I understand the emotional pull of getting together for a race to raise money. I understand the need to raise awareness. Many of our members wear pink ribbons; I respect that. The question is, what are we raising awareness of? Where is the money going? What is it accomplishing?

Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition (which has hundreds of organizations and thousands of individual activists focused on fighting cancer), says money raised for breast cancer should be given to science—specifically, through studying how the cancer develops and metastasizes—and not to give every woman a mammogram. We could screen every woman in the world and we would not have stopped breast cancer,” she adds. “I am not saying to stop funding for screening; however, we cannot afford to make it a main focus.”

Conservative trust in science just keeps going down, and down, and down, and down.

tballardbrown:

I post this with no comment. 

!!!

(via discoverynews)

yahoonews:

For the first time, researchers have found two new planets orbiting a distant sun-like star that are the size of Earth or smaller. The discovery is key because Earth-sized planets are considered critical in the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

(Photo: AP/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

(via npr)

nwkarchivist:

Complimenting our current cover story “MONEY BRAIN” — about the science behind your spending addiction — by brainiac-at-large Sharon Begley, we look back at our rich thematic coverage. 

discoverynews:

A World of Awe From Space

Astronaut Ron Garan spent five and a half months on the space station and took some dazzling photos from his amazing viewpoint.

Here are more of Garan’s photos.

Beautiful.

discoverynews:

Suicide by Roller Coaster

This is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being.

The 3-minute ride involves a long, slow, climb — nearly a third of a mile long — that lifts one up to a height of more than 1,600 feet, followed by a massive fall and seven strategically sized and placed loops. The final descent and series of loops take all of one minute. But the 10g force from the spinning loops at 223 mph in that single minute is lethal.

More

This is nuts. The creator, Designer/Artist Julijonas Urbonas, tells Discovery he doesn’t see his suicide machine as being about death, but as “an intellectual and artful departure from the world.”

futurejournalismproject:

A new app from Science Photo Library puts images of the world’s creepy crawlers a mere finger swipe away.

Over 550 insects have been photographed but this isn’t being done with typical microscopes. Instead, electron beams are fired at the critters and images are formed from them.

Via Wired UK (Emphasis ours):

Speaking to Wired.co.uk, Gary Evans and Simon Stone from the SPL explained behind the images: “In the past magnified photos have been taken through microscopes. However there have been problems with the light quality and sharpness of these images. With SEM [Scanning Electron Microscope] technology, an electron beam is fired at a subject and what is reflected back off it forms an image. You can get incredible magnifications from this process.”

The insects were dead before being coated in gold to prevent static and then put in a vacuum before undergoing SEM imaging at the hands of electron microscopist Steve Gschmeissner. The resultant photos, for example of a fly’s eye, allow viewers to magnify an image up to 1,000x larger than in reality.

The Mini Monsters Gallery App is available September 12 via iTunes.

They said “electron beams are fired at the critters”! File that in phrases I never expected to read until the year 2057.

(Source: futurejournalismproject)

poptech:

(via New Gravity Map Reveals Lumpy Earth)

Fluorescent Earth.

(via npr)

A full-blown nuclear meltdown would be devastating for pregnant women and their fetuses, which are particularly vulnerable to the lasting effects of radiation. Should the worst-case scenario become a reality, it could lead to a generation of children born with all manner of maladies, from congenital malformation to mental retardation.

How Japan’s earthquake will affect unborn babies