Computational biologists and ecologists at various leading US Universities have discovered an interesting use for Google’sPageRank, the algorithm that determines which pages are considered most important for displaying search results.  They’ve modified PageRank for modelling fragile ecosystems – in particular, they’re using it to determine which species are most critical, the ones whose extinction will most likely lead to total ecosystem collapse.  From the Wired article:

“While several previous studies have looked at the robustness of food webs to a variety of sequences of species loss, none of them have come up with a way to identify the most devastating sequence of extinctions,” said food web biologist Jennifer Dunne of the Santa Fe Institute, who was not involved in the research. Using a modified version of PageRank, Dunne said, the researchers were able to identify which species extinctions within a food web would lead to biggest chain-reaction of species death.

“If we can find the way of removing species so that the destruction of the ecosystem is the fastest, it means we’re ranking species by their importance,” said ecologist Stefano Allesina of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who co-authored the paper published Friday in PLoS Computational Biology.”

This kind of research can help determine which species need the most protection.  Not only that, but PageRank is attracting interest from other biologists who see it as a promising approach to intricate problems like gene regulation and protein interaction.  [Check out this post's mirror on w0rd.ca!]

IBM has created the first ever direct image of a molecule, using a piece of tech known as an atomic force microscope to image a pentacene molecule in unprecedented detail. Below there are two images; one is a rendered model of the pentacene molecules, the other is the image of the molecule as captured by the atomic force microscope:

Keep reading for my explanation of why this so totally fucking crazy.

[Read more →]

To be fair, this is old news, but I had to mention it because I’ve been reading through the Wheel of Time again and can’t stop thinking about awesome it’ll be to finally have some closure on this series! Any self-respecting Robert Jordan fan is probably already aware that Brandon Sanderson has been picked to finish the series. I’ve read a couple of his books, and I’m pretty happy with the choice. Mr. Sanderson has spent most of his career writing fantasy that doesn’t fit the traditional humble-beginnings-to-greatness mold, so it’ll be interesting to see how he treats a more traditional work like the Wheel of Time.

The big news, however, is that the final book, originally titled A Memory of Light, is so massive that it will be split into three volumes, each approximately the length of the longer books in the series.

[Read more →]

Richard Dawkins tears homeopathy (aka the height of quackery) a new one, as part of his Enemies of Reason series.

I’ve joined ranks with the scoundrels over at w0rd.ca, the newest and awesomest group blog around. Knowing the characters involved, be prepared for interesting original articles, wacky links and videos and an interesting discussion or two.

Check it out! W0rd!

I found this video the other day and had to share:

I’ll have more to say on this soon, but for now give it a watch (or three) and tell me what you think.

Scientists and Engineers at the National Ignition Facility in California have completed construction of the world’s largest laser system and will be using it to investigate nuclear fusion:

“With NIF, scientists will be able to evaluate key scientific assumptions in current computer models, obtain previously unavailable data on how materials behave at temperatures and pressures like those in the center of a star, and help validate NNSA’s supercomputer simulations by comparing code predictions against observations from laboratory experiments… It could also help scientists better understand the makeup of stars and giant planets both within and outside our solar system.”

Very cool stuff. A proper fusion study facility could help answer all kinds of questions about the processes going on inside of stars, and maybe help move us towards using fusion as an energy source. Once this thing starts firing, expect to hear some squawking from the same people who harbor fears that the Large Hadron Collider is going to create a black hole and destroy us all! (Thanks to Korman for the original link.)

2008 was a good year for investment in renewable energy technologies.  Over $150 billion was invested, much of it directly funding the construction of new projects worldwide, according to a report from New Energy Finance, the people who crunch the numbers of the UN’s Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative.  Considering the economic climate, the numbers are both encouraging and surprising.

Solar energy continues to be the fastest growing sector, but the most encouraging stat is that worldwide investment in renewable enregy  quadrupled between 2004 and 2008.  Check out the link above for more highlights from the report, or download it here.

Psychologists at Cornell have found a link between high disgust sensitivity and conservative political views, lending support to the idea that emotion (rather than some form of reason) is the driving factor behind our sense of morality:

“To test whether disgust sensitivity is linked to specific conservative attitudes, the researchers then surveyed 91 Cornell undergraduates with the DSS (Disgust Sensitivity Scale), as well as with questions about their positions on issues including gay marriage, abortion, gun control, labor unions, tax cuts and affirmative action.

Participants who rated higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to oppose gay marriage and abortion, issues that are related to notions of morality or purity. The researchers also found a weak correlation between disgust sensitivity and support for tax cuts, but no link between disgust sensitivity and the other issues.”

This is an interesting issue, because the disgust reaction is believed to have evolved as a mechanism to help humans avoid disease, and yet here it is playing a part in how we define moral ideas of purity.  One of the more interesting results of the study is that people who generally fit the tag of liberal tend to weigh the moral worth of an act by the actual good or harm it does, and less by their emotional reaction to it, while conservatives seem to be very much the opposite.