Results tagged “science”

Thanks to a study led by Julian Sachs, a UW associate professor of oceanography, scientists tracked rainfall from 1400 to 1850 at four Pacific islands, and found, in scientific-ese: "that the Pacific intertropical convergence zone was south of its modern position for most of the past millennium, by as much as 500 km during the Little Ice Age."

Wednesday science writer Winifred Gallagher is in town to discuss Rapt at 7:30 p.m. at the Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St. in Seattle (free). She also pops up Thursday at the "Good Life" event at 6:30 p.m. at the Palace Ballroom, 2100 Fifth Avenue (tickets: $25).

Local researchers and science geeks are totally geeking out right now, as $21.5 billion of the stimulus dollars, dedicated solely to research and development, is now up for grabs. Scientists from across Washington, including the big shots at UW, WSU, Children's, and Fred Hutch have all applied for funding, and will continue to keep their fingers crossed for months until they hear who gets a slice of the stimulus research pie. Signs point in a positive direction, as one local laboratory focused on energy efficiency research was awarded $124 million in stimulus bucks already. The Pacific Northwest is expected to receive some funding (=more jobs), including dollars for biomedical research, volcano monitoring, and earthquake studies.

It seems like we're always bemoaning the lack of critical, patient-advocating mental health coverage locally, so we wanted to point out that Psychology Today has interviewed Seattle's Furious Seasons, and the result is a really illuminating summary of almost everything that investigative reporter Philip Dawdy has been up to the past few years, from critiques of the rates of bipolar and ADHD diagnosis in children, to uncovering pharmaceutical misdeeds ("the worst corporate behavior I have ever seen in my 15 years as a reporter") and the failure of FDA oversight and regulation.

...is not even a remotely true headline, but we can't resist a pop cultural allusion. However, if you rearrange the words a bit, suddenly the truth snaps into focus, like a section of sagittal tissue on a microscope slide: the Wired story is about the brain-mapping going on at Paul Allen's Brain Institute. Science writer Jonah Lehrer takes you on a tour of the facility, explaining the "brain atlas" concept that maps what we know about the brain, from "gene expression to a cellular level." Also, there are robots, working day and night on mouse brains. It's pretty ingenious, but for all our sakes, we hope they never get loose.

This is fascinating, and thanks to the Big Blog's Scott Sunde for bringing it up: UW researchers have discovered that people with autism have a more intense response to looking at faces than the average Joe. The more social impairment, in fact, the more intense the response to someone's face.

You wouldn't think the age-old roommate battle over who's doing the dishes would have much to do with ant and bee research, but you're wrong! Ha! We win again!

Jonah Lehrer is all laconic, low-key business behind the podium, despite his emo-rocker look on his homepage. A little more bedhead and some ink, and he could make a third bandmate for We Are Scientists. (Tambourine?) He was Town Hall last night talking about his second book, How We Decide, which, it turns out, has a lot to do with dopamine-driven emotions, rather than Vulcan-style rationality.

SERENA RYDER: Who doesn't love a Canadian singer/songwriter? Only the very, very small of heart. Our sister site Torontoist called Serena Ryder "up and coming" back in 2005, and she just won the Juno Award (it's Canadian!) for New Artist of the Year in 2008. Plus, Wikipedia says, "Ranging musically between folk, roots, country, and adult contemporary, Ryder possesses a three-octave range." Here she is on the YouTube, here she is on the MySpace. Matt Duke opens, but you're on your own there.

[UPDATE: This post has been edited to reflect corrections made by David Dobbs to his original post, which we quoted below.]

As we alerted you the other day, author Steven Johnson was in town this week for a flurry of book talks; we caught up with him at Vivace--he didn't imbibe, he was already sufficiently caffeinated he said, and in fact we got 45 minutes of talk into our half-hour interview slot--and talked with him a little about his new book, The Invention of Air, but also about the life of Steven Johnson, author. Here's some of that--we'll post more later as we type it up.

Last night we flipped on the tee-vee, and stumbled on a KCTS fundraiser: Dr. Daniel G. Amen in his self-produced show, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life." If you missed it, you're in luck: it's showing fifteen more times locally.

