If You’re Not Out For Valentine’s Day

It’s a repeat (sorry, “encore”) but Six Degrees Could Change The World from the National Geographic is airing tonight (Thursday) on, funnily enough, The National Geographic Channel at 8PM et / 9PM pt. They have a cracking website called Is This Our Future, if you get a chance take a look.

A trailer for the show is embedded below, followed by three brief clips to give you an idea of what it’s about. If you’re reading via RSS, you might have to come here to watch.

The world’s most important table?

It’s the Periodic table of course. Tsk, what were you thinking? Anyway, someone by the name of Theodore W. Gray has spent four years collecting photographs of the elements that make up the Periodic table. I’m not sure why though, but it does make a cracking poster that is available in different sizes for all your, er, poster and gift needs. For example it includes the “rotor from a jet engine, made of titanium. A silvery fish molded from cadmium. A Hubble Space Telescope image of the Eagle nebula, which is 90 percent hydrogen. Various noble gases, xenon for instance, trapped in neon signesque versions of their abbreviations. An antique tin soldier. A watch face with glowing radium numbers. Here and there a picture of a famous scientist for whom some unphotographable element has been named, like Einsteinium”.
Source: News Gazette

Gray has modestly stated, “This is art”. The posters are produced on a state of the art printer to give the best print quality commercially available. If you don’t want to buy one just yet, in the December 2006 issues of Popular Science magazine there is a three-page tear out special edition of the poster, and more details on the process involved in creating this work of art.

The debate over stem cell research

Whilst the merits for and arguments against stem cell research are beyond the boundaries of this website, it’s hard not to be moved when you see this advert starring Michael J Fox. Of course, that’s the point, but as Tom Wilson (Biff in Back to the Future) says, “He’s a nice guy”….

The top 10 advances in science and technology this year

The Ig Nobel awards are an answer to the serious Nobel Prizes. “The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative - and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology.” - Marc Abrahams, editor of science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Nature called them “…arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar”. I call them brilliant.

This years winners included:Â

Maths: How many photos must be taken to almost ensure no-one in a group shot has their eyes closed, by Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes.
Ornithology: Why woodpeckers do not get headaches, by Ivan Schwab and the late Philip RA May.
Nutrition: Why dung beetles are fussy eaters, by Wasmia al-Houty and Faten al-Mussalam.
Acoustics: Why the sound of fingernails scraping on blackboards is so annoying, by D Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand.
Medicine: The Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage, by Francis Fesmire, Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven.

Source: BBC

Previous years winners have included:

• Feeding Prozac to clams (Ig Nobel Biology Prize, 1998).
• Whether buttered toast always falls on the buttered side (Ig Nobel Physics Prize, 1996).
• The Possible Pain Experienced during Execution by Different Methods (Ig Nobel Peace Prize, 1997).
• The Relationship among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size (Ig Nobel Statistics Prize, 1998).
• Training pigeons to discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet (Ig Nobel Psychology Prize, 1995).