Now on ScienceBlogs: Unitary mindfulness in collective action

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What We're Talking About Sunday, November 8, 2009

As the World Turns

Context By Seed

As the Earth's tectonic plates shift and grind miles below our feet, we feel the effects on the surface in the form of earthquakes and volcanic activity. As Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science and Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous explain, earthquakes far from tectonic plate boundaries may be aftershocks of more violent seismic events along mid-continental faults that occurred hundreds of years earlier. According to a study published in Nature this week, faults in the middle of a continent take much longer—100 years or more—to return to normal activity; thus, aftershocks can occur long after what would be expected from coastal quakes. In other earthquake news, Chris Rowan also reports on Iran's decision to move their capital city to a less earthquake-prone location than Tehran. And on Eruptions, Erik Klemetti gets to the bottom of a recent Slashdot post proclaiming that recent volcanic activity in Ethiopia is causing the African continent to rift apart, forming a new ocean. In fact, explains Erik, the recent eruptions are part of a known process. "This is nothing new," says Erik. "We've known that Africa is splitting apart for decades."

The Conversation

Mid-continent earthquakes are often aftershocks of centuries-old tremors

Not Exactly Rocket ScienceNovember 4, 2009

Earthquakes are a common occurrence on the boundaries between tectonic plates, and they occur at predictable spots. But they can often strike areas that are far away from such boundaries and where old fault-lines have seen little seismic activity over the past hundred years.

Earthquakes within plates: we don't know when, and we may not know where

Highly AllochthonousNovember 6, 2009

We already know the difficulties of predicting when big earthquakes are going to occur, but it seems that in the middle of plates, predicting where they are going to happen might also be a bit more tricky than we thought.

Earthquake hazard mitigation the Iranian way

Highly AllochthonousNovember 5, 2009

At first glance a relocation seems like a fairly foresighted strategy, even if a cynic (who, me?) might wonder if the move encompasses more than the political elite and their associated minions. But population centres do not generally spring up at random.

The rifting of Africa

EruptionsNovember 5, 2009

This process has been going on for millions of years and to come out and misconstrue the study as saying that the activity in 2005 started the rifting or that the crack is the "start" of a new ocean just shows that the mainstream media doesn't know how to read science beyond what other media are saying about it.

Video

magneticvideo.jpgMagnetic Movie, winner of the Nature Scientific Merit Award for accuracy at the Imagine Science Film Festival, on bioephemera.

Video

xkcdvideo.jpg Olga Nunes sings, "I love momentum, I love to engineer," in "I Love xkcd" on Science After Sunclipse.

Community

The newest blogger to join the ScienceBlogs community is statistician Andrew Gelman, author of Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do, among other books. Gelman is blogging at Applied Statistics, where he explores statistical quirks like the Russian Mortality Paradox and the reason so many men are named Matt. Drop by and check him out!

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In Conversation

“This is why I can't help but grit my teeth when I hear about how important a good night sleep is. I know it's important, OK? The more I want to fall asleep - the more intensely I'm trying to achieve my goal - the less likely I am to actually pass out. I'll lie awake, haunted by thoughts of white bears and cognitive deficits.”

Sleep

The Frontal Cortex

November 4, 2009

Channel Surfing

Life Science

Laelaps

Photo of the Day #757: Rock squirrel

A rock squirrel (Spermophilus variegatus), photographed at Dinosaur National Monument, Utah....

Evolution for Everyone

Truth and Reconciliation for Group Selection XV: Group Selection in the Wild

In T&R XIV I showed that prejudice against group selection is impervious to evidence from laboratory experiments. It...

Not Exactly Rocket Science

South African wildlife - Wait, that's not a trunk...

This is a bull elephant firmly establishing why it is he, and not the lion, who is...

The Life Science Channel RSS Feed

Physical Science

The Scientific Indian

Entangled Reality

Read an interesting interview with Roger Penrose at Discover Magazine. Found this part fascinating: So Schrödinger himself never...

The Scientific Indian

A matter of Life and er... Matter

As I was stuffing my face today, I wondered if the Universe cared. The short answer is no....

EvolutionBlog

Check Out Amazon's List of the Year's Best Science Books

Seriously! Go have a look. It seems my book The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math's...

The Physical Science Channel RSS Feed

Environment

Stoat

First Look at Carbon Capture and Storage in a West Virginia Coal-Fired Power Plant?

So says Sci-Am. The article is high on pic and low on facts. Only a small percentage of...

Stoat

Wadhams on sea ice

Nothing new, but M pointed me at Greenman on sea ice which has a quote from Wadhams (starts...

