Social Sciences
laelaps | March 6, 2008
There's a new paper out in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B about the ever-controversial Homo floresiensis, the authors of the paper arguing that the fossils representing this new species are actually "myxoedematous endemic cretins," of the species Homo sapiens. The condition the authors propose is expressed by the Flores hominid is generally caused by a lack of iodine in the diet, such a deficiency causing the thyroid gland to produce improper amounts of hormones associated with bone growth and brain size, resulting in mentally-impaired individuals of small stature. So far the paper…
gregladen | March 6, 2008There is a new paper out suggesting that the Flores hominids, known as Hobbits, were "human endemic cretins."
From the abstract of this paper:
... We hypothesize that these individuals are myxoedematous endemic (ME) cretins, part of an inland population of (mostly unaffected) Homo sapiens. ME cretins are born without a functioning thyroid; their congenital hypothyroidism leads to severe dwarfism and reduced brain size, but less severe mental retardation and motor disability than neurological endemic cretins. We show that the fossils display many signs of congenital hypothyroidism, including…
razib | March 6, 2008Small kerfuffle about the fact that ScienceBlogsTM is so white. Some amusement that I am one of the white science bloggers. In any case, this comment caught my attention:
Second, it is no secret that minorities of most stripes are seriously underrepresented in science. Bloggers are even more pointedly underrepresented in the pool of scientists. (Hard to categorize the "pool" from which the non-working-scientist SBers are drawn, so let's not even go there). It takes no genius to see that even if minority scientists were more likely to blog that this pool would be pretty dang small.
This is…
drorzel | March 5, 2008
The Quantum Pontiff : Twins in Donut Space
Mmmmmm.... Paradoxical Donuts......
(tags: physics relativity theory)
Laelaps : Preaching to the choir
"Has there ever been a time when science has been highly valued by the general public? "
(tags: science society class-war culture history)
Shockwave traffic jam recreated for first time - tech - 04 March 2008 - New Scientist Tech
Japanese scientists create flawless simulation of Washington, DC. Make sure to watch the video.
(tags: physics psychology science video youtube)
Richard Feynman Needs His Orange Juice | Cosmic Variance
What can I…
omnibrain | March 4, 2008Whenever I walk down the hall someone pulls me aside and says "Help me Steve! I don't know what journal to submit my paper to. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure who does research similar to me. I need to help find people to review my article. I don't know my own field that I'm publishing in!"
I tell each and every one of them that there's a new system out there called Jane (aka The Journal/Author Name Estimator) which allows you to put text (abstract, title, whatever) into a little text box and it will find journals and people who have written about your topic.
Ok so maybe this is a…
drorzel | March 3, 2008Michael Nielsen is planning to attend an "unconference" and is considering possible topics. He quotes one from Eva Amsen:
My idea: find 4 or 5 volunteers from different backgrounds to sit on a 20 minute panel and (with audience feedback) make a list of Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Science. Since we have a wide audience, this hopefully would be a varied list. Actually, maybe we could just put up a large sheet of paper and have people write down what they think should be on the list and get back to it later.
Michale offers a suggestion, which leads him to ponder scientific literacy,…
omnibrain | March 3, 2008
So how does Superman do it! He can see through buildings and clothing (he checks out Lois Lane's underwear in Superman 1 - more on this later). Many have attempted to answer this question of the ages yet few have explored this in as much depth as J.B. Pittenger who published a study in the journal Perception back in the stone ages (1983) entitled "On the plausibility of superman's x-ray vision"
But first, before we get into the meat of the paper, lets see what others around the InterWebs have said about Superman's amazing seeing through underwear powers.
In Correcting Misconceptions…
gregladen | March 2, 2008Right, I know, he just died so we have to pretend we did not loath him for a least two weeks. But I have the sense that William Buckley would not give me that courtesy, so forget that.
I am reminded that Buckley is often quoted as having said words to these effect:
I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2000 people on the faculty at Harvard University.
What a dummy.
The most recent instance in which I've seen the man with my own eyes, and heard him with my own ears, saying this (on TV, not in real life ... because he's dead and all…
drorzel | March 1, 2008
Stephen Huneck Gallery at Dog Mountain Vermont
" I wanted to build a chapel, one that celebrated the spiritual bond we have with our dogs, and that would be open to dogs and people. People of any faith or belief system."
(tags: dog religion art animals)
Such Madness - New York Times
Let the hype assault begin...
(tags: basketball sports)
Michael Nielsen » Questions
Big picture questions about science, the Web, and everything.
(tags: science society culture internet politics education academia)
Idiom Shortage Leaves Nation All Sewed Up In Horse Pies | The Onion - America's Finest News…
nisbetmc | March 1, 2008
In this week's Point of Inquiry podcast, host DJ Grothe and I share a wide ranging discussion about the relationship between science and religion in the United States and the impact of the New Atheist movement. Much of the discussion revolves around the themes that I explored in the presentation at the AAAS panel on "Communicating Science in a Religious America."
