Yesterday the U.S. Navy announced a cancelation of the remainder of the 2013 Blue Angels demonstration team air show season. The impacts expand beyond just the financial. My heart is very heavy about this from a parenting perspective. We are denying our kids critical exposure to STEM skills.
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The film, titled Do You Know What My Name Is? is said to showcase a “learning therapy that can reverse symptoms of dementia.” The word “reverse” is pretty big when we’re talking about dementia. What do you think, hope or hype?
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I cannot express to you how excited I was to find out there was a new Mary Roach book on the bookstore shelves. I devoured her other books and couldn’t wait to dive into this one. Or maybe I should say I couldn’t wait to bite into this one. This entertaining science writer’s newest work […]
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The Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park isn’t necessarily near anything. We endured a 360-mile round trip in one day — six hours worth of driving to and from our then-home in Bellevue, Nebraska — for about two hours of exploration in a very rural part of northeastern Nebraska.
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Do babies learn to prefer junk food as fetuses?
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The non-profit organization Girlstart is currently raising funds to help send girls in the Central Texas area to STEM-themed summer camp, so that they have the opportunity to learn in a fun, supportive environment.
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A group of registered dietitians has taken to Facebook to protest their professional organization’s more and more intimate relationships with “Big Food”. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics often counts on funding from ConAgra, Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s and other large corporations for its conferences and training.
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A car that runs on compressed air? Sign. Me. Up.
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Imagine using an Orion Spacecraft to go “lasso” an asteroid, position it near the moon, and make it available for long-term exploration. Click through to learn more about today’s announcement.
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In Tanzania, scientists recently used a mobile phone equipped with a makeshift microscope to diagnose intestinal parasites.
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What do you think of life without electricity, like what you see on NBC’s Revolution, FX’s The Walking Dead, or in the book/upcoming film World War Z? That’s what a low-yield nuclear blast in the upper atmosphere would cause, by exploding overhead and releasing an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could impact circuitry of all shapes […]
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The Federation of American Scientists has assembled an infographic on North Korea’s capabilities (based on their known intelligence of North Korea missile systems). Does this make you feel any differently about North Korea’s rhetoric?
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You live in a place more beautiful than you can see with the naked eye. Want to see more? NASA can help.
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Today marks the 237th birthday of the French mathematician Sophie Germain (1776-1831). While her work in elasticity was fundamental to the field, her work on proving Fermat’s Last Theorem blew 200 years of previous attempts out of the water. Her story is an inspiring one of self-starting, persistance, and courage. Happy birthday, Germain!
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Have you ever read a textbook cover to cover? I’m in grad school. I’ve had to do it more than once. It usually requires massive amounts of caffeine and re-reading a lot of pages. Well, there’s some good news. No Starch Press has The Manga Guide series on textbook topics, such as statistics, electricity, and molecular biology. The manga books are written by Japanese subject matter experts. They have been translated to English and (thankfully) rearranged to read from left to right.
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Dear Weather Channel, I wish you would back off on the long form programming that has very little to do with the weather and give up on the winter storm names. PLEASE consider the geek perspective: Gandalf, Nemo, Orko, Khan and Q have completely different meanings to us!
Continue ReadingAre you a “Force of Nature”? Take the pledge to be one during National Severe Weather Preparedness Week from March 3-9th. This is the week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has joined forces with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to educate and inspire Americans to be ready for this year’s severe weather. They have adapted the catch-phrase “Be a Force of Nature” to help Americans remember to be proactive and ready.
Continue ReadingSo maybe the sky isn’t falling, but it’s quite the coincidence that an asteroid and a meteor both descended upon our little plot of the universe within about 15 hours of one another. While many skywatchers have been anxiously awaiting the close approach of Asteroid 2012 DA14, they were completely taken by surprise when a 500-ton meteor that streaked across the Russian Ural sky earlier the same day.
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New research indicates babies learn their native language, even while in utero.
Continue ReadingWhen thinking about Christmas, its pretty typical to think about a lovely evergreens filled with ornaments you have collected throughout the years. However, sometimes some of the most beautiful “trees” aren’t trees at all.
