Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News.]

On NanoExplanations, Aaron Sterling talks at length about the problem of rectangulation of orthogonal polygons, or: calculating fat rectangles, and why we should care. I’m pleased to report that I learnt something new today – thanks Aaron.

Galaxies that are actively forming stars, report astrophysicists, are surrounded by more substantial and oxygen-rich halos. Charles Daney gives a nice discussion of this work on Today’s Science.

Our level of maths wizardry is apparently linked to how good we are at estimating times. On Inkfish, Elizabeth describes a very interesting study that shows a correlation between the two skills.

Thanks for the great writing this week, and I’ll be back next Monday with more selections!

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News.]

Welcome to the start of a new week! Here are some highlights from ResearchBlogging’s physical sciences categories from the last week.

Rumours of exciting physics results from the Large Hadron Collider abound, but let’s not get too distracted from other amazing research. Joerg Heber describes an awesome experiment demonstrating for the first time the exotic dynamic Casimir effect, which literally creates light from thin air using superconducting circuits.

Violent videogames invite a whole range of accusations, from violence to obesity and brain rot. But the gaming industry has led to some great advances in computer graphics processing. One application is the heavy duty image processing from functional MRI, as Neuroskeptic discusses this week.

The cookiecutter shark: not as cute as it sounds. On Deep Sea News, read the story behind a recent paper describing the first documented case of this creature attacking a live human. In the middle of the night. Thankfully the victim lives to tell the tale to blogger para_sight.

I’ll be back next week with more selections.

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from Researchblogging News]

Is astronomy the oldest profession? It certainly seems to go back an awful long time. I enjoyed archaeoastronomer Alun’s post on a recent paper about astronomy activities in the Paleolithic era – many, many thousands of years ago.

On Basal Science Clarified, Cath shows the latest design for a robotic hand, developed by engineers in Japan. With links to video of the bionic limb in action.

Want to find negative results? A new portal called BioNot uses clever machine learning algorithms to search PubMed and Elsevier publications for negative results. A great initiative, described here on Neurobonkers.

I’ll be back next Monday with more picks!

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News]

Welcome to a new week all. Here are some highlights from the past week on ResearchBlogging’s physical and geo-sciences feeds.

In Today’s Science, Charles Daney writes about a record-breaking pulsar discovery in astrophysics. Sexily named J1823−3021A is probably the youngest known of all millisecond pulsars, with the strongest magnetic field and emitting the strongest gamma ray signals. The Justin Bieber of pulsars, basically.

GrrlScientist posted a great video of a new robot developed by Canadian scientists, that climbs up walls in a gecko-inspired fashion. A very neat piece of engineering.

On Smells Like Science, Dan posted an interesting essay about humanity’s history with copper. It’s anthropology, archaeology, chemistry and DIY all in one post – well worth a read.

Have a great week, and I’ll be back next Monday with new picks.

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News]

Some extra-special selections today to mark Halloween!

On Basic Space, Kelly Oakes explains the nature of Blue Zombie¹ stars, and discusses some recent research on their origins in one particular cluster of stars.

In the Guardian, GrrlScientist writes about tropical fish and Zombies² operating in a vacuum, with an illustration in an episode of the awesome Periodic Videos series.

Why do Zombies³ not get headaches when they repeatedly ram their heads into a tree? Elizabeth Preston gives an insight into this fascinating research that can help prevent or manage head injuries in athletes.

Thanks for the great posts, and I’ll be back with more selections next Monday.

(¹stragglers, ²siphons, ³woodpeckers)