Archives for November 17, 2007
Blame, Jail, and Torture The Victim
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 This is the kind of story that makes it difficult to remain culturally relativistic. it also makes it hard to look at women who are in purdah walking around in a “free” country like the US and not, in part blame them for compliance. A woman was gang raped in Saudi Arabia. Fourteen times. Seven…
Get Your Own Genome Sequenced
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 Today, deCODE genetics announced the launch of their consumer genotyping service, deCODEme. deCODEme is the first personal genomics company to launch, and will provide sequencing information about 1 million SNPs for the introductory price of $985. The service has two components: [source] From deCODEme (Man, I’m siCK of these miXEDcase companynames.): “Through your subscription to…
IPCC Summary of Fourth Report
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 A few tidbits — just to give a flavor — from the Summary for Policymakers, which is available here. (Good luck downloading this file! You may want to wait until everyone is asleep…)
Bees Teach Techies a Trick or Two
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 You all know about the honey bee waggle dance. A bee finds some nectar, returns to the hive, does a dance that communicates information about where the nectar can be found to other bees, and off the workers go to get the nectar. Techies at Georgia Tech have applied this method to developing a better…
For the kids: Narrow Income Gap
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 According to research just out from the University of Nottingham, lowering the differential between high and low incomes can have a more positive effect on child wellbeing than simply growing the economy in countries that are already wealthy.
What’s the 411 on Goog 411?
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 [hat tip: Joe]
IPCC Working Group 3: Mitigation of Climate Change
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 This report covers six topics: Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trends Mitigation in the short and medium term, across different economic sectors (until 2030) Mitigation in the long-term (beyond 2030) Policies, measures and instruments to mitigate climate change Sustainable development and climate change mitigation Gaps in knowledge. This link will eventually get you to the PDF…
IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 A report accepted by Working Group II of the Intergovernmental on Climate Change but not approved in detail Summary of main findings
IPCC Working Group 1: The Physical Science Basis
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 The following is quoted from the Working Group I report
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is here
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 Actually, here. There are three parts from three working groups. “The Physical Science Basis,” Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” and “Mitigation of Climate Change.” I shall presently post excerpts summarizing the reports.
Dan Egerstad, the “Hack of 07″ Hacker Arrested
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 Last August, Dan Egerstad, of Sweden, hacked his way into secret email accounts of government embassies, various NGOs and corporations. It was easy, partly because it was not a secure network. He then posted a very large number of email user names and passwords. The way he did it was simple. There is a piece…
Santa’s War on Science
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 Corpus Collosum shows us this graph of search frequency on Google for the word “Science.” And asks “What could it possibly mean?” What it means is this: The following is a graph of search frequency on Google for the word “Santa.” The graphs are from Google Trends. Just in case it is not utterly obvious,…
Are you as smart as a Second Year University Student?
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 Larry Moran asks this question in this post, and this post.
Hey, Sb Readers, Get With It!
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2007 You all know about the dinosaur that acts like a vacuum cleaner, or a lawn mower, or whatever. This is a new find reported in PLoS. There are at least two important scienceblogs.com connections here, and since neither is to me, I feel comfortable talking (ranting) about this. The first connection is that PLoS is…
, which is now available for the 