The World's Fair

The Challenge of Eating Sustainably: College Edition

Is It Possible to Eat Sustainably at the University of Virginia? Four students try going vegetarian, going organic, eating under "The Six Dollar Limit", and going local.

The Environment Channel RSS Feed

Humanities & Soc. Sciences

Uncertain Principles

The Internet Is a Weird and Wonderful Place

Eric Whiteacre's Virtual Choir, made up of dozens of indivual YouTube videos.

Gene Expression

Unitary mindfulness in collective action

In reviewing a paper which sketches out the boundary conditions under which group-level natural selection would result in...

Gene Expression

Democracy & Creationism in Turkey

Another article on Creationism in Turkey: To John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in Dallas,...

The Social Sciences Channel RSS Feed

Education

Greg Laden's Blog

Islamic Creationism in the News

From the NCSE:...

Tomorrow's Table

And so, driven on ceaselessly toward new shores

I am traveling now far away from home towards a large lake in Zurich. What a perfect time...

The Primate Diaries

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

His birthday is actually on Monday, but today marks the first annual event initiated by Broward College in...

The Education Channel RSS Feed

Politics

Effect Measure

Acknowledging Obama's failures

We're pissed.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Ed Infiltrates a Protest

So after the reader meetup on Saturday, I and two of my readers, Barry and Eric, wandered over...

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Health Care Passes House

The House of Representatives passed the health care reform bill Saturday night, but not before passing an amendment...

The Politics Channel RSS Feed

Medicine & Health

Respectful Insolence

Idiotic comment of the week

In a nod to fellow ScienceBlogger Ed Brayton, with his hilarious Dumbass Quote of the Day, I hereby...

Terra Sigillata

The Detox Delusion: Kudos to Duke Integrative Medicine Nutritionist

Perhaps a valid mission of academic "integrative medicine" centers is to prevent patients from complicating their health problems with untested and dangerous alternative medical practices.

Effect Measure

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: more religion and child abuse

This time it's orthodox Jews.

The Medicine & Health Channel RSS Feed

Brain & Behavior

Gene Expression

What does not kill the group, makes it stronger!

I recently finished reading The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, a new book by...

On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

An Open Letter...

...to the guy next to me in seminar yesterday morning. Dear Dr. Hot-Shot, I realize that you thought...

Terra Sigillata

Response to Dan Ariely's Duke Sex Toy Study Is Predictably Irrational

An IRB-approved study by a well-known author and academic behavioral economist is criticized by a campus minister.

The Brain & Behavior Channel RSS Feed

Technology

Christina's LIS Rant

COTS software are not off the shelf or turn-key

There's a nice rebuttal of the Sirsi Dynix anti-open source white paper done by Mark Leggott that just...

A Blog Around The Clock

Tweetlinks, 11-07-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time (all my...

Collective Imagination

Google Transparency, choice and control technology announced

From Google: Today, we are excited to announce the launch of Google Dashboard. Have you ever wondered what...

The Technology Channel RSS Feed

Information Science

A Blog Around The Clock

The podcast of the radio show is now online

You can listen to the Friday episode of Skeptically Speaking here. I am at the beginning, first 10...

A Blog Around The Clock

ScienceOnline2010 - Program highlights

As you know, the Program is fully set now. There is a lot of stuff there! So,...

Mike the Mad Biologist

Reprints: An Interesting Way of Looking at Sharing Science-Related PDFs

UR STEALIN TEH SCIENTISMZ!!

The Information Science Channel RSS Feed

Jobs

DrugMonkey

What to do when recruitment promises evaporate?

As I have noted before, if there is one modal complaint of the newly hired Assistant Professor in...

Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Fork Lift Accident Brings Down The Warehouse

This video is one of those where you find yourself laughing while you secretly hope that this will never be you.

Transcription and Translation

Map That Campus XLIX

It's that time again. Here's this week's mystery campus:

The Jobs Channel RSS Feed

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ScienceBlogs Super Photos

SB Basics

hurricane.jpg

Hurricanes

As the 2009 hurricane season picks up speed after a remarkably mild beginning, we look to the ScienceBlogs archives for the science behind the storms.

The Island of DoubtJuly 25, 2006

The real story of the hurricanes


Neuron Culture September 11, 2008

Hurricanes & Climate Change: A Round-Up Says Maybe More, Definitely Hotter


Corpus Callosum September 12, 2008

What Ike Really Means; Introducing Integrated Kinetic Energy


See Also:

Cribsheet: Hurricanes
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