Did you feel that?

TPP was pretty sure he felt something, just the slightest of tugs, some tiny disturbance in the space-time continuum, so he knows what these physicists are talking about, gravity waves are mighty hard to detect. Einstein predicted gravity waves as part of general relativity, but they have not been confirmed to exist, except via scientific rumors, and if you believe those then maybe you want to buy a pet bigfoot or a cold fusion reactor. However TPP suspects that maybe this time there's a bit more data involved. This could lead to all sorts of new technologies for example an antigravity bathroom scale (It's so easy to lose weight; mass on the other hand is a bitch.).  At any rate we try to do our best to keep you up to date with the ever moving frontiers in science. It's not our job, but our calling.

How slippery is a banana peel? Very basic, award-winning research

Everyone has seen the slip on a banana peel gag in cartoons or old slap stick movies, but what kind of an inquisitive mind decides to actually measure just how slippery a banana peel is?  Well, here's a report on this award-winning research. And the award?  Why the Ignoble, of course! Highly coveted you may be assured. 

Teaching botany to physicists

Physicists are pretty bright guys, but they really don't have a clue about biology.  In the USA science curricula do a weird thing.  If you study biology, you generally have both a chemistry requirement, which is sometimes quite substantial, and a physics requirement.  Geology is left out of the equation although in many field geology is more relevant than physics.  Chemistry curricula have their students take physics, but never biology, and this is rather strange considering the broad interface that exists between the two fields.  Physics majors usually take math. This is why biologists in general know more about the physical sciences than they do about biology. In an effort to improve collegiality, biologists are being invited to give an informal lunchtime seminars.  It was pretty strange because they asked a ton of questions, mostly that had nothing to do with my research, they just wanted to hear a biological perspective.  "Are botanists alarmed/worried about global warming?"  Yes.  "What do you think about the denialists?"  It worked well for big tobacco, so the same people are using the same strategy.  It's easier to cast doubt on the science than it is to argue policy.  "What about evolution?"  What about evolution?  It happened, it's happening, we do our best to understand how.  "How do you know if plants are related?"   Shared characters, some external, some internal, some purely molecular. "If a plant grew on the west coast, but could grow on the east coast, how long would it take for it to get there?"  A flight from Portland to New York takes about 4 hours.  "If ginkgo was nearly extinct, how come you now see them all over the place?"  Seeds from a couple of small surviving populations were collected and the tree became a cultivated species and we've, humans, have moved it everywhere.  "So if it can live almost anywhere, why was it nearly extinct, and how come it was once widespread as the fossils show?"  Good question, we don't know, but it lives almost anywhere with our human assistance.  It hasn't escaped into the wild anywhere. While ginkgos were widespread in the fossil record, it wasn't this species, but a whole lineage of ginkgo related plants.   "Why doesn't ginkgo have any diseases?"  Hmm, so physicists have an inordinate interest in ginkgos, why?  Well, when you almost become extinct, the organisms that depend upon you have a very tough if not impossible time surviving.  The population of ginkgos gets to small to support other populations.  "Why do you go to the tropics?"  Tropical food is great, but generally biologists love the tropics because of the diversity, which means lots of interactions, complexity.  In the specific my research is centered around tropical trees in the magnoliid lineage. 
It was an interesting exchange, but many of the questions showed their lack of biological understanding.  So hopefully this was helpful. 

Higgs Boson is not quite what was expected

The Phytophactor does not want to be left out of the excitement whirling around about the imminent arrival of data supporting the existence of the infamous Higgs Boson. Now this is quite out of the Phactor's field but a reliable source indicates that much to the embarrassment of the LHC crew, the Higgs Boson is rather different in appearance than what was expected and it turns out to have a much darker side than anyone theorized. But wouldn't want to be the one pointing this out. See accompanying image. Glad my name won't be one of the 200 or so authors on that paper!

Everthing just got a little bit smaller

Oh, the Phactor sensed it as soon as he woke this morning; a chunky black cat landed on me with just slightly less force, the newspaper, never much of a news heavy weight anyways landed on the front steps with just a bit less of a thud, and the whole cosmos just seemed smaller somehow. A crazy feeling to have, but there in the news was perhaps the shocking reason: the proton is actually 4% smaller previously thought! Physicists reactions were predictable, 1. perhaps they've been wrong all along (yeah, right!), although using the wrong size for protons hasn't affected how well things like lasers, gravity, and atomic bombs work, and a new more accurate measuring stick (muon scatter) has improved the accuracy; or 2. maybe the new experiment was in error or measurements were calculated wrongly so the work will be checked, and rechecked, then checked again (it's what those graduate students are for). The thing about this is a 4% difference in the size of the proton is the physicists equivalent of missing by a mile in a land where things are calculated to 10 or 12 decimal places routinely. In botany we deal in nice whole numbers if we have numerical data at all. The newly measured proton has a diameter of 0.84184 femtometers, and 1 femtometer, in case you were wondering, is 1 quadrillionth of a meter (10 to minus 15 meters). Numbers like this don't have much meaning to you unless you're working on calculating the national debt, however, maybe, just maybe, everything just got a little bit smaller, so my worrisome feeling continues.