A Few Random Links

Because I don't have much to say, here are some other folks saying stuff:

Up first, John Scalzi with a baseball - writing metaphor:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/01/20/a-season-in-the-show/


Next, Chuck Wendig on characters:

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/01/13/25-things-a-great-character-needs/


A bit of Aussie science to offset the writing:

http://csironewsblog.com/2014/01/06/accelerating-our-dragon-rd-program/

The marvelous follow-up by CSIRO:

http://csironewsblog.com/2014/01/10/here-be-3d-printed-dragons/


And some music. I learned a bit of ukulele on the Hawaiian cruise. This piece by Amanda Palmer reminded me how fun an instrument this is.

It has a brief intro about her before she sings.

For those who don't know, Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are married. (Segue back to writing!)

Happy Monday. Back to editing my story now...

Link Gumbo

Hi.  Sorry I've been absent recently.  My life suddenly got busy.  It's poised to get busier still - I'm taking Mary Robinette Kowal's short story writing workshop in September and October. *squeeeee*

So.  Links instead of content. 

A man grabs a beaver and wins the Darwin Award:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/29/beaver-kills-man-belarus#ixzz2UhrZqodo

Have you read Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman?  If not - go read it.  It's wonderful.  I'll wait :-)
Now you can appreciate what Emily Asher-Perrin wrote over at Tor:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/a-comprehensive-reference-guide-to-good-omens
and
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/a-comprehensive-theological-reference-guide-to-good-omens
(or perhaps reading the reference guides will entice you to read the book.)

A long essay on women as warriors, from a historical perspective:
http://worldweaverpress.com/2013/05/28/female-warriors-in-fantasy/

Some charts and stuff comparing traditional publishing and epublishing:
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2013/05/27/survivorship-bias-why-90-of-the-advice-about-writing-is-bullshit-right-now/

Faerie information.  Because reasons.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/know-your-faeries-friendly-fierce-or-fatal

Science happening:
http://deepseanews.com/2013/05/why-should-men-have-all-the-fun-the-seafaring-ladies-of-physical-oceanography/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

There.  Links I've been hording for months. 

Content will resume at some point...

Fire Ant Research Team

I was trying to come up with an idea for a blog post, and what popped up was "Write about FART."  Well, that's a part of my life I haven't thought about in many years!  I hunted through three boxes of stuff to find this piece of letterhead; folded it so you could see the footer, too.  ;-)

For one quarter during my senior year in college, while I worked on my undergraduate research project, I was part of Dr. Walter Tschinkel's  Fire Ant Research Team.  From information at that link, there are now ten areas of research done in Dr. T's lab.  What I did fell under what is currently area Six on that list: allometry.  "Division of labor among the workers of ant colonies is based on worker age, but in a minority of species it is also based on worker body size (which varies greatly), a phenomenon referred to as polymorphism."  (Under Easily Amused:  when I highlighted that quote from the FSU link, the text turned gold and the highlight color was garnet = school colors.  Very nice touch!)

I investigated a small aspect of a red fire ant colony's response to threat.  I'd mentally outline an area on the side of a mound, stomp on the ground at the base of the mound, then collect every ant that crossed my 'area.'  Over the ten week quarter, I made many stops to collect ants.  Almost every time I was near a road at least one passerby would warn me that's a fire ant mound and I should stay away!  Folks in the south are nice like that.  I gave up on sampling near busy streets because too many people interrupted me.

You may be wondering how I collected the ants.  With a gadget made in the lab!  Nonscientists are probably unaware of how often we use something cobbled together at the bench from stuff in the drawers at the time.  I had a glass test tube, maybe an inch across and about six inches long, closed with a black rubber stopper.  The stopper had two holes in it.  Each hole had a short glass rod tube stuck through it.  One glass rod tube had a longish piece (about a foot) of rubber tubing attached.  The other had (1) a very small mesh screen tightly covering the end inside the test tube and (2) a shorter piece of rubber tubing.  The operator (me) sucked on the shorter piece of tubing and "vacuumed" up ants with the longer piece.  (That may have had a bit of glass rod tube on the working end, I just don't remember.)  Ants collected in the test tube.  The mesh screen prevented me from sucking up ants.  I think I had a timer for how long I collected for each session.

So, now I had a test tube with ants.  Angry ants, I might add.  This was where I could calmly watch what fire ants do when they sting you.  Yes, sting.  They hang on tight with their big jaws, arch up their bodies, bring their rump (with the stinger) around underneath and then jab.  There were times I watched them sting me, too.

This picture is NOT an ant on me, but from HERE, a good article from the University of California Riverside on red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta).

Okay, back to that tube of ants.  I only had one sampling gadget, so the ants couldn't stay in there.  The solution was plastic boxes with their edges dipped in talc powder.  The powder kept the ants from climbing out of the box while I was emptying the tube and before I got the lid on.

