Science in the News (please post articles of general interest here)

[Probeman]

I just thought this was a cool short video by David Attenborough:

https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1860548905911615955

on the electric fields of flowers and bees.

[Probeman]

Talk about a carbon contamination problem...

https://www.space.com/ryugu-asteroid-sample-earth-life-colonization

[Probeman]

This is a cool periodic table:



It's for kids, but I did not know that scandium is used in aluminum alloys for bicycle frames.  Or should I say "aluminium"?



You can buy one here for the kids in your life:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BHXQQ1N

[Probeman]

This has got to be the strangest thing in microscopy you will read today: "vegetative electron microscopy"

https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02/10/vegetative-electron-microscopy-fingerprint-paper-mill/

[Probeman]

Moving electrons is so much easier than moving molecules:

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/02/21/hydrogen-hype-meets-hard-costs-europes-pipeline-plan-in-trouble/

If anyone is interested in why moving electrons is so easy, it's because it's electric fields "all the way down"!  See this excellent explanation from the Veritasium channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI_X2cMHNe0

[Probeman]

This doesn't have anything in particular to do with microanalysis, or does it?

https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Medicine-Wrong-Health/dp/1639735313

It's a look at dogma, inertia, resistance to new ideas and stubborn refusal to look at scientific data that challenges the "status quo". I found this book to be an amazing and actually quite balanced read, and highly recommend it.

[Ben Buse]

Caltech Mourns the Passing of Arden Albee
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/arden-albee-obituary

[Probeman]

Caltech Mourns the Passing of Arden Albee
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/arden-albee-obituary

Interesting that the obituary did not mention that (at least at one time), the Bence-Albee matrix correction was the most cited paper in geology.

And this correction (at least for historical comparisons if not some esoteric applications), is still implemented in CalcZAF and Probe for EPMA:

https://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?topic=239.msg2763#msg2763

Here's a discussion regarding the Shaw and Albee dataset that Ben and I had some years ago:

https://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?topic=890.msg5708#msg5708

[Probeman]

Now that's what I call an "electron beam"!



(Artist's concept)

https://scitechdaily.com/slac-just-fired-the-most-intense-submicron-electron-beam-in-history-heres-what-it-can-do/

[Probeman]

The origins of Monte Carlo statistics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZeIEiBrT_w&ab_channel=Veritasium

[Probeman]

This is concerning:

https://theconversation.com/how-bad-science-is-becoming-big-business-262821

I think we today, with our early perceptions of AI, are basically at the same point in time as when the first books were being printed. Many people know that the bible was the most popular book printed with the first printing presses, but by some accounts, the 2nd most popular book at that time was "The Hammer of the Witches".  Which some historians credit with helping to create the witch hunting crazes in Europe.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/social-sciences/printing-press-witch-trials/