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Inspiring Science

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Tag Archives: language

The Language of DNA

29 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by sedeer in Evolution, Genetics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

biology, codon, DNA, evolution, Genetics, language, Popular science, redundancy, science, translation

One of the striking things about the genetic code is the remarkable way it twists back on itself, combining redundancy and utility in a simple, elegant language. Many of us are introduced to the basic concept in school, but that introduction often leaves out the wrinkles — some of them newly discovered — which give the system its resilience and precision. Despite their complexity, most of these tricks are pretty easy to explain with linguistic analogies, which is precisely what I’m going to try in this post. Continue reading →

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Words of science: variegated

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by sedeer in Language, Words of Science

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

color, etymology, language, pattern, science, vocabulary, words, Words of Science

Like many other fields, science has its own style of communication full of specific jargon and guided by unwritten rules.  Most of the posts on this blog focus on breaching this barrier to the public’s understanding and appreciation of science.  In this series, I’d like to take another approach by highlighting scientific words which have escaped the confines of jargon to reach a broader appeal because of their sound or their evocative power as metaphors.  Today’s word is variegated. [Previous words of science were petrichor, alluvium, nychthemeron, crepuscular, interstitial, and science.]
Continue reading →

Words of science: science

10 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by sedeer in Language, Words of Science

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

etymology, humanities, knowledge, language, science, vocabulary, words, Words of Science

Like many other fields, science has its own style of communication full of specific jargon and guided by unwritten rules.  Most of the posts on this blog focus on breaching this barrier to the public’s understanding and appreciation of science.  In this series, I’d like to take another approach by highlighting scientific words which have escaped the confines of jargon to reach a broader appeal because of their sound or their evocative power as metaphors.  Today’s word is a bit different from the earlier words; this time I’d like to talk about the word science itself. [Previous words of science were petrichor, alluvium, nychthemeron, crepuscular, and interstitial.]
Continue reading →

How are humans like ants?

15 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by sedeer in Complex systems, Humans, Language, Mind

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Behavior, brain, Cognition, Human, language, People, Popular science, science and society

Last year, I wrote about how some ants can find their way home after finding food.  They have the remarkable ability to account for all the twists and turns they made while foraging and calculate a direct path leading straight back to their nest.  A reader emailed to ask if I thought humans would ever be able to do something similar or to achieve the level of co-ordination shown by ants.  This post is based on my reply, where I pointed out several things that humans are amazingly good at doing  — in fact, we do them so well and with such ease that you might be surprised by how difficult they actually are!  I’ve spent a lot of time on Inspiring Science talking about behaviours and abilities which show that other animals aren’t just simple automata because I think it’s important to make the point that although humans are unique, we aren’t special; we’re just another species with our own particular tricks for surviving in this world.  I’ll take a different tack in this post and talk about some of the ways we stand out! Continue reading →

Words of science: interstitial

02 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by sedeer in Language, Words of Science

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

etymology, language, Popular science, science, vocabulary, words, Words of Science

Like many other fields, science has its own style of communication full of specific jargon and guided by unwritten rules.  Most of the posts on this blog focus on breaching this barrier to the public’s understanding and appreciation of science.  In this series, I’d like to take another approach by highlighting scientific words which have escaped the confines of jargon to reach a broader appeal because of their sound or their evocative power as metaphors.  Today’s word is interstitial. [Previous words of science were petrichor, alluvium, nychthemeron, and crepuscular.]
Continue reading →

Found while foraging (June 13, 2012)

13 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by sedeer in Foraging

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Tags

fun, israel, language, occupy, Open Access, photography, science, Science communication, video

I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting regularly lately — I’ve been unexpectedly busy with “real life” lately.  Things seem to have settled down a bit, so hopefully I’ll be back to my normal frequency soon.  In the meantime, here’s a collection of various things I’ve come across recently. Continue reading →

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All text and original images by Sedeer El-Showk. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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