amillikan
Posts by this author
March 17, 2009
There are several misconceptions circulating about Charles Darwin and his revolutionary ideas and theories in the field of evolution. That's why, in honor of Darwin's birthday last month, ScienceBlogger John Wilkins from Evolving Thoughts took it upon himself to clear things up. In his eight-part…
March 16, 2009
March 14, we here at ScienceBlogs celebrated the universally important ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter—the number that has now been calculated to over a trillion digits—the mythical, the irrational Pi. On this highly-regarded mathematical day, ScienceBloggers turned in their…
March 14, 2009
When will humans turn over the job of war to robot slaves? According to Peter W Singer, author of the new book Wired for War, it's happening already. In this week's Science Saturday, Peter and John Horgan discuss the role of robots in the success of the Iraq surge and whether America is starting…
March 13, 2009
Yesterday, Seed Media Group was proud to launch a new and improved SEEDMAGAZINE.COM. The site is loaded with rich content, advanced navigational tools and display features where design and functionality are flawlessly combined to guide you through all the glorious science you could want.
From the…
March 10, 2009
Pictures from the Building_Space_With_Words event:
The maze.
The venue.
The interface.
The Seed stand.
______Photos by Sheila Prakash.
March 10, 2009
Among the non-coding DNA that composes a large percentage of the genomes of humans and other eukaryotic organisms, pseudogenes are genes that were once active but were rendered defunct by mutations at some point in evolutionary history. But some pseudogenes may regain their functionality. A study…
March 10, 2009
President Obama signed an executive order today to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research signed into place by President Bush in 2001. The ban limited funding to fewer than two dozen existing lines of embryonic stem cells, severely crippling scientists who use embryonic…
March 9, 2009
Last Wednesday I took a voyage into the blogosphere. Upon entering this physical manifestation of the place I spend most of my time, a mix of words and light swirled around me, illuminating my field of vision from every angle as thoughts, desires and observations rushed forward from the trenches…
March 9, 2009
In an opinion piece published in the Huffington Post Wednesday, a woman dying of leukemia vehemently spoke out against animal testing in medicine, positing that scientists might have found a cure for her condition by now if "they weren't sidetracked by misleading animal tests." While acknowledging…
March 7, 2009
In this week's episode of Science Saturday, John Horgan and George Johnson discuss a recent debate about the identity of humanity's closest living relatives, an anthropological case study in the link between technology and violence, and the dizzying complexity of the mathematics of the financial…
March 6, 2009
The third edition of The Open Laboratory 2008, a compilation of the best science-related blog posts of last year, is now available for purchase in the Lulu Marketplace. The book was started by ScienceBlogger Bora Zivkovic in 2006 as a way to lend credibility to the new media form of blogging and…
March 6, 2009
The confirmation of two of President Obama's top science advisers was delayed yesterday as several senators placed anonymous holds on what was expected to be a quick vote. John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco, Obama's nominees to head the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the…
March 6, 2009
After complaining during a U.S. Senate hearing that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine he spearheaded wasn't yielding results that validated such practices, Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA) is facing the backlash of his statements from ScienceBloggers. Many of the alternative…
March 5, 2009
Sunday March 1, Seed employees and friends of Seed ventured up to the NY City College campus to help judge the annual New York City Science Fair. The event was sponsored by Seed, as science fairs are an important part of the learning and scientific development process for young minds. Additionally…
March 3, 2009
Day in and day out, scientists devote their time to exploring the unknowns of the physical world. Here on ScienceBlogs, our many contributors do the same so that they may provide enlightenment about the questions that plague us. Questions such as: Why does black ice form? What's up with that…
March 2, 2009
Come one come all! February is Black History Month, and to celebrate the diversity in science professions, DNLee from the blog Urban Science Adventures! has arranged a blog carnival titled 'Diversity in Science.' Many ScienceBloggers and other major contributors in the science blogosphere are…
March 2, 2009
Following President Obama's address to Congress Tuesday, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal delivered a speech on behalf of the Republican National Committee that criticized a government spending bill, claiming it was "larded with wasteful spending" because it allotted $140 million for "something…
February 28, 2009
Maybe not nearly as long as many anthropologists believe. That's the thesis of Gregory Cochran's controversial book, The 10,000 Year Explosion, which Gregory discusses with ScienceBlogger Razib Khan of Gene Expression in this week's Science Saturday. They also talk about how the evolution of…
February 26, 2009
Last weekend, a letter from acting NIH director Raynard S. Kington was distributed to NIH investigators and began making the rounds in the blogosphere as well. The letter detailed specific plans for the $8.2 billion of NIH funding included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus…
February 24, 2009
When considering the virality of internet memes—that is, the likelihood that a given item of web goodness will be passed from one person to another as fast as you can press Control+C, Control+V and send—there are many theories as to what causes these explosions of web transference. But examining…
February 22, 2009
The Washington Post is facing criticism after refusing to issue a correction for an erroneous statistic cited by Op-Ed columnist George Will's column topic—that global sea ice levels are the same as they were in 1979. The statistic was summoned to support his column's viewpoint that global warming…
February 21, 2009
In this week's Science Saturday, blogger and astronomer Phil Plait chats with science journalist Carl Zimmer. They talk about the time Buzz Aldrin punched a moon-landing denialist in the face, how consumer-culture gadgetry can serve the cause of science, the death of newspapers in the Internet age…
February 21, 2009
Thursday, February 19 ScienceBlogger Bora Zivkovic from A Blog Around the Clock gave a presentation on open science as part of a panel discussion at Columbia University in New York City. The event, titled "Open Science: Good for Research, Good for Researchers?" was organized by the Scholarly…
February 16, 2009
Today is Friday the 13th, and things are getting a little bit weird here at ScienceBlogs. I mean, birds wearing backpacks? The possibility of a Neandertal genome sequenced? Scicurious talking about co... oh wait, that's actually pretty normal. If we were superstitious though, we might think there…
February 10, 2009
The author of the 1998 paper that fueld the anti-vaccination movement by asserting a link between MMR vaccinations and autism was recently found to have falsified his original data. The Sunday Times reports that the study's author Andrew Wakefield "changed and misreported results in his research"…
February 6, 2009
While anacondas and pythons, the largest known snakes alive today, can reach over 30 feet long and swallow antelope whole, they are dwarfed in size by the newly discovered Titanoboa cerrejonensis, a serpent that lived during the Paleocene epoch whose bones were unearthed recenty in a Colombia coal…
February 4, 2009
The Blogosphere is abuzz about an article in the LA Times regarding Second Lady Jill Biden's preference to be acknowledged by her honorific title of "Doctor," which references her Ph.D in education. The article states that many prominent newspapers, including the LA Times and the Washington Post,…
February 3, 2009
As the field of genetics sheds its sci-fi image and gains approval in the public eye, the possibilities unravel for mainstream commercial use. But some worry that if couples can use In-Vitro Fertilization to screen for disease during pre-implantation procedures, they could use it to select desired…
February 2, 2009
It's become something of a tradition here at ScienceBlogs to write series of posts that are published on Fridays. For example, Janet from Adventures in Ethics and Science writes Friday Sprog Blogging, a tribute to her inquisitive offspring, and Abel from Terra Sigillata has been known to author a…
January 31, 2009
In this week's episode of Science Saturday, John Horgan chats with philosopher Denis Dutton about his book, "The Art Instinct," which argues that our artistic values are due, in significant part, to biological adaptations dating back to the Pleistocene.
Next, John and Denis discuss sex and…