Misconceptions

There are so many science misconceptions that people have and it's time to start talking about them.. Not even misconceptions some people just have questions they want an answer too.. Over the next few weeks I intend to answer a few of these.. If you have any questions post them in the comments or tweet me @gmoxom.
Hope to start answering soon!

Maybe its the cold?

Maybe its the fact that its winter time here.
Christmas in July the call it with many parties inclusive.
But it makes me very hungry.. Now that seems odd scientifically as my metabolism should slow down when im cold.. but at the same time your body does eat more..
Never mind.

The main point here is I have been looking at many foods lately.
Some good people over at Serious eats have come up with a fairly good build your own big mac recipie. Now there are plenty of big mac recipies out there but I like this one personally. I worked at mcDonalds for a very long time in my youth and I think this one is a really good adaptation of the one we serve at maccas.
So I thought I would share it..
No science today, just delicious burger.
Big mac link 

• 3.2 ounces boneless beef short rib, well-chilled (2/10 of a pound)
• 1/4 cup finely minced onion
• 1 teaspoon onion grated on a microplane grater
• 1 1/2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sweet pickle relish
• 1 teaspoon yellow mustard
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon marmite, vegemite, or Maggi seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 egg white
• 1 whole Wonderbread brand hamburger bun, plus 1 bottom bun (I dont have wonderbread here but they effect they are going for is soft white bread.. which I also dont eat so i used soft wholemeal bread.)
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds (about 600)
• 1/4 cup shredded iceberg lettuce
• 4 dill pickle slices (Not a fan of pickles.. and maccas only use 2)
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (Kosher salt means nothing to me I dont know what it is..)

• 1 slice American cheese (Cheese)

 Its pretty tasty..
Give it a go?? Please.. And post pictures!!

Nightmare

3/4 of all dream emotions are negative emotions.
Now the difference between a bad dream and a nightmare is that a nightmare is something that causes you to wake up where as a bad dream you can just sleep through.

Now bad dreams are very environmental, a person in their own home will have in some cases three times more nightmares than if they where in a sleep study test room.

Now negative emotions in dreams is common because the part of your brain designated to deal with stress is directly linked to the primary visual cortex which is where REM sleep happens.

I have been having reoccouring nightmares lately so just thought I would write out what I knew about nightmares.

<3

Spud Gene!

Scientists at the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (best name ever right?) have finally succeeded in mapping the full genome sequence of the humble spud.
Fun fact potatoes are the 3rd most grown crop and over 309 million tonnes of potato was sold last year? AMAZING!
But back to the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium!!
They have mapped all 12 haploid chromosomes (the dna bits)and its 840 million base pairs!
The two potato strains they sequenced where
"RH89-039-16 (RH), a diploid, heterozygous potato variety
DM1-3 516R44 (DM), a doubled monoploid."
Now for those of us that dont understand big words like that basically they are two different strains of potato and therefore have different genetic code.

The benefit of having completely mapped a genome is that now we can use it to find similarities too other plants, genetically modify the potatoes to be hardier and grow better, all sorts of wild wonderful things!

Soon is the day where we shall consume an entire meal in pill form and peel a banana to get a carrot.

Google +

Google+
Google+
Google+
hmmm.. well its not really science but its new and funky.
Well I got an invite.. I am just that amazing.
I set it up so when I open facebook it opens too so i can get into the habit of it and I set it up on my lovely android phone.

Well my first reaction is that I like it. Its a combination of facebook and twitter. and its done fairly well.

So far I have put all my RSS feeds over to google plus which is awesome because I love RSS feeds.

As far as social networking goes I really like it, the only feature I feel its missing is the "wall" idea that facespace has. But Its not that big a deal..

Hope you all got your invites, let me know what you think.

Fatty food!

So lets start back with something I consumed allot of lately.
Fatty food!

New research at the university of California suggests that fatty food actual cause a "munchies" effect in our brains causing us to continue to eat.

Endocannabinoids are the bodies natural version of the active ingredient in marijuana, it causes the same effects one gets from marijuana but normally things like dampening emotion and the need to eat.

To study these effects sets of rats where given one of three liquid diets
A protein mix, a sugar mix, and a fat based protein/sugar mix.
To avoid interference from digestive signals a valve as set up in the rats upper stomach to drain the food before digestion.

The rats on the regular diet ate a normal serving of the oil and then stopped, rats on the fat based corn oil continued to consume the oil and then began attempting to get oil out of the dispenser until an artificial chemical that suppresses endocannabinoids was given.

The research is exciting because it shows that we may be able to curb over-eating with a drug that blocks or suppresses endocannabinoids. It also goes to show that fatty food does in fact MAKE you hungry after you eat it. Who knew?

Check the full story at: Sciencenews

Im back!

And im back I think?
Not sure.
Life got hard all of a sudden involving losing a huge amount of friends and a girlfriend.
Since then I have been devoting all of my energy to making new friends and connections.
Which is going well. I am thinking I may run two blogs in parallel but thats all in the cloud at the moment..
I always said I wouldnt make a blog full of posts apologizing for not posting but my two month hiatus was unexpected.. especially just before the endevour launch!

Endeavour

The shuttle endeavour has been delayed until the 10th of may.. Its sad news for everyone but at least it didn't upstage the royal wedding or the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.
Both big news and I am glad they got their spot but I don't like to go into it.
The death of Osama is a touchy topic and the royal wedding doesnt interest me.
So lets end it on the Endeavour is set to launch on May 10th!

Haha!

One of our commenters @Vilvos posted on my previous post where I stated
"There are no Royal bloodlines in Atoms or in galaxies, there is just matter."
with a reply that was just so funny it needed front page.

but there ARE noble gasses.

Check out @Vilvos at http://vg73790.blogspot.com

Only a few hours till the launch of the Life project!

There are only a few hours left on the countdown, however for now the whole world is looking at the royal wedding!
Well Good luck Prince whats his face and whatchacallher middleton.. I could have just goodled their names but I am lazy..

Just did its William and Kate.
There you go now I know something about it.. yet I still don't think its that important. Marriage is great and its a huge expenditure of money sure, but what I care about is him ruling a country.. Not who he is marrying, people argue that she shall be the queen one day, sure and when she is maybe I will care.

Its not important stop talking about it.

And on that note I would like to leave you with this.

We are all made of starstuff, we where born of the cosmos and when our planet dies so too shall we become the cosmos once again.
There are no Royal bloodlines in Atoms or in galaxies, there is just matter.

LIFE project

Just a reminder that this Friday is the day we test Transpermia on the life project!

http://planetary.org/life/launch.html

Check it out!

NO BOOZE EASTER

So its 12:25 in the afternoon and I am already fairly well into my beers.
But lets recap.

It all started a few weeks ago my friend came up with the crazy idea of not drinking for a few days, well that ended up becoming lets not drink on a public holiday! (we where drunk when this was decided)

And so came the first holiday since, Easter.

So Thursday 1 night before Easter, I started drinking from getting out of bed onwards.
I was hosting a get drunk so we can be sober party! (yes that's what we decided it was called) and I ended up getting close to 20 people in on this idea of sober for the holidays.

About 2 hours into our party my friend brought out what he calls "The plasma grenade"

THE PLASMA GRENADE
__________________

You will need.
Lots of red bull
Lots of Jeigermeister
A shot of Tequila
A jug
two same size tumblers (glasses)
two shot glasses.

Now assemble the Grenade by pouring a shot of jeiger and a shot of tequila into two shot glasses and balancing them in a glass of red bull with the tequila shot higher up than the jeiger.
This means when you take your Tequila shot out of the glass it drops your jeiger into the red bull making a Jeiger-Bomb.

Now once your Grenade is assembled get another glass filled with just jeiger, and balance your Grenade with your jeiger glass in a jug filled with red bull with the Grenade higher so that when you take it out the glass with jeiger falls.

This makes the now dubbed PLASMA GRENADE.

It probably has some other name but we decided after making 4 of these in one night that it should be called the plasma grenade.

So the actual drinking part!

Take your shot of tequila, Chase with Jeiger Bomb, Chase with Jug sized Jeiger bomb!
_______________________

Friday morning.
UGHGHG
I had a huge hangover and no beer to help me get through it.
I had to rely on my old hang over trick before I discovered I could just get drunk and it would go away..

So me and my friends staggered to our local kebab shop and bought a kebab and a Gatorade each.
SOOOOOOOOOO good.

After that most of my friends decided to go home and sleep accept me and one other.

We decided to go to an all night playboy bunny party.
Good fun and good music happening there.
Unfortunately no drinking which was difficult but good because I went to the city on only $30!

That morning me and my friend went home and that morning got up and journeyed back to the city to go to yet ANOTHER night club.

Still no drinking allowed..
EXTREMELY UNHAPPY HERE.

