We're back in business here at the Science Museum (although the building is still closed to the public until next Friday), just in time to report some good news.
Ouch: Taking one for the team?
Courtesy Spamily
The CDC reported yesterday that 77.4% of US children between the ages of 19 months and three years received all their recommended vaccinations in 2007. That's a slight improvement over the 2006 statistic. There are big regional variations in coverage, and children living below the poverty line are slightly less likely to be fully vaccinated, but overall less than 1% of US kids received no immunizations at all.
What are the recommended shots?
- Four or more doses of diphtheria, tetanus toxoid, and any acellular pertussis vaccine, or DTaP
- Three or more doses of polio vaccine
- At least one dose of measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine
- At least three doses of Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine
- At least three doses of hepatitis B vaccine
- At least one dose of varicella vaccine
Some folks don't vaccinate their kids--particularly against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR)--because they worry that the vaccine is linked to autism. That theory has been debunked many times, in many countries, but it persists. On Wednesday, researchers from Columbia University and the CDC offered up another study showing zero causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism (or gastrointestinal problems.) So kids, roll up your sleeves at those back-to-school physicals and get your shots. It sucks, but it beats getting measles.
On the other hand, evidence is mounting to show that flu shots don't work well to protect people over 70. Older people have a lesser immune response to the vaccine and don't develop as much immunity. But the very old and the very young also account for the highest number of flu deaths. So what to do? According to the NT Times article:
"Dr. Simonsen, the epidemiologist at George Washington, said the new research made common-sense infection-control measures — like avoiding other sick people and frequent hand washing — more important than ever. Still, she added, “The vaccine is still important. Thirty percent protection is better than zero percent.”
Another way to protect the elderly is to vaccinate preschoolers. Not only are they likely to pick up the flu before other members of the family, but there's some evidence that preschoolers are actually the drivers of annual influenza outbreaks. Stop the flu in young kids, and you might just stop it for everyone else, too.
Tags : Dead Sea Scrolls Xtreme: E-Scrollz
in History and Nature of Science, Structure of Matter, Scientific Enterprise, and Human Organism
Like this: But way better. And stuff.
Courtesy Library of CongressProtect your grills, everybody, because the future is looking to get all up in them again!
Over the next two years, the oldest known copies of biblical documents, the Dead Sea Scrolls, will be digitally scanned and placed online for all the world to examine at their leisure.
Well, not all the world. Just the parts with computers and access to the Internet, and just those people who know and care that the Dead Sea Scrolls are available for public study. So not all the world at all.
The first of the scrolls were discovered accidentally in a cave in the West Bank by a goatherd in 1947. Over the next thirty years, more scrolls—about 1000 documents in total—were found in 11 caves in the area. The documents include texts from the Hebrew Bible, dating to before 100 AD. The scrolls are also reported to contain an astonishing number of recipes and very dirty jokes.
The thousands of fragments of the scrolls were photographed in their entirety (up to that point) only once, in the 1950s. Many of those photographs are now crumbling, and so, despite the arguments of some Luddites who are no doubt on the way out themselves, scholars are taking advantage of this amazing time we live in (the future), and are subjecting the whole of the scroll collection to some fancy pants scanning.
The images of the texts will be taken in very high resolution and with varying wavelengths of light, highlighting details not readily visible to the naked eye.
The physical scrolls will be beginning a tour of the United States next month at the Jewish Museum of New York.
Fossil Cabin Museum: Como Bluff is located just over the ridge seen in the background.
Courtesy Mark RyanOut on the High Plains of Wyoming about 50 miles northwest of Laramie sets one of the wackiest constructions in the world, a museum built entirely from fossilized dinosaur bones!
Known today as Fossil Cabin Museum, the structure sets smack dab on the border of Carbon and Albany counties near the nose-end of the Como Bluff anticline. It still operates as a museum, but access to it is spotty, depending on whether anyone’s around to let you in.
Fossil Cabin Museum wall: Fragments of 150 million year-old dinosaur bones make up the museum's exterior walls.
Courtesy Mark RyanThe oddity was built using 5,796 dinosaur bones fragments, more than 50 tons of them! At the time of construction traffic flowing past the site was heavy with motorists on their way east or west along Highway 30, the popular Lincoln Highway route.
