Monday Science Links

Sorry this is late, but things came up! And it's still Monday ... So here are this week's links:

• Carl at Rigor Vitae posts on a white eagle: Usually, white plumage is a liability for a predatory bird, especially in tropical forests. Conventional wisdom suggests the white Gray Goshawks realize a benefit from their similarity to white cockatoos (Cacatua spp.); small prey birds are likely to mistake them for the innocuous psittaciformes until it's too late. In fact, the white phase is not known to occur in any localities where Cacatua species don't.


• Jennifer at Mind the Gap tells us what prompted her return to science: Sometimes even the most innocuous events can have serious consequences. In a recent post, Henry related a lab nightmare of Hieronymus Boschian proportions which, on waking, made him thank Dawkins that he was no longer a practicing scientist. This, in turn, reminded me of why I decided to abandon a successful and lucrative career in science publishing to return to the lab. I’ve already discussed some of the core reasons for this volte-face, but up until now, I haven’t actually revealed the decisive inconsequential moments that catalyzed the whole affair.


• Kristjan at Pro-science fisks a creationist's challenge: Back when I started this blog, I would frequently take apart articles and comments made by people ignorant about the subject they talked about. Most often, the subject at hand would be evolution. As time went by, I stopped doing it quite as often, and lately I haven't done it at all. However, I've come across an article so stupid, so ignorant, that it virtually begged to be fisked, so here we go again. How Dawkins Misrepresents Evolution! by Babu Ranganathan Wow, that's a really strong title - note the exclamation mark and everything.


• Stefan at Back-reaction looks at the centenary of the first liquefaction of helium: I read about the story of the liquefaction of helium in the July issue of the PhysikJournal (the German "version" of Physics Today - PDF file available with free registration). Moreover, the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden shows a special exhibition to commemorate the event, "Jacht op het absolute nulpunt", but the website seems to be in Dutch only. However, the curator of the exhibition, Dirk van Delft, describes the story in a nice article in the March 2008 issue of Physics Today, "Little Cup of Helium, Big Science", where he makes the point that the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory in Leiden marked the beginning of "Big Science" in physics (PDF file available here and here). One Hundred years later, there is a twist to the story I wasn't aware about at all: Helium is now so much used in science and industry that there may be a serious shortage ahead!


• gg at Skulls in the Stars blogs about freezing images in an atomic vapor, saying: I thought I’d step out of my comfort zone and specific field of expertise for once and do a post on some interesting quantum optics. In a June issue of Physical Review Letters, an Israeli research group experimentally demonstrated the ability to store and retrieve optical images in an atomic vapor using so-called ‘electromagnetically induced transparency’, a purely quantum-mechanical effect. Researchers have previously demonstrated the ability to ‘freeze’ light pulses in an atomic medium, but this is the first time to my knowledge that a structured two-dimensional image has been given the same treatment. To fully describe the research and its significance, however, we need to say a little bit about how atoms and molecules absorb and emit light.

Enjoy!