You will pardon a placeholder post for just a little bit as I am trying to coordinate both loading a video reviewing the excitement that October 2009 has brought and the information you need to pursue the information further.

This information is further elaboration of this video which you may have followed from another site:

 

We met Ardipithecus ramidus on October 1! For more information, I am sending you to Carl Zimmer's site, The Loom, with Discover for more.  You can count on Carl for excellent writing and well researched information.  If you are into tatoos, don't forget to click on his Science Tatoo Emporium

Saturn has all the fun with new adornments in the form of a newly discovered ring made of particles of dust so fine that infrared imaging was required to see it! I enjoyed this video about this new ring. If you prefer to read,then visit Space.com for more!

NASA sent a probe called LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) to the moon to search for water, presumably in the form of ice! The best place to find out more is to visit NASA's website!

Ah, the Nobel Prizes. They stand out as the most prominent recognition for scientific investigators, although there are many others. Every year, there is some controversy or another, whether it is concern that someone was overlooked or perhaps new categories should be recognized. Regardless, it is always fun to imagine the representative of the Nobel Prize committee waking up the lucky recipients with a phone call.

This year, these phone calls went to:

Medicine and Physiology "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase" 

Physics "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication"

and "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor"

Chemistry "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"

I shall elaborate more on these in a while! thanks so much for your interest in science!

Kindly, Joanne

I am happy to present to you two new book reviews. I had originally filmed them in a video together, but found it to be way too long, so I edited them apart without adjusting some of the wording, so watching one individually may be just ever so slightly confusing!  I am now doing my book reviews in conjunction with Science Cheerleader because I like what she does in her outreach activities to the general public and, well, she wanted a book reviewer! Eventually my reviews will feature her logo on them, so watch for that and don't forget to visit her site!

The first review is of the book by new author, Louisa Gilder, called The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Reborn

 

The next book review is by seasoned author Amir D. Aczel on his latest book Uranium Wars: The Scientific Rivalry that Created the Nuclear Age

I haven't forgotten about the excitement that each October brings: The first being my birthday (yay!) that I just happened to discover is shared with the amazing and classy Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who appears regularly on NOVA!  Even more momentous are the announcements of the Nobel prizes in Medicine/Physiology (which fell on my birthday this year), Physics and Chemistry. Check back again soon for those announcements.

Until next time, 

Kindly, Joanne