Thomas Boylan, the guy who put together this strange museum, came to Wyoming from California, and established a homestead on the site in 1902. Boylan’s land was within walking distance of Como Bluff, an historic dinosaur graveyard from which 30 years before many of the first Jurassic-aged dinosaurs were dug up and introduced to the world. Boylan spent a lot of time hunting for dinosaur fossils and after 15 years had amassed quite a collection bone fragments. His dream was to construct an entire skeleton out of them.
“At first I planned to get enough of them together to mount a complete dinosaur skeleton, however erecting such a skeleton is a long and costly task for an individual to undertake so I abandoned the idea and proceeded to use them the best I could,” Boylan said.
Fossil Cabin postcard c. 1936
Courtesy Mark Ryan collectionCost and time weren’t the only reasons Boylan abandoned his dream. After consulting with paleontologists at the University of Wyoming Geological Museum he also learned that although he certainly had a boatload of dinosaur bones, they were from a large variety of species and didn’t amount to an entire skeleton of any one creature. Whatever the case, he and his son Edward (who for a time would serve as the museum’s curator) spent late 1932 and early 1933 constructing the building out of his collection.
Fossil Cabin postcard c. 1936
Courtesy Mark Ryan collectionNearby, they also built a residential home that - while not constructed out of dinosaur bones - was intentionally built to approximate the length of a Diplodocus in order to give visitors an idea of the size of one of the larger creatures extracted from the nearby dinosaur pits. Boylan also operated a service station alongside the roadside attraction, filling visitors’ cars with gasoline, as his museum filled their heads with science.
In 1938, Robert Ripley of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” fame mentioned the museum in his syndicated newspaper feature calling it "The Oldest Cabin in the World". But the museum has gone by several other names including Fossil Museum, Dinosaurium, Creation Museum, and Dinosaur House. Boylan often referred to it as “The Building That Used to Walk”.
Fossil Cabin Museum entry
Courtesy Mark RyanThe Boylans operated the roadside exhibit throughout the 30s and 40s, playing host to tourists and the occasional paleontologist revisiting the historic fossil fields. After Tom died in 1947, his wife Grayce continued the operation until the new interstate was built through Laramie in the late 1960s and tourist traffic past the museum all but disappeared. Nearby towns like Bosler, Rock River and Medicine Bow faded as well. In 1974, Mrs. Boylan sold all the property to Paul and Jodie Fultz, who tried to keep the attraction going, but the Fossil Cabin’s glory days had passed.
I’ve visited the area a few times and only once was anyone around to let me inside the museum. It looked closed, but I walked up to the nearby residence and knocked on a door framed by two large sauropod femurs. A young kid appeared, and was kind enough to allow me inside the museum for a $2 admission fee. As I “toured” the museum, he explained in a western drawl how he and his dad were living on the property, watching over it for the owner who had moved to Medicine Bow. They worked mainly as hunting guides for animals a little more current than what made up the museum’s exterior walls. 
Fossil Cabin Museum information sign: Brontosaurus was first named for a specimen discovered at Como Bluff.
Courtesy Mark RyanThe displays inside had seen better days, and I regret not taking photographs. A couple dusty glass cases held some large dinosaur bones, minerals, and marine fossils found around Como. A few faded and out-of-date science posters hung in tatters on the otherwise bare walls. Generally, it was a shambles. Which is too bad, because it could be a very nice little museum, and probably was in its time.
If anyone’s interested, the property is currently for sale. I know if I won the lottery it’d be the first thing I’d buy. With a little paint and wallpaper, and a pullout bed or futon, it’d make a nifty summer cabin for visits to Wyoming. Or a pleasant addition to the Dinos and Fossil gallery here at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
I should mention that this building is not the first of its kind. Bone Cabin Quarry, a rich dinosaur fossil site located along the Little Medicine river about 10 miles north of Como Bluff, was named after a sheepherder’s cabin built in the late 1800s. The cabin’s foundation had been created from the abundant dinosaur bones found in the region.
Buried neighbor: The Step Pyramid of Saqqara is a close neighbor to the buried pyramid that was discovered recently in Egypt. Archaeologists had to dig throug 25 feet of sand to find the pyramid's remains.
