Papers Discussed: 1. Jeffrey B. Bingenheimer, et al., Firearm Violence Exposure and Serious Violent Behavior, Science, 2005, 308:5726, pp1323-1326. 2. Paolo A. Mazzali et al., An Asymmetric Energetic Type Ic Supernova Viewed Off-Axis, and a Link to Gamma Ray Bursts, Science, 2005, 308:5726, pp 1284-1287 3. Roger Guimerà et al., Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance, Science, 2005, 308:5722, pp 697-702 4. Trevor Jones et al., The Highland Mangabey Lophocebus kipunji: A New Species of African Monkey, Science, 2005, 308:5725, pp 1161-1164 * * * A collaboration between scientists at the University of Michigan and Harvard…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From October, 2005
HOW THE SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS ELUCIDATED IN SCIENCE MAGAZINE WILL AFFECT MY LIFE (VOLUME 1)
Papers Discussed: 1. Jeffrey B. Bingenheimer, et al., Firearm Violence Exposure and Serious Violent Behavior, Science, 2005, 308:5726, pp1323-1326. 2. Paolo A. Mazzali et al., An Asymmetric Energetic Type Ic Supernova Viewed Off-Axis, and a Link to Gamma Ray Bursts, Science, 2005, 308:5726, pp 1284-1287 3. Roger Guimerà et al., Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance, Science, 2005, 308:5722, pp 697-702 4. Trevor Jones et al., The Highland Mangabey Lophocebus kipunji: A New Species of African Monkey, Science, 2005, 308:5725, pp 1161-1164 * * * A collaboration between scientists at the University of Michigan and Harvard…
ON STRING THEORY
My coworker helped her grandmother move out of her home recently. She was 94, she’d broken her hip and now had to move from a small house in the mountains to a residential care facility in the city. The whole family helped pack up her things and prepare the house to be rented. Like almost everyone who lived during the Depression, she had saved everything. In the attic they found a medium-sized box that was labeled: pieces of string too short to use.
TRASH TALKIN’ AT THE AQUARIUM
Wut up, tortoise? You think you’re all that ’cause you can swim really well and stuff? Well, sorry to disappoint you, son, but I can swim really well, too. Sucka. I need to wear water wings, on account I’m scared of deep water, but that’s still swimming. So bite me, fool. Ooo, shark, what big sharp teeth you have! Too bad four out of five dentists think you’re a doophis. Boo-ya! “Arf! Arf! Look at me: I’m a big fat sea lion! I can wave hello with my big fat flipper and spin a beach ball on my big fat…
IN WHICH OUR PROTAGONIST LEARNS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BASE CASE
I was three years old. By this point in my life, the residents of Sesame Street had educated me about as well as any community of puppets could reasonably be expected to educate any small child. Family legend has my father holding me, age fifteen months, as he selected an ice cream treat from the Dickie Dee vendor outside our Virginia home. I don’t know if I recognized the varieties of snacks, but apparently I could make some sense of their names. “I,” I enunciated, pointing. “C. E. C…” Incredulous, my father informed my mother, “She knows letters.” Since neither…
LOTIC
In electric confrontations, the clouds gather, grow dark, and grumble their dissent. They lumber about like gravid beasts, heavy bellies aimed at the earth below; a slow dance that lasts for days. Then, like a crescendo, it rains. Not an unusual phenomenon in this urban area of the west coast trapped between the mountains and the sea. The geometric nature of the city provides a horizon of percussive surfaces in the form of concrete stalagmites that have colonized what once was a temperate rainforest. What trees remain have been landscaped into place. And water batters into the foliage, each leaf…
ELSEWHERE AND OVERHEARD
Overheard “We have done what we can for him but he may never regain use of the organ again, at least for sexual purposes.” Doctor Nicolae Bacalbasa in Galati, Romania, on a farmer who broke his penis by dropping a sack of grain on it while ogling his wife. (Ananova.com) “It wasn’t like people were holding off until the ninth inning and then running to the emergency department.” Children’s Hospital Boston researcher John Brownstein on the drop in emergency room visits during the Boston Red Sox games. (Boston Globe) “Tracking them with advanced technologies and observing their sex…
IS MOST PUBLISHED SCIENCE FALSE?
Science is chasing truth, with an emphasis on the chase. Nevertheless, regardless of this pursuit, a common assumption is that when a scientific study is published, its results are true — and only on the rarest occasions, do false findings appear in print. But a new analysis of the probability that published research findings are true suggests that we all may be deceiving ourselves – most research papers are instead false. “We have to acknowledge that there is a problem,” says John Ioannidis, from the University of Ioannina in Greece, who recently undertook the analysis. Using a mathematical model that…
BUTTERFLY
This piece is copyrighted (2004), Chris Ware, and reprinted with permission from McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Issue 13