5AM rolls around and I have to get home.
But there are no buses!!
So I wait from 5am until 10AM for a bus in the freezing cold!
FREEZING COLD, get home at mid day, and first thing I want is a beer but no I have to wait another 12 hours.

I eat a huge amount of chocolate and dress up as the Easter bunny for my neighbourhood's kids! Which was something I wouldnt have done drunk i guess.

So then Anzac day (Easter monday), I had to drink, its anzac day so I went to dawn service and got amazingly drunk!
Then that night I went to disturbed which was a great concert and I enjoyed quite a bit of beer that night!

And then yesterday Tuesday public holiday, I stayed in bed all day, no drinking until Midnight! And I have been drinking since then!

No science today just a weird no drinking weekend!!

City and other fun!

So Ive spent the last three days in the city going to clubs to celebrate Easter, Im pretty hung over (even though I stayed sober 48 hours straight is not fun) but just updating so you all know that I am still alive and well!

Rotating Potato actually gravity map of Earth

PLANETARY PULL from Science News on Vimeo.

^that there is a gravitational map of earth.

Gathered date from the European Space Agency’s GOCE satellite.
The satellite launched back in 2009 uses multiple accelerometers (like the one in your phone but much cooler) to measure exactly how the earths gravity is tugging on it.
The blue is the normal gravity and the red and yellow are deviations.

This new research is designed to help us better understand tidal currents and our earth as a whole..

This video has been lovingly named the "Rotating Potato" by many scientists.

NASA budget cuts leave ESA in the dust.

Two extremely vital astrophysics missions have fallen prey to NASA's strenuous budget cuts.

The first a mission to launch 3 identical craft designed to detect gravitational "waves" could have given new evidence proving that intense gravity (such as merging supermassive black holes) can ripple space time. This in turn would hold true and prove another facet of Einsteins special relativity.

The second a new Xray observatory, designed to detect even the earliest supermassive black holes.

But the NASA funding has been cut on both of these missions.
Why? you may ask?

Well Nasa's total funding works out at 1/4 of a penny per tax dollar.
Education works out at 1 penny per tax dollar and so on and so fourth.
But I say, If 1/4 penny of every tax dollar I spend goes to NASA, then I would just donate all of my tax to NASA (however I am not an American so that doesn't really affect me)

I know the country needs money for other things, but Most of NASA's money comes from private investors.

So now due to less tax revenue in the last few years coupled with so many natural disasters and the exuberant amount of money spent on defense NASA just can't keep up..

Man will pay the price for his pride if he believes technology can give him the powers of God.

The pope today has announced that he believes that technology is getting too advanced and so by using it we are all going to hell.
Well isn't that quaint.

"From the beginning men and women have been filled — and this is as true today as ever — with a desire to 'be like God', to attain the heights of God by their own powers. Mankind has managed to accomplish so many things: we can fly! We can see, hear and speak to one another from the farthest ends of the earth. And yet the force of gravity which draws us down is powerful." If man wanted a relationship with God he had to first "abandon the pride of wanting to become God."

This news comes only months after the pope accused the internet of creating more satanists than ever before in history.. Unfortunately the popes definition of satanists includes free thinkers and atheists.
Who would have guessed that something that brings more information to people easier would make less people believe in a religion?

I have said it before and ill say it again..
I don't like religion, and I don't like tomato, but neither is significant because too this day I only ask myself, "What are the facts?"

Quantum State Teleportation!

A quantum particle reminiscent of Schrodinger's cat (Both alive and dead at the same time) has successfully been Teleported!
Or more correctly it had all of its quantum information transmitted using entangled light to another location accurately.

This is yet another step in the many steps required to building a home quantum computer, or even a Teleporter.

Sure we are still decades off, but its good too see work getting done.

Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is somewhat of a science celebrity.
Voted sexiest astrophysicist alive by time magazine.

I do love this man and I have been watching his videos all day too cheer me up.

Receiving information from this man is one of the major factors that made me scientifically minded.

I first heard about him by googling astrophysics, and I found his name came up often, this was a long time ago, whilst I was still in school.

I am still yet to have anyone actually hand me or even notice something by him, without having to find it myself.

It is a shame that we do not have that many science shows / radio stations here in Sydney.
So here I attempt to show you some of the lovely work Neil deGrasse Tson has done in order to generate public interest in science.
Below you will find an interview of him on Forum Network, very interesting stuff.



And now below you will find a link too his radio show. I suggest you listen too this if you have some spare time.. God I love podcasts

Startalkradio

There is a whole bunch of stuff he has achieved, but the best way to find him, is to just search for it.

