Giant Freakin Robot

Pop culture fanatics have Comic-Con and SXSW. Geo-scientists have the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The conference, which runs from Dec. 3-7, is being held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, and is bound to be a reference point for numerous news stories in the days to follow. Do you have Curiosity about what one could be? I’ll admit that wasn’t smooth.

Monday’s events start with something that has probably already happened by the time anyone reads this. NASA will be holding a briefing about what the Mars rover Curiosity has been finding, which almost certainly isn’t extraterrestrial genome charts. Climate gets the bulk of today’s spotlight, as climate change’s role on the rise and fall of past civilizations is discussed. Scientists will present the effects and implications of the oddball 2011-2012 winter experienced in the Rocky Mountains, with six-week-early snows disrupting plant and animal life. Round out the day with “Black Swan cyclones” and “Pineapple Expresses,” and how ecologists are working to study and form prevention methods against both.

As a country, we make a lot of blunders, both publicly and privately. It’s no surprise, of course, because our population is 311,000,000 strong. Even if each person only made one-half of a mistake every other day, that would still be, like, so many mistakes being made. I might have a more exact number, but I’ve never been that good at math, and I am far from being alone in this country. As it happens, the teaching methods one learns by may play a large role in this.

A study published in the journal Educational Psychologist, itself taken from two previous studies, sheds some solar-powered calculator light on the steep downward spiral that this country’s mathematics education has taken. The subjects were community college students who placed into a remedial math class, so these aren’t just your everyday village idiots. But these tests weren’t the standardized standards either, and traded learned knowledge for applied knowledge. Traditional math problems can be solved purely by memorizing formulas and procedures, but when these formulas and procedures are themselves the subject of questioning, the understanding falls apart.

When poring over the vast amount of the Internet’s science-based columns in researching my articles for this site, I must admit I put an unearned amount of trust into the subject matter of each story, reading without the grain of salt I hold for tabloid stories. Well, not every story is going to be 100% true 100% of the time.

More than 700 scientists have come together via an online petition to call for University of Caen researcher Gilles-Eric Seralini to disclose all of his research used in for a paper published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology. Criticized by agricultural group Rothamsted Research head Maurice Moloney for being “seriously deficient in its design, its execution and its conclusions,” the paper suggests that genetically engineered corn produced by the St. Louis company Monsanto was responsible for multiple organ failure and the the development of tumors inside rodents. In case you quickly judge the harshness of Moloney’s words, written to the journal’s editor, not only did the European Food Safety Authority also call the study defective, but six other European Union experts had similar views, saying nothing valid could be drawn from Seralini’s conclusions.

I will be the first to admit that my brain constantly backflips through the gamut of improper thought processes. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’ve found admitting this makes people’s expectations adapt to my output. Speaking of adapting to output, have you ever wondered, as I have, how non-human, shame-free animals avoid lapsing into incestuous behavior? I guess, in my mind, nature is like Caligula’s Flowers in the Attic or something. But this probably isn’t the case, if lemurs are anything to go by.

Gray mouse lemurs, an animal whose cuteness could likely overtake 2/3 of the stuffed animal industry, were the focus of a study by Arizona State University’s Sharon Kessler and her research team, published for the journal BMC Ecology. The researchers tested the animals’ recognition of the cries of their father. While one of the subjects was indeed called “Darth Lemur,” none of the female lemurs were named Leia. Seriously though, lemurs tend to be raised solely by their mothers before heading out and becoming self-sustaining once they’ve matured. The male lemur’s range is widespread, though, and will usually overlap with that of his offspring.