@MnemosyneSinger This meme plays off the false idea that human awareness affects interference phenomena. The presence of a physical detector at one of the slots will kill the interference pattern. But the movement of this guy’s eyeballs will not, nor will his “consciousness”.
"You go talk to kindergartners or first-grade kids, you find a class full of #science enthusiasts. They ask deep questions. They ask, "What is a #dream, why do we have #toes, why is the #moon round, what is the birthday of the #world, why is #grass#green?"These are profound, important #questions. They just #bubble right out of them.You go talk to 12th graders and there's none of that. They've become #incurious.Something terrible has happened between kindergarten and 12th grade." #CarlSagan
Remember that abysmal attempt at creating a fake paper detector that #Science magazine trumpeted? The one that just looked to see if you used your institutional email address, had international collaborators, and were affiliated with a hospital?
The one that instantiated the authors biases and then they turned around and used as evidence for those biases?
Science has just published the letter that Brandon Ogbunugafor and I wrote in response.
But their "editor's note" published alongside our letter is, not to put too fine a point on it, complete bullshit.
"Far from heralding or sensationalizing the tool, we presented it as a rough indicator of a real problem."
It’s not a rough indicator; their own data show that it entirely fails. More importantly, a rough indicator with racist consequences is far worse than no indicator at all, and the article neither notes these racist consequences nor this basic fact.
@ct_bergstrom the institutional email bit is scary. It also hits articles based on thesis work of recent graduates.
Finding a research position after graduation takes time, and if you publish something in the mean time a personal email is all that's left. Same applies if you decide to work in industry.
My first paper would have been impacted by this thing :kaboom:.
Rosalind Franklin’s research was crucial to discovering DNA’s double helix structure. But she never received proper acknowledgement for her contribution.
A look underneath seafloor hydrothermal vents on 🌎has revealed cave systems teeming w/ worms, snails & chemosynthetic bacteria living in 75F-degree water.
Methinks this may have significance for the origin of life on Earth & maybe Enceladus!
Huge life-saving breakthrough: The first Malaria vaccine has cut #Malaria deaths in kids under 5 by 13%. The results of this huge trial (hundreds of thousands vaccinated already) could mean that more than 60,000 children could be saved per year in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
@delfuego , for helping me correct my initial hasty post.]
The 300-square-mile Telescope Array experiment in Utah detected a cosmic ray with an energy of 240 quintillion electron volts. That's as much energy as a thrown brick, jammed into a single subatomic particle.
First ever drawings of the moon made by Galileo Galilei after observing it through his telescope in 1609.
Galileo produced this extremely famous set of six watercolours of the Moon in its various phases "from life", as he observed the Earth's satellite through a telescope in the autumn of 1609. They represent the first realistic depiction of the Moon in history.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Drawings of the Moon, November-December 1609
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
#OTD in 1609, Galileo Galilei aimed his telescope at the Moon.
While not being the first person to observe the Moon through a telescope (English mathematician Thomas Harriot had done it four months before but only saw a "strange spottednesse"), Galileo was the first to deduce the cause of the uneven waning as light occlusion from lunar mountains and craters. In his study, he also made topographical charts, estimating the heights of the mountains. via @wikipedia
"Duke University has decided to close its herbarium, a collection of 825,000 specimens of plants, fungi and algae that was established more than a century ago. The collection, one of the largest and most diverse in the country, has helped scientists map the diversity of plant life and chronicle the impact of humans on the environment.
The university’s decision has left researchers reeling."
@bicmay
'cant afford'
Lol.
One of the most independently wealthy schools in the world and one of the only universities which still pays service to conservatives.
Born in 1896, biochemist Gerty Theresa Cori became the 1st woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (and the 3rd to win a Nobel Prize).
Cori faced gender discrimination & was marginalized for years. But she never gave up.
There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling to move forward and turning the handlebars to steer makes bike riding an effortless activity.
Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Great Britain. Her family lived in poverty, selling fossils to make ends meet.
Scientists of Anning’s day could not believe that a poor young woman could posses her knowledge & talent. She has been described as 'the greatest fossilist the world ever knew' yet many people are still unaware of her incredible contributions.
