Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Over at The Loom, Carl Zimmer has a lovely post on the physics of animal motion: Our bodies are bunches of atoms, and like any rock or star or other bunch of atoms, we have to obey the laws of physics as we move. But each species obeys those same laws in its own way. My cat leaps onto my desk most mornings, his grace unblemished by the paper clips and computer cables he kicks onto the floor. A maple tree outside bends in the wind, a happy medium between flopping over and snapping in two. A hawk arrives at the tree and lands precisely on a branch. On their own, our eyes cannot tell us much about the different ways in which living things move. We can’t see the invisible vortices of air spiraling behind a hawk, the stresses experienced by different parts of the leaning maple, the thrust and torque generated by my cat as he rises into the air.


• Bonus! Digital Cuttlefish has a post and poem on animal walking, too!: Maybe those are accurate mounts of the dinosaurs, and they died out because they walked funny. - I thought I’d take an afternoon and visit the museum / I’d heard they had some new things, and I thought I’d like to see ‘em / One skeleton, a walking dog, was what I liked the best— / But its front was moving eastward, while its back was moving west!


• PalMD at The White Coat Underground shares some research on acupuncture: It's hard to hide severe back pain. When I stand up, I look like a question mark. The visibility of the problem, combined with the general goodness of my fellow human beings, leads to lots of unsolicited advice. Folks have given me great advice (take some NSAIDs, stretch, and don't lay in bed) and some questionable advice (go to the chiropractor, get some acupuncture). My colleagues and I have written a lot about acupuncture. It's sort of a "gateway CAM", in that it has a patina of plausibility. But the evidence of its efficacy has pointed toward it being an elaborate placebo.


• Darren at Tetrapod Zoology talks about identifying a skull: Had you not recognised the skull immediately, here's how you might have identified it... For starters, this is obviously a bird skull: it has long toothless jaws, rhamphothecae, and an 'open' skull morphology with huge orbits and no postorbital bar. You can also see the notches associated with the prokinetic hinge zone, if you know what to look for. As for what sort of bird it is, the biggest clue comes from the obvious bony hollows you can see on the skull roof, over the eyes [see below]. These are the supraorbital fossae: in life, they house the supraorbital salt glands. Seabirds use these organs to excrete excess salt. So, we're dealing with some sort of marine bird.


• Calla at Cocktail Physics blogs about valley inversions (and you have to see the photo montage): Lately I feel like I'm living in a primitive culture in the Amazon. Every day I wake up and face innumerable life-threatening dangers, forage for food, struggle to survive. That's because I'm living in Utah in the winter. And I have very little money, but that's a different matter. Because despite Utah's ferocious landscape, it is my home and I love it. I love the magnificent snowy mountains, despite the daily avalanche warnings that kept me away from physics conferences. I love the view of the mountain from my backyard, even if it means taking a look for cougar and coyote tracks before we let the dog out. I do love the snow, the snow shoeing, the snow throwing, even the snow shoveling, despite the inevitable snow driving. And I love the not-quite-small-town-not-quite-big-city feel of Salt Lake City, even if it means occasionally dealing with the worst air in the country.


• Andyxl, the e-Astronomer, muses about the blend of science and defense: My pal Will Saunders, with whom I spent many happy hours collecting IRAS galaxy redshifts, is one of the guys who wrote “No War” on the Sydney Opera House in huge red letters, and was sent to jail for it. I am proud to know someone with such clear and strong convictions. He is also a vegan. None of this half-baked vegetarian stuff. Makes me feel indecisive. I used to refer to myself as a “part time vegetarian”, and explain to people that although I think the Iraq war is stupid, morally wrong, and frightening, I am not a pacifist. Well, everybody is or should be concerned with such issues as citizens; but they also intersect with our scientific lives. Astronomy is entangled with the war machine more than we like to think.
  

Enjoy!