Also, major thanks go to Joseph Hewitt of Ataraxia Theatre for the zombie illustrations on this page and around ScienceBlogs. In addition to being a tremendous artist, Joseph also produces GearHead, an open source sci-fi RPG available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. Check it out at www.gearheadrpg.com.

We’ve also received an entry on zombie lab safety from Janet Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science, who seems to have avoided infection (for now).

The SETI Institute, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Brookhaven National Laboratory blogs are live now – you can find them at:

• http://www.scienceblogs.com/SETI/
• http://www.scienceblogs.com/weizmann/
• http://www.scienceblogs.com/brookhaven/

Blogs for the rest of the original five will be going live this week, so check back!

In the words of our Editor Evan Lerner, “Today we are expanding the ScienceBlogs platform to include the world’s top labs, enriching the discussion for our readers and providing these institutions with a new way of communicating their incredible research online. We see this as the next big leap in our mission of hosting and spurring the world’s conversation about science.”

Research institutions interested in learning more about the program are encouraged to contact Evan Lerner at +1 646 351 8582 or evanlerner@scienceblogs.com.

Perhaps it’s ethical – should companies be able to patent specific genes? Should primates have the same rights in laboratory settings as humans?

Maybe it’s silly – would you rather pet a dinosaur, or shake hands with a Neanderthal?

Or maybe you’re just looking for simple facts – what is the Higgs Boson and why do physicists want to find it? How much salt is in your fast food order?

Whatever you’ve wondered, now is your chance to ask. ScienceBlogs is reinstating our former Ask a ScienceBlogger series, in which (you guessed it), you get to ask ScienceBloggers questions, and they answer them!

Once we have a database of questions, we’ll choose one a time to pose to our ScienceBloggers, and round up the answers for you here. They can be about anything you want, but of course the more interesting we find them, the more likely we are to choose them.

Go ahead and post your question as a comment here, or email it to editorial@scienceblogs.com. And look for the first question soon!

World Water Day was designated by the U.N. General Assembly in 1992 to call attention to issues surrounding freshwater around the globe. This year, with the theme “Clean Water for a Healthy World,” World Water Day organizers hope to bring the concepts of wastewater management and water pollution into the political conversation about water alongside the issue of availability.

To observe World Water Day here at ScienceBlogs, we’ve rounded up some of the best posts about freshwater and drinking water from our archives. Check out Revere’s collection of posts on water pollution on Effect Measure, Maria Brumm’s thoughts on “Peak Water,” and the rest below:

• Water pollution posts on Effect Measure
• Have We Really Reached “Peak Water”? on Green Gabbro
• Tap Water is Not a Naturally Occurring Substance on Aardvarchaeology
• Does the Waterdrop Reduce Water Usage? on Guilty Planet
• Mandrake, Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water? on The Island of Doubt
• Clean Water for a Healthy World (World Water Day 2010) on Highly Allochthonous

Our content partners National Geographic have dedicated the entire April issue of National Geographic magazine to the issue of freshwater. And from March 22 to April 2, you can download a special interactive version of the issue for free at www.natgeofreshwater.com.

They call this special issue “an essential primer on the state of the world’s freshwater and the global implications as supplies of this finite resource are threatened.” In addition to the complete content from the magazine’s print edition, this version will contain extra photo galleries, maps and timelines, video profiles of photographers who worked on the issue and more.

Click through to get your free download of “Water: Our Thirsty World.”

So we’ve gone ahead and narrowed it down for you to what we hope you will agree are ten very deserving finalists. We based our choices on a mixture of creativity, presentation, and volume of the collective “OHMYGODYUMMMM” sound that they elicited when presented to our respective offices.

Once you think you’ve settled on your choice, vote for it in the poll on Serious Eats before midnight on Thursday. And if you have a pie in the running, let your friends know they can vote now!

