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By bigcitylib, on April 25, 2013, at 10:08 am Apr. 25, 2013 — The rediscovery of a mystery animal in a museum’s underground storeroom proves that a non-native ‘big cat’ prowled the British countryside at the turn of the last century.
The animal’s skeleton and mounted skin was analysed by a multi-disciplinary team of Durham University scientists and fellow researchers at Bristol, Southampton and Aberystwyth universities and found to be a Canadian lynx — a carnivorous predator more than twice the size of a domestic cat.
A neat little discovery, and a good intro to Darren Naish, one of my favorite science bloggers, who has a much more detailed (Read more…)
By bigcitylib, on February 22, 2013, at 6:46 am Janet Stephens, the “hair dressing archaeologist”, has been much in the news of late for having successfully recreated the hair-style worn by ancient Rome’s Vestal Virgin priestesses.
Here’s how she got her start:
“One day, I was killing time at the Walters Museum in Baltimore while my daughter was at a music lesson and I ended up in the Ancient Roman collection,” says Stephens. “They were making changes in the gallery and they had set some of the portrait statues in the middle of the gallery and I got to see the back of the head and that is where all
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: On Hair, Ancient And More Ancient
By bigcitylib, on February 14, 2013, at 10:09 am The bottom of Lake Whillans, a two meter deep body of water underneath Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf, sandwiched between ice and rock. And, yes, it harbors life.
By bigcitylib, on December 9, 2012, at 11:33 am With all the to-do about these folks lately, I thought the following might be apropos:
Dec. 6, 2012 — Despite their modern-day diversity of language, lifestyle, and religion, Europe’s widespread Romani population shares a common, if complex, past. It all began in northwestern India about 1,500 years ago…
[...]
The genome-wide evidence specified the geographic origin toward the north or northwestern parts of India and provided a date of origin of about 1,500 years ago. While the Middle East and Caucasus regions are known to have had an important influence on Romani language, the researchers saw limited evidence
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Carry On Roma
By bigcitylib, on December 6, 2012, at 6:34 am A quick update to this post from April 2012, which is about a paper withdrawn from the journal Applied Mathematics Letters because it had “no mathematical content”. Now we have second paper retracted from the same journal because it made “no sense mathematically”. A summary:
There’s nothing new in this paper, so it’s consistent with something, we’re not sure what. But we have raised a very serious question! OK, people have been raising that question for centuries, but this is important, dammit. The fact that we haven’t actually added anything to the discussion of that question? Please move along, nothing
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Mathys Get Punked
By bigcitylib, on November 29, 2012, at 8:11 pm Last week Curiosity was able to use its SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) device to confirm the discovery. A robotic arm with a complex system of Spectral Analysis devices was able to vaporize and identify gasses from the sample, concluding that it is in f… . . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Life On Mars?
By bigcitylib, on November 22, 2012, at 10:44 am This is terribly disappointing:The broad spectrum sounds recorded in the summer of 1997 are consistent with icequakes generated by large icebergs as they crack and fracture. NOAA hydrophones deployed in the Scotia Sea detected numerous icequakes with s… . . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Bloop No More
By bigcitylib, on September 25, 2012, at 3:27 pm * The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals. Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing. Deep brain stimulation of these systems in humans can also generate similar affective
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: From The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
By bigcitylib, on April 19, 2012, at 6:46 am Elsevier is a very large publisher of scientific and medical journals. It has been boycotted recently number of high-profile scientists due to its high subscription prices for individual journals, bundling subscriptions to journals of different value and importance, and Elsevier’s support for SOPA, PIPA, and the Research Works Act.[44][45][46] A couple of years back, this paper appeared in one of its journals.
Note the emails of the corresponding authors:
Now the paper has been retracted because it “contains no scientific content”. Obviously something the editors should have picked up, though some see the
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Elsevier Pranked
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