A major question of human evolution is, given that we are 98.8% genetically the same as a chimpanzee, and that we diverged as a species in a relatively short period of time, how is that you and I are able to play the piano? (I can't actually play the piano, but I could.) How can we be so similar to our relatives, and be so different in our capacity for social behavior, abstract thought, and reasoning, which has made humans stand out so drastically from any other animal? Our DNA sequences are only 1.2% different, but what a whopping 1.2%. A study published this week in the journal Genome Research attempts to shed some light on that question. And like so many things, it's all about timing.
Read MoreTurn-of-the-century Antarctic explorers had a cute, disgusting secret for fending off scurvy in a wasteland lacking fruits and vegetables. They ate wild, vitamin C-rich penguins. They ate penguin steak, they ate penguin stew, they ate penguin eggs, they fed them to dogs, they burned their fat for fuel. Sometimes the poor, unsuspecting creatures would waddle right into camp, unaware of this strange new animal wandering toward the South Pole for the first time. Other times, the men would lure their happy feet in with a song. Discoblog has a gross little history of penguin cuisine among late 19th century explorers, referencing a recent paper in Endeavor, and the journals of Frederick Cook.
Read MoreSports fans may owe the referees of the world an apology. In fact, a lot of us may owe a lot of people apologies. A recent study suggests that the outrage behind a “bad call,” and the all-too-common dead certainty that our team outperformed the other, is more than just loyalty. It’s a product of our brains perceiving events incorrectly based on our affiliation with the team.
Read MoreOriginally posted on mrchair March 17, 2011.
Within minutes of the email and website announcement of the NYT paywall details, Twitter was all aflutter.
Cory Doctorow made his rote attack against all things not free and open to the public. His basic argument is, this paywall is flawed as a way to keep freeloaders out of their content. It will piss people off, and people will stop linking to the Times because they won't want to, by extension, piss of their readers.
The other general negative sentiment is that the site will hemorrhage traffic, lose ad revenue, etc. This may all be correct, but I'd wager, and the Times is wagering big time, that none of that matters.
Read MoreOriginally posted on mrchair 2/17/2011.
The coincidence is not lost on me that the week I purchased a Kindle is the week Borders Books & Music — the big box version of a bookstore that I grew up on — filed bankruptcy and announced it would be closing 30% of its stores.
Nor do I take it lightly.
When I was an all-joints adolescent growing up in suburban Phoenix, Borders served as an entry point and an escape for me. In the same way media conglomerate Blockbuster introduced me to all the movies I’d never seen before (and my first job), so did the towering brick and mortar bookstore facilitate my introduction to the joys of reading, but also just spending time around books.
Read MoreOriginally published in The Arizona Daily Star, 2000.Tate Williams
An average patient for one Northwest Side hospital has gastrointestinal discomfort, needs immediate surgery, has a preference for standing upright and weighs upwards of 1,100 pounds.
Aside from the obvious, what sets Cortaro Equine Hospital apart from every other area clinic is that a case of gut pain sends Dr. Larry Shamis plunging into a couple hundred pounds of intestine to save a patient's life.
Read MoreOriginally published in the East Valley Tribune 2003.
Baseball legend Ted Williams' DNA is not missing from a Scottsdale cryonics company, and any damage to his body would be the result of regular procedures related to freezing a corpse for preservation, the company's director said Wednesday.
Carlos Mondragon, director of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, said during a news conference that a Sports Illustrated article claiming Williams' body is in poor condition stems from a disgruntled employee lashing out at the company.
Read MoreOriginally published in The Arizona Daily Star, 2000 Tate Williams
Stress muddles memories, according to a UA study that raises doubts about eyewitness testimony in criminal cases.
Results of a standard word-memory experiment suggest that stress increases the likelihood that people will remember hearing words they actually did not hear. The participants in the study tended to remember the general themes of the words they had heard but confuse the details.
"Be really careful on not depending on the details," said Lynn Nadel, head of the University of Arizona psychology department and co-author of the study with graduate student Jessica Payne.
Read MoreOriginally published in The Arizona Daily Star, 2000. Tate Williams
Three dimensions, most people understand. Height, width and depth.
Add a fourth - time, as in three-dimensional objects moving through time.
But a fifth?
Scientists have thought for years that dimensions exist beyond our perception but assumed they were so far out of reach that further investigation would be futile.
Read MoreOriginally published in The Arizona Daily Star, 2000.
Research scientists are using middens - material encased in ancient rodent urine - to chart thousands of years of climate evolution
Tate Williams
Local researchers have compiled a detailed 22,000-year history of climate change in one of the world's driest deserts by dating fossilized rodent middens.
Scientists from the University of Arizona and the U.S. Geological Survey on Tumamoc Hill examined the middens - clods of vegetation preserved in crystallized rodent urine - along with preserved deposits from dried springs. They used them to create a detailed record of climate change in the hyperarid Atacama Desert in Chile.
Read More