Environment
evolgen | December 12, 2006My call for ecology blogs went better than expected. I expected next to nothing, but I got more than nothing -- at least enough to consider it further away from nothing than next to it. Anyhow, I have compiled a list of blogs below the fold. They are grouped into those that deal with the science of ecology and those that deal with conservation, environmentalism, bird watching, etc. Some of the blogs were on the boarder between science and other, and I can't give a great explanation for how I decided where to put them. The order is somewhat arbitrary; it's the order in which I put toghether…
clock | December 12, 2006New Insights Into The Origin Of Life On Earth:
In an advance toward understanding the origin of life on Earth, scientists have shown that parts of the Krebs cycle can run in reverse, producing biomolecules that could jump-start life with only sunlight and a mineral present in the primordial oceans.
The Krebs cycle is a series of chemical reactions of central importance in cells -- part of a metabolic pathway that changes carbohydrates, fats and proteins into carbon dioxide and water to generate energy.
Scot T. Martin and Xiang V. Zhang explain that a reverse version of the cycle, which makes…
grrlscientist | December 10, 2006
Image source.
Environmentalists want to use corn to produce ethanol as an alternative fuel, especially as we run out of fossil fuels. However, there is a growing conflict between the 800 million automobile owners who want to continue driving their vehicles and the poorest 2 billion people in the world who simply wish to stay alive.
"The grain required to fill an SUV tank could feed one person for one year," says Lester R. Brown, a MacArthur "genius grant" winner with impeccable environmental credentials.
As it is, farmers currently do not grow enough food to feed the world's population…
clock | December 10, 2006Sleep Problems -- Real And Perceived -- Get In The Way Of Alcoholism Recovery:
The first few months of recovery from an alcohol problem are hard enough. But they're often made worse by serious sleep problems, caused by the loss of alcohol's sedative effects, and the long-term sleep-disrupting impact that alcohol dependence can have on the brain.
Solving Darwin's Dilemma: Oxygen May Be The Clue To First Appearance Of Large Animals :
The sudden appearance of large animal fossils more than 500 million years ago -- a problem that perplexed even Charles Darwin and is commonly known as "Darwin's…
sb admin | December 8, 2006Health and environmental bloggers have covered a wide array of topics this week. Some highlights:
Steve at Omni Brain (don't click the link while eating) displays graphic warnings from Belgian and Thai cigarette packs
Merrill Goozner at GoonzNews posts an excerpt from his just-published article (cover story of The Scientist, for those with subscriptions) on treating malaria on the Thai-Burmese border.
Revere at Effect Measure challenged those who inveigh against alternative medicine to respond to a study that found chicken soup to inhibit neutrophil chemotaxis, and a lively discussion ensued…
evolgen | December 8, 2006My university has been hosting panel discussions on science, religion, and teaching. I missed the first installment, which consisted of faculty members from science and humanities departments and a local clergyman. The second discussion was led by four students from a course cross listed in Science and Technology Studies and Philosophy. The topic of this discussion was teaching science and religion, but the discussion often strayed to the intersection of science and religion in general. It would have been nice if they stayed on topic. I, however, can't hold much against them, as I once took a…
pharyngula | December 7, 2006You may recall that a while back Nature published a letter from a Polish creationist, Maciej Giertych. This week, they published some of the replies. It's entertaining stuff: I've put all the letters below the fold.
A timely wake-up call as anti-evolutionists publicize their views
from U. Kutschera, Institute of Biology, University of Kassel
Sir:
Your Special Report "Anti-evolutionists raise their profile in Europe" (Nature 444, 406 407; 2006) mentions a seminar held in Brussels at the European Parliament on 11 October 2006, as part of a new strategy by supporters of intelligent design (ID)…
tlambert | December 6, 2006The latest paper being touted by the global warming skeptic crew is by a couple of petroleum engineers named Khilyuk and Chilingar and concludes
The current global warming is most likely a combined effect of increased solar and tectonic activities and cannot be attributed to the increased anthropogenic impact on the atmosphere. Humans may be responsible for less than 0.01°C (of approximately 0.56°C (1°F) total average atmospheric heating during the last century)
But what is the basis for this conclusion? Well, they work out total man-made CO2 emissions and ...
Recalculating this amount…
tfk | December 4, 2006SAn international team of scientists has gotten the first look ever at deep sea communities off the coast of New Zealand. The project, part of a larger effort to survey all the major areas where such communities exist, turned up new species and new problems. The area surveyed has four types of chemosynthetic habitats, including the sorts of hydrothermal vents we've become familiar with, and less familiar cold seeps.
At the hydrothermal vents, molten rock provides energy and nutrients to communities of bacteria, worms, crabs and other odd creatures. At the cold seeps, methane or hydrogen…
sb admin | December 1, 2006By David Michaels
The Bush Administration is manufacturing uncertainty about global warming, even as its allies in the carbon producing industries are abandoning it.
