Social Sciences
dolittle | December 3, 2010
While searching the website of The American Physiological Society, I discovered that there are local chapters of the society all across America. So I have decided to bring highlights from their meetings to you. We will be starting with the Arizona Physiological Society as they just held their annual meeting at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona.
Here are some highlights of current non-comparative physiology research from the meeting's abstracts:
Arsenic in Airways: Researchers at The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) have been studying the effects of arsenic on the epithelial cells…
pharyngula | December 2, 2010Some Kentuckians are not happy about my comments about their fake Ark-to-be.
Ark
This is a CHRISTIAN NATION if you hooked nosed kikes dont like it then get the hell out. If it were up to me we would have camp agin for you Christ Killing piles of human sh*t. You things are like acid on society you constantly corrode it with your porn, affirmative action, civil rights, fake funny money federal reserve, being totally morally bankrupt,yourselves all of you together are less than pile of dog sh*t. Like CHRIST SAID John 8:44 you are of your father the devil, you are not of God. I will be so…
tetrapodzoology | November 29, 2010
As you'll know if you have your fingers on the throbbing pulse of dinosaur-related publications, the massive, incredibly pricey volume published by the Geological Society of London, and resulting from the 2008 meeting History of Dinosaurs and Other Fossil Saurians, now exists in dead-tree form. It's titled Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: A Historical Perspective and (in my totally unbiased opinion) is a definite must-see* for anyone interested in the historical side of Mesozoic reptile research. Here are thoughts and comments on some of the contents.
* I initially wrote 'must have',…
tlambert | November 26, 2010In part 1 of this fact check I examined Brian Dunning's assertions that DDT did not thin eggshells. Responses from Orac: "Dunning should know better", Bug Girl: "Dunning clearly got his information second-hand. And it was bad information.", and Dunning:
I think I've repeated that Milloy was not one of my sources enough times. I hadn't even heard of him.
which is a rather odd thing to say, because in comments on his podcast Dunning responded to this comment:
Yeah, the very fact that you would consider Junk Science a source worthy of citing frankly is enough to treat the entire article with…
gregladen | November 26, 2010Americans and citizens of some of the most Islamic countries tend to agree that it is a force acting on the side of good. Many Europeans say the opposite. There is a rough correlation between the religiosity of a country and how much religion is revered (duh) as a primarily good thing.
This poll was conducted in connection with the upcoming debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blaire. The overall results, combining answers across countries, indicates that a slim majority of humans are rather suspicious of religion's value as an ethical or moral compass.
sa smith | November 25, 2010It was 75 degrees yesterday.
It got down to 24 today.
And pretty much everyone else in the country is under a layer of ice/snow.
But Im not gonna write about cold scientists. Im talkin about cool scientists.
Chris Mooney, the expert on facades, appearances, and stabbing people in the back with a smile (you see, if youre smiling, its civil! we are all about civility, here!) is worried, for some reason, that scientists arent cool.
This is not necessarily scientists fault, per se, as very few professions are actually cool. Being a teacher isnt 'cool'. Being a nurse isnt 'cool'. Working at…
sb admin | November 24, 2010Update 30/11/10: 23andMe has extended their 80% discount until Christmas, without a need for a discount code.
Personal genomics company 23andMe has made some fairly major announcements this week: a brand new chip, a new product strategy (including a monthly subscription fee), and yet another discount push. What do these changes mean for existing and new customers?
The new chip
23andMe's new v3 chip is a substantial improvement over the v2 chip that most current customers were run on (the v2 was introduced back in September 2008). Firstly, the v3 chip includes nearly double the number of…
dgmacarthur | November 24, 2010Update 30/11/10: 23andMe has extended their 80% discount until Christmas, without a need for a discount code.
Personal genomics company 23andMe has made some fairly major announcements this week: a brand new chip, a new product strategy (including a monthly subscription fee), and yet another discount push. What do these changes mean for existing and new customers?
The new chip
23andMe's new v3 chip is a substantial improvement over the v2 chip that most current customers were run on (the v2 was introduced back in September 2008). Firstly, the v3 chip includes nearly double the number of…
egrossman | November 23, 2010by Elizabeth Grossman
At this year's American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting that took place in Denver November 7-11, the APHA's Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety sections proposed new policy statements that recommend proactive strategies for preventing illness and injury by reducing exposure to hazardous chemicals and through design that promotes workplace safety. All five policy statements presented at public hearings on November 7 have now been approved. Two additional policy proposals - one that addresses the public health impact of U.S immigration policy…
gregladen | November 22, 2010The recount process for the Minnesota Gubernatorial Race starts this week. The national political significance of this recount is simply not as great as the Senatorial recount two years ago. That recount determined the balance of power in Washington, sort of. It also determined the insertion into the Senate of someone clearly destine by his own abilities and energy to be one of the great ones, Al Franken, and the removal of someone clearly shown by his own actions to be one of the embarrassing ones, Norm Coleman.
