Over the past few weeks, the stories of three high-profile scientists accused of bullying have emerged: geneticist Nazneen Rahman, psychologist Tania Singer and astrophysicist Guinevere Kauffmann.
Each of these researchers are (or were) at the top of their fields, recipients of huge amounts of funding. They are accused of abuses of power, bullying and abuse of their subordinates and creating a climate of fear in their institutions.
It would be easy to look to the personal characteristics of th ...read more
A scientist’s achievements are often measured in terms of the number of papers they publish (productivity) and how many citations those papers get (impact). These ‘bibliometric indicators’ are widely derided but they have proven remarkably stubborn.
Now, in a new preprint on bioRxiv, researchers Peter van den Besselaar and Ulf Sandström propose a new metric that, they say, could measure another important researcher characteristic: independence.
For van den Besselaar and S ...read more
A new model of Super-Earths implies many of these planets are covered in enormous, thick oceans. (Credit: NASA)
Water is a key ingredient for life — and new research suggests we might find it all over the galaxy.
Scientists looked at the mass of Super-Earths, a kind of planet common across the cosmos but not present in our own solar system. These rocky worlds are several times larger than Earth, but the team’s analysis of known Super-Earths reveals something astounding: Many of the ...read more
The Sacrifice of Iphigeneia, a mythological depiction of a sacrificial procession on a mosaic from Roman Spain. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, the demigod and his comrade Enkidu rip out the heart of the Bull of Heaven as a gift to the sun god Shamash. This bloody act is far from the only time sacrifice makes an appearance in the world’s most ancient stories, and in some tales such rituals claim human lives, or almost. In Greek myth, King Agamemnon dec ...read more
Alien it most certainly is not. But the word ‘venous’ is not far from the mark. So just what is this thing anyway?
An alien venous system? (Source: NASA Earth Observatory)
When I first spotted this mesmerizing animation on Twitter, my mind really did wander to the metaphorical idea of blood flowing through some sort of alien venous system.
And actually, to the extent that a river can be the lifeblood of a region, you are looking at something akin to a venous system.
The t ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
