Archive for the ‘Trivia’ Category

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Dinosaur flatulence caused global warming

May 7, 2012

Oh dear!

It sounds like a calculation a 10 year old could have made – given a few assumptions.

And this is what passes for peer-reviewed science ……… and for science reporting.

BBC Nature:

Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their flatulence, say researchers.

British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus.

By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs – as a whole – produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually.

They suggest the gas could have been a key factor in the warm climate 150 million years ago. 

(more…)

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Mathematics mayhem – paper proving the impossible to be possible retracted for lack of “scientific content”

April 17, 2012

This is hilarious but it does make the Dr.Mahalingam College of Engineering & Technology, Pollachi, Tamil Nadu look ridiculous.  This paper was accepted for publication by Elsevier and has now been retracted by the publishers for not containing any scientific content. It seems that the authors have applied a computer program to a “problematic problem” and have proved a 4 300 year old “impossible proposition to be possible” !

“Computer application in mathematics” [Comput. Math. Appl. 59 (1) (2009) 296–297], by M. Sivasubramanian and S. Kalimuthu, Department of Mathematics, Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Pollachi, Tamilnadu-642003, India

The paper is here : Sivasubramanian and Kalimuthu

But while the paper itself is remarkably short and is just a nonsense paper, it does not say very much for Elsevier’s editorial acumen or for its peer-review process. Perhaps this journal should be retracted for lack of editorial content? Timothy Gowers will surely get more support for his Elsevier boycott in the UK.

Retraction Watch has the full story:

(more…)

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Frequent eating of chocolate (any amount) keeps you thin

March 27, 2012

The kind of study results I thoroughly approve of and would like to believe!!

If only I was also convinced that it was entirely unbiased. It sounds like one of those studies which, if it had shown that chocolate was poisonous, would somehow have not been published.

A chocolate bar and melted chocolate. Chocolat...

A new paper in Archives of Internal Medicine:

Association Between More Frequent Chocolate Consumption and Lower Body Mass Index Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD; Sabrina Koperski, BS; Halbert L. White, PhD Arch Intern Med. 2012;172(6):519-521. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2011.2100

(more…)

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The scale of the Universe: from yoctometres to Gigaparsecs

March 16, 2012

I like this flash animation from NASA which is a modern version of the classic video Powers of Ten and travels from billionths of a yoctometre (10 -24 metres) up to tens of Gigaparsecs (about 3.1 x 10 25 metres). A journey of 60 powers of 10 from the Planck length of 1.616199(97)×10 -35  metres to the size of the observable universe at 10 27 metres.

“From where neutrinos are like suns to where galaxies are like dust”

It takes a few seconds to load.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html

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Address Magic

March 13, 2012

This is cool..

Click on the ball.

Type in your street address with city & state or somewhere you used to live. Then you click on “shake”. A photo of the house appears!

I tried it 6 times with addresses of people I know & it worked every time.

( So far I have tried addresses in 4 countries- UK, US, Germany and Sweden – and I get the Google Maps or Google Street View – but faster than I could zoom in on it. Just address and town seems to be sufficient.)

Description:http://chodzic.stage.ddfcb.com/_projects/holiday-card/index.html

Address Magic

(h/t – Nessan)

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Light blogging while on assignment

January 10, 2012

I am travelling again on an assignment and blogging will be light for a week or so.

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2012 – Ten Hopes

December 31, 2011

2012

I think I am an optimist and always have high hopes even if they are not often matched by my expectations or what actually transpires. But somehow the hopes remain.

A list of hopes can however be unending. So for 2012 I list just 10 – in no particular order or ranking:

  1.  that the killing stops
  2. that the food that is already plentiful and available can be distributed to all those who are in desperate need
  3. that India win the 4-Test series in Australia (though they were thrashed in the first match)
  4. that the Euro splits into two
  5. that the extremists of all kinds become marginalised and irrelevant
  6. that alarmism and sensationalism and belief systems are eliminated from science (though it undoubtedly helps to get funding)
  7. that having ethics replaces slavish compliance in politics and business
  8. that the do-gooders stop imposing their beliefs and telling others what is good for them
  9. that politicians realise that they are just civil servants, and
  10. that belief systems (whether in religions or economic theories or global warming) are subordinated to track records and evidence

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Kanji of the year – Kizuna

December 24, 2011

Kizuna - The Bond

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Well into December and no snow to be shovelled … yet!

December 15, 2011

I have just returned home to Sweden after 3 weeks in warmer climes  and with some sense of relief that I didn’t have mountains of snow to clear in my drive (as happened last year). Last year I was caught with summer tyres when the early snows arrived but maybe this year it has been kept at bay because I  changed to winter tyres before the end of October!!!

Predictions of a very cold winter have not yet materialised – but it is early days yet and I may still have to buy a new snow blower.

But a white Christmas is still on the cards.

It’s only weather after all.

 

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Light blogging for 2 weeks

November 30, 2011

I am on an assignment in India and blogging will be light for a couple of weeks.

In a rainy and cool Bangalore where I haven’t seen the sun in 4 days — but traffic is horrendous:

New elevated highways provide car parking!!!

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