Environment
vlicata | June 4, 2010I've started to write a few different posts in the past few weeks, but their different topics just don't seem to matter in the face of the death of the Gulf of Mexico, especially the affectionately named Redneck Riviera - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle - these areas are most assuredly dead. Field researchers from LSU who have been on the coast in the past few weeks say that these shorelines will be dead for decades, no question, and that we still don't know how much longer it will go on, and consequently how much farther it will extend.
There numerous excellent…
cagapakis | June 2, 2010Biosafety has been on everyone's mind this week after the announcement of the J. Craig Venter Institute's successful transplantation of a synthetic genome. What horrible pathogen will future bioengineers be able to design? What unforeseeable environmental catastrophe will befall us upon the release of genetically engineered bacteria? These are hugely important questions as research in synthetic biology moves forward, being discussed in congressional hearings and as an integral part of every new synthetic biology design.
As the major proposed goal of a great deal of synthetic biology research…
hrynyshyn | June 2, 2010If the title of Matt Ridley's new book, The Rational Optimist, sounds a little familiar, that's because it borrows heavily from the world view of one Bjorn "The Skeptical Environmentalist" Lomborg. Both contrarians dismiss global warming as nothing to worry about, although Ridley seems even less convinced that the planet is actually experiencing anthropogenic global warming. I don't have time to read it -- but I did manage to take a look at the kind of thinking that Ridley uses at his blog.
This week, Ridley wrote about what his research in the "Holocene Optimum," uncovered. What he found, he…
mikethemadbiologist | June 1, 2010Happy Tuesday. Here are a lot of links from a long weekend. Science:
Scientists Build Case for Undersea Plumes
Attacking Science to Defend Beliefs
When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent
Safety Rules Can't Keep Up With Biotech Industry
Gulf oil spill is public health risk, environmental scientists warn
Other:
Slavery of migrant farmworkers continues in the U.S. to this day
Headline of the Month: Why a Pigeon Is Under Armed Guard in India
When Teen Pregnancy Is No Accident
Weakening America: Mitch McConnell Shows How
Insulin giant pulls medicine from Greece over price cut…
illconsidered | May 31, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose...May 30, 2010 Chuckles, COP16+, Oslo, IPBES, How do we know?, Reforestation, Science-Beliefs, Oily Excuses Bottom Line, Subsidies, Royal Society, Post CRU, Late Comments Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle,…
eklemetti | May 29, 2010Hope no one minds my shameless plug here, but I get a lot of questions about books to read if you're interested in learning about volcanoes. There are an awful lot of good books out there and we can add one more to that list: Volcanoes: Global Perspectives" by Jack Lockwood and Rick Hazlett. I've been able to go through the book and it covers almost everything a volcanophile would want to know about volcanism on Earth and in the solar system - including some information I didn't know (which isn't a big surprise). It is written as a textbook for advanced undergraduates, but as along as you…
egrossman | May 28, 2010By Elizabeth Grossman
"All the data shows no toxic air concentrations from the oil spill where work is being performed," is what OSHA spokesperson Jason Surbey told me on Friday, May 21st.
But on the afternoon of May 26th, after crew members of three "vessels of opportunity" working in the Breton Sound area of the Gulf reported experiencing nausea, dizziness, headaches, and chest pains - and one was medevaced by air to West Jefferson Hospital in Marrero, Louisiana and two others taken to the same hospital by ambulance - the Unified Command recalled all vessels of opportunity working in that…
clock | May 27, 2010Thursday - four out of seven PLoS journals publish new articles and I make my own picks. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Influence of Climate Warming on Arctic Mammals? New Insights from Ancient DNA Studies of the Collared Lemming Dicrostonyx torquatus:
Global temperature increased…
dblum | May 27, 2010 The latest news from the Gulf of Mexico offers both relief (the "top kill" approach to ending the oil spill may be working) and dismay (the amount of oil pouring into the water is now thought to be closer to 20,000 barrels a day rather than the 5,000 barrels that BP has insisted on for weeks.)
