clock | August 23, 2007On September 2nd this year go out somewhere: into your backyard, or the woods, or the bottom of the sea, and turn a rock or two or three. Take pictures of what you find underneath. Perhaps you'll find earthworms, or pillbugs, or beetles. Or a starfish. Maybe even a snake. Perhaps even a snake guarding the entrance to Dick Cheney's Undisclosed Location. If you turn a rock in Iraq and find WMDs please let us all know as that would be the biggest scoop in the history of the blogosphere (good luck with that one, though).
The idea was hatched by Dave Bonta, Fred Garber and Bev Wigney. Dave…
clock | August 22, 2007Everyone in daily life carries such a heavy, mixed burden on his own conscience that he is reluctant to penalize those who have been caught.
- Brooks Atkinson
clock | August 22, 2007On Sunday, LATimes published a viciously uninformed piece about blogging by some Skube guy (who appears to be here in NC though I have never heard of him before). The blogosphere, as expected, responded with laughter and dismay.
Today, LATimes published a response by NYU J-school professor (who I have most definitely heard of, and even met in person once) Jay Rosen - The journalism that bloggers actually do:
Blowback! That's what you're in for when a great American newspaper runs a Sunday opinion piece as irretrievably lame as "Blogs: All the noise that fits" by Michael Skube...
The…
clock | August 22, 2007First Finding Of A Metabolite In One Sex Only:
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered a chemical compound in male blue crabs that is not present in females -- the first time in any species that an entire enzyme system has been found to be activated in only one sex.
How To Share A Bat:
New research shows how different species of plants evolve unique floral adaptations in order to transfer pollen on different regions of bats' bodies, thus allowing multiple plant species to share bats as pollinators.
Global Warming Threatens Moose, Wolves:
Global warming is…
clock | August 22, 2007I And The Bird #56 is up on Big Spring Birds
Carnival of Education, #133 is up on The Red Pencil
clock | August 22, 2007There are 30 new papers published in PLoS ONE this week. Here are a couple of my picks (under the fold). You know the drill, go read, rate, annotate and comment:
Marburg Virus Infection Detected in a Common African Bat by Jonathan S. Towner, Xavier Pourrut, César G. Albariño, Chimène Nze Nkogue, Brian H. Bird, Gilda Grard, Thomas G. Ksiazek, Jean-Paul Gonzalez, Stuart T. Nichol and Eric M. Leroy:
Identification of the natural reservoirs of Marburg and Ebola viruses is essential in combating the hemorrhagic fever outbreaks that they cause. This study reports Marburg virus-specific RNA and…
clock | August 22, 2007Intrigued, but unsure about the whole thing? Would like to add comments, but don't really understand what is acceptable? Read this.
clock | August 22, 2007Do you remember all the buzz about the paper on the not random but not deterministic either behavior in fruitflies? By our blogfriend Bjoern Brembs?
Well, you can now watch the behavior of the insect in the movie associated with the paper. The video is up on SciVee of course - see it here.
And if there is a text box on top of it that bothers you, you can easily toggle it off - see the menu on the left, find Selection and click on the selection you are watching - textbox is gone. Click again, box is back. Also there on the left are Options, one of which includes "disable selection box",…
clock | August 22, 2007Everybody go say Hello to the Bleiman Brothers at the most recent addition to the Scienceblogs Empire - Zooillogix. Andrew Bleiman appears to be a Crustacean of some sort, while brother Benny has distinctly mammalian characteristics, but you have to be an expert (is Darren Naish in the house?) to figure out which Order to put him in....
clock | August 21, 2007A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive;" or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture - in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.
- Andrea Dworkin
clock | August 21, 2007Kate Seip of The Anterior Commissure and two of her colleagues have announced the formation of Science Communication Consortium:
There's been a good deal of recent discussion, both face-to-face amongst colleagues and friends and within the blogosphere itself, on how scientists can effectively communicate their work to mass media and journalists, science writers and educators, and politicians and policymakers. To address these issues, we have partnered with New York Academy of Sciences to develop an inter-institutional Science Communication Consortium in the greater NYC region.
This newly-…
clock | August 21, 2007I have discovered that I sometimes suffer from paralysis by analysis on the blog. I write the best stuff when I concoct a post in my head during a dog walk and then immediately pour it into the computer while it is still hot. Whenever I set out to do some real lit research on the topic I realize that other, smarter people have already written all that, and did a better job than I could ever dream of doing, so I abandon the post.
So, I am getting really nervous now, as I am thinking of writing a post about the history of the scientific paper and how the Web and the Open Access will change…
clock | August 21, 2007The Boneyard #3 is up on Laelaps
The latest Grand Rounds are up on Med-Source
Carnival of the Green #91 is up on Green Options
Friday Ark #152 is up on Modulator
Carnival of Homeschooling #86 is up on Homeschoolbuzz
clock | August 21, 2007My Scibling Tara Smith together with Steven Novella, published an article in PLoS Medicine last week that all frequent readers of science blogs will find interesting:
HIV Denial in the Internet Era:
Because these denialist assertions are made in books and on the Internet rather than in the scientific literature, many scientists are either unaware of the existence of organized denial groups, or believe they can safely ignore them as the discredited fringe. And indeed, most of the HIV deniers' arguments were answered long ago by scientists. However, many members of the general public do not…
clock | August 21, 2007Maxine Clarke:
In printing the statement verbatim every week as we have done, making it clear when it originated, we have hitherto assumed that readers will excuse the wording in the interests of historical integrity. But feedback from readers of both sexes indicates that the phrase, even when cited as a product of its time, causes displeasure. Such signals have been occasional but persistent, and a response is required.
Suzanne Franks:
Who needs outright discrimination? It's so much more pleasant and civilized to discriminate while pretending to be inclusive. It's just one tiny step sideways…
clock | August 21, 2007Here are a few pertinent quotes, but read the entire articles as well as long comment threads.
Ed Cone:
Skube published an opinion piece about blogs that, with the help of his editors at the LA Times, failed to uphold the journalistic standards he preaches.
It's not the first time that Skube has opined out of ignorance on this subject. I called the Pulitzer winner's previous column for the N&R a "virtually content-free rant, citing no blogs, showing no signs he did any research by reading blogs...crap." Then I phoned Skube and found he had said little because he knew little and cared…
clock | August 21, 2007Do you have pictures from your lab (or office or Jeep you use to do your fieldwork), showing off some quirky aesthetic details? If so, send them to Cognitive Daily to include in the growing collection of the coolest lab decorations ever!
clock | August 21, 2007The Scent of the Waggle Dance by Corinna Thom, David C. Gilley, Judith Hooper, and Harald E. Esch:
A honey bee colony consists of many thousands of individuals, all of which help to perform the work that allows their colony to thrive. To coordinate their efforts, honey bees have evolved a complex communication system, no part of which is more sophisticated than the waggle dance. The waggle dance is unique, because it exhibits several properties of true language, through which a forager communicates the location and profitability of a food source to other bees in the darkness of the hive. The…
clock | August 20, 2007Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
- Thomas Jefferson