WIthout further ado, here are the ten contenders for the Grand Prize of $314:


Pamela Ronald’s Swiss chard-Gruyere pie



Annie Wang’s Archi-meaty Lamb pie



Claudette’s One-Hundred-Digit pie



Brownie’s Raspberry Rhubarb “Pie r²“



Stephanie Patterson’s Blueberry Cherry Pi pie



Donna Currie’s Pie to Seven Decimal Places: 3.1415926



Veronica Vadakan’s Avocado’s Number Pie



Team Kellon’s Method of Exhaustion Chocolate Pi(e)



Aimee Schiwal’s Area 51 pie



Joanna Pool’s Irrationally Good Chocolate Basil pie

Choose your favorite now!

In this post we have a Chicken Tikka Masala pie from Duchess Shiraz, a classic Apple Pi pie from Kate Gaudry, a Stuffed Mac & Cheese Pie with 4-Herb Crust and an Avocado’s Number Pie from Veronica Vadakan, and a Cookie Cake Pie (WHAT!) from Dorothy Nguyen.

Duchess Shiraz of the Duchy of Domesticity blog went the savory route with her Chicken Tikka Masala pie. With ginger, garlic, cilantro, garam masala, chili powder, turmeric and more, this pie promises to be long on flavor, short on time in existence.

Kate Gaudry stuck with a tried and true recipe for her pie entry, baking Granny Smith apples into a perfectly golden, pi-decorated crust. If you don’t like this Apple Pi pie, you must be Canadian.

Veronica Vadakan of the blog Tiny Sandwiches loves Pi Day so much she sent us two pies! We want to show you the Stuffed Mac & Cheese Pie With 4-Herb Crust first so we can try to forget that we’re not eating it right now and move on with our lives. Apparently this one was submitted to the PDX Pie-Off last year and lost to some Moroccan thingy or other.

Portland, seriously? What is wrong with you?

Veronica also made this Avocado’s Number pie, with a gingersnap crust, coconut milk, lime, and of course avocados. She writes, “you can judge for yourself if Amedeo Avogadro would tuck into a slice himself.” Well, given that Amedeo Avogadro was a widely known opponent of avocados who cursed their existence with his dying breath…probably not.

However, we will still eat it.

Dorothy Nguyen of the Kitchen Koala is lucky that her Cookie Cake Pie isn’t called the Cookie Pie cake or the Pie Cake Cookie, or we would have to disqualify it. But since it self-identifies (for the most part) as pie, we’re on board with it.

Cookie Cake pie sometimes has trouble deciding what checkbox to select.

The number of pies in our inbox doubled overnight, and we woke up to a virtual bakery’s worth of pastries. What did we find? We’ll have to break it into two posts…

In the first we have Stephanie Patterson’s Corned Beef Hash pie and Blueberry Cherry Pi pie, Joan Cook’s Pi(es) (a)r(e) square(d), Brownie’s Raspberry Rhubarb pie (another take on r², and Jason Goldman’s Bacon and Chocolate Mousse Fibonacci pie.

You want pictures? We have pictures.

Stephanie Patterson hedged her bets and sent us both a savory pie and a dessert pie. The first is a Corned Beef Hash pie, and we think Stephanie is smart—she’s clearly chosen a recipe that can do double duty for both Pi Day and upcoming St. Patrick’s Day. Her second pie, a Blueberry Cherry Pi pie, looks like it belongs on the cover of Martha Stewart for Mathy People magazine. It also uses vodka in the crust-making process…anyone care to explain the science behind that?

Beefy.

Berry-y

Next up is Joan Cook’s cleverly titled Pi(es) (a)r(e) Square(d) pie. The recipe for this beauty is posted on her blog Linguina, where she also reveals that some other office—meaning not the ScienceBlogs or Serious Eats offices—got to enjoy this pie in person. Lucky ducks.

With a different take on the “pi r squared” theme, we have Brownie’s Raspberry Rhubarb pie. As Brownie explains on her blog Blondie and Brownie, “the area of this particular pie is approximately 70.88 inches and the r-squared so happens to be raspberry and rhubarb.”

The area of this pie would be quickly reduced to zero if we got our hands on it.