In other words - at worst case - the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the spill amount may be closer to 39 million gallons of oil so far, rather than the 11 million previously suspected. Now, I've spent the last week or so focusing on the chemical dispersants used to break down the oil,…
clock | May 25, 2010Tuesday night - time for four PLoS journals to publish new articles and for me to check them out and pick a few I consider most bloggable. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Flower Bats (Glossophaga soricina) and Fruit Bats (Carollia perspicillata) Rely on Spatial Cues over Shapes and…
illconsidered | May 24, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsMay 23, 2010 Chuckles, IPCC-5, COP16+, Figueres, Cochabamba, NAS-ACC, Lyman, Ocean Volume Lake Tanganyika, Anthropocene, Carbon Tariffs, Subsidies, TEEB, Malaria, Hartwell, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures…
grrlscientist | May 23, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…
clock | May 21, 2010First big piece of news is the new PLoS Hub for Biodiversity - see the details on the PLoS Blog.
Second big piece of news is the New PLoS ONE Collection - Biodiversity of Saba Bank - the collection homepage, where all the articles are collected, is here and the overview article is here.
There is some movement on The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) in Congress. Keep up with the updates at the The Alliance for Taxpayer Access site, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) site, or by following PLoS on Twitter.
There is ten days left for the April Blog Pick…
laelaps | May 21, 2010
A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
Outside of the trash-grubbing black bears I occasionally come across when driving to hikes in northern New Jersey, I never encounter large predators near my home. The imposing carnivores which once roamed the "garden state" were extirpated long ago. This is a very unusual thing. For the majority of the past six million years or so hominins have lived alongside, and have regularly been hunted by, an array of large carnivorous animals, but humans have not been entirely helpless. Rather than a one-…
pronald | May 21, 2010The number of people on Earth is expected to shoot up from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050. How will we feed them? If we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions of birds and billions of insects will die, and farm workers will be exposed to more and more chemicals. And still, we will not have enough food. Clearly, there must be a better way.
Some scientists and policymakers suggest that genetic engineering, a modern form of crop modification, will dramatically reduce our dependence on pesticides, enhance the health of our…
illconsidered | May 17, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Information overload is pattern recognitionMay 16, 2010 Chuckles, Shiva, COP15, COP16, Cochabamba, Oh Oh, Sinervo, GBO-3, Hartwell, QUB Subsidies, Eli's Retirement, Open Letter, Pro-IPCC, IAC Review, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, CCD, IP Issues, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols,…
clock | May 13, 2010Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Tom Linden from the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?
My passion always has…
cagapakis | May 11, 2010Unlike many of my colleagues, I'm not really interested in the whole "science vs. religion" thing, but I do want to point out the very thoughtful analysis of genetic engineering and synthetic biology by the Church of Scotland's Society, Religion, and Technology Project. On GM food, they write:
The official scientific and economic reports support the view of the 1999 Assembly, that GM is not a simple 'yes or no' issue and must be taken case-by-case, weighing up many different factors. Theologically, SRT has found no convincing reason to say it is a wrong act to transfer genes into a crop from…
illconsidered | May 10, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose...May 9, 2010 Chuckles, COP15 Leak, Bonn, COP16, Cochabamba, IPCC Review, EPO, Rabett, Beck Bottom Line, Carbon Tariffs, Per Capita Quotas, Open Letter, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Colony Collapse, Land Grabs, IP Issues, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Nitrogen Cycle,…
illconsidered | May 7, 2010Science has published a letter with 250 signatories protesting the recent and extreme attacks on scientists, climate scientists in particular. I agree with Michael, this letter should not be behind a paywall. I think the fact that it is, is disturbingly revealing of the disadvantage science has in the PR arenas.
It is very well done, though to be honest I wish they had not pushed the creationist button and had instead used an entirely different example of well established science to make their point. As scientifically non-controvesial as the age of the earth is, we need to reach even those…