Every year around this time, references to that damn sunscreen speech pop up again, as people start thinking of graduations. It's in the air (Union's graduation is this Sunday, and I don't think I've ever been happier to see the end of an academic year).

And, of course, I have actually been asked to give a graduation speech. Which leads naturally to thinking about what one piece of advice I would give to a high school student who came up to me and said "I plan to study physics in college. What one thing should I study?"

(Hey, it could happen...)

My one-word piece of advice for students planning to study physics (or any other science, really, but mostly physics): Algebra.

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Eighteen years ago, in a laboratory at the University of Parma in Italy, a neuroscientist named Giacomo Rizzolatti and his graduate students were recording electrical activity from neurons in the brain of a macaque monkey. It was a typical study in neurophysiology: needle thin electrodes ran into the monkey’s head through a small window cut out of its skull; the tips of the electrodes were placed within individual neurons in a brain region called the premotor cortex. At the time, the premotor cortex was known to be involved in the planning and initiation of movements, and, just as Rizzolatti expected, when the monkey moved its arm to grab an object the electrodes signaled that premotor neurons were firing. And then, neglecting to turn off their equipment, Rizzolatti and his team got lunch. [More]

The sound effects for computer-generated movies are still recorded from real life, but modelling the physics of the real world could change that – see and hear the results for yourself

GLBTQ rights in Uganda have sucked for years, with open persecution by of gay, lesbians and other queers being propagated by hateful and ignorant people in positions of power.  The country has instilled oppressive laws against homosexuality and court cases have challenged these.  The police and mobs have taken to routinely beating, torturing and killing gays, ostensibly to protect the population from immorality.  (Apparently, killing unarmed people who love each other is not immoral in Uganda.  Lucky break, there.)

(Cross-posted at sexgenderbody)

Recently however, things went from bad to worse with the help of the import of US gay-bashing whack jobs.  According to Casey Sanchez at the Southern Poverty Law Center:

A bizarre trio of American anti-gay leaders arrived in the Ugandan capital of Kampala Thursday to stage a three-day seminar, "Exposing the Truth Behind Homosexuality and the Homosexual Agenda," in a country where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. They are:

? Scott Lively, co-founder of the hate group Watchmen on the Walls and author of The Pink Swastika, a pseudo-history book claiming that "militant male homosexuals" helped mastermind the holocaust.

? Caleb Lee Brundidge, a "sexual reorientation coach" for the International Healing Foundation, whose signature technique, as demonstrated on CNN, involves patients "beating on chairs with tennis rackets and screaming, "Mom, Mom, why did you do this to me?" Brundidge also counsels men struggling with their sexuality to visit mortuaries with a fringe Charismatic ministry team to "practice raising the dead."

? Don Schmierer, a board member for Exodus International, an international umbrella group covering hundreds of "ex-gay" ministries. Schmierer warns parents in his guide to preventing homosexuality to watch out for boys who show "extreme macho behavior" are "frail, deformed, deaf" or "avoid fights/physical altercations."

 

Perhaps these whack-jobs sensed the losing battle against gay marriage in the US and have looked to franchise ignorance and hatred abroad, so they can keep feeding their families from the spoils of gay-bashing.  Or, maybe God is whispering in their ear right now about how we all need to be saved, no matter how much it may hurt us.

Uganda is quite capable of fostering its own religious intolerance from both Christian and Muslim factions calling for mass arrests of gays.  So, they don't really need US help in destroying lives.  It is sad and sickening to consider that blacks in Uganda are importing the philosophy of hatred disguised as God's word from the hate-filled "Bible-belt" of the US, which used the same language of intolerance to persecute black slaves.  I guess Tarzan was busy.

In the aftermath, bogus arrests are being carried out with one ridiculous charge after another being leveled in a feeding frenzy of persecution and social intolerance.

The situation also has taken a new direction after a 19-year-old man accused Pastor Robert Kayanja of Rubaga Miracle Center of having sodomized him. This story has been running in the Uganda media for almost two weeks now. After police cleared the pastor of sodomy charges, the President of Uganda came out and blamed the Ugandan police for not handling the investigations very well. Anti-gay groups are also strongly supporting the Pastor's accuser.

So, if you have any time to offer to the cause, please contact

The Embassy of Uganda:

His Excellency Professor

Perezi K. Kamunanwire

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Tel: (202) 726 4758
  Fax: (202) 726 1727
pkamunanwire@ugandaembassyus.org

or

IGLHRC
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 1505
New York, NY 10038
Phone: 212.430.6054
Fax: 212.430.6060
Email: iglhrc@iglhrc.org

Editor’s note: Scientific American contributing editor Christie Nicholson is traveling with nearly 80 scientists conducting the largest tornado study ever completed. Check out her progress and learn about twisters on SciAm’s Twitter feed, and have a look at the photos she's taking along the way.

