scientificactivist

Shelley of Retrospectacle asks fellow ScienceBloggers: "Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?" I'm against the death penalty, and I would agree…

I would be remiss if I didn't address the latest stem cell news, since it's already all over the place. An article from today's issue of published in advance online yesterday by Nature describes a technique for deriving a line of human embryonic stem cells by removing a single cell from the eight-…

Over at Retrospectacle, Shelley reports on a Forbes article detailing the impressive degree to which various billionaires are picking up the slack left in the wake of restrictive Bush Administration regulations on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. From the original article: Since…

Lines were drawn in the sand, artillery stood armed and ready, and tensions ran high. Neither side was willing to budge, and despite the seemingly endless conflict having already tested the resolve of both sides, it looked like things were only just beginning to get rough. The whole scenario was…

If you love science and don't know how to show it, there are a few sites out there that'll be more than willing to help you out. Here are a couple of examples: At Support Our Scientists, you can buy a magnetic ribbon to show your support wherever you drive. It looks a bit like one of those "…

Coming to Life: How Genes Drive Development by Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Kales Press: 2006. 176 pages. Buy now! (Amazon) If you examine yourself in the mirror, take a closer look at your favorite pet, or even contemplate that pesky fly that just won't leave you alone, it's difficult to not…

I don't make it to the movies too often in the UK. To start with, they're prohibitively expensive, and I'm often seeing them months after my friends back home. When you then consider the fact that the popcorn here tastes like salty styrofoam (it's called butter, people! Look into it!), there…

This announcement is a couple of days late, so please accept my apologies, although I can blame it in part on a lack of internet access. Anyways, as of 15:30 GMT last Thursday (August 17th), after enduring what was surely the longest transfer viva in the history of man (two and a half hours--hell,…

It has been known officially since 2002 that the sciences are hard, and, as much as we scientists love it when our friends and family tell us how smart and wonderful we must be since they could never understand what we do... is this elevated position going to cost us in the end? Big time?…

According to the AP, NASA announced Tuesday that it was beginning an official search for the missing tapes from the Apollo missions. Red-faced because the best pictures of its glory days are missing, NASA said Tuesday it was launching an official search for more than 13,000 original tapes of the…

...of not having internet access! So, it turns out that the internet is pretty fundamental to this whole blogging endeavor. Who would have thought? I don't have internet access in my "new" house yet, and I probably won't have any for another couple of weeks, so please bear with me. I'm finding…

Since I've been on the road so much lately, I haven't really had a chance to follow up on some of the more interesting links forwarded to me lately. Each probably deserves its own post... but I'm going to dump them all into this post anyway. Besides, there seems to be a common thread running…

Yes, that's right. The moon landing may have been one of the most significant events of the Twentieth Century, but our original records of it seem to have been misplaced, as The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the 5th of August: The heart-stopping moments when Neil Armstrong took his first…

This week's installment of Fantastical Fridays discusses a not-so-impressive finding reported in the media in January 2006. From the archives: (30 January 2006) To all of those who worried about the United States' dependence on Middle Eastern oil, who tried to raise awareness about dwindling…

From the archives: (23 April 2006) The media is by its very nature sensational, and on the issue of global warming this can swing both ways. Therefore, there was a big fuss over a study in Nature this past Thursday that seemed to lay out a more conservative estimate for the expected increase in…

From the archives: (19 January 2006) Today's issue of Nature features several interesting articles about the effects of global warming. Two are research articles, with one revising estimates of the expected increase in sea level due to global warming and the other demonstrating how certain…

From the archives: (13 January 2006) What do global warming and epidemic diseases have in common? Apparently they have a lot, at least when it comes to amphibians. Microorganisms have a knack for showing up in unexpected places. In the 1980s, two scientists discovered a bacterium called…

I know that I just got back from vacation, but I have family visiting this week, so I'll be out of town again until next week. Have no fear, though, because as usual you can expect plenty of posts from Ye Olde Archives. I haven't written too much about global warming or the environment since I…

On the weekend of July 28th-30th, about 150 NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) scientists from the UK and Europe (and a few from the US) gathered in Ambleside for the Sixth Annual Collaborative Computing Project for NMR (CCPN) Meeting. The topic of the meeting was "Efficient and Rapid Structure…

With a name like Ready.gov, the Department of Homeland Security's emergency preparedness website isn't particularly modest about its objectives. However, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) claims that the site isn't living up to its mission. Instead of just complaining about it, though,…

On the surface, science and poetry seem as distant from each other as the Republican Party and good science policy. And, in a large part they are. While both strive for a deeper understanding of the world around us, one avoids the subjective like the plague, while the other embraces it almost…

As part of the constant and inevitable march of progress here at The Scientific Activist, I've fixed my blog template so that now when you click on the "Read on" link at the bottom of an entry on the main page, you'll be magically transported to the spot where you stopped reading before. Try it out…

Yesterday, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee released a report entitled Drug Classification: Making a Hash of It?, which challenges the logic behind current drug classifications in the UK, especially when tied to legal penalities. The report discusses specific cases where…

After over two weeks on planes, trains, and automobiles (actually, more like planes, buses, and boats)--on a trip that involved a wild weekend in Newcastle, a relaxing week and a half on a small island in the Norwegian fjords, and an informative three-day NMR conference in the Lake District--I'm…

From the archives: (19 March 2006) Genetic engineering holds a great deal of promise, from potentially curing a variety of human ailments to addressing nutritional deficiencies through transgenic crops. One project even aims to engineer into bacteria the ability to generate a variety of…

From the archives: (13 March 2006) If sellers are allowed to compete freely without any regulations, market forces will inevitably drive down prices and improve the quality of services so that everyone wins, even the consumer--or so the dogma goes. Life is rarely so simple, and markets don't…

From the archives: (17 February 2006) I'll be honest with you: I really don't know what to think about drug companies. I'll give them some credit, since unlike many of their peers they produce a product that is useful to society and has important humanitarian implications. I want to like them--…

From the archives: (18 April 2006) If Massachusetts were a physician, I'd have mixed feelings about visiting him or her. Sure, Dr. Massachusetts would be incredibly persistent and would do its best to make sure I left its office feeling better than when I arrived, but on the other hand if I had…

From the archives: (21 January 2006) I had a great trip to the doctor the other day. I showed up for my appointment (one I had made only one day before), waited a few minutes, saw the doctor, and then I left. There was no paperwork, no long wait, no money exchanged, and no stress. Basically,…

This post from the archives describes a recent research finding that may be welcome news for some.... (24 May 2006) If you know what I'm talking about, and if you are in fact "cool", then you might also be interested in the findings presented Tuesday by Dr. Donald Tashkin and his coauthors at an…