What we're talking about 
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Beyond 400 PPM
Here’s a template for a letter I hope you will consider sending/emailing to all of your elected representatives at the municipal, state, and federal levels, if you are in the US. Thanks Dear [elected official] I am writing to ask you to join the very small but hopefully growing number of elected representatives and executives…
The Last Time Atmospheric CO2 was at 400 parts per million Humans Didn’t Exist
Significant Figures by Peter Gleick May 10, 2013
The planet has passed a disturbing landmark, a marker on a continuing highway to climate disruption. On May 9th, the NOAA and the Mauna Loa observatory reported that atmospheric CO2 levels touched 400 parts per million. Before humans started burning fossil fuels, they were around 280 parts per million. The last time atmospheric CO2…
Channel Surfing
Life Science
A quaint New England rocky creek Imagine standing next to Parable Creek, an imaginary rocky brook in New England. The water is rushing past you from left to right, around the rocks that emerge tall above the surface of the stream, mounding over the top of those that are lower down. The deepest parts of…
In behavioral biology there is a fair amount of attention to individual quality, which may be determined by genes or parasite load or energy balance, or some interaction among these (and other) factors. Individual quality is honestly indicated by some trait or behavior; a large bright thing hanging of your head, a long bout of…
It’s the lovely Pink Dragon millipede — it’s bright enough to belong in the girl’s aisle at the toy store. It also squirts cyanide at you if you annoy it.
Physical Science
“Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson Well, I guess it’s that season again. The charlatan who claims to have invented a cold fusion device — the same device whose flaws were exposed here two years ago — has just held an “independent…
At Scientific American’s blog network, Ashutosh Jogalekar muses about the “greatest American physicist”, eventually voting for Josiah Willard Gibbs, one of the pioneers of statistical mechanics. As both times I took StatMech (as an undergrad and in grad school), it was at 8:30 in the morning, I retain almost no memory of the subject, and…
Nate Silver provides the antidote to some dubious statistical reasoning on the part of certain conservatives. He was replying in particular to this column from Peggy Noonan. A column, mind you, that opens with, “We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.” Goodness! Then she presents evidence like this: The second…
Environment
There are good reasons to believe that global warming leads to more storminess, but the exact nature of that transition is unclear and hard to measure. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that a given type of storm may become more likely under certain conditions caused by climate change, while a different kind…
The story of climate change has always been more of worst-case, or at least, worser-case scenarios developing and less about good news showing up out of nowhere and making us unexpectedly happy. A few decades ago, it became clear that the release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere primarily as CO2 was going to cause…
Researchers compare the calories purchased by teenagers at McDonald’s versus Subway.
Humanities
Ezra Klein talks to Bill Gates and Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber about investing in disease prevention and the tradeoffs in healthcare spending decisions.
Nate Silver provides the antidote to some dubious statistical reasoning on the part of certain conservatives. He was replying in particular to this column from Peggy Noonan. A column, mind you, that opens with, “We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.” Goodness! Then she presents evidence like this: The second…
Last winter I was amazed by the poor upkeep afforded to buildings in central Marrakech. I spent part of last week in fascinating Istanbul, and there it was again: plentiful ruins of recent buildings in the middle of busy shopping and hotel districts. Istanbul is in even worse shape than Marrakech. Many older houses are…
Education
I was discussing SciArt on several occasions with different people recently and was fishing for a way to classify different SciArt in order to make a particular point – the point being that the type of SciArt I find most interesting and valuable is in the minority. Basically, it seems there are 3 (or maybe…
I was just digitally flipping through a new book called “Crime Against Nature“, which describes various reproductive behaviors in the animal kingdom. It is written by an artist, Gwenn Seemel, not a scientist, so I cannot vouch for the scientific accuracy of the book as a whole. However, the illustrations are quite nice and the content is seemingly scandalous,…
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
In Praise of Unsung Heroes in Science at the USA Science & Engineering Festival
Heroes should never be forgotten, but unfortunately too many of them in the field of science go missing from our classroom textbooks. Equally disturbing is that a disproportionate number of these heroes overlooked are women and minorities. While the average American young person will likely have no trouble detailing the latest antics of such stars…
Politics
Confessions of a Science Librarian
The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment
This is a brief chronology of the current Conservative Canadian government’s long campaign to undermine evidence-based scientific, environmental and technical decision-making. It is a government that is beholden to big business, particularly big oil, and that makes every attempt to shape public policy to that end. It is a government that fundamentally doesn’t believe in…
