The Lounge

Steve Irwin need to step aside. This guy is good. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11424547 http://www.kmbc.com/r-video/25183352/detail.html

i was just wondering. If this is a science forum, that would mean almost everyones views or interests are very scientific based. Consequently, this could mean that everyone here would side with darwin's theory of evolution, over creationism. am i correct ?

I don't mean to be a sh1t stirrer... But I have always felt that transparent processing is a good thing. I found this in another thread, that was closed: Uhm...I didn't know that Scruffy or Azurephoenix had mod privileges...or Insane_alien for that matter... I really don't care, but I think that it is nice to have it all out in the open, ya know?

Thought I would share this with you all. A couple of days ago I had a dream. A single wasp came at me and landed on me. It was so vivid that I woke instantly, jumping up and brushing myself off. When I finally convinced myself that it was just a dream and there was not a wasp hiding in my bed somewhere, I went back to sleep. I should note that I am generally not scared of wasps. And the last time I was stung by any sort of bee was over 20 years ago as a youngster. Anyway, the day I woke up from that dream, I was stung 4 times by wasps. I was in the woods hunting for mushrooms and I must have disturbed their nest. Freaking things chased me all the way bac…

i was baned from the chat 2 months ago is it possible for me to be unbanned?

Straightforward question, perhaps complicated answers. $100 billion is, I think, many times more than a person could reasonably spend on themselves without going out of their way to specifically waste money (though it is a net worth within an order of magnitude of a few dozen people in the world), so I guess for most people it will be a three part question: how much money do you want for yourself? How would you spend it on yourself? What would you do with the excess?

During the frameworks of my master thesis, I am currentlyworking on the image characteristics. The project, supported by the NorwegianColor research laboratory, leads me to carry out an online study aboutcharacteristics of images. In order to have a maximum of data, I need you to takepart in the experiment which last only a couple of minutes. To contribute to it, follow the link below : http://h0201.myetrayz.net:8000/IC/ Thank you very much for your attention.

Okay, this may seem like a stupid question, but how do I quote somebody in a post reply? I realise that I can put them in a quote box, but how do I specify who it was who said it if I am quoting multiple people. I'm sure it's very simple but I've been messing around for ages and can't get it to work! Help me please, I'm new to forums.

The BBC are asking people to complete a survey on their science coverage - radio, TV and online apparently Only open until the 27th Sept if anyone is interested Story here: http://www.soci.org/News/SCI-BBC-survey with link to survey at the end.

Hello everyone, I just watched this video of UK rocket launch!? It is said to be launched soon, but is this possible? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEJGI3NjJso

I wanted to say welcome to all the new members we've gotten in the last few weeks. There have been quite a few but we haven't heard much from you. Most of you have introduced yourself, and I'd like to make sure all is clear about responding to existing threads and starting new ones of your own. How's it going? Are you finding interesting things to discuss? Do you prefer amphibians to reptiles? Talk to me.

This morning, we had 630 km of traffic jams in our little country which measures less than 400 km north-south and 200 km east-west. (source in Dutch) (Google maps of the Netherlands to see the road network) The reason? Rain. Just normal rain - not even a torrential downpour or a monsoon. Roads were not closed, and nothing flooded. The problem was just people who would normally take a bicycle, or walk to a bus stop or train station now all took the car. In addition, people generally drive a little more careful in bad weather. A normal morning rush hour will have about 150-200 km of traffic jams. How bad is traffic where you live?

Greetings, Having just graduated from college, I have had this summer off before I start grad school. I decided to create a video game inspired by concepts from my research in metabolic engineering. The game's target demographic is rather small, so I'd like to share it with you here on science forums where people might be enthusiastic about these kinds of things. The game is called BioHack. It's a bioengineering simulation/puzzle game where you have to design regulators to enhance metabolic pathways. It uses an enzyme kinetics simulator, so it's based on real science and would be an excellent want to gain an intuitive feel for biochemical kinetics, whic…

One World One Nation. What do you think? discus all the intricacies of such an idea. The economics, politics, world population mortality rate, education and ignorance. I want to hear all your thoughts about every single facet of the concept.

Unschoolers maintain that a child's learning should be curiosity-driven rather than dictated by teachers and textbooks, and that forcing kids to adhere to curricula quashes their natural inclination to explore and ask questions. Unschooling is an acknowledgment that schools and education are in many ways contradictory, that there's an implicit tension between them. Education is about the production of more democracy, production of peace, production of happiness whereas schooling is often the production of global economic competitiveness... The Unschooling Movement Grows In Popularity

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…