Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Bigfoot

Apparently there was a bigfoot sighting in El Dorado County in September caught on photo film ... well kinda. They claim that the Bigfoot is breaking into a car and you can see some "underwear" and "male organ" I can barely see a damn thing but there you go. I cannot tell if Bigfoot just doesn't know how to wear underwear so that his "organ" doesn't show or if the underwear is supposed to be hanging on a close line that just happens to be at bigfoot crotch level.

But breaking into a car. Hard times for Bigfoot.

Click the link for the grainy photos.

Happy Halloween

Enjoy the one time a year where it's okay to take candy from strangers in masks.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Monday, October 09, 2006

Ancient Reptile Sea Monsters

The fossilized remains of a 33-foot sea reptile dubbed "The Monster" have been found on an Artic island.

The ancient graveyard once lay deep underwater during the Jurassic period, about 200 million to 145 million years ago (take a virtual swim with Jurassic sea monsters).he site now sits on the island of Spitsbergen, part of the Norwegian-owned Svalbard archipelago, which lies about 600 miles (966 kilometers) from the North Pole (map of Norway).

In total, 28 well-preserved skeletons of marine reptiles that lived some 150 million years ago have been identified at the site, reports a team from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum in Norway.

The fossil haul includes the Monster, an estimated 33-foot-long (10-meter-long) pliosaur that has not yet been fully excavated. (See images of the newly found sea monster.)

Pliosaurs were the top marine predators during a time when the oceans were teeming with large, meat-eating reptiles.

"It was the T. rex of the ocean," said Jørn Hurum, co-leader of the research team. "It would have eaten everything."

So far the team has found the Monster's skull, which measures 6.9 feet (2.1 meters) in length, along with dinner plate-size neck vertebrae and portions of the lower jaw containing teeth as thick as cucumbers.

Nobel Prize in Econ


As you can see by the Colbert Nobel Prize Excel photo from below an American was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics this week. Colombia University professor, Edmund S. Phelps won for his theories on the relationship between inflation and unemployment.

The 73-year-old Columbia University professor challenged prevailing views in the 1960s by developing a new economic model that has helped corporate and government leaders balance inflation and unemployment in decision-making.

He is the sixth US citizen to win a Nobel Prize this year, meaning every prize save for the literature and peace prizes, which have not yet been announced, have gone to Americans.

Phelps said in New York that he learned of the prize in a telephone call from Sweden shortly after 6 am.

...

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Phelps' work, done in the late 1960s, had "deepened our understanding of the relation between short-run and long-run effects of economic policy."

Colbert notices the US Nobel Dominance

For your Colbert Nobel Prize watch.

Plus a great video on last wednesday segment concerning the Nobel Prizes can be found at comedy central (as of now the second row of videos). No video yet on youtube.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

And Another!


With the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Stanford University professor Roger Kornberg, the Americans have swept the Nobel science prizes for the first time since 1983 and just as importantly the Bay Area represented winners for all three prizes.

Stanford University professor Roger Kornberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry today for his research into how information stored in genes is copied and used to construct an organism.

Kornberg's Nobel Prize comes 47 years after his father received the coveted award for his work in medicine. Kornberg is the third Bay Area scientist to win a Nobel Prize this week, and will receive about $1.3 million for the honor.

Kornberg, 59, was honored for his work studying transcription, the process of copying information stored in genes and transferring them outside the cells, where proteins use the copy to actually create the organism. His work could help scientists understand fatal illnesses including cancer and heart disease and move stem cell research forward, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

It has been a great week to be a Bay Area science junkie.

Photo via Creative Commons Search, credit ereneta

Nobel Prize in Physics



The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced yesterday morning and once again some Bay Area scientists won.

George F. Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and John C. Mather of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for their research that found the first overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang as the origin of the universe.


Prof. Smoot is a physics professor at UC Berkeley. He actually teaches Physics 7B, the second semester of introductory physics class. Can you imagine being a freshman or sophmore, coming to class to find out that your professor just won a Nobel Prize? The Award ceremony in Sweeden is the day of the class final.

Dr. Mather was a UCB doctoral grad, studying under another Nobel prize winner, Charles H. Townes.

More seriously, Smoot explained how he, Mather and their teams of colleagues had successfully united the science of quantum mechanics, which deals with the smallest things in the universe, and the science of cosmology, which concerns itself with the largest.

Humble congrats to both and enjoy the parking spot.

Photo via Creative Commons Search, credit ereneta

Monday, October 02, 2006

College Radio

My friend Evan, a law student at UCLA, does a radio show on the UCLA college radio station on Mondays from 2-4 PM called Pocket Full of Rock. If college style radio is your thing, and if you consider yourself the least bit hip it should be, then check out http://uclaradio.com/

Its on now.

Nobel Prize time



So its that time of year, when the Nobel Prizes are announced. Although there is no Nobel for the field sciences, we will still post a bit about them, because well it is interesting. That simple.

First up is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine which went to two US scientists, Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for their work looking at how some genes are regulated in the body. They discovered RNA interference which is responsible for down-regulation of certain genes. It has also become a very important tool for scientists studying certain proteins. The technique pioneered by the Nobel laureates allows one to artificially "knock-down" a gene and study how the protein of interest effects the cell or animal model by making observations in its absence.

We use this very new technique in my lab and it is instrumental in understanding the effects of proteins in cell and tissue physiology.

DNA holds the information needed to build all the proteins that make life possible. The information in a gene is first copied into a molecule known as mRNA (messenger RNA), which is then used as a template for making a protein (get a genetics overview.)

But unlike DNA, which generally exists only as a double-stranded molecule with two matching sides, mRNA is single-stranded.

Fire and Mello found that injecting a cell with the matching strand for a certain mRNA silences all expression of the associated gene—the protein is simply not made. The scientists reported their discoveries in a 1998 issue of the journal Nature.

The matching strand binds to the target RNA to create a double-stranded RNA molecule, similar to DNA.

This double-stranded RNA, scientists later discovered, is destroyed by a set of proteins as a natural defense mechanism against viruses, as well as a tool to regulate the expression of certain genes.

Photo via Creative Commons Search, credit ereneta