Over 100 years since the Nobel Prize-winning father and son team Sir William and Sir Lawrence Bragg pioneered
The post Continuing Bragg legacy of structure determination has been published on Technology Org.
The Texas School Board has managed to receive lots of attention here because of its regular attempts to undermine science education, either through approving standards that promote phony controversies in science or by attempting to get publishers to modify the contents of reasonable science textbooks. Once again, science content is the source of Texas controversy—but this time it's in the social studies books. And for once, the school board isn't at fault.
The social studies books were submitted to the Texas School Board in April, and they will be the subject of public hearings tomorrow. In advance of those hearings, the National Center for Science Education arranged for an analysis of their content, finding that the content covering climate science is severely lacking.
In three cases, the textbooks seem to confuse climate change and ozone depletion. One implies that it's the loss of the ozone layer that's leading to the planet's warming by letting more sunlight in. Two others confuse carbon dioxide emissions with those of ozone destroying chemicals. One states that “Fossil fuel emissions have also caused a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica,” while another argues "Scientists believe the Earth is absorbing more of the sun's harmful rays" as part of its coverage of science issues.
Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Data scientist Shaun Swanson has launched a crowdfunding campaign aiming to collect money for founding a new subfield
The post Crowdfunding campaign to launch a new physics discipline has been published on Technology Org.
In this crowded starfield covering over 2 degrees within the high flying constellation Cygnus, the eye is drawn to the Cocoon Nebula. A compact star forming region, the cosmic Cocoon punctuates a long trail of obscuring interstellar dust clouds. Cataloged as IC 5146, the nebula is nearly 15 light-years wide, located some 4,000 light years away. Like other star forming regions, it stands out in red, glowing, hydrogen gas excited by the young, hot stars and blue, dust-reflected starlight at the edge of an otherwise invisible molecular cloud. In fact, the bright star near the center of this nebula is likely only a few hundred thousand years old, powering the nebular glow as it clears out a cavity in the molecular cloud's star forming dust and gas. But the long dusty filaments that appear dark in this visible light image are themselves hiding stars in the process of formation that can be seen seen at infrared wavelengths.Kamal Joshi A collaborative team of scientists including biochemist Peter Chien at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has
The post Knowing how bacteria take out trash could lead to new antibiotics has been published on Technology Org.
