TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| Kremlin Relents, for Now, to Foes of Highway Environmentalists were handed a surprising victory when President Dmitri A. Medvedev postponed construction of a Moscow-St. Petersburg highway. feeds.nytimes.com |
Russia Defers Razing of Seed Repository A modest reprieve for a seed bank that is home to the world's largest collection of European fruits and berries. feeds.nytimes.com |
The Charge of California's Light Brigade New policies adopted on Thursday by the California Public Utility Commission encourage utilities to rethink their consumer subsidies, which tend to focus on compact fluorescents, in favor of newer and more energy-efficient technologies. feeds.nytimes.com |
Today's Mystery Bird for you to identify | GrrlScientist This challenging-to-identify shorebird goes by two different scientific names. Can you identify this bird and tell me both scientific names?Mystery Bird photographed at Iona Beach Regional Park on Iona Island in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]Image: Kevan Cowcill, 15 September 2010 (You'll probably want to look at this challenging bird with binoculars).Canon PowerShot SX20IS. Probably not more than 20x magnification. This challenging-to-identify shorebird goes by two different scientific names. Can you identify this bird and tell me both scientific names? Daily Mystery Bird Rules: 1. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification, keeping in mind that more than one field mark is often necessary to distinguish between species. IDs without any supporting information are not valid and may be deleted by the moderators. 2. Expert and intermediate level birders: do NOT try to be the first to blurt out the mystery bird's ID. Instead, please provide helpful hints, such as descriptions, literary references, puns, personal anecdotes, and other forms of discussion and assistance for beginning birders and for those following on their iPhones without naming the species. Expert and intermediate birders are free to name the bird species 24 or more hours after it was first published.3. Each mystery bird is usually accompanied by a question or two. These questions can be useful for identifying the pictured species, but may instead be used to illustrate an interesting aspect of avian biology, behaviour or evolution, or may be intended to generate conversation on other topics, such as conservation. 4. Each bird species will be demystified 48 hours after publication. If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and appreciate audience, feel free to email them to me for consideration.GrrlScientistguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Neutrons and Coffee One of the vanishingly small number of perks of being on committees for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is that every now and then you get to see some very cool science or technology outside your own field.Last week as part of our meeting, STFC Science Board visited a bunch of really really big lasers and the ISIS neutron and muon facility in Oxfordshire.Neutrons are like protons (made of three quarks) but they have no electric charge. All atomic nuclei1 need them in order to stay together. At ISIS you can put various things into a beam of neutrons. Since they have no charge, they ignore the cloud of electrons round atoms and molecules, and just see the nuclei. How strongly they "see" them depends on the kind of nucleus and, for instance, they see the hydrogen in water much more clearly than the aluminium in an espresso maker. Hence:... a video2 made with neutrons. Wow.Scientists and engineers come from all over Europe and beyond to use neutrons from ISIS. Neutron scattering allows physicists to study new materials, and allows engineers to watch how fluid flows round an engine, for instance. Also, bathing aircraft electronics in neutrons allows you to test how likely they are to fail under cosmic ray bombardments when they are at 10,000 metres. As a particle physicist who flies a lot, this appeals to me. As does the fact that ISIS is being used in research towards a international muon collider or neutrino factory. The video was shown to us by Andrew Taylor, Director of ISIS, who also gave us coffee later. It was actually made at ILL3. ISIS and ILL have complementary applications, since ISIS is a spallation source which produces short intense bursts, whereas ILL is a reactor neutron source and provides a steady stream of neutrons. The UK runs ISIS. We also own a third of ILL, which is in Grenoble, in another of the vital international collaborations which allow us to keep at the forefront ... I am struggling not to lapse into another "Science is Vital" rant here since the rest of the Science Board meeting was spent gloomily discussing scenarios for possible cuts. Here's hoping George Osborne, Vince Cable et al are awake and can smell the coffee.____1 Except hydrogen, which is just a single proton.2 Thanks to Andrew Taylor, and to Andrew Harrison, UK Director of ILL, for permission to use the video.3 The video, not the coffee44 Well, the coffee we drank. Obviously, the coffee in the video was made at ILL. But it would be cold by now.Jon Butterworthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |