j7uy5 | November 7, 2007I found this at John Fleck's
href="http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/?p=2310">Inkstain,
but others
are writing about it, too. Some think it is a hoax
perpetrated to promote anthropogenic global warming
denialism; others think it is an attempt to discredit
the denialists.
I was all excited at the prospect that humans
aren’t causing global warming after all, that it’s
really
href="http://www.geoclimaticstudies.info/benthic_bacteria.htm">benthic
bacteria. Then Roger Pielke Jr., suspicious bastard that he
is, had to go and
href="http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/…
j7uy5 | November 7, 2007A recent study indicates that the lifetime cost of medical
care for
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will be greater than the cost of the war
to date. We really have no choice, but it is going to cost
us. A lot. Of course, the ones really paying are
the troops themselves. From Medscape (free registration
required).
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/565407">High
Rate of PTSD in Returning Iraq War Veterans
Bob Roehr
November 6, 2007 (Washington, DC)
—
Estimates of the rate of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among
veterans returning from Iraq range from 12% to 20%. With…
j7uy5 | November 7, 2007
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/"
title="Click this link to find out details of the Creative Commons license associated with this image.">
src="http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif"
alt="There is a Creative Commons license attached to this image."
style="border: medium none ;" height="31" width="88">
class="ccIcn ccIcnSmall">
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">
src="http://l.yimg.com/www.flickr.com/images/cc_icon_attribution_small.gif"
alt="Attribution" title="Attribution" border="0">
src="http://…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2007This cartoon is by
href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett,
the editorial cartoonist for the Christian
Science Monitor.
I guess that is one way to get re-elected. Tell
people what they want to hear.
j7uy5 | November 6, 2007Medical/technical illustrators too often are forgotten.
They add value to publications, and need to be compensated.
So what will be the effect, as open-access publishing becomes
more common?
It is hard to know for sure, as the whole field is evolving so rapidly.
But Peter Suber, writing at
href="http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2007/11/does-oa-help-or-hurt-scientific.html">Open
Access News, thinks the OA movement will be beneficial to
illustrators. He links to an article by
href="http://www.medical-illustrations.ca/2007/11/02/open-access-and-medical-art/">Tim
Fedak, which…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2007
href="http://www.researchblogging.org/">
alt="Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research"
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
height="50" width="80">The
researchers did fMRI
of brains of persons with
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder"
rel="tag">Borderline Personality Disorder, before
and after psychotherapy. This was a small study, using a
design that would be difficult to use routinely, but it is
provisionally interesting. Difficult, because the patients
received 12 weeks of inpatient therapy (perhaps…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2007I am glad to see this, because I have never played the game,
but have been curious. So I gather that the game is mildly
amusing, but gets old.
via
href="http://parody.videosift.com/video/What-Second-Life-is-REALLY-Like"
title="What Second Life is REALLY Like">videosift.com
j7uy5 | November 5, 2007This is a photo from the space telescope Hubble, as shown on
National
Geographic's site. The conglomeration of the two galaxies is
known as Arp 87.
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/photogalleries/wip-week53/photo3.html">October
30, 2007—A new Hubble image offers the most
detailed view yet of a pair of galaxies entwined in a graceful dance
300 million light-years away. The image reveals fine structures that
couldn't be seen when the pair was first cataloged in the 1960s...
...Interacting galaxies like Arp 87 are known to have some of the
universe's highest…
j7uy5 | November 4, 2007There is very little published about this, so I have no idea why it
happened. Dick Cheney's attorney,
href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/news-desk/2007/11/1/cheney-lawyer-is-leaving.html">Shannen
Coffin, has resigned. He "is expected to take a
breather from the rapid pace of government service," then return to
private practice.
The announcement was made late Thursday last week, and was essentially
ignored by the media. Google News lists
only the US News & World Report article,
and one mention at
href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004627.php">TPM
Muckraker. Perhaps…
j7uy5 | November 4, 2007Yes, it has come to this. Increasingly, college
graduates are trading their mortarboards for hard hats. Why?
Because that is where the jobs are. Plus, there is a looming
wave of retirements, as most current coal miners are in their 50's.
The story is at
href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1031/p01s05-usgn.html">Christian
Science Monitor.
Note: it is not as gloomy as it sounds.
j7uy5 | November 4, 2007Again, my weakness for cute animals takes hold. I
saw a piece
on Yahoo News about a
href="http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Buenos-Aires/photo//071102/photos_od_afp/d6b664898c02c8a712b81c441e343e56//s:/afp/20071102/od_afp/argentinaaustraliaanimalkangaroo_071102005235;_ylt=AuUk1l0pYqwPyI7YihPOxZmhOrgF">white
baby kangaroo born in a zoo in Argentina, a
canguro blanco. The only photo they have
is small:
href="http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Buenos-Aires/photo//071102/photos_od_afp/d6b664898c02c8a712b81c441e343e56//s:/afp/20071102/od_afp/argentinaaustraliaanimalkangaroo_071102005235;_ylt=…
j7uy5 | November 3, 2007...11 miles from Denver, in a wildlife refuge, forcing the
cancellation of
a number of public events.
This refers to a placed called the
href="http://www.fws.gov/rockymountainarsenal/">Rocky
Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, near Commerce
City, Colorado. Their website now states, simply:
Wildlife
Refuge Temporarily Closed
Public visitation to the Refuge has been temporarily suspended due to a
specific remediation project. All tours and programs have been
cancelled until further notice. Visitor safety is our number one
priority and we appreciate your patience during…
j7uy5 | November 3, 2007
Folded from a single, square piece of paper. It even has the
cerebellum!
Source: Origami
Page, by Brian Chan
HT:
href="http://growabrain.typepad.com/growabrain/2007/11/predicting-the-.html">Grow
A Brain
j7uy5 | November 3, 2007A site called LibriVox
now has a catalog of over 1,000 free audiobooks. They are all
in the public domain; all have been read and recorded by volunteers.
It's a nice supplement to the 20,000+ free books in the
href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page">Project
Gutenberg Online Book Catalog.
HT:
href="http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2007/11/librivox-releases-its-1000th-free.html">Open-Access
News
j7uy5 | November 2, 2007
rel="tag">Anhedonia
is one of the most important symptoms of depression. I wrote
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/03/basic_concepts_anhedonia.php">a
post about it a while back, so I won't go into the definition
in this post, other than to summarize by saying that it is the
inability to experience pleasure in response to activities or events
that otherwise would be pleasurable.
It is difficult to do studies on the brain mechanisms involved in the
genesis of individual symptoms. Progress has been made, but
it has been slow.
When I was in residency, toward the end…
j7uy5 | November 2, 200711/11 is to be the new 9/11, according to the jihad-watchers at
href="http://www.debka.com/" rel="tag">DEBKAfile.
href="http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=4723">DEBKAfile
Exclusive: Al Qaeda declares Cyber Jihad on the West
October 30, 2007, 9:23 AM (GMT+02:00)
In a special Internet announcement in Arabic, picked
up DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources, Osama bin Laden's followers
announced Monday, Oct. 29, the launching of Electronic Jihad. On
Sunday, Nov. 11, al Qaeda's electronic experts will start attacking
Western, Jewish, Israeli, Muslim apostate and Shiite Web sites. On…
j7uy5 | November 1, 2007(AP)
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/politics/main3441060.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_3441060">President
Bush compared Congress' Democratic leaders Thursday with
people who ignored the rise of Lenin and Hitler early in the last
century, saying "the world paid a terrible price" then and risks
similar consequences for inaction today.
Yeah. If the Dems don't impeach the guy who's talking about
World War III, we very well could pay a terrible price for inaction.
Oh, and which is better: going to war reluctantly, and winning, or going to war eagerly, and being a loser?
j7uy5 | October 31, 2007This won't happen, but I think it should.
Television media should not be allowed to participate, other
than to do the broadcast. The media performance in the
10/30/07 Democratic debate shows that MSM do not know how to conduct a
useful debate.
Find a good media company, say Seed Media, and have
them host the Democratic Party debate. Have the editorial
board prepare topics & guidelines for questions. Show
the topics & guidelines, but not the questions, to the
candidates ahead of time.
Get some scientists to write the questions, using the topics &
guidelines. Get some…
j7uy5 | October 31, 2007This is a
href="http://www.digitimes.com/displays/a20070404PD212.html">pico-projector
from Texas Instruments. The idea is to have a device that can
project an image onto a screen, using a very small device such as a
PDA. Right now the usable image size is about 15 to 20
inches. They hope to scale it up to 40 inches.
I suspect that they envision this as a solution for small sales
presentations and the like. Personally, I'd like to see it
investigated for use in mainstream computing. Imagine the
typical usage of an office computer: word processing, email, maybe a
small spreadsheet. …
j7uy5 | October 31, 2007It was kind of depressing to see the post on Effect Measure (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2007/10/chemical_plants_internal_dange.php#more">Chemical
plants: internal dangers, external costs) about the
half-measures being taken to safeguard chemical plants and facilities.
The chemical security problem is as urgent
as it is obvious. Chemical plants are potentially static weapons of
mass destruction: large volumes of ammonia, chlorine, highly flammables
like propane, large repositories of chlorinated organic solvents and
chemical feedstocks like phosgene and more.
The…