Technology
laelaps | September 23, 2008How do the conversations that occur on science blogs foster the development of science in academia? While conferences and papers are certainly an important part of the current scientific infrastructure, conversations about those more formal sources of information have always played a pivotal role in the development of science, and according a new paper published by my fellow ScienceBloggers Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith in PLoS, science blogs are a good way to extend those dialogs.
The paper starts out with two well-known success stories; the rapid rise of Pharyngula to…
scientificactivist | September 22, 2008Just over a year ago, I joined fellow science bloggers Shelley Batts (Of Two Minds) and Tara Smith (Aetiology) in setting out to catalogue the accomplishments--and pitfalls--of the scientific blogosphere and to explain why people should pay attention. In a sense, we wanted to say "We are the science bloggers; hear us roar!" And, in order to make our case, we drew from the collective experience of our fellow science bloggers, far and wide, asking how blogging had affected their work, their careers, and their lives--both positively and negatively.
The results were astounding. Across the…
clock | September 17, 2008Under the fold:
Ex-Cheney aide: Bush won't hit Iran:
US President George W. Bush will not attack Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program before his term ends in January, David Wurmser, a key national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney up until last year, has told The Jerusalem Post.
Election 2008 | Papers Examine Comparisons of McCain, Obama Health Care Proposals, Positions on Science :
Three reports examine the health care plans of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Wall Street Journal reports (Meckler,…
dgmacarthur | September 15, 2008The successes of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in identifying genetic risk factors for common diseases have been heavily publicised in the mainstream media - barely a week goes by these days that we don't hear about another genome scan that has identified new risk genes for diabetes, lupus, cardiac disease, or any of the other common ailments of Western civilisation.
Some of this publicity is well-founded: for the first time in human history, we have the power to identify the precise genetic differences between human beings that contribute to variation in disease susceptibility. If…
nisbetmc | September 11, 2008Following up on her testimony before Congress yesterday, MIT President Susan Hockfield writes in the Washington Post today that the U.S. needs a Manhattan Project-scale investment in renewable energy R&D.
Drawing on the metaphor of Vannevar Bush's pact between government and science, Hockfield describes that part of the problem is the absence of serious R&D investment from the major energy companies, despite what they might tell us in TV advertisements:
Today, the United States is tangled in a triple knot: a shaky economy, battered by volatile energy prices; world politics weighed…
aardvarchaeology | September 10, 200820 years ago, radiocarbon dating was transformed by the widespread adoption of AMS analysis, accelerator mass spectroscopy. Willard Libby's original scintillation-counting method demanded large sample sizes and a lot of time per sample. The sample size meant that many interesting things couldn't be dated at all, and that once you had gotten a large enough chunk of organic material together, chances were that it would be heavily contaminated with later stuff. The time demands meant that prices were high.
Radiocarbon technology continues to advance. A few years back, I learned that a method had…
terrasig | September 10, 2008Despite having to employ biophysical methods in my day job, I must admit my woeful understanding of physics as a discipline. I wasn't like my high school grease monkey friends using torque wrenches on their cars with Springsteenonian dedication and my lowest grade in undergrad came in physics. For that reason, I rarely have the opportunity to link to fellow ScienceBlogger, Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles. Prof Orzel was one of the earliest science bloggers, coming online in June, 2002.
Chad posted about being on the programme of a meeting in Waterloo, Ontario, entitled, "Science in the…
dgmacarthur | September 9, 200823andMe is one of three companies currently providing chip-based personal genomics assays, which provide information about up to a million sites of common variation throughout the human genome. These companies provide insight into a limited but informative slice of your genetic diversity, as I discussed yesterday, giving you information about variants contributing to the risk of a number of common diseases and other traits.
Since their launch earlier this year, 23andMe and competitor deCODEme have offered their genome scan services for a fraction under $1,000. Now 23andMe has announced a…
dgmacarthur | September 8, 2008This little USB drive represents the current pinnacle of luxury personal genomics. It's the product of Knome (pronounced "know me"), a Cambridge, MA-based biotech start-up fronted by genomics pioneer George Church (recently profiled in Wired). In return for $350,000, Knome's customers receive a shiny 8 Gb drive containing their entire genome sequence (or rather, a hefty fraction of it), along with specialised browser software for viewing it.
$350,000 is a hell of a lot of money to fork over for a few gigabytes of data. So, how much of a return will these customers be getting on their…
sa smith | September 6, 2008If youre a long time reader of SciBlogs, you probably remember when James Watson was on the advisory board of SEED. You also probably remember he was removed from that position after he made some idiotic racist (and sexist) remarks.
In a wonderful bit of scientific lulz, Craig Venter recently compared his genome with that of James Watson and made some predictably astute observations about race, genes, and drugs.
'Individual Genomes Instead of Race for Personalized Medicine' (its open access right now!)
