David Almandsmith 5 July 2021 Hello again dear readers, ¿Wasn’t science supposed to let us travel using flying cars and jet packs and hover-boards? Well, all are available but it’s a lot cheaper to buy an airline ticket (or book a plane from your flying club) and rent a car at your destination. In my June 6 SciSchmooze, I expressed … Read more
27 June 2021 A 150,000-year-old skull found in China is described in a journal this week. The skull is not Homo sapiens. The authors chose to name the species Homo longi but many scientists suspect the person was Homo denisova. Just eleven years ago, it was announced that novel DNA was sequenced from a girl’s finger bone found in a Siberian Altai Mountain … Read more
7 June 2021 Clouds are rare over Mars. Curiosity photographed clouds so far above the surface that they may be dry ice crystals. This SciSchmooze is going to press before the results of Ingenuity’s 7th flight are known. But if you would like a little model (about 1/7 scale) of Ingenuity – for free – … Read more
30 May 2021 Dr. Elizabeth Bik searches for faked images, plagiarized passages, and incorrectly interpreted data in scientific papers. She is amazing in her ability to recognize improperly re-used images even when they are reversed and rotated. She presented a paper on “Misconduct in Scientific Papers: Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification” at the Bay Area Skeptics … Read more
2 May 2021 Fewer and fewer Americans are lining up to get COVID-19 shots while only 31% of our population has been fully vaccinated. Public Service Announcements are pushing for more people to get vaccinated, e.g. Barack Hussein Obama, Stewie from Family Guy, and Google. Aware that a large proportion of Republicans are hesitant, there … Read more
“Now what on earth are we going to do with that?” mom’s voice blared from the kitchen. We all quickly crowded into the kitchen of our home on the second floor over a tiny grocery store and the downstairs flat; me and my brother Noel, sister Linda Sue, Mom, Dad, our Cocker Spaniel Rusty, and … Read more
4 April 2021 Dear Science Fans, Out in our solar system neighborhood, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter is about to be released from the underside of the Perseverance rover. NASA’s official description of Ingenuity’s role says it will be decommissioned after a month of test flights. Sorry, folks. I do not expect the world’s population will … Read more
Back in about 1975, the Canadian Wildlife Service invited personnel from the International Bird Rescue Research Center up to their regional offices in Winnipeg to instruct agents from across Canada in the cleaning and aftercare of oiled water birds. Alice Berkner and i naturally picked ourselves as the training team. As Alice and volunteers prepared … Read more
James Michael Harris, D.V.M. persuaded the folk at U.C. Berkeley Extension to let the International Bird Rescue Research Center offer a six-week night course in avian anatomy & physiology. This was when the Bird Center was in the warehouse on Eighth Street in Berkeley adjacent to the East Bay Humane Society. I would co-teach with … Read more
Oil spills did not end with the San Francisco spill of January 1971 when i began my 7-year odyssey as Research Director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center, IBRRC. Spills were a constant feature of the shipping business of the Bay. The bilge water of freighters and cruise ships normally collect lubricants and fuel … Read more