Social Sciences
ksharpe | March 3, 2009Originally posted by Scicurious
On February 26, 2009, at 1:06 AM
About a week ago, a prof in my MRU loaned me a book he'd just read, saying it would be right up my alley. He was very right. I couldn't put it down. It's already changed a great deal about the way that I think about addiction, as well as the way I think about finding a cure.
The book was "The End of My Addiction" by Olivier Ameisen. Half case report, half memoir, Olivier Ameisen was a well-known cardiologist doing some crazy good work in New York. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic. After more than a decade of broken…
grrlscientist | March 2, 2009tags: pinky, pink bottlenose dolphin, albino bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, Lake Calcasieu, Eric Rue
Image: Eric Rue, Calcasieu Charter Service.
A rare pink Bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, has resurfaced two years after it had first been seen in Lake Calcasieu, an inland saltwater estuary, north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern Louisiana.
The young dolphin, which was first sighted as a calf in June 2007 and photographed a few weeks later, gets its brilliant pink color and bright red eyes from blood vessels that lie just below its layer of blubber. This pink color is…
sa smith | March 2, 2009(H/T AtBC)
Oooooooookaaaaay. I think its time for nappy-nap time at the Discovery Institute. Casey-baby is all cranky, and now Michael Egnor, who is normally the most adorable cuddliest toddler ever has thrown a mighty temper tantrum.
While their ba-bas are warming up in the microwave, lets preserve this rant for posterity. Cause its all about how awesome Creationism is. Yes, Creationism. Engors word. Not mine (well, its mine too for describing ID, but he did it *points*):
Most Americans are creationists, in the sense that they believe that God played an important role in creating human…
grrlscientist | March 2, 2009tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch, Leucosticte tephrocotis,
photographed at Meadows Campground, Hart's Pass,
in the Okanagan of Washington State.
Image: Lee Rentz, 19 October 2008.
Birds in Science
The unusually intact fossilized skull of a giant, bony-toothed seabird that lived up to 10 million years ago was found on Peru's arid southern coast, researchers said. The fossil is the best-preserved cranium ever found of a pelagornithid, a family of large seabirds believed to have gone extinct some 3 million years ago, said…
clock | February 28, 2009Babies Learn Music While Sleeping:
Early screening and treatment for infants with hearing problems, and the ability to computer-generate musical scores, are two very different possible outcomes of some "off-the-wall" research. Until recently, little has been known about the perceptions humans have when they enter the world. Although adult perception has been extensively researched, how, or even if, the brains of newborn babies perceive patterns in the world remained a mystery.
Scientists Discover Why Teeth In Mammals, But Not Sharks, Form In A Single Row:
A system of opposing genetic forces…
clock | February 26, 2009Another editorial about science blogging today, this time in Nature Methods: Lines of communication:
The public likes science stories it can easily relate to, and we have to admit that most science, including that published in Nature Methods, is unlikely to get more than a snore from nonscientists. In contrast, science stories that have a human interest or other emotionally charged angle require the concerted efforts of both journalists and scientists to ensure that the public understands the story well enough to make an informed personal decision. A failure in this regard can lead to a…
tqa | February 26, 2009
Remember that Colorado State Senator I talked about yesterday? The one that voted against the HIV testing bill because he thought it would encourage humanity? It turns out that he really, really doesn't know when to stop talking. He gave an interview to the Rocky Mountain News after the vote. Reading the things he said, I'm well and truly past appalled. This man, who currently holds elected political office, clearly does not understand the concept of what it means to be a human being.
What he said afterward:
"What I'm hoping is that yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a…
tqa | February 23, 2009
What Government - at least as we know it - Is.
Timothy Sandefur and I have been debating the proper role of government in funding scientific research for a couple of weeks now. Over the course of the debate, it's become clear to me that he and I do not have a common understanding about what our government actually is, or what the right relationship between the government and the citizens actually is.
Over the years, we humans have tried out more forms of government than you can shake a stick at. In the context of this particular debate, though, whenever we've used the term "government",…
jstemwedel | February 23, 2009Over at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, Dr. Isis looks at challenges of opening up participation in human subjects research to potential subjects who are not fluent English speakers:
When one enters the university hospital here at MRU, there are a number of skilled and qualified translators that are available to help patients that can't dialogue in English to communicate with health care staff. They are able to sufficiently translate documents to allow a patient to provide some reasonable level of consent (my M.D. blog buddies can debate the quality of said consent). There…
eklemetti | February 23, 2009
I have never had to leave my home in an evacuation from a natural disaster. I'll put that out there right now. So, I might not fully understand the emotions going through people when they find out that they have to leave their home by no fault of their own because nature has decided that where they live is no longer livable. I especially don't know what it might be like if you are then told you can never go back. You might have a home there. You might own a business there. You might have grown up there. Your great grandparents might have lived there over 100 years ago. Yet, you are told -…
jstemwedel | February 23, 2009Over at The White Coat Underground, PalMD looks at the ways in which delivering good health care to deaf patients depends on providing good interpreters -- and notices the difficulty of making this happen:
How do we approach this as a society?
