This tumblr's for all the great men and women of science for whom we owe our current understanding of the natural world; their achievements, their failures, and even their quirks, we celebrate them all.
For Science. For Inquiry. For Humanity.
Method extends archaeological and linguistic data by tracing early human migration.
“The first humans left Africa some 200,000 years ago, dispersing to populate the rest of the world. But this was not a one-way trip: some people came back. Scientists say that they have traced a reverse migration that, in two steps, carried genes from the rest of the world back to southern Africa, long before European colonizers arrived.
The findings are part of a flurry of research enabled by better tools to survey African genomes. For the first time, population geneticists can examine the complex history of human migration in Africa effectively, a field long dominated by the analysis of bones, artefacts and languages.
“Up until now this was mostly done based on linguistics and archaeology, and now we can use genetics to test ideas,” says Carina Schlebusch, a geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden. “It’s a really exciting time for African genetics.”
Genetic signs of reverse migrations had been spotted before. Over the past decade, evidence has accrued that people returned to Africa after the original ‘out of Africa’ event. And more recently, DNA data suggest that a small group of east Africans migrated to southern Africa to mix with the hunter-gatherers who lived there 2,000 years ago.
A new analysis connects these two migrations. In a paper posted on the preprint server arXiv on 30 July, population geneticists at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, report their use of a method to identify traces of this two-step migration within DNA of the minority Khoe-San ethnic groups of southern Africa (J. K. Pickrell et al. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.8014; 2013)” (read more).
This, my friends, is how you pipette
National Geographic explores the science behind lightning strikes. Lightning strikes during thunderstorms kill more Americans each year than either tornadoes or hurricanes.
Lise Meitner (1878 – 1968)
Called the German Marie Curie by Einstein and name stake of element 109, Lise Meitner studied physics under Max Planck and Niels Bohr and worked with Otto Hahn to discover nuclear fission. Hahn went on to win the Nobel Prize for their work, and Meitner’s omission from the prize is considered one of the most egregious times that a woman has been left off of the prize because of being female.
This is really awesome, like it will be easier to do electronic circuits but I still enjoy doing it on a circuit board and experimenting on it until you get it right. This is good in notebook though. =)))
Texas Finally Gave The Go Ahead For Evolution
The Texas State Board of Education finally casted the final vote to approve science textbooks based on actual science. This includes everything from teaching about evolution to climate changes.
T4 bacteriophage via electron microscope — Creeeepy, cool
This is Buckminsterfullerence (bucky-ball) which is a spherical molecule of carbon. Each vertex is an atom of carbon.
Buckminsterfullerene is the most commonly naturally occurring fullerene (composed completely of carbon) molecule, as it can be found in small quantities in soot. Solid and gaseous forms of the molecule have been detected in deep space. The chemists who discovered the molecule won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1996.
On October 7th, 1939 (74 years ago, today) Harry Kroto, a man who was key to the discovery of the molecule was born.