tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31244697757503917982024-03-18T16:04:02.495+13:00Stars, Genes And QuarksPersonal musings on science, scientists and the public understanding of STEM by a New Zealand-based amateur astronomer and paleontologist. ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.comBlogger181125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-34273821189937014072021-10-18T20:12:00.002+13:002021-10-18T20:12:53.765+13:00Volunteering for victory: can people power make New Zealand pest-free?I've often discussed citizen science and how it varies from pie-in-the-sky research to projects with practical goals that may be achievable within a lifetime. When it comes to conserving native species New Zealand has a plethora of public engagements, including the Garden Bird Survey and Great Kererū Count (the latter being the country's largest citizen science project.) In a nation that is ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-84097721969627968342021-09-15T18:20:00.001+12:002021-09-15T18:20:31.775+12:00Life in a rut: if microbes are commonplace, where does that leave intelligent aliens?A few years ago I wrote about how Mars' seasonal methane fluctuations suggested - although far from confirmed - that microbial life might be present just under the Martin surface. Now another world in our solar system, the Saturnian moon Enceladus, has ignited discussion along similar lines.The Cassini probe conducted flybys of Enceladus over a decade, revealing that Saturn's sixth largest moon ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-81446786033082456882021-08-18T08:38:00.000+12:002021-08-18T08:38:34.383+12:00Mushrooms to Mars: how fungi research could help long-duration space travelI've often noted that fungi are the forgotten heroes of the ecosystem, beavering away largely out of sight and therefore out of mind. Whether it's the ability to break down plastic waste or their use as meat substitutes and pharmaceuticals, this uncharismatic but vital life form no doubt hold many more surprises in store for future research to discover. It's estimated that less than ten percent ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-12509473633551795282021-07-18T17:10:00.000+12:002021-07-18T17:10:25.301+12:00The uncertainty principle: does popular sci-comm imply more than is really known?Over the years I've examined how ignorance in science can be seen as a positive thing and how it can be used to define the discipline, a key contrast to most religions. We're still a long way from understanding many fundamental aspects of the universe, but the religious fundamentalist (see what I did there?) mindset is seemingly unable to come to terms with this position and so incorporates ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-27950772118513984792021-06-15T09:50:00.000+12:002021-06-15T09:50:43.686+12:00Meat-free marvels: does a vegetarian diet reduce your risk of disease?Is it me, or are there times when contemporary diet trends appear to verge on pseudoscientific crankery? While I briefly mentioned potentially dangerous items such as raw water and unpasteurised milk a few years' ago, it's surprising how many fad diets in developed nations bear a suspicious resemblance to the traditional ingredients of non-Western societies. Super foods are a particularly ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-36798504634570342902021-05-14T12:22:00.000+12:002021-05-14T12:22:09.840+12:00Weedbusting for a better world: the unpleasant truth about invasive plantsThere's been a lot written about New Zealand's Predator Free 2050 programme, including my own post from 2016, but while the primary focus has been on fauna, what about the invasive species of flora? Until recently it was easy to think of plants as poor man's animals, with little in the way of the complex behaviour that characterises the life of vertebrates and many invertebrates. However, ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-53394509365734638462021-04-01T17:42:00.000+13:002021-04-01T17:42:44.292+13:00Zapping zombies: how the US military uses the entertainment industries as a recruitment toolWe hear a lot about gamification these days. As video games edge closer to simulating the real world, while Hollywood blockbusters seem to more and more resemble video games, it's little wonder that businesses are using the gaming concept as a learning tool. If anyone has noticed an eerie similarity between the plethora of military sci-fi movies, combat video games and the technology used by ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-8911875805939054052021-03-15T18:17:00.001+13:002021-03-15T18:17:26.894+13:00 Distorted Darwin: common misconceptions about evolution and natural selectionA few months' ago, I discussed how disagreements with religious texts can lead the devout to disagree with key scientific theories; presumably this is a case of fundamentalists denying the fundamentals? Of all the areas of scientific research that cause issues today, it is evolutionary biology that generates the most opposition. This is interesting in so many ways, not