But the outcome of this year's gubernatorial race in Minnesota is not…
bioephemera | November 21, 2010Today's Guardian has a very interesting (though long) article by Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder, about the unsung women of science. In the Guardian piece, Holmes shares some of his research for his forthcoming book, The Lost Women of Victorian Science:
[M]y re-examination of the Royal Society archives during this 350th birthday year has thrown new and unexpected light on the lost women of science. I have tracked down a series of letters, documents and rare publications that begin to fit together to suggest a very different network of support and understanding between the sexes.…
drorzel | November 20, 2010The final Short Story Club story is "Throwing Stones" by Mishell Baker. Once again, I find myself without a whole lot to say about it.
This is a gender-reversed Asian-flavored fantasy story. The nameless narrator lives in a city with canals and teahouses in an Empire with rigid class and gender roles, a writing system based on ideograms, and a system of temple examinations that offer the narrator a way out of low station. The big difference between this and other fantasy derived from Asian sources is that the gender roles are flipped: women hold all the positions of power, and a man's "only…
dolittle | November 18, 2010
When I saw the advertisement for the NOVA special on dogs called Dogs Decoded, I just had to watch it! This special shows just how smart man's best friend really is. If you have ever owned a dog, you have probably noticed that they seem to be tuned in to how we feel. In this special, scientists sought to figure out just how tuned in they really are. What they found was that dogs are actually able to read human emotions in a way that is similar to how humans assess each other's emotions. Moreover, humans were able to interpret the meaning of various barks that dogs make. Can you decode the…
jgoldman | November 18, 2010
Scientists thought they had a pretty good handle on the social interactions of bottlenose dophins (Tursiops). They've used the term fission-fusion dynamics to describe dolphin (and non-human primate) society and so far it has served researchers well. Fission-fusion societies among dolphins are characterized by two levels of social hierarchy: groups of two or three related males ("first-order alliances") which work together to guard one or more females from other males, and larger teams comprised of multiple related first-order alliances ("second-order alliances") which cooperate to "steal"…
stoat | November 16, 2010I haven't ranted about climate for a bit, so I think I will. Misc stuff follows, mostly commentary.
APS has a nice post on "The nothing that was Climategate" (though he really needs to upgrade his colour scheme; links are hard to see). [Update: or ClimateSight perhaps; or Bart]. APS has some nice referee's quotes of his own, and links to Joe Romm. I'll get on to JR in a moment, but first I need to comment on JR's link to...
[We interrupt this link to bring a minor update; Nature has a completely rubbish editorial on the subject.
But RC has the correct answer. Now to return...]
Robin McKie in…
dolittle | November 11, 2010 The research of James Waters and Jon Harrison from Arizona State University on ant metabolism was recently featured in a press release from The American Physiological Society.
Mr. Waters and Dr. Harrison have measured the standard metabolic rates of individual ants as well as whole ant colonies. What they found was that the colony produced only 75% of the by-products that would be produced by individual ants if each lived in isolation. In other words, the metabolism of the colony was less than the sum of each individual ant's metabolism. Moreover, they found that larger colonies had lower…
lborkowski | November 10, 2010Here at George Washington University this morning, Department of Health and Human Services officials unveiled a new strategy aimed at preventing new smoking habits and helping current smokers quit. One major component is the Food and Drug Administration's proposed rule requiring that all cigarette packages and advertising include one of nine health warnings (which will be larger and more noticeable than the current text on cigarette packs) and color graphic images that depict the negative health consequences of smoking.
The Tobacco Control Act that passed last year specified the nine text…
neurophilosophy | November 6, 2010NEW York City in the 1920s and '30s was a hotbed of criminal activity. Prohibition laws banning the production, sale and distribution of alcohol had been introduced, but instead of reducing crime, they had the opposite effect. Gangsters organized themselves and seized control of the alcohol distribution racket, smuggling first cheap rum from the Caribbean, then French champagne and English gin, into the country. Speakeasies sprang up in every neighbourhood, and numbered more than 100,000 by 1925. When prohibition was abolished in 1933, the gangsters took to other activities, such as drug…
tfk | November 5, 2010Franz De Waal wades into the science/religion fuss with a great post at the New York Times: The God-Science Shouting Match: A Response:
To have a productive debate, religion needs to recognize the power of the scientific method and the truths it has revealed, but its opponents need to recognize that one cannot simply dismiss a social phenomenon found in every major society. If humans are inherently religious, or at least show rituals related to the supernatural, there is a big question to be answered. The issue is not whether or not God exists — which I find to be a monumentally uninteresting…
pharyngula | November 3, 2010I've run into this particular phenomenon many times: the True Believer in some musty ancient mythology tells me that his superstition is true, because it accurately described some relatively modern discovery in science long before secular scientists worked it out. It's always some appallingly stupid interpretation of a vaguely useless piece of text that wouldn't have made any sense until it was retrofitted to modern science. My particular field of developmental biology has been particularly afflicted with this nonsense, thanks to one man, Dr. Keith L. Moore, of the University of Toronto. He's…