Back in the lab, I sorted them by size class (large stack of sieves with grid sizes from larger to smaller).  I remember measuring ant heads under a dissecting microscope as part of this.  At the end, my results hinted at a skew toward larger ants responding to the threat.  I think one of Dr. T's graduate students at the time used my work as a starting point for her thesis.

I can't end this without putting in a plug for Dr. Tschinkel.  HERE's an article from Discover Magazine on his work visualizing the shape of ant nests underground.  AND he wrote a book!

I'm going to order it today.  It may sit in my TBR pile for a while, or I may nibble at it until I finish it.  No telling. 

Edit:  Dr. T's book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2007!  Wow!!

Science Fun

Came across this in my daughter's tumblr feed (click on the image to make it bigger):

It's from The Electron Café, which is written by a research scientist.  Oh, my, I have lived this.

Geeks in Washington DC

The Obama administration instituted a system for people to petition the government.  Someone opened one for the construction of a Death Star.  It received enough signatures to get a response.  I know this is old news, but I hadn't read the actual response until today. 

Geek points for the administration!

"This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For"  was written by Paul Shawcross.  It includes the statement that the administration doesn't support blowing up planets.  I like that.  Blowing up planets is only for the bad guys.

He also mentions it would be quite expensive at a time we're trying to reduce the deficit and has a fundamentally flawed design that can be exploited by a one-man starship.  Good thinking, that.

There is also a list of some of the cool space science going on now, like our robot labs roaming Mars and the planned replacement satellite for Hubble.  And he encourages people to pursue careers in science and other areas related to space exploration.  Good Stuff!

Curiosity Rover self portrait from here.  

I follow the Curiosity Rover on Twitter - @MarsCuriosity.  Boy, it's fun living here in the future!

The Hydrologic Cycle

The US Geological Survey (USGS) created this marvelous image of the water cycle.  It tickles me inordinately.  I think it's the faces on the little drops ... yes, I recognize anthropomorphism when I see it.  Doesn't mean I'm not susceptible or can't enjoy it!

Click the image to biggify.  Or go to the USGS link.

Okay.  Fun's over for me.  Back to editing (I'm working on Rising Tide again). 

City Lights - Black Marble

NASA and NOAA jointly manage the Suomi satellite, which takes high resolution images.  The first video is about 2 minutes long and gives an explanation of what the satellite images show.   

The second video is about 30 seconds of Black Marble animated images. 

 I've already lost track of how many times I watched it!

News from the Climate Change Front

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Group, generally considered to be climate change skeptics, funded a project to investigate global temperatures over the last fifty years.  Guess what?  Their results confirm what so many scientists have been saying!  Well, duh.  Facts is facts.  Temperatures have increased by 1.5 °F over the past fifty years and "essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases." 

It’s wonderful to see they went at this with an open mind, ready to accept whatever the data showed them.

 ~ ~ ~ :: ~ ~ ~

Way south, a huge, mile-deep rift valley was found under the ice in West Antarctica. It's about the size of the Grand Canyon:

That's a trace generated by ice-penetrating radar towed by a team of scientists on snowmobiles.  It’s thought this deep canyon may be channeling warmer ocean water to the bottom of the near-by Pine Island Glacier.  This can lubricate the underside, speeding its flow and hastening its melting.  This glacier is poised to calf a large chunk soon: 

The picture is from November, 2011.  The crack was about 19 miles (30 kilometers) long, 260 feet (80 meters) wide and 195 feet (60 meters) deep back then.  The giant iceberg that will result will cover about 350 square miles (900 square kilometers).  Yikes!

The current rate of ice loss from West Antarctica is thought to contribute about 10% to global sea level rise, currently at about 3.3 millimeters per year and increasing.  If the ice sheet there (West Antarctica, not the entire continent's ice) were to completely melt, sea level would go up by several meters.  Greenland losing its ice would add another couple meters. 

 ~ ~ ~ :: ~ ~ ~

That's it for now.  Don't go buying any beach-front property!

Happy Higgs Boson Day (tentative)

Wow.  CERN may have found a Higgs Boson .  Coolness.  Lots more work to be done, naturally.  That's how science works.  But, still, lots of wow.  Adds another reason to celebrate the day. 

Happy Birthday to the country of my birth.  So many candles.  Need to make them virtual this year as there are many areas of the country in drought or near-drought conditions. 

Novel is doing well and says hi.  Just passed 67K.  I am on an expotition to find The End.  I think someone is moving it.  I blame Rori and Serge.  They are trying to have some private fun, but keep getting interrupted.  Serge has threatened to keel haul someone - fortunately not me.  Yet.  He will hopefully pause and remember that I have the pen in my hand before doing anything so foolish.

Dots - Red and Blue

You’ve probably heard through various news outlets that last month was one of the warmest Aprils on record.  Where it stands in the stats depends on what region you consider:  5th warmest globally, 4th warmest for the US.  Land surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were 1.7°C (3.1°F) above the 20th century average.