Lets say you have a headache, so you decide to take some Tylenol. It dissolves in your…
stoat | September 2, 2008Stein alerts me to Obama answering the science debate questions, and provides some of his own commentary. T' Intersection reports, but wimps out of any analysis. The answers are here. So, looking only at those bits that interest me:
1. Innovation... What policies will you support to ensure that America remains the world leader in innovation?
Obama's answer to this (see below) is reasonable: increase spending on research etc. But this sits very oddly with his restatement of the problem:
...the U.S. annually imports $53 billion more in advanced technology products than we export. China is now…
dmunger | September 2, 2008Over the weekend we finished transferring ResearchBlogging.org from its dependably quirky old home to sleek new digs. If you haven't visited the site in the past 72 hours, you should definitely head over to take a look -- or even if you have, you should go back again, since dozens of new posts have been added over the weekend. In addition to a fantastic redesign, the site has tons of new features.
We've been working for the last six months with Seed Media Group, who has generously donated hundreds of hours of project management, site design, and development from their expert SMG Technology…
scientificactivist | September 1, 2008On Saturday, ScienceDebate 2008 and Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) announced that Barack Obama answered a fourteen-part questionnaire that they put together along with several other scientifically oriented organizations. Major props to ScienceDebate, SEA, and these other organizations for making this happen and to Barack Obama for thoroughly answering these fourteen questions.
I'd encourage you to check out his answers for yourself, at either of the links above. My own analysis is that his answers overall are quite satisfactory. He says all of the right things for the most part…
revere | August 31, 2008The folks at ScienceDebate2008 pushed hard during the primaries to have the candidates address science policy. Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum from Scienceblogs The Intersection were among the leaders in this movement. They didn't succeed in getting a debate then, but now with the field down to the finalists, they have received a response from Barack Obama to 14 questions culled from over 3400 submitted by the 38,000 signers of the ScienceDebate initiative (we were proud to be among them; they include nearly every major American science organization, the presidents of nearly every major…
drorzel | August 31, 2008As you have no doubt seen by now, if you read any of the other blogs on ScienceBlogs, the Science Debate 2008 group has gotten Barack Obama to answer their 14 questions on science issues. John McCain has apparently promised answers at some point in the future.
The answers are, well, pretty much what you would expect. For example:
What policies will you support to ensure that America remains the world leader in innovation?
Ensuring that the U.S. continues to lead the world in science and technology will be a central priority for my administration. Our talent for innovation is still the envy…
dgmacarthur | August 31, 2008Note: I'm splitting this off from my earlier post on 23andMe's encouragement of genetic testing of children, since I think this rather speculative argument distracts from the main point of that post.
I mentioned in my previous post that there's a real danger that parents might try to use information from current genetic tests to steer their children in specific directions (and that at least one company is already touting such a test) - but the information available right now from genome scans simply isn't accurate enough to justify such decisions.
For instance, to mention a field close to my…
sheril | August 30, 2008
In November, 2007, a small group of six citizens - two screenwriters, a physicist, a philosopher, and Chris and I - began working to restore science and innovation to America's political dialogue in an initiative called ScienceDebate2008. Within weeks, more than 38,000 scientists, engineers, and other concerned Americans signed on, including nearly every major American science organization, dozens of Nobel laureates, elected officials and business leaders, and the presidents of over 100 major American universities. Signers submitted over 3,400 questions and we worked with the leading…
josh donlan | August 27, 2008In the recent issue of the journal Biological Invasions, my colleague Chris Wilcox and I published an essay entitled, Integrating invasive mammal eradications and biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch: conservation opportunities and challenges for seabirds and sea turtles. It expands on a previous paper we wrote in 2007 that makes an argument for biodiversity offsets in the fishing sector. The idea has turned out to be controversial to say the least, but that is not unexpected - new ideas are often so, and biodiversity offsets in general have been controversial in nature.
Here is how…
sheril | August 26, 2008originally published November 2, 2007 by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum
I'm publicly responding to a particular reader's provocative comments because women-in-science is a topic that needs to be settled. Finally. After which, I'll be moving away from the great gender divide for a while and back to science and policy next week. Here goes.
November 2, 2007
Hello there Gabe,
You may be wondering why I'm addressing you in this forum. Well, since you visited both blogs and stirred up quite a response, I figured you deserve to be in the spotlight.
To begin, I'm glad you read our blog and take enough of…
skookumchick | August 26, 2008The Scientiae theme for September is "my summer vacation." My first week of class started today, so perhaps this is a good way to remind myself of what I've done this summer.
We had dinner early in May at a friend and colleague's house to acknowledge my husband's decision to step away from his tenure-track job.
I went to a co-PI meeting in Washington DC for a grant we are hoping to get in mid-May - learned a lot, networked, and got all jazzed up to get the grant. Unfortunately, at the end of August, we're still waiting to hear. We have made progress in the meantime, however - we have…