Animal Spotlight: Red Pandas

It's been a while since I've had an animal spotlight. When thinking of which animal to choose I felt back on an immediate favorite, Red Pandas. I'm an avid zoo-goer. I make sure to stop by the local zoo in every town I'm visiting and I just became a member of the Bronx Zoo which I'm very happy about. Red Pandas are a staple at many zoos and are my default favorite because the lines to see them are usually short but their adorable factor is high. They typically live in the Himalayas, eat bamboo and are not related to bears, rather they are closely related to raccoons, skunks and weasels. They have numerous nicknames which are all just as inaccurate as Red Panda. Bear Cat, Fire Fox, Fox Bear, Common Panda and Lesser Panda are some of them. Red Pandas are so adorable that it got me thinking, why are animals cute? Is their seeming cuteness a result of evolution or coincidence. It would appear that looking cute would put you in good favor with humans who have been calling the shots for thousands of years. But it doesn't seem to be helping Red Pandas any. They are endangered due to lack of habitat and being hunted for their fur.

My New Favorite Band: Carl Sagan and the Physicists

There have been plenty of autotuning videos posted on the web. I personally think we are at the end of that trend. But I couldn't help reposting this one because the content is so amazing it deserves to be heard in any form. Thinking about how large the cosmos is and how small we are in comparison is a thought that keeps me sane. And not so much because it means we are insignificant so we shouldn't worry so much about the day to day stuff but because we are significant. We really are connected to everything; each other, the earth, the stars. It's comforting to know that I'm part of a larger network that contains all that ever was and all that ever will be. It's like a blanket I can always keep wrapped around me.



The video is from symphony of science. You can check out their info on the youtube page where I initially got this video.

The Flume Gorge

Warm weather thankfully keeps me busy and away from the computer. I try to spend as much time as work will allow traveling during the summer. Most of those trips end up being to natural wonders of some sort. A recent vacation took me to Franconia Notch State Park located in the White Mountain region of New Hampshire. There you can see the Flume Gorge. It was formed millions of years ago when a brook eroded a dike in Conway granite leaving 80 foot walls of rock. It truly looks like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Despite its age, it wasn't discovered until 1808 when a 93 year old woman named Jessie Guernsey went looking for a better place to fish. At the time there was a large glacier boulder wedged between the two walls of the gorge. But a flood in 1883 washed it away and buried it under debris. Today you can see a replica boulder on your way up to the gorge. I love taking trips like this because I get to combine science, history and breath-taking scenery all in one place.

OMFG Robots Controlled by Thought

I must say that when the year 2000 arrived I was disappointed by the stunning lack of futuristic things. There were no flying cars, no personal robots and no colonies on the moon. But thankfully science has been picking up the pace since then. Honda just unveiled a robot that is controlled by thought alone. This technology has been steadily growing for a while. I first saw a story about its use for paralyzed patients over a decade ago and Nintendo already has plans to make a video game controller that uses sensors to measure electrical activity in the brain. But something about this video screamed "The future is here now!" Although, I guess I always feel that way when new advances in robotics are revealed.

Ladies and Science, Yay!

Phlebotomy Technician Schools just posted a list of 50 blogs written by women in science which is great because I was just wondering how I was going to go about finding more science blogs to read. I haven't heard of most of these before so I'm going to go through and read a bunch. Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde and Dinochick Blogs may be my favorite on name alone so far.

And on a related note, Kate Beaton may not be a lady in science (she's a history buff) but I love this drawing she did of Marie and Pierre Curie.

Happy Birthday, Darwin!

Today is Darwin's 200th birthday and it is unbelievable to me that after nearly 2 centuries, the ideas he put forth in the Origin of Species are still being debated. Apparently, 61% of Americans either don't believe in evolution or have no thoughts on it. (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/11/darwin-200/) Really? 61% of people are not receiving a proper science education? I knew that scientific thought in this country was low and that a lot of people refuse to believe it for religious reasons, but I had no idea how severely out numbered the remaining 39% of us who do believe in evolution are. It almost makes me want to buy a darwin fish. Even Pope Benedict XVI has found a way to reconcile evolution with faith saying that if you don't believe God could have created a world that includes the possibility of evolution then you are limiting what he is capable of. Which, I think, is a pretty good argument for people who are having a hard time reconciling science with faith. It's certainly a lot better then steadfastly believing that the earth was only created 6,000 years ago.

Space is the Place

Some space facts:

- The "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula (above) were most likely destroyed in a supernova explosion 6,000 years ago.

- Any free-moving liquid in outer space will form itself into a sphere, because of its surface tension.

- In space, no one can hear you scream.

- Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest single structure inside the Solar System. If you could see it with your eyes, it would appear larger than our full Moon.

- Europa, covered with mostly water ice, has the smoothest surface of any large object in the solar system.

- If you added up the mass of all of the thousands of known asteroids in the asteroid belt, the total would be less than ten percent the mass of the Earth's moon.

- In space, astronauts cannot cry, because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow.

- The moon is drifting away from Earth at a rate of 3.8cm a year.

- Star BPM 37093 is actually a giant diamond. It's a mass of crystallized carbon.

- Sun Ra wrote all of his own lines for the film, Space is the Place.