Technology
sb admin | February 9, 2007In addition to writing about the IPCC report itself, bloggers are dissecting the media and public responses to it. RealClimate wonders why the Wall Street Journalâs editorial board still has its head buried in the sand; Matthew C. Nisbet at Framing Science thought the report should have made more of a splash than it did; and David Roberts at Gristmill notes that there were some good print stories about the report, but public engagement on the issue is lacking.
Meanwhile, the US Congress is still holding hearings about political interference into the work of U.S. government scientists. Ian…
cmooney | February 8, 2007
Why do House global warming hearings draw so many more people than Senate hearings? I don't know, but I arrived late today to Capitol Hill and so spent half of my time listening to the House Science and Technology Committee hearing on the new IPCC report in an overflow room. (I didn't try at first to invoke "journalist's privilege" to get in the main room, although later, Seed's Washington correspondent was ushered in.)
The opening of the hearing was in some ways the most interesting part. In an historic moment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (left) gave testimony on her global warming…
chaoticutopia | February 7, 2007
Yesterday, I posted a paper discussing a potential flaw in our perception of reality. Here, I review an article from Scientific American Mind, suggesting how such "flaws" occur from a neurological standpoint.
A Delay from Reality
By Karmen Lee Franklin
Imagine being witness to a spectacular car accident. The scene seems to happen in slow motion; you notice every detail as it unfolds, such as the sound of crunching metal or scattering shards of glass twinkling in the sun. Later, you realize how late the accident has caused you to be, and notice time passing quickly as you race to your…
cmcclain | February 6, 2007
Just Science Entry #2
[For the second day of Just Science, I asked Henry Ruhl, fellow MBARI'ian and deep-sea ecologist to discuss a new project he is involved with]
Much of what we know about temporal variability in deep-sea ecology comes from only a few locations and most timeseries studies extend back less than two decades. Comprehensive understanding of both natural variability and anthropogenic impacts will require longer datasets. Providing some certainty about the spatial extent of any observed trends will require the inclusion of currently under-sampled locations such as the…
j7uy5 | February 4, 2007Yesterday, both
href="http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2007/02/lavender_and_tea_tree_oils_may.php">Abel
and I posted about the unexpected effects of lavender and tea-tree
oils: they've been implicated as causing gynecomastia in boys.
href="http://www.blogpulse.com/search?query=gynecomastia&image22.x=20&image22.y=18">Blogpulse
indicates that the Blogosphere has reacted quite a bit to this: the
blog at
href="http://blog.wired.com/biotech/2007/02/lavender_oils_f.html">Wired
News picked it up, as did
href="http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=377">Skepchick,
href="http://…
jstemwedel | February 3, 2007During the discussion after my talk at the Science Blogging Conference, the question came up (and was reported here) of whether and when tenure and promotion committees at universities will come to view the blogging activities of their faculty members with anything more positive than suspicion.
SteveG and helmut both offer some interesting thoughts on the issue.
SteveG takes up the idea that academic blogging can often be a productive way to communicate the knowledge produced in the Ivory Tower to the broader public. Arguably, public outreach is part of the larger mission of institutions…
thescian | January 31, 2007Sir Richard Branson offers this fabulous deal. Am unhelpful sidenote on the news page chirps thus:
"The chance of an individual using personal cord blood for a blood cell disorder before the age of 20 is estimated to be between 1/20,000 to 1/37,000"
Dang! But then, with the population of aged shooting over the roof in the UK, the chances of using the stem cells collected when you were born would improve quite a bit in the future I would think.
A scifi novel read a few weeks ago is relevant in this context. Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire. The novel is set in the near future when life extension…
thusspakezuska | January 31, 2007Mollishka writes to ask plaintively:
"Feminist theory of science"?! Other than a nice set of buzzwords, what does that even mean??
So I thought, why not go ahead and launch the Basic Concepts idea now?
On the super-secret Scienceblogs back channel, we have been discussing the idea of each doing a series of "Basic Concepts" posts on our blogs; some of my SciBlings are already doing them. You know, choose a few fundamental concepts or terms in your field, write a post describing/defining/delineating their use, label it Basic Concepts, and voila! A series is born. We thought that in…
jlynch | January 27, 2007
I am: Arthur C. Clarke Well known for nonfiction science writing and for early promotion of the effort toward space travel, his fiction was often grand and visionary.
Which science fiction writer are you?
PZ made me do it.
developingintelligence | January 26, 2007Yesterday I reviewed several detailed architectural asymmetries between the right and left hemispheres, but presented little information on asymmetries in long-range connectivity. Recent advances in a form of magnetic resonance imaging called "diffusion tensor MRI" have made possible whole-brain imaging of white matter tracts, which are important for long-range connectivity in the brain. So, how has this technology refined the study of hemispheric structural asymmetry?
First, the basics: dtMRI analyzes the "fractional anisotropy" of water in tissue: in other words, it demonstrates the…
bcohen | January 25, 2007[Category explanation: this post overlaps with so many of our Scienceblogs category options that I ended up just dumping it in philosophy of science as a default location.]
