purepedantry | October 24, 2006Edmund Phelps -- recent winner of the Nobel Prize in economics -- defends the moral rightness and the economic wisdom of the capitalist system in this essay in the WSJ:
There are two economic systems in the West. Several nations--including the U.S., Canada and the U.K.--have a private-ownership system marked by great openness to the implementation of new commercial ideas coming from entrepreneurs, and by a pluralism of views among the financiers who select the ideas to nurture by providing the capital and incentives necessary for their development. Although much innovation comes from…
purepedantry | October 23, 2006News@Nature has another fabulous North Korea science update:
What more have we learned about last week's North Korean test?
Scientists have been able to confirm that it was indeed a nuclear weapon. US intelligence is reporting that the explosive force of the bomb was less than a kiloton of TNT, and used plutonium as opposed to uranium.
How do we know all that?
The first clues came from seismic data immediately after the blast. A sharp pulse of seismic waves meant it was a man-made explosion and the size suggested it was too big to be a conventional weapon but too small to be a successful…
purepedantry | October 23, 2006Ask a ScienceBlogger inquires:
What's the best science TV show of all time?...
I think that is pretty obvious. The answer is obviously my favorite science show from when I was a kid: 3-2-1 Contact
Not only did it have the best do-it-yourself science for young people, but it had a great 80s science montage as opening music. I can still to this day sing this song from memory.
<singing>"Contact is the secret, is the moment, when everything happens. Contact..."</singing>
A video of the opening music is below the fold:
purepedantry | October 22, 2006I like posting poems from time to time. They remind me that at one point I had an interior life that did not involve anxiety over tissue culture.
Anyway, the poem of the week is by Billy Collins, a personal favorite. His work is always direct but insightful -- like prose-poetry until it isn't, when he hits a note of sublimity where only that word will do. (Click on any of the images to enlarge).
Study in Orange and White
by Billy Collins
I knew that James Whistler was part of the Paris scene -
the cafe awning and the wicker chair -
but I was surprised when I discovered the painting
of his…
purepedantry | October 20, 2006Hydrogen is great, but I feel like there are some structural and technical issues that have to be solved before...you know...the angels fly down to save us and hugs and bunnies abound. Popular Mechanics introduces a note of realism to the debate on alternative fuels with a great article on hydrogen fuel:
At first glance, hydrogen would seem an ideal substitute for these problematic fuels. Pound for pound, hydrogen contains almost three times as much energy as natural gas, and when consumed its only emission is pure, plain water. But unlike oil and gas, hydrogen is not a fuel. It is a way of…
purepedantry | October 20, 2006The Scientist has an excellent article attempting to fairly evaluate the Bush record on science:
What may be adding to the perception that the Bush administration is harder on science than ever before is that in recent years, biology has borne the brunt of political interference in science, which is a decidedly unfamiliar experience for many life scientists. "So far, most of [biologists'] experience with Congress has been showing up and asking for money and going home," says Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists. Now, politicians spend less time talking about atomic…
purepedantry | October 19, 2006This Synapse features a special Society for Neuroscience line-up with Shelley, Evil Monkey, Nick the Neurocontrarian, and myself attending.
I arrived and faced a moral quandry of whether to drag my ass out of bed to see stuff. Having decided to have a look, I attended a Workshop on Teaching, a Workshop on Open Access publishing, nearly lost my mind, and a neurogenesis/gliogenesis slide session. Shelley summarizes some interesting work on oxytocin and vassopresin and critiques the lecture by Frank Gehry. Nick and Evil Monkey (here and here) have their sparse summaries here.
As you may have…
purepedantry | October 16, 2006If you have never been to Neuroscience, one of the things they do is have slide sessions. These sessions are sort of like short talks -- a slide of data or two presented by many people. It is sort of a good summary of what people are working on.
Considering that I work in a lab that studies oligodendrocyte development, the one of these I chose to attend was the Neurogenesis/Gliogenesis.
The big highlight for me was Bruce Appel from Vanderbilt. He found a way using GFP and time lapse photography to watch oligodendrocyte myelination in zebrafish. Showed some absolutely crazy videos that I…
purepedantry | October 16, 2006My head hurts. I am sitting in a crappy slide session of limited personal relevance, trying vainly to find something fascinating in the injection of morpholino oligos into Xenopus. Two complete yo-yos are talking really loudly behind me.
Let's have a little humanities moment, so that I don't lose it.
