Technology
pontiff | March 18, 2008Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author, predictor of the future, and inspirer of at least one little kid from rural Northern California, is dead at age 90.
Although I learned to cringe at some of Clarke's writing as I grew older, I have very distinct and fond memories of reading "Childhood's End" and "Rendezvous with Rama." (Like all such memories, I dread rereading these for fear of losing my even now foggy recollections of the joy these books brought me.)
And then, of course, there are Clarke's Three Laws:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he…
sheril | March 17, 2008Our partner on the ScienceDebate2008 steering committee, Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of Science magazine contributed this Op-Ed piece to today's Philadelphia Inquirer:
A successful president thus needs to be science-minded. Voters deserve candidates who can answer core science-related questions crucial to our future. Here's the start of a presidential questionnaire.
National Security: The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on advanced missile-defense systems and now plans to update our nuclear weapons and…
revere | March 16, 2008The headline seemed to say it all: "Funding Issues Stymie Pandemic Preparation." Right, I thought. All the money is going in to procurement, too little into shoring up a failing public health system. Little did I know:
The fear of bioterrorism and avian flu are driving a healthy new interest by biotech firms in developing products in the field of infectious diseases. "Even though we were developing a smallpox vaccine in 2000, there is no doubt that 9/11 was the moment that biodefense suddenly came up the funding ladder in the U.S.," said Clement Lewin, Ph.D., vp of marketing policy and…
pharyngula | March 15, 2008The critics of atheism seem, without exception, to be lacking in imagination. Over and over again, what we hear from them is desperate attempts to pigeonhole atheism as just another religion; they squat uncomprehendingly in their hovels built of faith and peer quizzically at the godless, seeking correspondence with their familiar theological nonsense, and crow in triumph when they find something that they can sort of line up with their experiences. "They want more people to think rationally — why, that's evangelism!" Never mind that you could, with the same legitimacy, argue that when one…
moleculeoftheday | March 14, 2008Like alizarin, indigo is a dye that we used to have to rely on a plant to make. Now we're able to synthesize it:
Indigo used to be prepared from natural sources, like plants. Modern synthetic techniques have made it cheap and plentiful. While this might seem like not such a big deal, can you imagine a world without colorful...well, much? Everyone wearing Amish white and dishwater grey?
Nowadays, we tend to use dyes that have nothing to do with plants, like Yellow 5, Red 40, and Blue 1 (the separation of which you can see here). Dyestuff technology has advanced with synthesis and physical…
clock | March 14, 2008Got an e-mail from AAAS and will try to go if at all possible:
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and North Carolina State University, will be holding a one-day workshop "Communicating Science: Tools for Scientists and Engineers" on Thursday, April 3, 2008. We aim to extend an invitation to the faculty scientists, engineers, and Ph.D. students at your institution who would like to attend this workshop, in order to learn more about communicating science to news media and the general public. Please feel free…
mikethemadbiologist | March 14, 2008In keeping with the Broken Pipeline theme (see ScienceBloglings Greg, Coturnix, and Drug Monkey), this letter to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) from the Coalition for the Life Sciences about his efforts to shift more funding to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs seems timely (italics mine):
I am writing on behalf of the Joint Steering Committee for Public Policy (JSC) to express our concerns regarding S. 1932 and its intent to double the percentage of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget earmarked for the Small Business…
hrynyshyn | March 10, 2008The atmosphere is lethal
But I will fear no evil
Because it's not too late,
It's not too late.
-- T-Bone Burnett
Marvelous musician and cracker-jack producer that he is, (responsible for last year's stellar Alison Krauss-Robert Plant collaboration), T-Bone may be dead wrong when it comes to doing something about the climate crisis. So conclude a quartet of researchers from Princeton University and the Brookings Institution. The problem is, we may have waited too long to start bringing down greenhouse-gas emissions.
"Atmospheric stabilization and the timing of carbon mitigation" appears in the…
nisbetmc | March 7, 2008
In the latest issue of the journal CBE Life Sciences, National Academies senior staffers Jay Labov and Barbara Kline Pope describe the audience research that informed the writing, design, and promotion of the recent report Science, Evolution, and Creationism. Citing the articles I co-authored last year at Science and The Scientist, Labov and Pope describe how the National Academies commissioned focus groups and survey research in order to figure out how to "frame" the contents of the report in a way that made evolutionary science personally meaningful and relevant to non-traditional…
pharyngula | February 28, 2008Answers in Genesis started this so-called peer reviewed journal called Answers, and the latest publication therein is such a confused mess that I'm wondering if it could be a hoax. Here's the abstract, but I think just the title alone would be sufficient to tell this is codified lunacy: An Apology and Unification Theory for the Reconciliation of Physical Matter and Metaphysical Cognizance.