Item 1: Deaf people have special needs with regards to interactions with the health care system.
Item 2: The government mandates that proper interpreters be provided for doctor visits.
Item 3: Neither patients nor doctors can afford to provide this service.
Now don't go telling me that "all you rich doctors can afford to get the interpreter"---we most…
drorzel | February 21, 2009
Cocktail Party Physics: science, politics, and getting it wrong
"One surefire way to panic the heck out of people is to mention nuclear bombs and radical Islam in the same sentence. I dunno about you, but I kinda had a mini-freakout when I read about the amount of enriched uranium the United Nations says that Iran has at its disposal for bomb making. It was hard not to, with the alarming headlines: the LA Times said "IRAN HAS ENOUGH FUEL FOR A NUCLEAR BOMB, REPORT SAYS"; the New York Times was a little more low-key: "IRAN HAS MORE ENRICHED URANIUM THAN THOUGHT." Coupled with our mostly…
drorzel | February 20, 2009
mmcirvin: Some children's music
"We listen to a LOT of children's music these days. Maybe a little too much sometimes. On the other hand, we're fortunate to live in an age of relatively listenable children's music with some adult appeal. Here's some stuff Jorie's been hearing lately:"
(tags: blogs music kid-stuff)
Acephalous: Batman as a Monster in a Classic Horror Film (Batman Begins)
Another of Scott's really interesting shot-by-shot analyses of Batman movies.
(tags: blogs education academia movies humanities)
slacktivist: TF: Inaction Heroes
"For those who did read the first book,…
jrosenhouse | February 20, 2009The general blog drought around here lately will, regrettably, continue a while longer as I dig out from under a big pile of work that isn't getting done on its own. But I just had to poke my head up for a minute to comment on this bit of silliness from the lunatics over at Uncommon Descent.
By now I'm sure you've seen the New York Post cartoon, in which a policeman, having just shot and killed a chimpanzee, remarks, “They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” This was a play off the recent story about the pet chimpanzee who went crazy and mauled a woman. The…
tetrapodzoology | February 20, 2009
While checking a few details on kiwi skeletal anatomy the other day, I discovered some old material I'd written on these strange birds. I've updated it, and here's the first lot of it.
Kiwi have been known to science since 1813. In that year George Shaw (then the Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum), writing in the final volume of his series The Naturalist's Miscellany, described a specimen that had been given to him by Captain Barclay, a privateer engaged in the transport of convicts. Investigation of Barclay's voyages reveal that he probably never visited New Zealand, so he must have…
gregladen | February 18, 2009Nature, the publishing group, not the Mother, has taken Darwin's 200th as an opportunity to play the race card (which always sells copy) and went ahead and published two opposing views on this question: "Should scientists study race and IQ?
The answers are Yes, argued by Stephen Cici and Wendy Williams of the Dept of Human Development at Cornell, and No, argued by Steven Rose, a neuroscientist at Open University.
I would like to weigh in.
The real answer, as is so often the case, is "You dumbass, what kind of question is that? Think about it further and rephrase the question!"
But I don't…
denialism | February 17, 2009Dan MacArthur has started a big discussion on whether or not the relationship between IQ and race should be studied. Inspired by a pair of essays for and against the idea it has created a pretty healthy debate among the sciencebloggers including Razib with whom I will likely never agree on this issue. For the record, I'm on the side of those like Richard Nisbett (for a good review of his analysis of race and the black white divide see here PDF) that genetics are a poor explanation for the divide.
But this issue aside, why do I believe this is a still a bad idea to expend resources to…
gregladen | February 14, 2009In Genesis 4, we see specific reference to herdsmen and farmers as distinct groups, represented by Abel and Cain, respectively. God indicates a preference for the results of herding over planting, and the sibling troubles that ensue result in the world becoming a difficult place to farm, and humans becoming more nomadic, as herders. This is interesting, because it seems like a dramatic shift from reference to irrigation agriculture to herding. Given the usual role of origin stories, we may be seeing a layering of blame in this case. If this is the origin story of cattle keeping nomadic…
cwilcox | February 13, 2009Happy Valentine's Day! Though, I doubt this post fits well into your lovely romantic images of the day...
I promised another vertebrate, so here it is, a parasite so cruel it's sure to make you cringe: The Candiru.
It looks innocent enough. It's a little catfish. Heck, it's so little it's known as the "toothpick fish", and yet it's more feared in the Amazon River than the fierce Piranha.
To understand why, you have to understand what this parasitic catfish does. It's intended hosts are other fish. When it finds a host, it burrows its head in to its gills and eats the blood, tissues, or mucus…
tqa | February 13, 2009
No. But that's apparently not enough to keep some people from making the claim.
There's a story that's making the rounds on some right wing blogs that John Holdren said, at his confirmation hearing, that he thinks that 1 billion people will die as a result of global warming by 2020. So far, that claim has been made at The National Review Online by Chris Horner:
Just got this e-mail from someone up on the Hill, regarding John "Clearly NOT the 'Science' Guy" Holdren's confirmation hearing as (of all things) chief science advisor to the president). I do think it's fair to say we told you so…