British scientist Rosalind Franklin died #OTD in 1958.
Her most famous contribution to science came from her X-ray diffraction images of DNA, particularly Photo 51, which provided crucial evidence for the double helix structure of DNA. Her photo was shared without her knowledge with J. Watson & F. Crick, who used it as a basis for their model of DNA's structure. Their work overshadowed her contribution, & she was not fully recognized for her role until after her death.
Born in 1918, Gertrude Elion faced discrimination in #science, unable to get a job as a woman. So she volunteered as a lab dishwasher, earning enough $ for grad work at NYU, where she was the only woman in chemistry classes.
@Sheril Thanks for posting this Sheril, I started watching the Apple version of this story, Lessons in Chemistry but found it a bit too dark for me (Episode 2) so haven’t pushed through. Have you checked the series out?
“Man the Hunter has dominated the study of human evolution for nearly half a century & pervaded popular culture. [But] it was the arrival of agriculture that led to rigid gendered roles & economic inequality. Hunting belonged to everyone.”
@morecowbell@Sheril No, they use words that are fit to describe their observations. In this case how there are, previously tried to insufficiently categorize as f.e. Intersex, a whole range of people with sex markers that are on a spectrum between the two most common phenotypes commonly described as male and female.
This is not just word juggling, it's science that should become part of sex education but is heavily fought. Your denial doesn't change anything about this.
Uncovering the Forgotten Female Astronomers of Yerkes Observatory
It all started with a photo of Einstein.
In the first half of the 20th century, Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin employed more than 100 women, many who were astronomers. But their names have all been lost to time—until now. via @atlasobscura
@gutenberg_org There is interesting technology underlying the floors of those big refractor telescopes. Up on Mt. Hamilton near San Jose the floor was floating, sort of, on water that could be pumped in to raise the floor or drained to lower it. Last time I was at Mt. Hamilton they were seeking donations to repair the broken hydraulic floor - and until then one has to climb a rather tall set of movable stairs to get to the eyepiece.
I've never stopped feeling angry about the NYT's story from last November which fearmongered heavily about puberty blockers and the supposed risks to bone health they might bring.
So it is with grim satisfaction that I can report on a new study, in JAMA Pediatricts, that suggests fears about bone density have been wildly overstated. #science#trans#journalism#mediabias#news
@Sheril I'm conflicted about celebrating someone's accomplishments along with their race and gender. I get that it 'feels' important, buts it's also incredibly patronizing because...what did we expect from a woman POC? That they can't accomplish things everyone else does? True equality means never celebrating someone for their race, reproductive organs, or other perceived 'disadvantage'. We are all equally capable of being incredible. Celebrate being incredible.
The UK is to rejoin the EU’s Horizon research scheme AND Copernicus (the Earth observation satellite system). Very cheering news to start the day!
It doesn’t really make up for the stupidity of leaving in the first place, or the damage done to our research base when our contributions stopped, though.
@kentindell@helenczerski@CrackedWindscreen the only potential party of a new UK Government is so much in thrall to the worst of right wing England, that they are at pains to tell us how little they intend to change from the incompetent right wing fools who currently hold the position. Their strapp line seems to be. "The same shit, delivered more competently."
German mathematician Emmy Noether was born #OTD in 1882.
One of her most significant contributions is Noether's Theorem, which establishes a fundamental connection between symmetries & conservation laws in physics. This theorem has had profound implications in fields such as quantum mechanics, particle physics & field theory. Despite facing discrimination as a woman in academia during her time, Noether persevered & made enduring contributions to mathematics and physics.
In 1915 David Hilbert invited Noether to join the Göttingen mathematics department, challenging the views of some of his colleagues.
In April 1933 she received a notice from the Prussian Ministry for Sciences, Art & Public Education which read: "On the basis of paragraph 3 of the Civil Service Code, I hereby withdraw from you the right to teach at the University of Göttingen." Several of Noether's colleagues, including Max Born & Richard Courant, also had their positions revoked.
The philosophical faculty objected to Northers appointment and she spent four years lecturing under Hilbert's name. She wasn't paid by the University for a number of years. After Nazi Germany rescended her position, she joined Moscow state.
