clock | September 20, 2006Over 1.6 Million Americans Use Alternative Medicine For Insomnia Or Trouble Sleeping:
A recent analysis of national survey data reveals that over 1.6 million American adults use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping according to scientists at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health.
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Those using CAM to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping were more likely to use biologically based therapies (nearly 65 percent), such as herbal…
clock | September 20, 2006Team Describes Unique Desert Cloud Forest:
Trees that live in an odd desert forest in Oman have found an unusual way to water themselves by extracting moisture from low-lying clouds, MIT scientists report.
In an area that is characterized mostly by desert, the trees have preserved an ecological niche because they exploit a wispy-thin source of water that only occurs seasonally, said Elfatih A.B. Eltahir, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and former MIT graduate student Anke Hildebrandt.
After studying the Oman site, they also expressed concern that the unusual forest could be…
clock | September 20, 2006Carnival of Education #85 is up on The Median Sib
Carnival of Homeschooling Week 38: The Five W's and One H, is up on The Thinking Mother
clock | September 20, 2006This strange November 09, 2005 post should really be posted on Friday as part of the Friday Weird Sex Blogging....
Via Shakespeare's Sister and Blue Gal in a Red State comes this crazy article:
Serbs line up for testicle shocks
Men in Serbia are lining up to have electric shocks delivered to their testicles as part of a new contraceptive treatment.
Serbian fertility expert Dr Sava Bojovic, who runs one of the clinics offering the service, said the small electric shock makes men temporarily infertile by stunning their sperm into a state of immobility.
He said: "We attach electrodes to either…
clock | September 20, 2006In Ormond Beach Middle School:
Developed by teacher Tucker Harris and School Resource Deputy Karen Pierce, the investigation program is an innovative way to teach sixth-grade science students the scientific method. The CSI class takes students out of the classroom and into a crime scene orchestrated by the deputy.
Pierce developed a fictional situation involving a property theft at the school. During the class, Pierce "briefed" the students on the crime, and the students received written statements from the victim and three suspects. The students then visited the crime scene, where they…
clock | September 20, 2006Amanda makes a correct connection between preformationism of old and the anti-abortion ideology of today. The only thing missing is the connection of both to Dawkinsian genocentrism which is just preformationism with modern rhetoric of DNA and genes and "blueprints of life". The history of the war between epigenetics and preformationism and, within preformationism, between spermists and ovists is masterfully covered in Clara Pinto-Corriea's book Ovary of Eve.
clock | September 20, 2006In light of the recent outburst of blogging about diversity provoked by the all-white meeting of bloggers with Bill Clinton, it is interesting to take a look at Simon Owen's new informal survey of the diversity in various bligging niches. Go take a look and let Simon know what you think. Also, compare his findings with the last three years of Blogads surveys which do not explicitely ask for "race", but have additional interesting questions (each year had different questions, though, so check all three). Also, see what Dave says about the survey.
clock | September 19, 2006Unfortunately, not in my neighborhood any more, the First Year Teacher gets portrayed, quite positively, in USA Today in an article about teachers-bloggers.
clock | September 19, 2006So, is extreme "larkiness" due to overphosphorilation or underphosphorilation of PERIOD2?
Hypotheses get tested, studies conflict with each other and, in the end, there is a resolution. In this case, we are still waiting for resolution. Science marches on.
clock | September 19, 2006The latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine is devoted to sleep. The articles are freely available. Here is the press release:
Incorporate Sleep Evaluation Into Routine Medical Care, Expert Says
Sleep is an integral part of health, and assessment of sleep habits should be a standard part of medical care, according to an editorial in the September 18 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The issue is devoted to studies of sleep and health.
"The theme that emerges throughout this issue is that sleep serves as an indicator of health and quality of…
clock | September 19, 2006Jennifer Ouliette offers sage advice.
You don't need a science degree.
But nobody said you cannot have a PhD to do it.
clock | September 19, 2006Chris Clarke explains Berube's new book (yup, I am hoping to buy it one day) for the masses.
I am assuming that Chris spent quite a lot of time and effort into making this from scratch. I could have saved him some of that by mailing him some of the existing stuff I had and read as a kid. Ah, the glory of growing up in a socialist country!
[Hat-tip: Amanda]
clock | September 19, 2006Why, whenever a society is going down the tubes and the people start feeling insecure, the Middle-Eastern beat starts dominating the popular music?
See hip-hop in the States today. Compare to turbo-folk in Serbia in the 1990s.
clock | September 19, 2006This is an excerpt from the first chapter of George Lakoff's new book Thinking Points. You can read more here or download a PDF of the first chapter here.
You have heard many of these ideas before, including repeatedly on my blog, but it is nice to see them all stated succintly and collected in one place:
1. The Issue Trap
We hear it said all the time: Progressives won't unite behind any set of ideas. We all have different ideas and care about different issues. The truth is that progressives do agree at the level of values and that there is a real basis for progressive unity. Progressive…
clock | September 19, 2006This June 01, 2005 post from Science And Politics has been reposted (with mild edits) at several different places by me and others, including on June 01, 2005 on Idea Consultants and on June 10, 2005 on DailyKos. This post, in some way, turned me into some kind of carnival "guru"....
What is a blog carnival?
A blog carnival is a blog-post that contains links to posts on other blogs. How does that differ from a linkfest, or for that matter from most of the stuff that early blogs (and many blogs today) routinely did? In the early days of blogs, there was no original content - blogs WERE…
clock | September 19, 2006
Its'a all about sex, sexual repression and sexual politics:
Jessica
Lindsay
Ezra
David Neiwert
Lance
Berube
Jill
Zuzu
PZ
Sisyphus Shrugged
Scott
Echidne
Amanda
Roy
Jessica
Lauren
Amanda
Heretic
Jane
Scott
Jessica
Driftglass
Pam
Lance
clock | September 19, 2006Grand Rounds, v.2, n.52 is up on Tundra Medicine Dreams. Gorgeous pictures from Alaska and the best of medical blogging.
The Synapse v.1, n.7 is up on GNIF Brain Blogger
clock | September 19, 2006Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the anthrax attack. It was the Big Topic for the media for about as long as any Missing White Woman story, .... or was it until it was realized that the perpetrators were not "Islamofascists" (the term that was not, but could have been, invented at the time) but the more domestic kind?
Dave and Tara have much more.
clock | September 19, 2006Demand an Exit Strategy Not a Facelift:
By pointing the finger at Rumsfeld, they deflect blame from Bush's neo-conservative agenda. It is that agenda that drew the nation to Iraq, that has distracted from a smarter struggle against terrorists and terrorism, that has resulted in the erosion of our civil liberties, that has incurred the wrath of the international community.
Identifying Rumsfeld as the problem reinforces the "bad apple frame," which is among the common frames we examine in our new book, Thinking Points. This frame derives from the old saying that one bad apple spoils the barrel…
clock | September 18, 2006Sorry for scarce posting Monday - I hope you liked that long re-post from 11am, long enough to be sufficient reading for one day.
Anton has posted the summary of the Blogger MeetUp. I really like to have this kind of semi-structured meetup once a month. I was impressed by wiki.com - it is simple enough for a compidiot like me to set up and use. And Lyceum, whle still being developed, looks like a promising platform for a classroom multi-blogging use.
Then, I went to Top Of The Hill and had a couple of beers with my fellow ScienceBloggers Orac and Abel. That was fun - I have not met Orac…