Official "Science News" Thread

[axn]

Originally Posted by kladner

I guess the Adidas item might be called 'consciousness-raising', but 'attention-getting' is equally descriptive.

Attention-getting is a prerequisite to consciousness-raising. Just sayin'...

[rogue]

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Story of Kullervo Will Be Published In October

Surgery patients hear benefits of music therapy loud and clear

Scientist Deciphers Mystery Words from Gulliver’s Travels

Beyond Sight: The Gadgets Bringing Our Bodies Into Virtual Reality

How the Emotional Power of Color Can Tap into Your Audiences' Brains

Rewriting Autism History

Are fingerprints the new passwords? Security experts sure hope not.

Study: Your choice of sleep position may affect your brain

The Lego prosthetic arm that children can create and hack themselves

Scientific Peer Review Is Broken. We’re Fighting to Fix It With Anonymity

Why Phone Fraud Starts With A Silent Call

To get girls more interested in computer science, make classrooms less 'geeky'

Cracking open diamonds for messages from the deep earth

When Virtual Reality Collides with Reality, It’s Surreal

Cancer cells programmed back to normal by US scientists

The Hidden Bias of Science’s Universal Language

What does Google’s new Alphabet mean for you?

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by rogue

[lotsa links]

"Rewriting Autism History" is a must-read, IMO. I wonder if the far-too-long-in-coming acceptance of Asperger's more-expansive view of autism as a broad spectrum is what is really behind the 'autism epidemic' scare of the past several decades, which is costing money, time and lives in a much broader sense, by way of its having incited an anti-vaccine hysteria.

And note the evil role (as ever) played by those pseudoscientific psycho-quacks, the Freudians.

[kladner]

The claims of a new species are questioned by some others in the field, who argue that fossils presented so far could be early homo erectus.

A huge haul of bones found in a small, dark chamber at the back of a cave in South Africa may be the remnants of a new species of ancient human relative.



Explorers discovered the bones after squeezing through a fissure high in the rear wall of the Rising Star cave, 50km from Johannesburg, before descending down a long, narrow chute to the chamber floor 40 metres beneath the surface.


The entrance chute into the Dinaledi chamber is so tight - a mere eight inches wide - that six lightly built female researchers were brought in to excavate the bones. Footage from their cameras was beamed along 3.5km of optic cable to a command centre above ground as they worked inside the cramped enclosure.

[Batalov]

Originally Posted by kladner

Sounds like a description of a Hollywood movie.
And of course there's rule 34.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Sounds like a description of a Hollywood movie.
And of course there's rule 34.

It is interesting that they could find women, but not men, who could pass the 8" test. I wonder what body part is likely to have the limiting dimension.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by kladner

It is interesting that they could find women, but not men, who could pass the 8" test. I wonder what body part is likely to have the limiting dimension.

In my experience, it's either the hips or the skull.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by xilman

In my experience, it's either the hips or the skull.

I was thinking that males would be too big in the chest or shoulders, though the skull is certainly a contender.

[ewmayer]

@Above anthro-apologist 'Q: But how do you know it is a new species? A: It looks like one!' squabble:

Could not possibly be homo erectus ... as the article notes, the space was simply too cramped to stand up! (In, um, either direction, if ya get my drift, which rhymes with 'direction.')

With that settled, on to our next topic...forgot to quip at one item in the above "MarkR's latest laundry list of lovely links':

Originally Posted by rogue

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Story of Kullervo Will Be Published In October

Ooh! Lemme guess, this one will feature annoyingly idealized magical humanoids not having sex? Or perhaps more inane skipping about and tra-la-la-la-ing by Tom frickin-Bombadil and his g/f? I still recall the piece of amusing doggerel some netizen wrote in response to Peter Jackson's very wise decision to excise all mention of Tom B. from his cinematic realization of LOTR:

Hi, ho, Tom Bombadil, hey, ho Tom Bombadil-lo,
Should've got yourself an agent, cos your onscreen time was nil-lo.

(Or something to that effect.)

[only_human]

Well it's gotta be more scientific than this discovery:
Newly discovered Chinese mushroom turns out to be an abandoned sex toy (semi-NSFW)

[Xyzzy]

http://www.radiolab.org/story/shrink/