Courtesy CharlesjsharpAre you missing a pyramid? Well, one was found this week in Saqqara, Egypt, under about 25 feet of sand.
Actually, it’s the base of a collapsed pyramid that is believed to have been built for King Menkauhor, who ruled Egypt in the mid 2400s B.C.
And the discovery should really come as no surprise. During the 1800s, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius had recorded that there were remains of a collapsed pyramid at the site. No one really did anything with that information until recently.
It took crews a year and a half to dig through the 25 feet of sand that had accumulated over the pyramid site just to get to its remains. Saqqara, located near Cairo, is the site of several other famous pyramids. It is also the site of the ancient city Memphis, which was the royal seat of power during much of early Egyptian history.
And this could all just be the start of a lot more to come. Egyptian government officials want to relocate people who now live close to the Saqqara site so more extensive digging can be done in the area. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, estimates that only 30 percent of the temples and tombs of Saqqara have been found.
"Saqqara is a virgin site," he told National Geographic. "It's very important for us to do this excavation to understand more about the pyramids of the Old Kingdom."
Links:
National Geographic report
National Geographic video of the find
The Museum of Ancient Inventions
in History and Nature of Science, Scientific Enterprise, and Historic Perspectives
Baghdad battery components
Courtesy IronieHere’s an interesting web site of ancient inventions re-constructed by students at Smith College in western Massachusetts. A short history is given of each invention and there are links to the methods the students used to recreate them. I thought the ancient Baghdad battery that produces 1.1 volts of electricity was particularly intriguing. Also, the coin-operated holy water dispenser drew my attention. According to Wikipedia it's believed to be the first vending machine ever manufactured.
Walk to an Egyptian Pharaoh: This tunnel through another pharaoh's tomb in the Valley of the Kings gives an idea of the elaborate wall art that adorns such structures.
Courtesy SebiDig around in Egypt and you’ll never know what you’ll find. Archaeologists there have been poking around the huge tomb of Seti I, the largest known tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, only to discover that it’s 100 feet longer than originally thought.
The full details of the discovery can be found at this National Geographic link.
Seni I’s tomb was first discovered in 1817 and the burial chamber measured a whopping 328 feet long, about the length of a football field. Through the newly unearthed secret passages, an additional 100 feet of the tomb has now been discovered. And there could be more.
But in this new 100 feet of tomb space and tunnels, archaeologists have found more tomb wall art and other funerary artifacts. And there could be additional tunnels to discover branching off from these new passages.
An all-Egyptian team of archaeologists made this latest discovery. And they’ll keep on working in the Valley of the Kings. Graffiti found on walls of other tombs in the area state that there are nearby tombs for pharaohs Ramses VIII and Merenptah.
Dinosaurs coming to St. Paul
in Earth and Space Science, Diversity of Organisms, Earth Structure and Processes, and History and Nature of Science
Goodness, gracious, here they come!: No reason to panic. Just think of them as giant parakeets that could swallow you whole.
Courtesy Mark RyanNo, this isn’t about the herds of conventioneers descending upon the Saintly City for the Republican National Convention next fall. That would be disrespectful. I’m talking about the dinosaurs coming in June for five days at the Xcel Energy Center in a show called “Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience“.
These aren't the same dinos that overran the Twin Cities last year during the Science Museum's 100th anniversary celebration. These latest dinosaurs are from Immersion Edutainment, an Australian company that uses a mix of computers, hydraulics, puppets, and actors to create a live show based on the highly acclaimed BBC television series by the same name.
And just in case you’re worried, these aren’t going to be cuddly and lame purple dinosaurs dancing about on ice, or jerky, hard-cased theme park animatronics, or even colorful plaster statues– no siree Bob – these are going to be scientifically accurate Mesozoic behemoths complete with life-like flexible skin, rippling muscles, swinging tails, snapping jaws, and heart-pounding sound-effects that will shake your popcorn right out of its box.
