news update: photonics, publishing, and elephants

January 8, 2007 at 8:43 pm | | literature, news, science and the public, science community, stupid technology, wild web

Just a few (sciency) news updates today…

Publishing

This month, NPG launches its new (sub)journal Nature Photonics. It might have some cool articles in the future. Also PLoS One launched at the end of 2006 and will be an open-access journal that publishes any submissions that pass very limited scientific criteria (i.e. not including the impact or “coolness” of the paper). Who know? It might even work. If there were a good way of filtering the papers after they’re published, this open-access fad might be the new paradigm.

Invisible Cloak (not)

OK, everyone’s calling it an invisible cloak, but the “metamaterials” technology isn’t really even close. But it just got closer, with Opt. Lett. 2006, 32, 53–55. The authors report a metamaterial with a negative refractive index for visible (780-nm) light. And it’s really cool because … hey wait … where’d you go??

Stupid Elephant Picture

Many newspapers etc. have been publishing a picture of an elephant fetus in the womb (allegedly).

elephant_fetus.jpg

Cool eh? But it’s bogus! (Yeah, I was fooled, too. I saw it in Nature, where they claimed it was “enhanced with computer graphics.” Riiiiight. That should have tipped me off.) Actually, it is a silicon model of this ultrasound image:

elephant_fetus_real.jpg

I guess that’s cool.

6 Comments »

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  1. Amazing Picture. The Beauty of life. I love Eli’s…

    Comment by Nicol — May 1, 2009 #

  2. which picture, the fake one or the real one? i do love elephants, though.

    Comment by sam — May 1, 2009 #

  3. that is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo amasing:):)LOL

    Comment by people — October 19, 2010 #

  4. and its also sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo KUTE

    Comment by people — October 19, 2010 #

  5. and i mean the BIG FOTO hardy hardy lol

    Comment by people — October 19, 2010 #

  6. I still think the real ultrasound is pretty cool. Someone should put together an article featuring ultrasounds of all different types of animals.

    Comment by Alex At Precision Photonics — November 18, 2010 #

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