I really love the poetry of ee cummings. He always captures a little bundle of emotion in life that is lost on most people. This moment reminded me of this poem:
since feeling is first
by ee cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly…
purepedantry | October 16, 2006I attended a panel discussion chaired by David van Essen entitled (R)evolution in Scientific Publishing: How will it Affect You? It was focused on what the implications of the Open Access movement in science are, and what scientists should expect from that. For those of you who don't know, the Open Access movement is a push to make all journal articles published freely available to the public. This while a very laudable goal raises some issues, not the least of which is who is going to pay for publishing if all the articles are free. Nick Anthis from The Scientific Activist and I debated…
purepedantry | October 15, 2006I TA'd a bunch in college and I am currently the TA for the medical school Neurology course, so I am always looking for good ways to make teaching better.
However, the moderator made a good point during the workshop that SfN -- in spite of the fact that majority of members do teach or are themselves students -- has always focused on research rather than teaching. This issue exceeds SfN; I would argue it applies to academia as a whole. It seems to me that teaching is viewed as something that you do because you have to and research is something that you do because you want to.
Anyway, that…
purepedantry | October 15, 2006Last night, we also met Nick from Neurocontrarian. He is also liveblogging the proceedings, and maybe doing some audio interviews. Check out his site for his coverage.
purepedantry | October 15, 2006There are a bagillion people here -- a bagillion. No other word appropriately conveys how many neuroscientists are in this building.
That being the case and there being so many exhibits and lectures and craziness going on absolutely simultaneously, it has become an issue about how to break down the problem of seeing everything without becoming overwhelmed and starting to babble incoherently in the corner about NRG1 signaling.
There is to my mind two ways of dealing with this
1) You can run around like a head with your chicken cut off, and lose your mind.
or
2) You can just go with the…
purepedantry | October 15, 2006I got here late night after a plane flight filled with people accidentally clubbing each other with long cyclinders filled with posters. The baggage checkers probably thought we were a horde of terrorists.
"Sir, what is in that long skinny package?" she asks as her hand moves to the alarm. "Science, my dear. Science."
There is simply no way to elegantly carry a poster case, particularly in coach.
There are these pretzel vendors in the airport, and I got to thinking that under the new rules food related liquids probably have to be thoroughly inspected before entering the concourse. Are…
purepedantry | October 14, 2006Hi everyone,
For the next 5 days, I -- like fellow Sciencebloggers Shelley and Evil Monkey -- will be blogging up a storm from the Society for Neuroscience convention in Atlanta. Check in regularly for updates as to the proceedings. And remember to check in next Thursday for a very special issue of The Synapse that will summarize all the convention related goodness.
Jake
UPDATED: Incidentally, if you are going to SfN and you read this blog, email me. I would love to meet people there -- particularly at the Neuroscience Official Superswanky Sponsored Socials or NOSSSs.
purepedantry | October 14, 2006Previously, not cute. Now, cute.
Let the swooning media attention begin.
purepedantry | October 13, 2006Chris from Highly Allochthonous -- say that five times fast -- has a great post summarizing the geological issues of the North Korean nuclear test (how deep? how do we know that? etc.) Check it out.
purepedantry | October 13, 2006I expressed a certain level of skepticism about North Korea's nuclear test this week because of the low estimated yield and the failure of the earlier test of their Taepodong-2 missile. Basically, I question the ability of North Korea to make a nuclear weapon that will actually work, given the strict controls on their society and the limited ability to innovate. I think that we need to factor into our strategic calculations in dealing with North Korea -- serious as they are -- the possibility that they may not have the beef.
Now it would appear that North Korea's nuclear test -- in…
purepedantry | October 13, 2006Scientists have discovered a bacteria the survives with an incredibly small number of genes:
The tiniest genomes ever found belong to two types of bacteria that live inside insects, researchers have announced.
One of these types of bacteria, Carsonella ruddii, is so small that it could perhaps be considered an organelle within the cells of the bugs. But both microbe species face the threat of extinction because of their small genome size, experts say.
C. ruddii has the fewest genes of any cell known in the world - a mere 182, according to the new results. Humans, by comparison boast…
purepedantry | October 13, 2006CNN is reporting that mammals have been sighted in Europe:
Using DNA testing, scientists have discovered what is believed to be the first terrestrial mammal found in Europe in decades: a mouse with a big head, ears, eyes and teeth that lives in a mountainous area of Cyprus.
The mouse was native to the eastern Mediterranean island, survived the arrival of man on Cyprus and could be considered a "living fossil," experts said.
I assume they mean the discovery of a new species of mammal rather than that mammals had been observed where they were not previously believed to exist. I have been to…