CSSC: Chicken Smoothie Science Club

[.jabberwocky]

sadly, I traded away all of my scientist items... now I wish I hadn't!!! D: [/oh well]

[Celeritas~]

Here's mine:


Anyway, I figured I'd share this here since it seems like it is the best place:
I ended up having to take my little brother and his friend down to the creek behind our backyard today; my mom was scared to send them alone, so I had to go with them (oh yes, because I'll certainly be able to keep them safe while watching the tadpoles and ducks)... Anyway, we found a dead toad... my brother's friend, much to my annoyance, pulled it out of the water and flipped it over with a stick, all the while mistakenly calling it a frog. Its whole back was split open, and it had all of its internal organs oozing out. Suffice to say, the two kids quickly ran away, disgusted, and I stayed back, so I could look at it (but not touch it... eww...). It was pretty awesome, even after I got back home, a big grin on my face, only to find my mom angered at my having allowed the kids to get wet. :]

[Atwood]

I just came across something I thought was really neat regarding merling in collies. 8D The merle effect of diluting the coat colour is caused by a SINE that inserted itself into the SILV gene which controls melanin production - the SINE has a poly-A tail on it of variable length due to repeating, and the tail is what interrupts the gene. The longer the tail is, the less melanin can be made, producing a lighter dog. However, that tail is very fragile and subject to mutations, and it often ends up mutating to become shorter as the dog's cells divide during fetal development. The result is that the poly-A tail becomes too short in some of the dog's cells to continue interrupting SILV completely, resulting in those cells producing part or all of the normal amount of melanin. Therefore, every single black spot on these puppies is an individual somatic mutation within a mutation that reversed the effect of the SINE insertion and restored the wild-type phenotype in those cells:

The original article on the merle colouring was Retrotransposon insertion in SILV is responsible for merle patterning of the domestic dog by Dr. Leigh Anne Clark, but there's a condensed and simplified version of it along with further discussion and conclusions here: http://www.colliesonline.com/may2009/co ... colors.php

[June Bug]

Dude, I love genetics! I'll definitely give that a read! =D

First I want to present something to you all so I don't forget or get too lazy to do it later. xD

Just as a warning, after reading the first few paragraphs of the info, I stopped taking it seriously for various reasons. It did, however, pose some interesting opinions and theories that I would love to hear your ideas on regarding their scientific claims.
So, on my way to classes today, there where a couple people on the street corner offering to discuss a cause. It was hot so I had the window down and I guess they took that as an invitation to approach my car to talk to me about it. xD Though I don't regret agreeing to take a look at the info they where giving out. They presented the cause as supporting the continuation of scientific research rather than cutting funding as the government wants to (this is an American issue so I'm not sure how familiar some of you non-Americans are about our government spending. x3)
These are two of the articles they provided me (the third wasn't as relevant and was basically just bashing Obama. xD ):
Earthquakes, the Sun, and Japan.(This one made me giggle in just the third paragraph. ". . evil propaganda issued from the foul organs of the British Empire . ." Trolololol~)
Apart from the sillyness, it poses some very interesting scientific claims.
Obama's Criminal Negligence Demands His Removal From Office.
This one doesn't have as much sciencey-type info, but it does have some.

Obviously, there's some exaggerations and outright ridiculousness in there, but the science they've presented really made me want to know what you all think, especially since a good portion of it has to do with cosmic forces I'm not familiar with. :]

[Harpalyce]

Took that survey for you! I admit I'm sort of biased though - I'm definitely an omnivore, but I've read too much Michael Pollan to eat the cheapest.

Speaking of him, if you haven't read any of his works, you totally should. http://michaelpollan.com/books/ "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is one of my favourites. It explains why, among other things, I HATE THE CORN INDUSTRY WITH THE PASSION OF A THOUSAND FIREY BURNING SUNS etc. But I get the feeling I am preaching to the choir, most likely.

By the way, you can read Origin of Species here - http://www.literature.org/authors/darwi ... f-species/

Super tired, so I'm afraid I can't really offer anything much unless you want to hear a firsthand experience of how CT scans with contrast aren't much fun. But as long as we're kinda discussing public perception of science, I'm going to go ahead and say that I really believe in comics and graphic narratives as a medium for this. No, really - Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics' is genius, even if it's not exactly science.

