Misc
Page 3.14
Category archives for Misc
Genital Warts Will Be History
Posted by Wesley Dodson on April 25, 2013 
On ERV, Abbie Smith reports on the phenomenal success of the HPV vaccine in Australia. The vaccine, designed to protect against several types of sexually-transmitted papillomavirus, was first administered to Aussie girls in 2007. Since then, total prevalence of the virus among young women has dropped from 11.5% to less than 1%—and to 0% among…
Catching Up on Homepage News
Posted by Wesley Dodson on April 15, 2013 I have been remiss in not posting articles from the homepage here on Page 3.14…so to catch up, here’s four at once. No Beauty Without Water On World Water Day, think of the water cycle that defines this planet. On The Pump Handle, Liz Borkowski writes “rivers often flow through multiple countries, and actions by…
Meteor Impact Blasts Chelyabinsk
Posted by Wesley Dodson on February 26, 2013 
For once an asteroid strikes when we were kinda, sorta expecting one to. According to the Washington Post, the Russian Academy of Sciences “estimated that the meteor weighed around 10 tons and was traveling at 10 to 12 miles per second (roughly 30,000 to 45,000 mph) when it disintegrated.” The same report estimates that more…
Perennial Perils of the Solar System
Posted by Wesley Dodson on February 15, 2013 
On February 15th, Asteroid 2012 DA14 came hurtling between us and our satellites, twelve times nearer than the Moon, so close that it was visible through binoculars from certain parts of the globe. Greg Laden writes, “This asteroid is not going to hit the earth now or during any of the next few decades, but…
Attention to old Combined feed users
Posted by Wesley Dodson on February 14, 2013 If you use the old Combined or Select feeds, you might notice they’re broken. Please use our new sitewide feed url: http://scienceblogs.com/feed/. You can also subscribe to channel feeds such as http://scienceblogs.com/channel/brain-and-behavior/feed/. But really you should just hang out at Last 24 hrs and keep clicking on things. http://scienceblogs.com/last-24-hours/.
Beyond Cloud Nine
Posted by Wesley Dodson on October 19, 2012 On Universe, Claire L. Evans notes the renewed appreciation than can come with a change in perspective—whether it’s seeing the space shuttle Endeavour roll past a Sizzler in South Central, or daredevil Felix Baumgartner leap towards the Earth from 24 miles up. Baumgartner, aided only by gravity and a spacesuit, broke the speed of sound…
Silent Spring 50th Anniversary
Posted by Wesley Dodson on October 1, 2012 On Casaubon’s Book, Sharon Astyk says that although many books are ascribed profound historical significance, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring truly brought environmentalism to the mainstream. Carson described the deadly effects of pesticide use on its unintended targets—birds, wildlife, human beings. Carson was a nature-lover at heart, but her memory will always be tied to…
Threatening Zoonoses
Posted by Wesley Dodson on August 27, 2012 Two weeks after an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, the same disease is circulating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But the outbreaks have been caused by two distinct subtypes of virus, meaning they were not spread from one country to the other. The same thing happened in 1976, when over 500 people died…
Global Warming Reiterated
Posted by Wesley Dodson on August 3, 2012 At first glance, Richard Muller’s “conversion” from global-warming skeptic to true believer—based on research funded by global warming denialists—is a welcome surprise. Hey, people can change their minds! But on Stoat, William M. Connolley takes a more critical view. Connolley asks, “Everyone who has doubts gets to run their own re-analysis of the temperature record?…
Higgs Completes Standard Model
Posted by Wesley Dodson on July 19, 2012 At scales where nothing can see, the best science is done by colliding particles at near lightspeed and picking up as many “pieces” as possible. We know of six quarks (which combine to make baryons, protons, and neutrons), six leptons (which include electrons and neutrinos), and four gauge bosons (which carry or exchange the fundamental…