Last week, the Washington Postâs Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin reported that âtop executives at many of the nation's largest energy companies have accepted the scientific consensus about climate change and see federal regulation to cut greenhouse gas emissions as inevitable.â John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co, said
We have to deal with greenhouse gases. From Shell's point of view, the debate is over. When 90-plus…
sb admin | November 27, 2006by Liz Borkowski
If you haven't read Laurie David's op-ed, "Science a la Joe Camel," in yesterday's Washington Post, I recommend clicking over to it. David was a producer of Al Gore's climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," and reports that the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) turned down 50,000 free DVDs of that movie, which the movie company offered for classroom viewing.
Why would an organization of science teachers turn down a movie that brings science to a mainstream audience and tackles what's arguably the most important environmental issue of the day? Because,…
nisbetmc | November 27, 2006
Readers of FRAMING SCIENCE who work in downtown DC or on Capitol Hill may want to take an extended lunch break tomorrow to check out this American Meteorological Society briefing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rm. 106, featuring one of your favorite bloggers. ;-)
The Divide between Values and Behavior: Exploring American Perceptions of Global Warming and the Environment
Many in society still largely adhere to the notion that 'If we just tell people the facts, they'll reach the right conclusion.' Is this notion supported by research on risk perception, decision-making, and…
clock | November 15, 2006An oldie but goodie (June 12, 2005) debunking one of the rare Creationist claims that encroaches onto my territory.
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I got homework to do. PZ Myers alerted me to an incredible argument that the existence of circadian rhythms denies evolution!
bryanm, the proprietor of the aptly-named The Narrow blog, describes himself as "...nobody who wants to tell everybody that there is somebody who can save anybody." In other words he is a know-nothing who keeps bothering everybody trying to push his idea that there is this non-existent being who…
revere | November 5, 2006Genes and bird flu are being talked about again. A WHO study is "stating" some kind of genetic factor may be at work, but it appears it is only an observation that in the notorious Indonesian Karo cluster of eight family members, only those "related by blood" were affected by the human-to-human spread:
Only blood relatives were infected in the Karo district of North Sumatra, the largest cluster known to date worldwide, "despite multiple opportunities for the virus to spread to spouses or into the general community," it added.
The theory - which it said merited further study - was contained in…
chaoticutopia | November 1, 2006
...or at least, the end of any simple theory regarding the extinction of our saurian predecessors. A few announcements from the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America last week concerned the simplicity of mass extinctions. For instance, new evidence suggests the Chicxulub meteor impact was not the sole cause of the end-cretaceous extinction:
The Chicxulub impact may, in fact, have been the lesser and earlier of a series of meteors and volcanic eruptions that pounded life on Earth for more than 500,000 years, say Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller and her…
clock | October 30, 2006Trotting With Emus To Walk With Dinosaurs:
One way to make sense of 165-million-year-old dino tracks may be to hang out with emus, say paleontologists studying thousands of dinosaur footprints at the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite in northern Wyoming. Because they are about the same size, walk on two legs and have similar feet, emus turn out to be the best modern version of the enigmatic reptiles that once trotted along a long-lost coastline in the Middle Jurassic.
Grape Seed Extract Halts Cell Cycle, Checking Growth Of Colorectal Tumors In Mice:
Chemicals found in grape seeds significantly…
hrynyshyn | October 22, 2006For a guest post to the meta-blog Daily Canuck, I whipped off a few words on the chasm between what's considered politically feasible when it comes to a national climate change strategy for Canada and what climatology suggests will be necessary. Along the way, I got sidetracked by the bigger question of what to do when the "moderate," "reasonable" or, to use a Taoist phrase, the "middle way" is no longer up to the task of addressing a serious threat.
It seems pretty darn obvious that by now, we have allowed ourselves to get in just such a situation. Here's the fundamental problem:
1. Even…
clock | October 20, 2006An oldie (March 28, 2005) but goodie, bound to stir up the comment section (why do I post controversial stuff on Fridays when the traffic starts coming down?)
WHAT SHOULD WE CALL THEM?
First, who is "them"? Second, why should they be "called"? Third, who are "we"? Fourth, why "should" we call them anything? Finally, "what" is the appropriate name? These are all interconnected questions, dealing with the current US political environment, and the notion of "framing".
In his book Moral Politics (MP) and later, more explicitely, in "Don't Think Of An Elephant" (DTOAE), George Lakoff…
clock | October 18, 2006Since this is another one of the recurring themes on my blog, I decided to republish all of my old posts on the topic together under the fold. Since my move here to the new blog, I have continued to write about this, e.g., in the following posts:
Preserving species diversity - long-term thinking
Hot boiled wine in the middle of the winter is tasty....
Global Warming disrupts the timing of flowers and pollinators
Global Warming Remodelling Ecosystems in Alaska
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Clocks, Migration and the Effects of Global Warming (December 23, 2005)
Circadian…
bcohen | October 2, 2006There are a range of campus sustainability initiatives across the US and across the world (though the US needs them more). There's even a conference this week at Arizona State held by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
One nice opportunity with campus-wide approaches is that they can avoid being "sustainable" for the sake of "sustainable development." Most efforts that use the sustainable term are, to be sure, aiming to develop their incomes and resource uses in sustainable ways, not to sustain the earth and ecological health. They are, in other…