With opening day in baseball less than a week away (April 4th, Sox v Yankees, 1am Irish time – be there!), this is as good a time as any to do a baseball book review. But it’s also sceintific! Moneyball is subtitled “The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” and it chronicles the paradigm shift that sabermetrics brought to the game, the transition of baseball from the historical way of scouting players to the new technique which involved statistics, statistics and more statistics.

Teleflex Medical design and deliver specialised instruments and devices to touch nearly every organ in the human body. With 1 well established Original Equipment Manufacture plant in Limerick (TFX OEM) and a newly announced plant being created in Athlone, this is a relatively low profile player in the Irish medical device sector which looks set to grow.

Propofol is very short acting hypnotic agent used to induce general anesthesia and to maintain patients who are mechanically ventilated. For those of you who have undergone general anesthesia, the milky white liquid is probably the last thing you see prior to being knocked out - as once injected propofol will induce unconsciousness in around 10 seconds. Due to its ability to impair memory while under its influence and its appearance as a white liquid, propofol is jokingly called “milk of amnesia” by medical professionals. Interestingly, Michael called propofol his “milk”.

SO WHAT WENT WRONG…?

Finally i will never have to worry about leaving my desk for a hot tasty treat. Mind you if i spill it everywhere i’ll need some form of cleaning device. RH
Future of USB Fast Food?

nbelievable video, you can see the poor guy’s (Anthony Van Loo of Roeselare) body jolt @ 0.16 secs in. This device literally saved the man’s life, numerous examples have happened in the past with tragic consequences. Mohamed Abdelwahab (Egypt), and the most famous example possibly being Marc Vivien Foe, who died while playing he Confederation’s Cup for Cameroon.

Found a very cool use of technology meeting science head on. Lots of fun playing with you periodic table!
Simply follow the link -> www.ptable.com
RH

Just saw this on RTE news, amazing story. Connie Culp, 46, was shot in the face by her husband in 2004 - he then turned the gun on himself. 30 operations later, she still did not have the ability to perform ‘ordinary’ facial functions. A 22 hr operation, led by 11 surgeons has reHer news conference afterwards was special too, kids used to call her a monster. Connie used to have to carry a photo of herself to show them what she used to look like. It will be very interesting to see if she regains the ability to smell and drink (not using a straw) - things we all take for granted.

-BHC

The knuckleball is an intriguing prospect from the outset. How can something which is sometimes not even thrown at 70mph compare to something thrown at 95+ mph by some fireballers (Jonathan Papelbon, Joba Chmberlain et al)??
Having experienced Tim Wakefield pitch live twice, it really is hilarious. The ball looks like it floats out of his hand towards large burly major leaguers. To see them swing violently and miss at something so slow is amazing. Which begs the question, what is the Science behind the knuckleball? As alluded to in the Ronaldo post, the principles isolated in this pitch are quite similar. The distinct lack of spin imparted to Wakefield’s pitch and Ronaldo’s strike results in the respective balls making erratic movements on the way to their targets due to increased drag, results in the goalkeeper and hitter, respectively, having trouble anticipating where the object ball will be on arrival.

We here at ScienceBlog love the Science Gallery. For a number of reasons. Anything that popularises science and encourages people to discover more is a great thing. It is a quite unique proposition worldwide, an interesting concept which is simply somebody thinking outside the box. And it works.

Great news last night from the provosts in TCD and UCD - this should create a whole bunch of new jobs (albeit years from now) and is really the type of development in Science we’ve been looking for. Expect many new (or expanded) innovation centres to start popping up around the campuses.