Science can be neither conquered nor defended by armies and its advancement will change the way humans govern themselves. Science cannot be controlled or arrested. Science doesn't respect distances or frontiers or laws. The major thing is the world is becoming ungovernable. The real force in our time is no longer politics, but science. And science took away the strengths of politics. Citizens now must be persuaded rather than ordered in this new age of knowledge - Israeli President Shimon Peres

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/science-is-changing-h...

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/05/dark-matter-search-turns-...

http://www.whatscientistsread.com/take-part/

Does literature impact what scientists study?

How does art inspire science? It may seem a difficult question to answer with any empirical evidence, but in a new research project Scottish scientists aim to do just that.

Launched yesterday, What Scientists Read? will aim to find out what influence literature has on scientists and the decisions they make.

Asking questions like “how does reading literature affect scientific thought and practice?” and “does reading literature affect the career decision to become a scientist?”, the project team will conduct interviews with scientists in Scotland to try to unravel the influence on science of the creative arts.

Fear not, though. Even if you’re ruled out of the interviews due to geographical disadvantages you can still take part in the study. The project’s website hosts a forum where any scientist can go and add to the discussion.

The launch of the project is great timing. At the crossroads between science and art there has long been debate about how the arts feed back into scientific research - whether as a justification for the art or for the funding - but for ArtLab nothing is going to be as compelling as some cold, hard scientific fact.

Why do People Die While Running Marathons?

Heatstroke can certainly be a factor, as can hyponatremia -- low sodium levels in the blood often caused by drinking too much water during exercise. However, in the vast majority of cases, people die during marathons because of a heart attack. Marathon running puts an extraordinary stress on your heart, one that your body was not designed for.

It's a classic example of a concept known as "the reverse effect" – where too much of something that is normally good for you can have the opposite impact. According to a study presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2010 in Montreal, regular exercise reduces cardiovascular risk by a factor of two or three.

Research by Dr. Arthur Siegel, director of Internal Medicine at Harvard's McLean Hospital, also found that long-distance running leads to high levels of inflammation that may trigger cardiac events,ⁱⁱⁱ and a separate study published in Circulation found that running a marathon lead to abnormalities in how blood was pumped into the heart.^{Research by Dr. Arthur Siegel, director of Internal Medicine at Harvard's McLean Hospital, also found that long-distance running leads to high levels of inflammation that may trigger cardiac events,iii and a separate study published in Circulation found that running a marathon lead to abnormalities in how blood was pumped into the heart.iviv}

http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2012/05/11/peak-fi...

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE IN SOCIETY
University of California, Berkeley, USA
17 - 19 November 2012
This Conference will address disciplinary and interdisciplinary challenges in the sciences and in particular the relationships of science to society.
http://science-society.com/conference-2012/

MUTAMORPHOSIS II: TRIBUTE TO UNCERTAINTY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE Prague
6 - 8 December 2012
Do you have something original to say about our world that is increasingly fuzzy, unstable and chaotic? Are you interested in how crisis, uncertainty and complexity can come together in order to question the known as well as predict and/or model yet unknown? Do you want to share projects intrinsically linking domains of scientific, artistic and technological research and creativity that can be introduced as relevant tools for better understanding of our common future? We invite you to respond to the Tribute to Uncertainty theme.
http://mutamorphosis.org/2012/tribute-to-uncertainty/

How Science of animal colours helping us:
Birds, butterflies, squid and other creatures often sport intense or changing colors that are not formed by pigments but by highly organized nanostructures that researchers are only beginning to unravel.
Orderly and disorderly geometric patterns of these nanostructures reflect only certain wavelengths of light, creating specific colors that in some cases can also shift if the structures get wet or if their dimensions change.
Scientists are making synthetic materials that mimic these biological structures, which could lead to cars or dresses that change color as they move, sensors that detect impurities in drinking water, efficient optical chips for cell phones and authentication marks on credit cards that are exceedingly hard to counterfeit.

“There is a confusion about science. We don’t know everything right away. We have ideas and speculations and you might have a theory before you have a premise confirmed—experimental data, before you know what it means…"

Some Microbiology:

Bacterial cells in the body outnumber human cells by a factor of 10 to 1. Yet only recently have researchers begun to elucidate the beneficial roles these microbes play in fostering health.
Some of these bacteria possess genes that encode for beneficial compounds that the body cannot make on its own. Other bacteria seem to train the body not to overreact to outside threats.
Advances in computing and gene sequencing are allowing investigators to create a detailed catalogue of all the bacterial genes that make up this so-called microbiome.
Unfortunately, the inadvertent destruction of beneficial microbes by the use of antibiotics, among other things, may be leading to an increase in autoimmune disorders and obesity.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=microbiome-graphic...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/may/18/science-careers-under-m...
Science careers under the microscope

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/17/152913171/the-essence-...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2012/may/21/science-weekly-...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/Do-it-yourself-an...

The science of magic:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/05/14/how-neu...

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/05/22/neurosc...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magic-and-the-brain

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magic-neuroscience...

Magicians use such sensory illusions in their tricks, but they also heavily use cognitive illusions, manipulating people’s attention, trains of logic and even memory. Although magicians probably haven’t studied these phenomena with the scientific method—they don’t do controlled experiments—their techniques have been tested over time, perfected by practice and performed under conditions of high scrutiny by skeptical audiences looking to spot the trick.

• Magic tricks often work by covert misdirection, drawing the spectator’s attention away from the secret “method” that makes a trick work.
• Neuroscientists are scrutinizing magic tricks to learn how they can be put to work in experimental studies that probe aspects of consciousness not necessarily grounded in current sensory reality.
• Brain imaging shows that some regions are particularly active during certain kinds of magic tricks

Benefits of sleep:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sleeps-secret-repa...

http://www.senseaboutscience.org/

http://www.sciencenewsdaily.org/archaeology-fossils-news/cluster153...