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[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

Guys, here’s another reason to eat your veggies: they might be good for your sperm. Some studies show that male fertility and what’s called seminal quality have declined over the last few decades. So researchers from two fertility clinics in Spain looked at the reproductive power of fruits and vegetables. The scientists have spent the past four years analyzing diet and possible exposure to workplace contaminants in men with fertility problems. [More]

Biologist Jared Diamond is being sued by people he studied. The case has serious lessons for all field researchers, says Daniel Everett

Neutrinos left over from the big bang may stretch billions of light years across the universe, say researchers

• You’re Like School in the Summer… « The First Excited State "Summertime is a time to focus on your research, without the distractions of tests, homeworks, and (hopefully) teaching duties. But many grad students, at least in physics, take the summer as an opportunity to attend summer schools, which are short, intense sessions aimed at advanced grad students that are held at various institutions around the country and the world. " (tags: science academia physics education blogs)
• Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: The Dizzying Data Rate Conundrum Theorists are more likely than experimentalists to say that data preservation is "crucial," showing that experimentalists have a better idea of how much crap data there is in the world... (tags: science physics statistics)
• News: Tenure's Value ... to Society - Inside Higher Ed "While noting "countervailing public interests" in the case, the judge wrote that "the public interest is advanced more by tenure systems that favor academic freedom over tenure systems that favor flexibility in hiring or firing." The ruling added that "by its very nature, tenure promotes a system in which academic freedom is protected" and that "a tenure system that allows flexibility in firing is oxymoronic."" (tags: academia law politics society)
• News: More Rankings Rigging - Inside Higher Ed "How many members of the National Academy of Engineering are on the faculty at the University of Southern California? This might seem like a straightforward question, but it's anything but when you add in the politics of rankings. USC's Viterbi School of Engineering maintains a list of 34 faculty members it says are in the academy. And when reporting to U.S. News & World Report, which uses NAE members on the faculty as one criterion in its rankings of top engineering graduate schools (where USC landed at No. 7), Southern California claimed 30 members. But according to the National Academy of Engineering, USC has only 22 members on its faculty." (tags: academia education journalism inside-higher-ed stupid)
• Matthew Yglesias » Social Democrats Hammered in European Parliament Elections See if you can spot the problem with the graphics. (tags: world politics math yglesias)

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People who lack a certain protein on their blood cells, and are infected with a parasite caught from cats, may be more likely to have slow reaction times

The rising stars of the scientific world tackle the future of cosmology, psychology, and morality, in a new collection of essays

Two things that are worth a plug beyond the Links Dump level:

1) Over at the Intersection, Sheril Kirshenbaum wants you to look at pictures of people kissing. This is for Science, so stop giggling, and tell her what you think of the pictures.

2) There's a new blog, Ecocomics, dedicated to exploring the burning questions of how the principles of economics play out in superhero comics. This is both more and less silly than that description makes it sound. If you'd like a participatory entry to parallel Sheril's kissing survey, they're asking readers who's the richest character in comics.

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What is now part of Lake Huron's obscured floor became a dry land bridge between modern-day Presque Isle, Michigan and Point Clark, Ontario when lake levels dipped some 7,500 to 10,000 years ago. But could it have been a rich hunting ground for Paleo-Indians? [More]

There's one more White-naped crane (Grus vipio) in the world today, thanks to an innovative breeding program at the Smithsonian's National Zoo, in Washington, D.C.

Fewer than 5,000 of these rare Chinese cranes are believed to exist in the wild, and the birds that are left aren't breeding very frequently. Making matters worse, very few female cranes have been born in captivity in recent years, putting the entire breeding program at risk as its gender balance gets out of whack.

[More]

Today, Erin McKean realized the idea behind her 2007 TEDTalk with the launch of Wordnik.com, a dictionary that evolves as language does. On Wordnik, users can add new words and meanings, tag words with related expressions, see real-time search...

Take 3 minutes to help celebrate World Oceans Day by helping us grant Sylvia Earle's 2009 TED Prize wish. Our partners at Razorfish have created an ocean survey regarding the threats to marine life today. This survey will offer valuable...

Larry Webster has been working at Mount Wilson Observatory outside Los Angeles for more than 30 years, doing everything from keeping toilets flushing and adjusting mirrors to mapping out sunspots. In September 2006, the 51-year-old solar observer came into work looking more like he was 90. He was dehydrated, jaundiced and had lost a lot of weight. Although he spent a month in and out of emergency rooms for symptoms of nausea and vomiting, doctors were uncertain what had caused his illness. [More]

Our ability to think of numbers as abstract concepts is probably innate, research with newborns suggests

Extreme differences in the way genes are expressed by fetuses with Down's syndrome could lead to ways to treat the condition in the womb