The last pie in this post is Jason Goldman’s Bacon and Chocolate Mousse Fibonacci pie. To learn how Jason’s pie was envisioned, you must read the post on his blog The Thoughtful Animal, in which he and ScienceBlogger Scicurious debate the merits of combining chocolate and bacon. Last year, voters chose Dave Bacon’s Spicy Pi Bacon Squared as the winner of the Pi Day Bake-Off. Could a bacon chocolate pie take first place again this year? Are our readers bacon loyalists? We shall see.

Wait a second, what are we saying? We can definitely find space for them if you want to send them to us…

In this next batch we have a One-Hundred-Digit berry pie from Claudette, a Banana Cream pie from Brendan Jinnohara, and an Ordered Pear pie from Deena Prichep. So much fruit pie in one post! Let’s have a look, shall we?

Claudette’s amazing One-Hundred-Digit pie is made with cherries and four different kinds of berries: raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries. The filling and dough are both pretty standard, but Claudette’s pie becomes a standout with the addition at the end of one hundred digits of pi cut out of pie crust! This might have to become part of next year’s bake-off campaign.

Brendan Jinnohara’s Banana Cream pie entry is a serious contender in the Most Photogenic prize category. It’s so pretty we can’t really imagine eating it. Though, we would still like to. He calls his crust a “No Fear Pie Crust,” which sounds encouraging, like we could actually make it. The banana filling contains cinnamon…okay, Brendan, we’re intrigued.

Mostly Foodstuffs blogger Deena Prichep’s Ordered Pear pie features a fractal pattern of pears atop a custardy frangipane filling. Deepa will be the first to point out this might actually be more of a tart than a pie, but as she says, “Pi Day is not about divisions — its about bringing us together around a love of math. And pie.” Well said.

Yesterday we posted Annie Wang’s Archi-meaty pie, Leigh’s Rabbiteye Blueberry Pie, and Stephanie’s “Grown-Up” S’mores Pie with Guinness, and ScienceBloggers James Hrynyshyn and Pamela Ronald posted their own Strawbarb and Swiss chard-Gruyere pies, respectively.

Today we bring you three more: Mareena Wright’s Cauchy’s Coconut Cream Condensation Test Pie, Zinjanthropus’s USO and Banana Pie with Anthropoid Bread Crust, and Nathan Lau’s Chocolate Haupia Pie. We’re starting to wish Pi Day came around more than once a year.

Mareena Wright, an avid reader of Casaubon’s Book, made a coconut cream pie inspired by the Cauchy condensation test. Growing up, coconut cream pies were the standard unit of currency for bet-placing in my house, so all I have to say is, YUM.

Next up is Zinjanthropus’s USO and Banana Pie with Anthropoid Bread Crust. Zinjanthropus studies (and blogs about) human and primate evolution, so it is fitting that this pie takes its inspiration from the foraging habits of early hominids. Zinjanthropus’s post is seriously worth a read, but basically, the pie combines sweet potato and banana in an “anthropoid bread” crust (anthropoid bread is, obviously, a relative of monkey bread). Speaking as an extant primate, I think those foragers were onto something.

And last we have Nathan Lau’s Chocolate Haupia pie. Haupia is a Hawaiian coconut-based dessert, somewhat like pudding. The haupia in this pie is combined with chocolate, which seems like a pretty reasonable way to make something even more delicious than it already sounds. It all gets poured into a macadamia-nut crust, as Nathan helpfully demonstrates with photos on his blog House of Annie.

Don’t mind if we do…

First, from Annie Wang at frites & fries, the ingeniously titled Archi-meaty pie. Because Archimedes was Greek, the pie itself had to be Greek too, made with lamb, feta, honey, apples and raisins.

Next up is Leigh’s Rabbiteye Blueberry Pie, originally posted on her blog 5 Acres & A Dream. Freshly picked blueberries don’t need much dressing up, and Leigh’s no-fail pie crust recipe makes them shine (or she claims…you be the judge).

If you think you can beat any (or all) of these pies, check out the 20210 Pi Day Pie Bake-Off page for more details about the contest, and make sure send us your pie by the end of Sunday, March 14! And check back here after that to vote for your favorite pie.