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” -Frederick Douglass I thought we were past this, I really did. Having grown up in New York, having lived in eight different states and traveled to 39…
It is being debated in the US Senate! (Unofficially.) Here’s Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on the issue: See also: Sen. Whitehouse destroys colleague who said God won’t allow climate change And this: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Medicine
Actions have consequences. No matter how much the person might want to try to hide from the consequences of one’s actions, they frequently have a way of coming back, grabbing you by the neck, and letting you know they’re there. We see it happening now in the U.K. Fifteen years ago, British doctor Andrew Wakefield…
Respectful Insolence
A male BRCA mutation carrier “emulates” Angelina Jolie by having preventative surgery to remove his prostate? Not so fast there, pardner…
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. OK, I know I use that line entirely too much, but I also don’t really care. When something fits, wear it. And if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. Sorry, I’ll stop. I’m in a weird mood as I write this. But it’s…
I should have known it. I should have known that the reaction wouldn’t take very long. I should have known it based on prior history. The news story to which I am referring is, of course, the revelation yesterday in the New York Times editorial page by Angelina Jolie that she had decided to undergo…
Brain & Behavior
I was just digitally flipping through a new book called “Crime Against Nature“, which describes various reproductive behaviors in the animal kingdom. It is written by an artist, Gwenn Seemel, not a scientist, so I cannot vouch for the scientific accuracy of the book as a whole. However, the illustrations are quite nice and the content is seemingly scandalous,…
Dr. Kerstin Lindblad-Toh at Uppsala University (Sweden) who specializes in comparative genomics and Dr. Åke Hedhammar, SLU (Sweden) recently identified a novel gene in German shepherd dogs, PKP-2, that encodes a protein (plakophilin-2) important for regulating proper skin structure and function. This protein was found to be associated with canine atopic dermatitis (i.e. doggy eczema), a…
Hilarious! And, as always from The Onion, so true…
Technology
Scientists in Maine have converted two Cold War bunkers at Loring Air Force Base into winter havens for bats in an effort to protect the animals from the fungus that causes white nose syndrome. What is nice about using a man-made space is that they can actually clean up the area as opposed to trying to kill…
The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 38 Table of Contents Chapter 40 Chapter 39 A Walk in the Park, April 26, 2056 I got a bit of a surprise when I got home. Edie caught me just as I was entering and asked, “Do you think we are descending into a New Dark Age?”…
It is critically important that the community participate in the current ongoing discussion for the NASA roadmaps. Particularly if you are an early career researcher. This is your opportunity to make the case for what you think is interesting and important. NASA is going through a series of Roadmap exercises by the different directorates, trying…
Information Science
Confessions of a Science Librarian
The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment
This is a brief chronology of the current Conservative Canadian government’s long campaign to undermine evidence-based scientific, environmental and technical decision-making. It is a government that is beholden to big business, particularly big oil, and that makes every attempt to shape public policy to that end. It is a government that fundamentally doesn’t believe in…
I have to admit — I’ve always been more of Star Trek fan rather than Star Wars. The Star Trek universe has always seemed more open, more diverse, with a lot more opportunities for telling different stories not just about the rebels versus the empire. It seems that Neil deGrasse Tyson agrees. “I’m old-school with…
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Around the Web: OMG still with the librarian angst, Forking the academy and more
Yes, We Should Talk About the MLS On Big Name Librarians The Loon’s job Why am I getting my MLIS? Because I have to. So You Think You Want to Be a Librarian? The Adjunctification of Academic Librarianship Your candidate pools Fork the Academy (github as a model for scholarly communcation) Massive (But Not Open)…
Jobs
The Pump Handle
Wage theft in South Florida: Nation’s first county with wage theft protections reports on progress and perils
Earlier this month, Florida lawmakers wrapped up their latest legislative session. And nearly 500 miles south of Tallahassee in Miami-Dade County, workers’ rights advocates breathed yet another sigh of relief.
The Pump Handle
Study: Peer-to-peer training can improve safety, knowledge among Hispanic construction workers
Eric Rodriguez and his colleagues at the Latino Union of Chicago quite literally meet workers where they’re at — on the city’s street corners. Many of the day laborers who gather there are hired to work construction at residential housing sites. Work arrangements are hardly formal and day laborers are frequently subjected to unnecessary and illegal dangers on the job. Unfortunately, worker safety is often kicked to the curb in the street corner marketplace.
A quick review of the bi-partisan Senate immigration reform bill reveals a few provisions related to workplace safety.
