The Lounge

Hi everyone; Just wondering if any of you know what's the name of the animal in this picture: Thanks in advance

1.given that it is common knowledge that one needs to formulate a hypothesis before carrying out a research ( this applies mostly to scholars writting their theses). Then, isn't true that these hypotheses acts as misleaders since they fuel the confirmation bias of the researcher? 2.again, if confirmation bias exists, disconfirmation bias must exist as well(seems like they are interdependent in a way!), but how can one give evidence of its existence without making proof that he is also influenced by confirmation bias?--(i mean how to argue neutrally about one of these biases) 3.i think a 'fair' researcher should navigate btn confirmation and disconfirmation biases…

I go in for surgery in the morning, I'll be gone for a few days, I know I'll be missed, wish me luck guys and gals...

About a mile from my place ocurred that San Bruno underground gas pipe explosion, got me wondering... As it left a crater and ejected a pipe section, the explosion was underground... I think. How the needed air/oxygen for an explosion to occur got into the packed pipe sorroundings? If the pipe was leaking before the event, less chance for air to get underground, as would be flushed out by the outgoing gas. I think. The fire in the gas filled pipe did not propagate inside the pipe further lenghtwise to other served neighborhoods, as there was no oxygen. The spark... on highly doubtful conditions, the spark had to happen underground... perhaps metal-to-metal g…

I don't know how many of you are ahead of me on this, but I thought it was an interesting article, (posted from CNN because I found it there first) Bug Zapper I don't know if I would be for or against it ecologically...but my skin almost cried with joy anybody think this doo-hickey may become feasible someday? Personally I'm a bit skeptical:

well I found Boimbay crazy this time. It wasnt only the papers ! Every time I switched on the tv there was some filmstar giving an interview. There are far more intelligent people in India than the filmstars. It drove me crazy and I was only too glad to get back to Europe not that our tv is much better!!!

I keep seeing Facebook friends from different parts of the world reporting that they have the flu. Not that I'm suggesting anything apocalyptic -- it just got me wondering if scientists have ever tried using Facebook data to track the spread of a flu outbreak. The appeal here is pretty obvious -- hundreds of millions of users communicating over a vast network in a centralized manner. But the problems seem pretty robust too -- people's public wall posts don't really constitute good medical data (the user could have anything, or nothing at all). You'd have to sit down and figure out what kind of wall post text constituted a "hit", but here I think information scien…

I am searching for metrics relating to temperature trends and past and present agricultural developments within the state of Alaska. Any help would be nice. Also i am searching for an exhaustive tool to measure the nutrient density of soil along with the metric data on various species of staple food type plants and their subspecies. The exact metrics i am looking for are of course, temperature ranges that the plant can live in, nutrient absorption rates, the range of time for growth.

How would an average person, without connections in the science community, publish a new idea? How could someone get help with things like the math, the terminology used, etc? Or, help with evaluating the validity or novelty of the idea? What is the best way to balance "not being a crackpot" if the idea is bad, with getting due credit if the idea is good? And how to balance openly sharing the idea, with keeping it secret enough until you can greedily claim credit for as much work as you can do with it? I recently took on the challenge of understanding physics as a hobby, and have been blogging about it. As far as I know, no one reads the blog. My hope was that a…

All in good fun, if not in good taste... Folks, I thought I was reasonable well acquainted with the vagaries of the English language until I read the term 'asshat' in this Forum. The only time I have seen anything that resembled this mythical 'asshat' was when I saw aliens from Star Trek. Which of the following is the best 'asshat?' Is it the guy on the right in this image? or these guys? Note the groove on the lower forehead. To my mind, these guys come the closest: The Americans have a tendency to create new and ever-inventive insulting phrases from swear words, e.g. f---wad. What on Earth does that mean? Have you guys destroyed the Eng…

"A orgasm does not mean ejaculating semen, it means a way to achieve great pleasure. Society views sex as the greatest pleasure that one can achieve in life. The truth is that a human body can achieve orgasms that's a thousand times better than sex. Mass genocide is one way to achieve an orgasm, unfortunately not everyone enjoys murder. Cultivating qi (energy) in the body can form a orgasm so powerful that will make you feel like a juggernaut. Meditation is another way to achieve pleasure. Sadly, ninety nine percent of people on this planet are lazy and useless, they continue to cling to sexual acts. Sex is for children, we refrain ejaculating semen like a man ch…

I'm sure there are better places to be posting a thread on StarCraft 2 but as a number of us in IRC have begun to play this title I thought maybe others on the forum would like to share their experience; I for one am quite interested. I am pretty noob to the game myself having only played the original on one occasion. I must say the animation and cutscenes are A1 considering they mostly consist of machinama. Tychus is very hawt! \o/ Playing through the first mission didn't present much of a challenge on hard which was expected. The lounge areas where plot is thickened is a bit interesting and sort of reminded me of a few games I've historically played(some snowboa…

CNN is reporting on a newly discovered complex system of gravitational highways between planets. Using these would significantly reduce the cost of missions to other planets. The article is a little light on details, so post a comment if you're able to find a more detailed explanation of this.