I need to do this up more professionally, but have a short thing 'bout prions -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v193/ ... prions.jpg

[Atwood]

@ Nociception: You could probably post that in Adult Chat and make it a thread discussing food animal welfare - if it was just a survey ad, it probably wouldn't be allowed, but if the survey was used more as a starting point/component for discussion, that would be all right, I think. :3 Definitely Adult Chat though, not Animal Chatter, given what food animal production is like - people might post pictures, and that might traumatize kids who aren't ready to see where pork comes from, and you'd inevitably end up with under-18s doing the survey if you posted it there.

[Autochthon Scion]

These are two of the articles they provided me (the third wasn't as relevant and was basically just bashing Obama. xD ):
Earthquakes, the Sun, and Japan.(This one made me giggle in just the third paragraph. ". . evil propaganda issued from the foul organs of the British Empire . ." Trolololol~)
Apart from the sillyness, it poses some very interesting scientific claims.
Obama's Criminal Negligence Demands His Removal From Office.
This one doesn't have as much sciencey-type info, but it does have some.

Obviously, there's some exaggerations and outright ridiculousness in there, but the science they've presented really made me want to know what you all think, especially since a good portion of it has to do with cosmic forces I'm not familiar with. :]

I just had a brief read through the article you posted, and also had a little look at the video which was linked inside it, although I must be honest and say I gave up trying to watch the video as the way it was presenting information was annoying me (and it was 22mins long!).

The topic itself reminded me of Reddit post I read last night regarding a possible conspiracy theory about an atmospheric device known as HAARP which probes the ionosphere with radiowaves in order to induce certain behaviours and study it.
The post is here, and well worth a read: http://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/glnoi/please_help_a_crazy_old_man_understand_what_haarp/

I found it quite interesting, firstly as I hadn't heard of the experiment (but my Atmospheric Physics knowledge is not very complete) but also because it was trying to argue that this device is capable of creating earthquake, typhoons etc and target them at specific places around the world. It sounds like something from a James Bond film, and from what I can tell, the impact such a device could be having is massively over-exaggerated, but one of the points made about the device and earthquakes in general, is somewhat relevant to the article you posted and important to bear in mind.

Earthquakes are massive releases of elastic potential energy which has built up over a period of time through the stress between tectonic plates. This stress won't be induced by a solar activity, which means that effectively when an earthquake happens, it was always going to happen. If it did not happen now, then it might happen a few years down the line with an increased ferocity. Therefore, when links are seen between solar activity and earthquakes, I think it needs to be noted that even if somehow the solar activity triggered the quake, it would in effect be doing a favour, because if the plates are left to push past one another for a longer period of time, it is unlikely that the plates would be able to suddenly slide past without any sort of quaking.

That's just my thoughts on it though, I think the idea presented is unrealistic as patterns do not necessaries imply cause and effect and people are always trying to find shapes in data (see Penrose's paper on the rings in the CMB, although Seraph is probably better suited to talk about that :P ), but I find it hard to take any sort of science claim seriously when it is promoted with such propaganda as in the article lol

@ Nociception: I filled out the survey for you, although I feel that the questions are a little bit leading, and examples of the different types/ grades of meat would have been handy, as I'm not really sure (apart from chickens) what sort of farming has been involved with say the pork for bacon or the beef for a steak.

@ Harpalyce: I enjoyed the prion comic strip. I feel I have learnt something :P

Also in terms of physics, I was disappointed when I read about this, saying that NASA is pulling out of the LISA project, which would use laser interferometry with three satellites in space to detect gravitational waves. It seems the ESA are still working on the project with LISA-Pathfinder although I think it is more a proof of concept device. Either way, I was impressed when I first heard about the project purely because of the precision required to have three satellites shining lasers at each other and being able to measure slight deviations due to gravity waves bending the light.

[Seraphwolf]

Kam, I pretty much agree with auto on the leaflets, I enjoyed reading them but probably not for the reasons intended by the authors xD They string a lot of nonsense together. Which is a shame because it started out fairly reasonable even if eccentric!

Auto, Whhhaaaaaat NASA can't pull out of LISA! D: but GRAVITY D: Damn budget cuts!

I thought people would really like to read these one two pages, they're a Q and A session with an astronaut :) they're really interesting!

[Vivid]

Hi! I wanna join! I'm not toooooo old, not to young either, but I'd just like to say, if I can, I'll make a description of my scientological background later. I gotta go soon. =)

One thing I must say,though, before departing, is that I'm 100% interested in Paleontology. If anyone wants to back me up, well, yay. There aren't enough of us the way there is.
I♥Science.

[.jabberwocky]

Hello, Loudrain! I love paleontology too, although I know pretty much nothing about it... XD lol