Environment
razib | October 4, 2007Evolution happens faster than originally assumed:
Studying animals from Bighorn sheep to guppies, the research has revealed that animals are evolving to human changes in the environment within 200 generations. "They can be pretty dramatic [changes]," Kinnison said.
...
"People are just catching on to how important these changes are," Kinnison said. The changes discovered in these species showed that those driven by human intervention appear nearly twice as fast as those driven by a natural environment, according to a press release.
The above was a press release from the University of Maine…
cortex | October 2, 2007You know what I think of when I read stories like this?
The pace of change [in the polar ice caps] has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. But that disconnect can cut two ways. Are the models overly conservative? Or are they missing natural influences that can cause wide swings in ice and temperature, thereby dwarfing the slow background warming?
I think of the Atlantic Cod. These fish used to be everywhere. (Once upon a time, they were considered…
illconsidered | October 1, 2007This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's GW news roundup(skip to bottom)
Top Stories, African Floods, Melting Arctic, Greenland, Ward Hunt Lake, Polls, CDP Meetings, UN, Clinton Initiative, Washington, Retrospectives Hurricanes, Ozone, Sea Levels, ENSO, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Rainforests, Wacky Weather, WildFires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Agro-Corps Mitigation, Transportation, Sequestration, Iron Hypothesis, Ocean Pipes Journals, Misc. Science Kyoto, Carbon Trade, Carbon Tax, Optimal Carbon Reduction…
tqa | September 29, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, I posted two ridiculous quotes that are found in the Bob Jones textbook that's involved in the California Creationism lawsuit. I'm still wading through these texts and Behe's report explaining why it's really a very good book for high school students to use to learn biology. It's a slow process, and a painful one, but I've found another couple of outstanding quotes to share with you.
This time, I'm including three different types of quote. There are a couple where the authors say things have absolutely nothing to do with science of any kind (and are totally out to…
clock | September 26, 2007
Now that the registration for the Science Blogging Conference is open, it is time to remind you that the new edition of the Science Blogging Anthology, "Open Laboratory 2007", is in the works and is accepting your suggestions.
Although the entire process, from the initial idea all the way to having a real book printed and up for sale, took only about a month, the Open Laboratory 2006 was a great success. This year, we have much more time so we hope we will do an even better job of it.
More than 100 entries have come in so far (see under the fold) and we are looking for more. I have read…
illconsidered | September 25, 2007This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's GW news roundup
(skip to bottom) Top Stories, IPCC WG2 2007 Report, Montreal Protocol, African Floods, Melting Arctic, Antarctica, Methane Burp Hurricanes, Temperatures, Glaciers, Sea Levels, el Niño, NEO Impacts, Tropical Rainforests, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts, Biofuel & Food Mitigation, Transportation, Architecture, Sequestration, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science Kyoto, Carbon Trade, Carbon Tax, Optimal Carbon Reduction Strategy Politics, International, Kofi's Forum…
clock | September 21, 2007
How The Brain Handles Surprise, Good And Bad:
Whether it's a mugger or a friend who jumps out of the bushes, you're still surprised. But your response--to flee or to hug--must be very different. Now, researchers have begun to distinguish the circuitry in the brain's emotion center that processes surprise from the circuitry that processes the aversive or reward "valence" of a stimulus. C. Daniel Salzman and colleagues published their findings in the journal Neuron.
Official Kilogram Losing Mass: Scientists Propose Redefining It As A Precise Number Of Carbon Atoms:
How much is a kilogram? It…
nisbetmc | September 20, 2007
E.O. Wilson is on a noble mission to bridge the perceived divide between science, religion, and partisanship. In his book, The Creation, by framing environmental stewardship as not only a scientific matter, but also one of personal and moral duty, Wilson has engaged an Evangelical audience that might not otherwise pay attention to popular science books, or for that matter, appeals on the environment.
Shifting his focus to the partisan divide, Wilson employs a similar strategy by penning the forward to a forthcoming book by former Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich. In A Contract with the…
pharyngula | September 19, 2007People keep sending me interesting news stories! More than I can handle! So let me do a little linkdump here, and you can sort through them and see if anything is of interest.
Ben Stein is visiting Baylor! You knew they'd rush to squeeze in one more dramatic scene of the oppressive atmosphere at a Baptist university while the Marks/Dembski noise is still hot. The ass-prod, Mathis, is going to be cruising the campus for footage, and he claims the biology majors are reluctant to talk to him: "If you were a biology student, you wouldn't dare touch this." The implication is that biology majors…
nisbetmc | September 17, 2007 Philosopher Paul Kurtz has been an influential mentor to me and he remains a major inspiration. Back in 1997, Kurtz hired me to work at the Center for Inquiry-Transnational as Skeptical Inquirer's media relations director. Three years later he strongly supported my decision to go to graduate school.