The Profile Picture background image looks like genetically mutated man with demented shoulders and neck. I felt like I landed in biology section when i made my profile finally i put my image which doesnt look much different:lol:

Put another way: Have there been any clear advances or benefits to science as a direct result of this forum? Scienceforums.net has been around for many years now, and I love it. I know it has helped me, and it is an invaluable resource for a layman to be able to ask professional scientists questions. Or for scientists to ask themselves questions. Think about the state of communication 30 years ago compared to today. You would think that a forum (like this one) that offers virtually instant communication between scientists around the world, giving them the ability to share and compare ideas, theories, and thoughts, would be a huge boost to technological/scie…

Every few years or so, there is a coming End of The World that colorfully deranged quacks widely believe will come to pass. As anyone reading this is no doubt already aware, in the past few years there has been a lot of noise about the year 2012, apparently due to the date of the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar, though practically every apocolypse has now become associated with it as well. They even made a mainstream disaster movie about it! There has been so much noise, in fact, that it seems on the verge of a Quack Consensus. In fact, I haven't heard any End of the World predictions about any later dates. So, my question is, once 2012 is in the past, when will …

Any takers?

Let me start with my own response: 1) Values--what is good, what is beautiful. Science will never be able to tell us that the Brandenburg Concerto #3 is better than the Symphony Fantastique, or to go to the ridiculuous, dirty rap songs; 2) Science can not answer why questions, particularly why science works, or in the words of Eugene Wigner, explain "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences"; 3) There are other mysteries within the scientific project--to mention just one, quantum non-locality, which the French physicist/philosopher, Bernard D'Espagnat, is a manifestation of the veiled face of reality; 4) science cannot prov…

which of these get payed more? physicist a chemist a programmer and a computers/signals security tech

So I have been wondering what the average SFN user is like. So I created a short, (7 multiple choice), survey to see what most SFN members are like on certain subjects. The survey will ask for no personal information, and is meant only for the purpose of my own curiosity. If you wish to take the survey here is the link: Survey to Determine Average SFN Member If you guys would be willing to take the minute or two to take the survey it would be greatly appreciated. I will post the findings of the survey, once it is over. I know that surveys are often posted on here, but please realize this is in no way spam, and that I am only doing this because I am curio…

Hello. Would like to find out some details/colaboration/information about Crooke's radiometers, from any SFN member residing in Paris. Thanks

I went to turn on my computer the other day and i ended up getting a blue screen after windows was loaded and after i logged into my account. Now being a slightly better than your average computer user i tried to track down the cause of the bluescreen to get around it. i found that if i enter safe mode i don't get a blue screen, atleast until i tried to open either of my AV programs. also it seemed that if i tried to open firefox it would freeze, though i only tried to do it once, and all 3 of these happenings i did at once. ( i know, when troubleshooting computer issues your supposed to do it singularly, but i tried to multitask.) The bluescreen flashes and my compu…

So its getting to be that time of year again were many SFN'ers are going back to school. So what are your guy's schedules, or if you are teaching what are you teaching? My schedule is: -ENGLISH 125: College Writing (4 Credit Hours): This is just the standard required freshman writing course. According to what I have heard the focus of this course is on learning and refining the revising process. To do this my section will look at material, both fiction and non-fiction, pertaining to mental illness. -MATH 295: Honors Mathematics I (4 Credit Hours): This is the beginning of the advanced calculus sequence. This course focuses heavily on the theory rather than the a…

So i was walking to midnight snack the other day, and i happend to look up at a brilliant full moon. I wondered to myself, just how much energy the moon is giving off to illuminate the world around me by exciting the individual atoms within each structure to give off the frequencies of light that i precieve. Then my mind traveled to the amount of energy it even takes to excite an atom enough to give off light and the amount of energy within the light to travel distance. So just how much energy is required for that?

I like black sand in my aquariums, it is not only expensive but it has about 1/2 the volume by weight than white sand. the black sand cannot contain metals because it's safe to use with marine invertebrates which are very sensitive to metal poisoning. White sand is primarily SiO2, what is black sand made of? I may have found the answer to this.... Slica sand "SiO2" specific gravity 1.6 Ilmenite Sand "TiO2, Fe2O3, Cr2O3, MnO" specific gravity 4.6 Works for me....