Contrasting approaches to brain death and religion:
Pharyngula: A tragic tale, made worse by dogma
Twelve year old Motl Brody has died. A tumor destroyed his brain, and the consequences are unambiguous...This is sad, but final...except for one little problem. The boy's family belong to a sect of Hasidic Jews who cling to an archaic belief that life is determined by the presence of a beating heart...
Orac: Brain death and fundamentalist religion
I realize that the title of this post might sound as though I'm equating brain death and fundamentalist religion. As tempting as it is sometimes to do so, I'm not. What I'm more interested in is a story I came across by way of ScienceBlogs Big Kahuna blogger P.Z. Myers last night, mainly because it brings up some serious ethical issues, aside from any religious issues. P.Z. tackled the story as he usually does tackle stories involving religion, with all the subtlety of a jack hammer in a glass factory.
The Scientific Inidan is proud to point out A piece of India on the moon.
DO NOT FORGET: The Open Laboratory 2008 - two weeks till the deadline!
Green beards, flocs of yeast and the evolution of cooperation
When we think about cooperative behaviour, most of us would think of animals like ants, meerkats, lions or, indeed, humans. But don't rule out yeast. The small, single-celled fungus has provided us with much of our knowledge of genetics and molecular biology and now, it's shedding light on the evolution of cooperation too.
This is an illustration of Basilosaurus, a fossil whale discovered in Egypt by Phil Gingerich and colleagues. Gingerich is the guy who taught me everything I know knew about collecting fossils....