The ETC Group - dedicated, they say, to supporting "socially responsible developments of technologies useful to the poor and marginalized and it addresses international governance issues and corporate power" -- recently held a contest for the design of a new nanotechnology warning sign. But they should've put in a Steve Martin-related bit as one of the contenders.
They had 400 entries reviewed by a panel of judges. The…
sb admin | January 21, 2007Mining companies opposed to a health standard to protect underground miners from diesel particulate matter (DPM) finally had their day in court. The morning proceeding featured remarks about tail-wagging dogs and coal-mine canaries, presented before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Industry attorneys urged the Court to vacate the exposure limits and other provisions of the Mine Safety and Health Administrationâs (MSHA) 2001 DPM rule. From my vantage point sitting on the public gallery benches, Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsberg, Senior Judge Harry T.…
sciencetolife | January 18, 2007 Nanotechnology is all the rage, it seems. The word 'nanotechnology' has been popping up in news articles and research papers more frequently. So I want to know...
What exactly is nanotechnology and how can it impact your health?
The basic definition of nanotechnology is anything related to the building of materials on a nanometer scale-a scale smaller than one millionth of a meter.
Nanotechnology is a highly interdisciplinary field encompassing elements of colloidal science, physics, chemistry and biology.
While its research has wide reaching implications the specific health benefits of…
thusspakezuska | January 16, 2007Are you a women in a high tech job? Please consider participating in this worthwhile project; it only takes a few minutes. Lisa Gable recently wrote to the WEPAN listserve:
I am writing to share news about exciting research being conducted by Catalyst, which IBM is sponsoring, in part. Catalyst is the leading research and advisory organization working with businesses and the professions to build inclusive environments and expand opportunities for women at work. This study focuses on talent management and women in high tech jobs and/or companies. The research provides insight into women's…
evolgen | January 16, 2007
Don't say I didn't warn you. We have irrefutable evidence that the manatees are attacking. We're only now gaining insights into their advance technology. Only a week ago did I say to Sandy:
And I'm obsessed with manatees, not chimeras. That is, unless the matatees devise some sort of manatee/lobster chimera. That would really freak me out.
Never did I think I could be so right, yet so wrong, at the same time. This site contains some odd pictures demonstrating what happens when animal-animal chimeras go wrong. Included is the photo above -- the MANAPHANT, or manatee/elephant chimera. The…
hrynyshyn | January 12, 2007When former Redskins quarterback Heath Shuler managed to bump off incumbent congressman Charles Taylor in November, there was much rejoicing here in western North Carolina. Many Democrats kept their hopes modest, however, as Shuler got elected campaigning on "mountain values," a not so subtle code phrase for the Christian fundamentalism that pervades the Blue Ridge Mountains. We didn't have to wait long for those fears to be realized.
Yesterday, Shuler voted against a bill to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Fifteen other Democrats did the same. Why?
"I want…
razib | January 11, 2007Jonah over at The Frontal Cortex has some commentary up on the gay sheep story. A reader pointed out that this controversy started off with some wild claims made by PETA. Nevertheless (more at Andrew Sullivan's), no matter the details of the claim, there are a few points I'd like to pick up on....
Jonah says:
So here's my hypothesis: if you select against homosexuality in a biological community, you will also be selecting against our instinct for solidarity. The same genes that give rise to gayness might also give rise to cooperation. When scientists create a population of all heterosexual…
dmunger | January 9, 2007Eric Schwitzgebel has just completed an exhaustive study of the behavior of ethicists. He had noticed that a large number of ethics books seemed to be missing from research libraries across the nation. Rather than leave that observation in anecdotal form, he began a systematic analysis of the data. His initial analysis showed that 1.25 ethics books were missing for every 1 book in non-ethics fields of philosophy. But that still didn't satisfy him. Perhaps ethics books are simply more popular, or perhaps the sample is biased because of the relative age of the ethics versus non-ethics books. So…
nisbetmc | January 8, 2007As I predicted, stem cell opponents have issued a press release "pleading" with Dems to hold off on a stem cell bill in light of the Nature Biotechnology study on amniotic stem cells:
Christian Groups Urge Pelosi to Hold Off Embryonic Stem Cell Bills Based on New Scientific Discovery
A growing coalition of Faith organizations are expected to hand-deliver a letter to Speaker Pelosi this week.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 /Christian Newswire/ -- Groundbreaking scientific advances in stem cell research released today by Nature Biotechnology may resolve the decade-old moral dilemma concerning the…
omnibrain | January 8, 2007Check out this new pilot from PBS. You can watch the episode next Wednesday on TV or you can see it right now right here.
If you want this program to continue show your support by watching and sending your love to the website :)
Here is their press release:
22nd Century
"World Wide Mind"
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
8:00 p.m. EST
Ever wonder what the world is going to be like in the future? Will human life spans increase to 250 years or more? Will your personal computer become smarter than you? Will machines shrink so small they can make repairs inside a human cell?
22nd Century is an…