least because the primary ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-68243130289169928972021-02-19T11:07:00.000+13:002021-02-19T11:07:58.212+13:00Science, society & stereotypes: examining the lives of trailblazing women in STEMI was recently flicking through a glossily illustrated Australian book on the history of STEM when I found the name of a pioneer I didn't recognise: Marjory Warren, a British surgeon who is best known today as the 'mother of modern geriatric medicine'. Looking in the index I could find only two other women scientists - compared to over one hundred and twenty men - in a book five hundred pages ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-22331926895907779142021-01-25T20:39:00.000+13:002021-01-25T20:39:13.850+13:00Ignorance is bliss: why admitting lack of knowledge could be good for science"We just don't know" might be one of the best phrases in support of the scientific method ever written. But unfortunately it carries an inherent danger: if a STEM professional - or indeed an amateur scientist/citizen scientist - uses the term, it can be used by those wishing to disavow the subject under discussion. Even adding "- yet" to the end of it won't necessarily improve matters; we humans ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-8301261064250502132020-12-14T18:21:00.001+13:002020-12-14T18:21:46.499+13:00Biomaterial bonanza: putting plastics out of a jobWith the rapidly approaching midwinter (at least for the Northern Hemisphere) festival - and traditionally a time of gift-giving - wouldn't it be great to say that humanity can offer a present to the entire planet? The amount of plastic-based products manufactured every year is somewhere between three hundred and four hundred million tons, about fifty percent of which is single-use or disposable.ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-76780707047155015502020-11-23T21:04:00.001+13:002020-11-23T21:04:30.539+13:00Self-destructive STEM: how scientists can devalue scienceFollowing on from last month's exploration of external factors inhibiting the scientific enterprise, I thought it would be equally interesting to examine issues within the sector that can negatively influence STEM research. There is a range of factors that vary from the sublime to the ridiculous, showing that science and its practitioners are as prey to the whims of humanity as any other ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-44037216787491369932020-10-27T17:08:00.002+13:002020-10-27T17:08:29.433+13:00Bursting the bubble: how outside influences affect scientific researchIn these dark times, when some moron (sorry, non-believer in scientific evidence) can easily reach large numbers of people on social media with their conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific nonsense, I thought it would be an apt moment to look at the sort of issues that block the initiation, development and acceptance of new scientific ideas. We are all aware of the long-term feud between some ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-30827549607738996972020-09-24T20:19:00.001+12:002020-09-24T20:19:44.281+12:00Dangerous cargo: the accidental spread of alien organisms via commercial shippingIt's often said that whichever culture and environment we grow up in is the one we consider as the norm. Whilst my great-grandparents were born before the invention of heavier-than-air flying machines, I've booked numerous long-haul flights without considering much beyond their monetary and environmental cost. Yet this familiarity with our fast and efficient global transportation network masks anScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-77282209348045575972020-08-24T15:08:00.004+12:002020-08-24T15:08:43.207+12:00Fundamental fungi: the forgotten kingdom vital to our futureAt the end of 1993 the Convention on Biological Diversity came into force. A key piece of global legislation in the promotion of sustainable development, it marked a change in focus for environmental concerns. Whereas previous high-profile conservation efforts such as those of the World Wide Fund for Nature or Greenpeace were frequently aimed at individual species or regional ecosystems, the ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-44419013807038145472020-07-22T10:35:00.000+12:002020-07-22T10:35:10.135+12:00Eco-friendly eats: the potential of new foods to save the planetBack in 2015 I wrote a post about the potential for insect-based protein to become a much more common environmentally-friendly food in the near future. Although it may be rather better for the environment than traditional ingredients, Western cultures have a cultural bias against eating anything with more than four limbs. So what are the alternatives to conventional farming and fishing that can ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-14723401899015705102020-06-23T20:07:00.000+12:002020-06-23T20:07:53.488+12:00Grey matter blues: why has the human brain been shrinking?There is a disturbing fact about our species that the public don't appear to know, and few specialists seem to want to discuss: over recent