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Recently, I’ve acquired a couple of elves to help me bake Christmas cookies. My sons, ages 7 and 10, are old enough to do just about everything in the cookie baking process (with plenty of adult supervision). My youngest son loves cracking eggs, which is just the beginning of the educational value of this annual tradition. I offer to you five small math lessons that can pay dividends for any young person to have a fruitful future in cooking and baking.
Continue ReadingDreaming of being an astronaut is a phase just about everyone goes through at one point in their lives. It’s a much smaller amount of people who decide to peruse that dream when they grow-up. While not everyone might go into space, everyone has the opportunity to race on the moon…. well almost. For the last 19 years, NASA has given high school and college teams from across the globe a chance to compete against each other for the title of “Greatest Moonbuggy of the Year”.
Continue ReadingHave you heard, Mardi Gras has made it to Mars!!! Yesterday there were rumors flying about the internet about a massive discovery of plastic found on Mars. With only a quick glance it seemed to be a legit press release from Jet Propulsion Lab in California. However, for anyone that looked at the article for more then 30 seconds it was obvious that this was a nicely executed hoax. Phil Plait from Bad Astronomer wrote a great post last night listing all of the ways that this hoax outed itself. The prankster obviously wanted to take advantage of the “earthshaking” announcement from last week that something was found on Mars. Its been later determined that even that previous press release was an over exaggeration by a reporter after an interview with a Curiosity team member.
Massive scientific hoaxes aren’t new, they have been around for ages. Sometimes they are a lot harder to spot then this one, and cause a lot more confusion then this little prank. One of the greatest achievements of the scientific method is the ability for correction over time. No matter how elaborate the hoax, science will be able to eventually prove or disprove a skeptic. There are times that hoaxes almost get by without detection, and as a reminder to stay ever vigilant to the proof here are five of the greatest scientific hoaxes of all time.
Continue ReadingIn this episode, GeekMom Nicole Wakelin gets to do a face-to-face interview with the kids on the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam from Nashua North High School in Nashua, New Hampshire
Continue ReadingIn the last couple months my Photography Snapshot series has focused on the theory of light and how it behaves as it created images in an optical system. I’m planning to shift my focus now from the theoretical side of photography to the practical components of taking magnificent photos. This snapshot will focus on creating the perfectly exposed image and the three most important elements in determining exposure. So pick up your camera, its time to play.
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This weekend my boys and I happened through the toy aisles where I spotted this amazing little gem, just sitting on a shelf. Mattel has cast a die model of the awe-inspiring NASA Mars Curiosity rover. These little rovers are likely going to be extremely collectible and won’t be in stores long.
Continue ReadingWhile attending World Maker Faire in New York earlier this month, I was surrounded by hundreds of DIY projects that had been dreamt up by hackers and makers around the world. The projects were magnificent! From the moment I walked through the gates for set-up on Friday till we had to leave to drive home on Sunday, there was one display that I was magnetized to. From afar it imply looked like a large wooden sculpture of an soccer ball. I had to know more. I immediately went up and started taking pictures, it was massive and very impressive. The structure was a truncated icosahedron and I hadn’t even seen the best part of the sculpture at that point. Rob Marshall, owner of Hamlet Construction, had turned this ancient design into what he calls the “Happy Fun Ball.”
Continue ReadingLike the Mars Rover landing, my family didn’t think anything about letting our kids join in Sunday morning tuning into Discovery Channel to watch the ascent of the Red Bull Stratos balloon, listen to Baumgartner and chief communicator USAF Colonel (Retired) Joe Kittinger run through checklists, and then watch the live feed of Baumgartner’s free fall.
Continue ReadingFriday night I was given the awesome opportunity to go to the Myths Busted Tour, hosted by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. The show was everything I could have hoped from things going wrong on stage to Adam’s jokes to the tricks they played on willing volunteers.
Continue ReadingTry this experiment on unwitting friends and family. Muah ha ha.
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