From a description for the show:
In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, Nisbet highlights the recent AAAS panel he organized titled "Communicating Science in a Religious America." He details his ideas for the most effective strategies…
oracknows | February 29, 2008It's very bad when I have a week off. Very, very bad.
The reason is that when I have a week off I have this rather unfortunate tendency to stay up late at night, and when I stay up late at night I have an even more unfortunate tendency to check out late night infomercials that show up between the hours of 2 AM and 4 AM. Such was the case the other night when I found myself sitting in bed bathing in the glow of the LCD screen, staring in utter awe at the woo I found until my wife's annoyed retort told me that I was yelling at the TV screen. Even so, I still wondered whether I should use it for…
j7uy5 | February 28, 2008Judith Warner has some insightful essays in the NYT column, pertaining
to the long-raging question about whether psychiatric patients are
style="font-style: italic;">overmedicated or
style="font-style: italic;">undermedicated.
One of the essays addresses the question directly:
style="font-weight: bold;"
href="http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/overselling-overmedication/">Overselling
Overmedication
Judith Warner
February 14, 2008
...In the book, Barber
argues that Americans are being vastly
overmedicated for often relatively minor mental health concerns. This
over-…
tqa | February 28, 2008
On Tuesday, I posted a "can you identify this animal" quiz. I put a picture of an animal up, along with some information about it. The photograph was taken with the animal in captivity, at a location that was relatively near where the animal lived in the wild. The picture was not taken in Australia, and the DNA sequence that was superimposed over the image came from the animal in the picture.
Shawna was the first person to correctly identify both the species of the animal and the location where the picture was taken. The animal is a Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata), and…
clock | February 27, 2008A blog is software.
Importantly: a blog is free software.
Everyone can use it in any way they want. If there are 100 million blogs out there, there are 100 million blogging styles and 100 million ideas what blogging "is". And anyone who dares tell others how to do it incurs the wrath of the other 100 million who are NOT going to be told what to do. Blogosphere is democratic - the voice of millions of individuals who finally have the ability to have their voices heard. They will never accept any authority telling them how to do it and what they can or cannot write.
This means that one also…
esiegel | February 27, 2008It's been a spectacular week for the film space industry, and here at Starts With A Bang!, we've got the recap of all the highlights that you may have missed while watching the countless Oscar montages. Take your time browsing and enjoying this site, and maybe even find out what the question is if 42 is the answer! And now, without further ado, here are the winners from the 43rd Carnival of Space, as chosen by Ethan Siegel, your magnanimous host of this week's Carnival (and check out all previous carnivals here):
Nancy Young-Houser, of A Mars Odyssey, for Stellar Breakthrough Performance…
terrasig | February 27, 2008I was remiss in noting that Hungarian medical student and Medical Web 2.0 guru Berci Meskó has hosted the current and rather large Grand Rounds medical blog carnival at his excellent blog, Science Roll. Fresh off his US tour that included a presentation at the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference and a talk at Yale University, Doctor-to-be Meskó returns in stride with the week's wide spectrum of medical blogging.
For those new readers, blog carnivals are periodic compilations of posts organized around general topical areas. For example, Grand Rounds is a general medicine carnival begun…
oracknows | February 27, 2008A few days ago, I came across an article on Engadget that mentioned almost in passing some studies that seemed to indicate health problems or no health problems, depending on the specific study, due to the ubiquitous and maligned cellular telephone. Not having dealt with this issue much on my blog, I decided to take a look, mostly out of curiosity. The claims that cell phones somehow cause cancer have been circulating for many years, and the studies marshaled to show such a link have in general been not that impressive. However, even though radiofrequency radiation of the sort used in cell…
terrasig | February 26, 2008I just received this news from Americans for Medical Progress with a link to the Santa Cruz Sentinel reporting on the home invasion last evening Sunday of a UC-Santa Cruz breast cancer and neurological disease researcher:
UCSC researcher targeted in attack - animal rights activists believed to be behind home invasion
26 February 2008 0645am Eastern
The news is disturbing, and if indeed the violent fringe of the animal rights movement is behind the attack, it represents a serious and criminal escalation in its tactics used to harass researchers. AMP joins others in the research community in…
jjacquet | February 25, 2008I spend a lot of time complaining about the ineptitude of the science world when it comes to mass communication and function in mainstream society. But all of a sudden here is this Science Debate 2008 effort that is being run with shockingly good style and savvy. Who in the world is behind such a non-science-like effort? It all tracks back to Matthew Chapman, science writer, screenwriter, descendent of Charles Darwin, and member of the general public who was disappointed at the lack of discussion of science and technology by the presidential candidates. I contacted him and asked 5 simple…
tsmith | February 25, 2008This is the first of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
by Matthew Fitzgerald
Viruses cause cancer?
Cancer researchers have for decades known that viruses can cause cancer. It is now estimated that 15% of the world's cancers are caused by infectious diseases including viruses. Some of these include: Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and cervical cancer; Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) and nasopharyngeal cancer & lymphoma; Hepatitis B and liver cancer. In fact cancer researchers use this knowledge of viruses causing cancer by utilizing EBV and SV40 and other viruses to "…