How Hurricanes are formed:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/the-origin-of-life-the-lat...

New light on the origin of life

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/olympics/science-and-swimming...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?id=instant-egghead-why-...
Why is HIV so difficult to control

The science of creativity:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=put-your-creative-...

Seeking Scientists for Science Cafe!
The WA National Science Week Coordinating Committee invites you to participate in the 2012 Science Cafe. We are seeking 80 West Australian Scientists to share their passion for science with year 10 and 11 students from across Perth at a morning tea hosted at The University of Western Australia. On Wednesday, August 15th at 9:00 AM, students will attend this event at Winthrop Hall and the University of Western Australia to get to know science professionals and learn more about their fields. For information on participating, please contact Kerry Mazzotti at kerry.mazzotti@scitech.org.au

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/2012/06/11/exe...

“Intellectual integrity made it quite impossible for me to accept the myths and dogmas of even very great scientists, more particularly of the belligerent and so-called advanced nations. Indeed, those intellectuals who accepted them were abdicating their functions for the joy of feeling themselves at one with the herd.”— Bertrand Russell 1872-1969. (How true! - Krishna)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-must-make-rese...

http://www.science-to-touch.com/en/index.html

My comment on the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA&feature=player_embedded
I am from the field of science and it is disgusting to see how women are being stereotyped and made to look like fashion-crazy idiots!
Do women scientists look like this? Definitely not! This is not the way to attract girls into the field of science. Tell them interesting and inspirational stories about women scientists and their discoveries, inventions and achievements if you really want to bring them into the field of science.It doesn't matter if the actual science chicks don't look like this. 

Somebody's reply: It doesn't matter if the actual science chicks don't look like this. That is not the target audience.

My reply:

If this is the case, these girls will be utterly disappointed once they get into the field of science! And they will leave it if they find out the truth and the very idea of attracting girls into the field of science with these types of images will be a big disaster! Because they should get attracted to the truths and facts of science and not false images!

The main ingredients for a successful career in science are curiosity and enthusiasm, not lip gloss - The wall street journal

These ones look good:

http://science-girl-thing.eu/profiles-of-women-in-science

http://science-girl-thing.eu/jobs

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120621223525.htm
Stress can boost immune system!

It's certainly true that chronic stress, lasting weeks and months, has deleterious effects including, notably, suppression of the immune response. But short-term stress -- the fight-or-flight response, a mobilization of bodily resources lasting minutes or hours in response to immediate threats -- stimulates immune activity, said lead author Firdaus Dhabhar, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and member of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection.

Science and Security:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/protection-for-science-and-s...

Why blame science for human foibles?

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article3563310.ece

http://www.science-niblets.org/

http://www.science-niblets.org/natural-phenomena.html

http://www.science-niblets.org/biology-and-life-science.html

Scientists think math is hard too!

Artistic types are not the only ones whose eyes glaze over when confronted with too many numbers, according to research out Monday that suggests scientists, too, find lots of equations hard to read.

The study by researchers at the University of Bristol analyzed nearly 650 studies on ecology and evolution published in three leading journals in 1998.

They found that papers with more equations in the text were less likely to be cited in future papers, signaling that scientists may not be paying attention to research that is jammed with mathematical details.

Studies with the most math in them were referenced 50 percent less often than those with little or no math, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US peer-reviewed journal.

Heavy use of equations impedes communication among biologists. Nearly all areas of science rely on close links between mathematical theory and experimental work. If new theories are presented in a way that is off-putting to other scientists, then no one will perform the crucial experiments needed to test those theories. This presents a barrier to scientific progress.

Adding a bit of verbal flourish might help experts get their point across. Scientists need to think more carefully about how they present the mathematical details of their work. The ideal solution is not to hide the maths away, but to add more explanatory text to take the reader carefully through the assumptions and implications of the theory.

 Source: AFP

Another article on this:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/06/28/scienti...

Scientific explanations of unknown phenomena which are dubbed as "miracles" :

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=supernova-red-cruc...

Effective presentations for scientists:
http://www.labmanager.com/?articles.view/articleNo/3136/

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/story/2012-07-07/arsenic-micro...

The discovery of an arsenic-loving microbe that NASA said would rewrite biology textbooks and offered hope of life on other planets now looks like a case study in how science corrects its mistakes, researchers report.

In our own lifetime, chances are we will see phenomenal 'futuristic wizardry' enabled by manipulating the Higgs field(s).
An analogy we might think of is Quantum Tunneling. It seemed pure, ethereal 'naval gazing', until we used it to create the revolution of solid state physics/electronics that has transformed our lives more significantly than perhaps any other insight.

If it IS possible to manipulate the Higgs field, imagine how it might enable inertia-less travel. What if relativistic speed limitations can be circumvented by eliminating the influence of the Higgs field?
Could we leave the planet's gravitation with less energy?
Could it enable interstellar travel?
Could it revolutionize the development and construction of mass-carrying vehicles? Cars? Ships? Planes? Cargo? Hoverboards? ;)

We've now discovered the outline of a new continent. There is no telling where it will take us.

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/physics-is...

Space for the benefit of mankind: symposium
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/264356/scientists-look-space-be...

How to write like a scientist:
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issue...

How Competition is effecting scientific research:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=intense-competitio...

Microbial abstract paintings:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/oscillator/2012/07/24/bioplayti...

Lab disasters:

http://blog.labguru.com/lab-disasters/?goback=.gde_3031368_member_1...

How to write like a scientist:

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issue...

How is it that common elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen happened to have just the kind of atomic structure that they needed to combine to make the molecules upon which life depends? Has the universe been consciously designed? - Richard Morris