(Click on the map to see an enlarged version.)

I like these pictures NOAA does because they give a visual of what goes into creating a statistic like a global average.  What’s happening at “your house” might be near that global average, or wildly divergent from it. 

Some people who work hard at denying the earth is warming will point out that glaciers in the Himalayas and some parts of Antarctica are growing.  Look at the map above and you’ll see blue dots in those areas.  Eastern Greenland even has a blue dot.  Yes, there are areas that are cooler than average, but talking only about them is cherry-picking data. 

There are very few blue dots on the land.  Very few.  And the land is where we live.

NASA's Perpetual Ocean

Video:  NASA/SVS

The eddies appear too perfect due to the limited resolution, but this is an amazing visualization of the surface currents of the world ocean.  

The following text is from NASA. 

“This is an animation of ocean surface currents from June 2005 to December 2007 from NASA satellites. Watch how bigger currents like the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean and the Kuroshio in the Pacific carry warm waters across thousands of miles at speeds greater than four miles per hour (six kilometers per hour); how coastal currents like the Agulhas in the Southern Hemisphere move equatorial waters toward Earth's poles; and how thousands of other ocean currents are confined to particular regions and form slow-moving, circular pools called eddies. Credit: NASA/SVS

“The visualization covers the period June 2005 to December 2007 and is based on a synthesis of a numerical model with observational data, created by a NASA project called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, or ECCO for short. ECCO is a joint project between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. ECCO uses advanced mathematical tools to combine observations with the MIT numerical ocean model to obtain realistic descriptions of how ocean circulation evolves over time.

“These model-data syntheses are among the largest computations of their kind ever undertaken. They are made possible by high-end computing resources provided by NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

“ECCO model-data syntheses are being used to quantify the ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle, to understand the recent evolution of the polar oceans, to monitor time-evolving heat, water, and chemical exchanges within and between different components of the Earth system, and for many other science applications.

“In the particular model-data synthesis used for this visualization, only the larger, ocean basin-wide scales have been adjusted to fit observations. Smaller-scale ocean currents are free to evolve on their own according to the computer model's equations. Due to the limited resolution of this particular model, only the larger eddies are represented, and tend to look more 'perfect' than they are in real life. Despite these model limitations, the visualization offers a realistic study in both the order and the chaos of the circulating waters that populate Earth’s ocean.”

If you've read this far, thank you!  Here's a link to a ten minute version
At the NASA site I linked at the beginning, there's information to find a twenty minute version as well.

Our Blue Marble

NASA scientists have released a new picture of earth.  Remember those pictures from the moon of Earthrise?  Now we have satellites that can produce images of our home.

National Public Radio's program Science Friday has a video of how these images are compiled: 

Flora Lichtman of Science Friday narrates ...

The results are beautiful, but also useful.  Environmental scientists can use these satellite images to track changes in vegetation cover, ice cover, ocean productivity, and so much more.  They provide real time data on how our world is changing.

Anak Krakatau

I guess we all know the story of the massive explosive eruption of Krakatau.  Not as many may know she has a daughter - Anak Krakatau. 

From the Borneo Post this morning:

"JAKARTA: The drastic increase in volcanic earthquake activities at Anak Krakatau has forced authorities to warn of a possible eruption.

"All quarters have been asked not to approach within a two-kilometre radius of the volcano, located in the Sunda Strait. Normal activities are still allowed outside the radius.

"Anak Krakatau is 40km from the coast of Lampong, Sumatera, and the coast of Anyer-Carita coast, Jawa.

"Local media quoted Head of Volcanology and Geology Disaster Mitigation Centre, Surono, yesterday that the seismograph recorded between 6,000 and 7,000 volcanic earthquakes a day.

"Prior to this, the seismograph only recorded between 100 and 300 volcanic events a day, said Surono to Indopos, as quoted by news portal Jawa Post National Network.

"Antara news agency quoted Andi Arief, Special Presidential Staff Disaster Areas Social Disaster Assistant, that, in theory, anything more than 1,000 earthquake activities could cause Anak Krakatau to erupt.

"He said the type of eruption has yet to be ascertained because developments are still at the intensive monitoring level.

"Since Anak Krakatau appeared on the surface of the sea on June 11, 1927, the volcano has erupted more than 100 times, with a dormant period of between one to six years.

"The explosive eruption of Anak Krakatau last July 10 hurled hot ash into the sky to a radius of 700 to 1,000 metres from the centre of the eruption, causing damage to seismic equipment placed at the volcano.

"The explosive eruptions which took place in the last four years were the magmatic type, throwing volcanic material and dust for 1,000 to 1,500 metres around Anak Krakatau.

"How wide the volcanic dust was spread, however, depended on the strength and direction of the wind. – Bernama"

I hope it doesn't have a massive eruption, but the number of quakes indicates serious magma motion.  We'll have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading; comments welcome.  >^.^<