With all of the sadness lately.

With all the sadness lately..
I just needed to visit my old friend Carl Sagan.
Even the intro song makes me cry that this great man is dead..
Im actually crying right now whilst writing this..

I know that may seem sad..
But I love you Carl Sagan.
You are my god.

So in yet another tribute to this amazing man,
Here is the first scene in the epic journey of the cosmos.
I hope you will get this series, even if you just watch it all on youtube.



and to follow up with some more videos.
here is the latest symphony of science, entitled ode to the brain.



Go check out the symphony website, and watch all their music videos.

http://www.symphonyofscience.com/

Radiation Scale explained!

7 – Major accident

Chernobyl Disaster
- We all know (at least I hope) of the Chernobyl catastrophe, 6000 dead within 4 years from the radiation, 31 dead from the initial blast, world wide radiation spread.
The worst contaminated areas getting a reading of above 200,000 roentgens per hour.
Now what is a roentgen you may ask? well even if I explain it, it wont mean as much as saying that at 500 roentgens over a 5 hour period (100 roentgens per hour) , you will die of radiation sickness within that time , the "normal dose" for a human to receive over a year from things like cell phones, cosmic rays and background radiation is about 0.023 roentgens per hour.

200,000 roentgens per hour is still being recorded in parts of Chernobyl, with a half life of 10 years and in some cases 25 years (strontium 90), often taking between 10 and 20 half lives to break down to "safe" levels, chernobyl may be inhabitable for 500-5000 years, Yeah that's not a type FIVE THOUSAND years for strontium 90..

That is the breadth of a level 7 catastrophe.
Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown.

The incident that's all over the news lately, but what does it mean?
Well it has been declared a level 7 incident.
This is an incident that has caused wide spread long term damage, that needs an extreme long term plan of action.

Fukushima now has a 20 km exclusion zone and a 30km volunteer evacuation zone outside that.

The widespread effects you may not have heard of yet however, Iodine-131 has been found in cows all across the United States of America, the cows are suspected to have eaten tainted grass, and although this amount is neither a health concern nor deadly, it is still present.
The more pressing concern was the discovery Cesium 134 and 137 as far away from japan as "Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, Shanghai, Inner Mongolia, Jiangshu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Ningxia in China, and in California, USA" -wikipedia
The reason this is concerning is that the half life of cesium is 30 years, with a ten year safe breakdown.
So it will infect target cells, and be a part of the food chain in these areas for another 300 years.
This can be a good and bad thing as it will cause mutations, some of those mutations may be a good evolutionary step, however most will just make it poisonous for human consumption.

6 – Serious accident

Kyshtym Disaster
The Kyshtym Disaster happened in 1957, and I am not all that familiar with it, so any information i can present too you would be purely off of the wikipedia page.
From what I can gather however is that a cooling tower exploded, and dumped 80 tonnes of radioactive material into the atmosphere..
(that's bad)

5 – Accident with wider consequences
The factors required for a level 5 are.

Impact on people and environment
This includes:

Limited release of radioactive ­material likely to require i­mplementation of some planned­ countermeasures.
Several deaths from ­radiation.

and


Impact on radiological barriers and control

Which includes:


Severe damage to reactor core.
Release of large quantities of radioactive material within an installation with a high probability of significant public exposure. This could arise from a major accident or fire.

The most common level 5 accident referenced is
3 Mile Island was a nuclear power plant in America that due to some design flaws and operator errors started to lose cooling fluid, leading to a melt down in one of its reactors.
Luckily due to good training and past experience death was kept to a minimum and nobody was seen as highly infected.. However the cultural affect (General media and such) was extremely widespread.

4 – Accident with local consequences
The factors required for a level 4 are split into two categories

Impact on people and environment
Minor release of radioactive material unlikely to result in implementation of planned countermeasures other than local food controls.
At least one death from radiation.

Impact on radiological barriers and control
Fuel melt or damage to fuel ­resulting in more than 0.1% release of core inventory.
Release of significant quantities of radioactive material within an installation with a high ­probability of significant public exposure.

An example includes a minor incident in Argentina, where a rod failed to insert correctly killing the operator and injuring two others.

3 – Serious incident

Serious incidents include things like stolen nuclear material and things like radiation burns to at least one person

2 – Incident

an incident is something like, a worker receives slightly more than the annual acceptable radiation limit.

1 – Anomaly

There is no real safety significance with an anomaly.

0 – Deviation (no safety significance)