During the 90-minute show, a “paleontologist” serves as ringmaster and narrator, offering scientific insights into the world of these fantastic creatures. Geological concepts such as plate tectonics and continental drift help put things in perspective, as ten dinosaur species are presented in their proper order from the late Triassic to the late Cretaceous, including two enormous Brachiosaurs and everyone’s favorite, Tyrannosaurus rex. This is going to be one really BIG show!
Music and video projection will add to the dramatic content of the presentation and the program is deemed appropriate for all ages although some scenes could be a bit too intense for some very small kids.
Hoards of Australians evidently flocked to this thing when it toured sports arenas there. Performances here run June 11-15 at the Xcel Energy Center. And if 90 minutes of dinosaurs running amok aren’t enough for you, after the show, you can scoot across the street to the Science Museum and see the remains of some real dinosaurs. What could be better than that?
All the information you need about “Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience” can be found at the Immersion Edutainment website.
Noted hurricane forecaster Dr. William Gray has offered up his 2008 Atlantic hurricane season predictions. (The season begins on June 1 and runs through November 30.)
Hurricane Katrina, 8/29/05: This image was taken by NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES).
Courtesy NOAA
Gray's team, working out of Colorado State University, is predicting an above-normal season, with 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes, and 4 major hurricanes (category 3 storms or higher). Why? A La Nina pattern creates cool water conditions in the Pacific and warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern Atlantic. Warm sea surface temperatures are critical to the formation of hurricanes.
What's "above average"? An average hurricane season produces about 10 tropical storms and 6 hurricanes. In 2007, 14 tropical storms formed, and 6 of those strengthened into hurricanes. But 2005, of course, was a record-shattering year, with 28 storms, including Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Here's the Science Buzz feature on hurricanes.
Buzz thread on Hurricane Katrina, started on 8/29/2005.
Buzz thread on Hurricane Rita, started on 9/22/2005.
Buzz thread on the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season
Buzz thread on the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season
Do you know about the 1938 hurricane that crashed into New England?
Share your natural disaster stories.
And, lastly, here are the hurricane names for 2008:
- Arthur
- Bertha
- Cristobal
- Dolly
- Edouard
- Fay
- Gustav
- Hanna
- Ike
- Josephine
- Kyle
- Laura
- Marco
- Nana
- Omar
- Paloma
- Rene
- Sally
- Teddy
- Vicky
- and Wilfred
Fair and balanced: Or leaning to the left, as it often does. Journalism often presents science in less-than-accurate ways.
Courtesy nick farnhill
You'll never find any of that here! ;-) But the American Association for the Advancement of Science recently discussed how the public receives and understands science news. The situation is discouraging – there’s a lot of bad information out there, much of it the result of sloppy reporting. One of the big culprits was a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of statistics.
Meanwhile, biochemist Michael White complains about how the human desire to tell a good story often misrepresents how science really works.
Join us for a lecture in the Deadly Medicine series: "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to Present.
American blacks have long suffered from health adversities not shared by whites, and the problem persists even today, decades after the end of state-sanctioned racism. As Harriet A. Washington writes in her new book, Medical Apartheid, the "racial health divide confronts us everywhere we look, from doubled black-infant death rates to African-American life expectancies that fall years behind whites." To the question of how this disparity came to be, she provides a provocative answer.
Though slavery and segregation form the backdrop of her analysis, Washington believes that a very specific aspect of past discrimination against blacks explains the unequal levels of treatment and health that are still with us. Her focus is on the long history of medical experiments of which American blacks were the unwilling or unwitting subjects. These past injuries, Washington argues, have "played a pivotal role in forging the fear of medicine that helps perpetuate our nation's racial health gulf." Long after the events themselves, she believes, the memory of abuse has remained.
(Harriet A. Washington has been a fellow in ethics at the Harvard Medical School, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University. As a journalist and editor, she has worked for USA Today and several other publications, been a Knight Fellow at Stanford University and has written for such academic forums as the Harvard Public Health Review and The New England Journal of Medicine. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards for her work.)
Thursday, February 28
7-8:30 PM
SMM Auditorium, Level 3
Presentations at the Science Museum are $12 per person ($8 for Science Museum members). Admission to Deadly Medicine is included in this ticket price. Purchase tickets to four of the lectures and get the fifth one free. For tickets, call (651) 221-9444.
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