinations:

…[C]ollege students they studied said they sometimes heard faux voices after chugging at least seven cups of coffee daily.

…

Some previous research has found that reducing or eliminating caffeinated coffee from the diets of schizophrenics reduces their hallucinations, but other studies haven’t replicated those findings, they note.

Entered on 22 January 2009 at 6:11 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

The Rat-Planned City.

Tel Aviv researchers are revolutionizing urban design, PhysOrg.com reports, by designing cities for rats. Normally thought of as vermin, the critters can navigate the street plans to see the rat sights, take in a few rat shows….

Instead of using humans as guinea pigs, the scientists went to their nearby zoo and enlisted lab rats to determine the functionality of theoretical and existing plans.

They’ve already tried their theory in the academic setting by blindfolding human biology students to confirm that human orientation strategies and instincts are similar to those of their fellow four-legged city dwellers.

“We’ve found that routes taken by rats and other members of the animal kingdom tend to converge at attractive landmarks, the same way people are attracted, for example, to the Arc de Triumph in Paris,” says Prof. David Eilam from TAU’s Department of Zoology. “Our research takes the art used by humans to create their towns and cities and turns it back to the animal world for testing. We can look at how rats will react to a city’s geography to come up with an optimal urban plan.”

Entered on 20 January 2009 at 6:41 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Big Boom. Boom. Boom.

NASA likes listening to space, because it’s kind of noisy up there. Somewhere in the background there are echoes of the Big Bang, and if we can decipher those, we’ll know a lot about how the universe came to be. But when the scientists at a listening post in Palestine, Texas, sent up a balloon to hear what it could hear, they were surprised when the universe started playing booty bass from outer space:

“The universe really threw us a curve,” [Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center] says. “Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted.”Detailed analysis ruled out an origin from primordial stars or from known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy. The source of this cosmic radio background remains a mystery.

Entered on 19 January 2009 at 6:53 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Afrikanska kulturföremål_2, Nordisk familjebok

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Norwegian encyclopedists behold African artifacts.

Found in a very special category on Wikimedia Commons.

Entered on 18 January 2009 at 6:21 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print