Wednesday Morning Roundup

I took a break from doing the morning roundup yesterday, but everybody's favorite least-read morning "things that I don't have time to really blog about so I'm going to blog about in one fell swoop" post returns today. Today's load is actually on the light side. There are a couple more consequences of climate change to talk about, a question about disability access to labs, and a little more on framing. Iraq and the Virginia Tech shooting are also in the news, but I'm not going to talk about them here.

Climate Change Goodies:

The more we think about climate change, the more potential disasters we learn about. Joseph points out (and comments on) an article that discusses the vast amounts of water used to generate power in the United States. That amount is likely to increase in the future. Why? It turns out that a lot of the processes that cool the machinery and remove pollutants.

Meanwhile, there's another grim warning over at The Worlds Fair. It turns out that many of us have forgotten what Steve McQueen told us after the Air Force removed a huge threat from our midst some five or six decades back: we're only safe from The Blob as long as the Arctic stays cold.

Frame, frame, frame. . .frame of fools:

Orac has another good article up on the whole framing flap. Matt (one of the authors of the article that inspired the whole thing) is talking about it on his blog today, too. PZ and Larry Moran remain determined to remain unconvinced. Chad has a few comments on and for them.

Disability Access:

Janet wonders how accessible our labs are to people with disabilities. The lab I work in isn't bad, but it's not good, either.

As far as mobility impairments are concerned, we've got plenty of pathway space, and few barriers that would block easy movement from place to place in the lab. On the other hand, our lab benches are, for the most part, at conventional lab bench height. We've got two moveable benches that are at a convenient height for someone working from a wheelchair, but right now both are in use as gel stations, so some reworking would be necessary to clear them for personal access.

Having someone with a visual impairment enter the lab would require more reworking, but more reworking of our personal habits than reworking of the space. Things move around a lot, there's equipment that doesn't have a set home, things are stacked on top of other things in drawers, that sort of thing. Those changes would actually be harder to make, I think, than setting things up for someone in a wheelchair.

Janet also asks, in passing, about fieldwork. That's a much bigger challenge. There are projects that can be done by people with disabilities, but my own fieldwork would be very, very difficult for people with either mobility or visual impairments. I choose which flies to collect based on the dark and light spots on their wings, and I'm working in some relatively steep areas with lots of vegetation to get through.