millennia, the human brain has been shrinking. There have been plenty of non-scientific warnings about the alleged deleterious effects on IQ of first television and more recently smartphones and tablets, but palaeontological evidences proves that over some ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-70541779711008007052020-05-12T08:37:00.000+12:002020-05-12T08:37:56.379+12:00Ancestral tales: why we prefer fables to fact for human evolutionIt seems that barely a month goes by without there being a news article concerning human ancestry. In the eight years since I wrote a post on the apparent dearth of funding in hominin palaeontology there appears to have been some uptake in the amount of research in the field. This is all to the good of course, but what is surprising is that much of the non-specialist journalism - and therefore ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-8121421389302584702020-04-01T17:40:00.001+13:002020-04-01T17:40:43.529+13:00Herbaceous dialects and dialectical materialism: how plants communicate with their pollinatorsThe inspiration behind this post stems from reading two of the giants of science popularisation during my formative years. The first component is from Carl Sagan's book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, which remarks that the emotional lives of plants are an example of pure pseudoscience. The second is Stephen Jay Gould's essay on Pyotr Kropotkin, a nineteenth century Russian ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-37828165779423816422020-03-17T18:26:00.001+13:002020-03-17T18:26:36.222+13:00Printing ourselves into a corner? Mankind and additive manufacturingOne technology that has seemingly come out of nowhere in recent years is the 3D printer. More correctly called additive manufacturing, it has only taken a few years between the building of early industrial models and a thriving consumer market - unlike say, the gestation period between the invention and availability of affordable domestic video cassette recorders.
Some years ago I mentioned the ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-65968163154289265412020-02-25T14:02:00.000+13:002020-02-25T14:02:49.566+13:00Falling off the edge: in search of a flat EarthIt's just possible that future historians will label the 21st century as the Era of Extreme Stupidity. In addition to the 'Big Four' of climate change denial, disbelief in evolution by natural selection, young Earth creationism and the anti-vaxxers, there are groups whose oddball ideas have rather less impact on our ecosystem and ourselves. One segment of people that I place in the same camp as ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-59186471736385980462020-01-22T21:24:00.000+13:002020-01-22T21:24:49.339+13:00Wildfires and woeful thinking: why have Australians ignored global warming?In a curious example of serendipity, I was thinking about a quote from the end of Carl Sagan's novel Contact ("For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love") just a few minutes before discovering his daughter Sasha Sagan's book For Small Creatures Such as We. Okay, so I didn't buy the book - due to the usual post-Christmas funds shortage - and cannot provide a review,ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-17418488716334788502019-12-19T21:37:00.000+13:002019-12-19T21:37:55.333+13:00Our family and other animals: do we deliberately downplay other species' intelligence?I recently heard about a project investigating canine intelligence, the results being that man's best friend can distinguish similar-sounding words, even if spoken by strangers. Yet again, it appears there is a less and less that makes our species unique: from the problem-solving skills of birds to social insects' use of farming techniques we find ourselves part of a continuum of life rather thanScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-32078649904970060882019-11-27T18:28:00.000+13:002019-11-27T18:28:22.203+13:00Ocean acidification: climate change at the sour endA few weeks ago, I overheard a 58 year old man telling a 12 year old boy that the most dire of scientists' warnings concerning global warming over the past 30 years had failed to materialise - and that what the boy needed to learn was to be able to separate facts from propaganda.
Although it is no doubt next to impossible to be able to change such entrenched mindsets as those of this particular ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3124469775750391798.post-51943741253982332662019-10-30T15:45:00.000+13:002019-10-30T15:45:21.876+13:00Our feline friends - not so miaowvellous after all?
I've published a few posts concerning citizen science, from the active participation in conservation-orientated projects here in New Zealand to the more passive involvement in distributed computing projects that I briefly mentioned back in 2012.
A type of public involvement in scientific research half way between these examples has been developed to utilise the human ability to match up ScienceSGQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13870384408403934735noreply@blogger.com0