Most of us who have spent any time bored on the internet, or have bored friends who send us forwards about everything they find, know our porn star name. The formula for this is, of course, the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on. (For example, we have the world's most boring porn star name ever: Minnie Smith.) More advanced bored internet surfers may also know their soap star name and Star Wars character name.

We sent special Killer Bugs correspondent Roger van Oosten to Town Hall last night to catch Richard "Hot Zone" Preston's talk. Post-decontamination, here is his report.

We were very impressed by the great mobilization of Seaside, Oregon's Internet Defense Forces after our very first post about that town. Since then, we've had the pleasure to re-visit the place on several occasions, to eat at Herb's, and to exchange e-mails with residents. As a result, we have fallen deeper in love with both its charming small-town Americana as well as its gaudy tourism-pandering excesses. Seaside is the gold-standard and deliciously eponymous archetype of seaside towns, 'nuff sed.

CHARITABLE INDULGENCES: If you're not too hungover from tonight's couture cocktails with Jack Mackenroth at Product Runway, something beautiful involving imported beer and fine Scotch is happening in Fremont both tonight and tomorrow: the HopScotch Spring Beer and Scotch Festival. The festival's a benefit for NW Folklife, so think of your purchase of extra tequila tastings as an act of springtime charity.

Kane Hall's Room 130 was almost full last night, for "The Psychology of Blink: Understanding How Our Minds Work Unconsciously," the last talk in the 2008 Edwards Psychology Lecture Series at the UW.

There are two more poets due in town for the Seattle Arts and Lectures Poetry Series, both in April. Lucille Clifton shows up at the Intiman on April 7, Edward Hirsch on April 21.

Sixty University of Washington professors have signed an open letter discussing the trend of unprepared students. Science and Math teachers at the UW have noticed a rising number of their incoming students can't do basic math. Some instructors claim they've had to dumb down their classes because of the increasing lack of math skills.

Popular Science released its list of the 50 Greenest cities in the U.S. recently. Of course, liberal, green Seattle was on it. We came in eighth. It surprised no one at Seattlest HQ, however, that our neighbor to the South, namely Portland, came in first since some of us believe that Portland is better and we all love PDX regardless.

We were trying to figure out how to gracefully suggest you go see U23D at the Seattle Science Center's IMAX before it closes (the run ends the 19th), when we ran into Mandy's blog. Mandy, take it away:

i think U2 always reminded me of my dad. (not that this is a bad thing) but when i was little he might have put on some bono and cranked up the stereo. which i am pretty sure mortified me as a child. no one wants to be dropped off at school in junior high by your dad cranking what you think at the time is "old man rock". this is where it think my slight resentment to U2 came from. but my eyes have been opened, the clouds are clearing and i can see what i have been missing.

And then there was Downloading Nancy. Whether you loved it or had serious issues with it (we fell into the latter camp), everyone agreed that the film is beyond "difficult" to watch. Deliberately so: loosely based on a true story, the topic is a wretched woman (Maria Bello, fearless as always), full of pain and desperate for a way out of her current situation. The film delves into Nancy's mental illness and the tenuous relationship that comes to exist between her husband (Rufus Sewell) and the new man in her life (Jason Patric). Downloading Nancy is provocative, and the violent images of cutting and other self-inflicted sadism caused quite a few audience members to walk out, some in tears. The entire film is bruised--master cinematographer Christopher Doyle provided sallow tones of yellow and blue. Sure, it's well-made, but with its dark tone and subject matter (and shades of misogyny), how exactly do you market such a downer?

We don't claim to be an expert on male attractiveness, but if forced to rank television personalities by hotness or notness--well, let's just say that Bill Nye, "The Science Guy", would be closer to Willard Scott than to Matt Lauer.

The soul-crushingly young Jonah Lehrer was at Town Hall last night, his mere presence deriding our wasted time on the planet. At 25, he's been a line cook, a lab tech, and a Rhodes Scholar, and he's now an author (Proust Was a Neuroscientist), editor-at-large for SEED, and of course a blogger. (We were a pantry chef one night, and we learned how to "make" a crème brûlée with a propane blowtorch, but so far no Rhodes Scholarship, no book deal.) By contrast, Lou Dobbs was upstairs, giving inspiration for late-in-life windbags/rabble-rousers, so perhaps it evened out.