Because one is tangible and the other intangible, the physical and metaphysical are generally
treated separately. But this dichotomy is illogical; at the very least it is inconsistent with reality, for
the…
cevans | February 25, 2008As a blogger, I usually willfully delineate a giant chasm of non-communication between myself and political issues, preferring to dabble in the absolute: time, space, theoretical technological infrastructures, and, recently, aliens. I wrote one very reticent entry in 2005 about chimeric research, prefacing it with the pronouncement that "this blog will rarely concern iself with Pressing Science Ethics Issues," a statement that has proven in the intervening years to be true.
However, I can't deny that my love of the sciences has blossomed under the steely wing of one of the most anti-science…
clock | February 24, 2008Early Experience Affects Where Birds Breed For Life: What Happens If Habitat Changes?:
How young migratory birds choose the nesting location of their first breeding season has been something of a mystery in the bird world. But a new University of Maryland/National Zoo study of the American redstart suggests that the environmental conditions the birds face in their first year may help determine where they breed for the rest of their lives, a factor that could significantly affect the population as climate change makes their winter habitats hotter and drier.
Ancient Puzzle Solved In Fossils…
cortex | February 22, 2008In my recent Seed article on science and art, I wrote about how we need to foster a new cultural movement:
If we are serious about unifying human knowledge, then we'll need to create a new movement that coexists with the third culture but that deliberately trespasses on our cultural boundaries and seeks to create relationships between the arts and the sciences. The premise of this movement--perhaps a fourth culture--is that neither culture can exist by itself. Its goal will be to cultivate a positive feedback loop, in which works of art lead to new scientific experiments, which lead to new…
oracknows | February 21, 2008Earlier this month, I was remiss in not noting an update to a story about which I had written before, a story of domestic terrorism carried out by so-called "animal rights" advocates who are utterly opposed to the use of animals in research. The series of attacks began with an intimidation campaign against a UCLA researcher named Dario Ringach that succeeded in frightening him to the point where he gave up doing primate research. Against Ringach himself, the campaign consisted primarily of harassment by phone and other means. However, Ringach was spooked by a botched attack on another UCLA…
sheril | February 18, 2008Saturday I reported that AAAS had pulled together an unexpected preliminary presidential science debate at the annual meeting. The event was organized by the Association of American Universities and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and as promised, here's what went down in Boston...
Representatives of the major Democratic candidates accepted invitations to participate in a discussion of science in the next administration. Senator McCain's campaign sent their regrets that they could not attend on such short notice, while Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul did…
sciencetolife | February 12, 2008
ScienceDebate2008, an initiative calling for a presidential debate on science and technology policy, today announced that it has formally invited the presidential candidates to a debate on April 18 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, four days before the Pennsylvania Primary.
ScienceDebate2008, is spearheaded by ScienceBloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, among others, and has garnered over 10,000 supporters to date including endorsements from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Click here to learn more about…
evolgen | February 12, 2008Jonathan Eisen's been blogging the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) meeting in Marco Island. Here's what he's written so far:
Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Meeting - First Post
AGBT Marco Usland Update - Long Live Sequencing
Marco Island Evening One - The Strange and the Good
More notes from Marco Island/ AGBT
Coolest Thing at Marco Island - The Polonator
Marco Island sequencing frenzy - are we getting lost in all the data?
Marco Island - Saving Some of the Best for Last
The second to last post is the best, in my opinion. But there's some interesting points about…
vhughes | February 11, 2008At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, while chatting with Canadian parliament member Scott Brison, Seed Magazine's founder and editor-in-chief Adam Bly lamented the Canadian prime minister's recent decision to fire the country's science adviser, Arthur Carty. Shocked by the news, Brison brought up the matter on the parliament floor as soon as he got home, saying:
"Dr. Carty was a voice of reason on climate change, stem cell research, resource management and the environment...Does the Prime Minister not realize that his attack on science is making Canada look like the Flat Earth…
drorzel | February 10, 2008Kate and I will be attending Boskone agains next week, and the preliminary program has been posted. Kate's posted her thoughts on what looks interesting, and mine are below the fold:
Friday 7pm Otis: The Rise of Modern Science
What happened in the Middle Ages which led to the rise of modern science? Why did it happen first in Europe and not elsewhere? How did science grow if the Middle Ages were really an "age of faith" without reason?
Guy Consolmagno, John Farrell, Michael F. Flynn
Could be interesting, if we're there. We may be visiting family that evening.
Friday 8pm Consuite: Death to…
oracknows | February 8, 2008In the year and a half or so that I've been doing Your Friday Dose of Woo, I must admit that I've come across some truly weird stuff. Stuff so weird that, after reading it, you wonder either, "How on earth could someone seriously think something like this is true or would work?" or "How can anyone be so unscrupulous as to scam people like this?" Not infrequently, both questions come to mind simultaneously. Other times, I realize that it's fundamentalist religion of some sort or bizarre spiritual quasi-religious beliefs that are behind the woo. I've also started to notice recurring themes,…