In my time at CFI, I learned from Kurtz the importance of framing messages in ways that affirm shared common values and that go beyond just attacks. When I arrived at graduate school, I began to research how to turn Kurtz's philosophy and practice into a systematic approach to public engagement…
goodmath | September 17, 2007 Both in comments, and via email, I've received numerous requests to take a look at
the work of Dembski and Marks, published through Professor Marks's website. The site is
called the "Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory". Before getting to the paper, it's worth
taking just a moment to understand its provenance - there's something deeply fishy about
the "laboratory" that published this work. It's not a lab - it's a website; it was funded
under very peculiar circumstances, and hired Dembski as a "post-doc", despite his being a full-time professor at a different university. Marks claims that his…
sb admin | September 14, 2007Journalists and editors were in the spotlight this week. At the Society of Environmental Journalists conference, attendees grappled with journalistsâ role in covering climate change; Robert McClure at Dateline Earth and Richard Littlemore at DeSmogBlog report. Tara C. Smith at Aetiology highlights one cringe-inducing example of a newspaper getting an important statistic wrong, while Revere at Effect Measure criticizes newspapersâ failure to correct factual errors.
Bloggers also pointed out public health-related calendar items: Gloria Feldt at RH Reality Check reminds us to celebrate Margaret…
angrytoxicologist | September 14, 2007Three things I thought you might find interesting today, starting with the shortest:
Don't pass the gas.
When you get crude oil, there is usually a natural gas pocket that goes along with it. Most drillers just burn it off. According to the World Bank, the gas burned off last year was enough to supply 27% of the US need for natural gas (~$40 billion dollars). Geez, if you you're gonna burn it, you might as well burn it in a usefull way. I should add that producers wouldn't get $40B, it costs money to collect it. (Via C&EN) (Thanks for indulging my juvenile title :) Oh, and my juvenile…
pharyngula | September 11, 2007On eBay, obviously!
The source is the PL Institute of Space Technologies. It's an amazing place that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in "Creationist in Sciences" (a Cr.S. degree is not equivalent to a bachelor's degree, they say), and also carries out research in these fields:
Creational Healing: We develop a new kind
of healing method.
Electrical Engineering: We develop and use
a new kind of semiconductor technology mainly based on silicon, copper and
oxygen, and we search for new energy systems, etc.
Minor-System-Technology: This
environmentally sustainable technology uses a…
jrosenhouse | September 11, 2007Over at blogfish, Mark Powell has a little challenge for me:
Scientists opposed to “framing” science keep asking for an example of what framing science looks like when done well. Here's a very good example in Carl Safina's description of an effort to raise awareness of climate change.
I challenge PZ Myers, Jason Rosenhouse and other haters of framing to consider what Carl is doing and respond. And...for those who say what is this about...the question is how can we get scientific information to play a bigger role in public policy. Some say “frame” the science so people can hear the message.…
grrlscientist | September 10, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Clark's Grebe, Aechmorphus clarkii, in the foreground with a Western Grebe, Aechmorphus occidentalis, behind. Both were photographed on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge (north end of the Great Salt Lake) in the spring of 2005. Similar birds, but the field marks are straw-yellow bill (Clark's) cf. greenish-yellow bill (Western); white feathering around the eye (Clark's) cf black (Western), and whiter flanks on the Clark's Grebe. This pair of birds was hanging out together, and that was not unusual, making one wonder…
voltagegate | September 10, 2007
Perhaps the best fair in all of Western PA is the Somerset Historical Society's Mountain Craft Days, which finished up yesterday, under the threat of looming rain clouds. Fortunately, we didn't need to break out the umbrellas this year (nor did I break out the camera - I forgot it, sadly).
It's set on the SHS's ground outside of the town, and is more or less a showcase of the cream of local artisans selling their wares, combined with demonstrations of how people lived in the 18th Century Appalachians - they have replicas of cabins, cooking & laundry methods, musicians playing period…
j7uy5 | September 4, 2007IBM is launching
href="http://linuxgazette.net/142/lg_bytes.html">Project
Big Green. Part of the initiative is to consolidate
operations in the world's largest data centers. They will
replace nearly 4,000 servers with 30 refrigerator-sized
System
Z mainframes, running Linux, using virtualization technology.
This will reduce energy usage by about 80%, saving about $250
million per year.
What's more, the consolidation will leave plenty of room for
future expansion.
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Tesla Roadster
The University of New Hampshire is going to
href="http…
hrynyshyn | August 31, 2007Talk about alarmist climate science. A new study has confirmed earlier propositions that the most recent ice age will be the last, for at least half a million years, if we don't stop burning fossil fuels. But I say, this is not something we should be worried about.
In "The long-term legacy of fossil fuels," (Tellus B, 59(4): 664-672, September 2007), Toby Tyrell, John Shepherd and Stephanie Castle at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton conclude that the ocean's ability to absorb all that carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere to keep our decadent lifestyles afloat will…
nisbetmc | August 30, 2007
Science has published four letters in response to our framing article along with a fifth letter as our reply.
As it turns out, I know two of the correspondents fairly well.
Earle Holland, the author of the first letter, is assistant VP for Research Communications at The Ohio State University, where I served on the faculty for three years before moving to American University and Washington, DC. During my time at Ohio State, Earle attended a Dean's Lecture on framing that I gave to the College of Biological Sciences. We also discussed the nature of science communication several times. He…