Search Results for: label/photon

• Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

  …e X Extra: A triglyceride can have up to three different fatty acids attached to it. Canola oil, for example, consists primarily of oleic acid, linoleic acid, and linolenic acid, all of which are unsaturated fatty acids with 18 carbons in their chains. Why do we take in fat anyway? Fat is a necessary nutrient for everything from our nervous systems to our circulatory health. It also, under appropriate conditions, is an excellent way to store up…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on June 8, 2012

• Why is the sky pink?

  On Mars, the sky is pink during the day, shading to blue at sunset. What planet did you think I was talking about? On Earth, the sky is blue during daytime, turning red at as the sun sinks toward night. Scattering light Well, it’s not quite as simple as that: if you ignore your dear sainted mother’s warning and look at the Sun, you’ll see that the sky immediately around the Sun is white, and the sky right at the horizon (i…

  Authored by Matthew R Francis on March 12, 2012

• After Newtown missteps, journalists get guidelines

  Protip: Don’t diagnose based on speculation. by Jessica Wright                Attention journalists: If you’ve been calling people “nuts” or “deranged” in your stories, the Associated Press is recommending that it’s time you stopped. This guideline — along with the common-sense assertion that writers shouldn’t diagnose individuals with a mental illness based entirely on speculation — is part of a new recommendation added to the AP styleboo…

  Authored by DXS Contributor on March 27, 2013

• As Seen on TV! Restoring Hair with LASERS!!!!!!

  The author’s rapidly-expanding forehead. Anyone who watches TV, reads magazines, or flips through catalogs has seen some interesting products. Maybe they seem plausible to you, maybe they don’t. However, a little investigation shows they are based less on science and well…actually working, and more on wishful thinking. At worst they’re actual con-jobs, designed to separate you from your money as efficiently as p…

  Authored by Matthew R Francis on September 28, 2012

• How fluorescent lights work: quantum mechanics in the home

  We have a tendency to think that “quantum mechanics” is synonymous with “out of the ordinary.” I do that, too, since there’s so much strange to talk about: the blurring of particles and waves, the apparent randomness that drove Einstein crazy, and so forth. It’s easy to forget that quantum mechanics also is an everyday matter. The odds are pretty good you’re reading this post on a computer screen (as op…

  Authored by Matthew R Francis on January 30, 2012

• Making Light in Electronics

  By DXS Physics Editor Matthew Francis   A while back, I wrote about one of the most common ways of making electric light: fluorescent bulbs. Understanding fluorescent lights requires quantum mechanics! While a lot of quantum physics seems pretty removed from our daily lives, it’s essential to most of our modern technology. In fact, reading what I’m writing requires quantum mechanics, since you are using a computer (maybe a handheld…

  Authored by Matthew R Francis on April 20, 2012

• Unicorns and Brainbows

  Brainbow is a mouse with a rainbow brain. By Jeffrey Perkel    A couple weeks ago I wrote about the beautiful world right under our noses, a world visible only under the microscope. The cover image for that post was this picture, a “‘Brainbow’ transgenic mouse hippocampus,” which placed 18th in the 2008 Nikon Small World Photomicroscopy contest. Brainbow technology also won the 2007 Olympus Bioscapes contest, with this be…

  Authored by Jeffrey Perkel on May 6, 2013

• Is the bar high enough for screening breast ultrasounds for breast cancer?

  …nt movement and legislation to inform women that they have dense breasts. Merits and pitfalls of device approval The approval of breast ultrasound hinges on a study of 200 women with dense breast evaluated retrospectively at 13 sites across the United States with mammography and ultrasound. The study showed a statistically significant increase in breast cancer detection when ultrasound was used with mammography. Approval of a device of this nat…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on September 21, 2012

• Autism and the DSM-5

  …questions in the context of these criteria. I’ve expanded on a couple of these reports at length elsewhere, as have others with an interest in the subject. The short version is that studies overall indicate that at the least, 10% of people who would currently have an autism diagnosis under the DSM-IV-TR criteria would lose that diagnosis under the DSM-5, and some studies go as high as 55% in their estimates. Even more troubling? The committee’s s…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on April 23, 2013

• Depressing genes

  …ch experience — yet it was obvious he didn’t have the knack for it. This student’s dogged pursuit of a mental health career made me wonder what kind of emotional turmoil he experienced which would make him think, at age 19, that psychiatry was the only vocation worth working towards. Then there were the two graduate students who both worked incredibly hard and were both prone to obsess about their experiments. Each burned off stress in quit…

  Authored by DXS Contributor on May 17, 2013