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Research on The Origins of Maize (Corn)

Corn (maize) was domesticated in the earlier part of the Holocene in Mexico from a wild plant called teosinte. Subsequent to the discovery of this area of origin by MacNeish, a great deal of research has gone on to track the spread of maize across the New World, its diversification, its effects on Native American lifeways, and so on. How do you tell if corn was grown in a particular area? There are several possibilities, including looking for pollen in swamps and lakes or at archaeological sites, finding macro-fossils (don't be fooled by the name .. macrofossils are tiny, like individual…

Enormous bacterium uses thousands of genome copies to its advantage

They say that size doesn't matter, but try telling that to bacteria. Most are very small, for they rely heavily on passive diffusion to ferry important nutrients and molecules across their membranes. To ensure that this happens quickly enough, bacteria need to ensure that their surface area is large enough relative to their volume - become too big and they won't be able to import enough nutrients to support their extra size. These constraints greatly limit the size of bacteria. The larger ones solve the problem by being extremely long and slender, or by using an internal compartment called…

Adapt! The cry of the coward

The failure of the negotiators at Bali to reach any kind of agreement on a schedule for reducing greenhouse gas emissions has left many observers wondering if maybe it's time to resort to Plan B. Instead of adapting our industrial economy to the physical realities of radiative forcing and positive feedbacks, we should begin the process of adapting ourselves to a much warmer world. And why not? If there's one thing that sets Homo sapiens apart from the rest of the primate gang, it's our ability to adapt. Because planetary ecology isn't that simple, that's why. Already, the confused logic of…

Hacked emails, tree-ring proxies and blogospheric confusion

One of the commenters to my last post, an attempt to explain why the hacked climatology emails do not constitute a scientific scandal, came up with a darn fine idea: If you think that global warming rests on a few temperature data sets and models, you are very wrong. If you don't understand this then you don't know enough to have an opinion on the subject, and you most likely will be treated just like any other ineducable troll. Grab a climate textbook and do some reading...it will help if you have some physics background too. Yeah, science takes effort... I just happen to have at hand a…

Bacon, Fish, Arts vs Science, and Dawkins.

I wrote about this over at Terry, but will reprint here as well This is interesting, if not a bit alarming. Essentially, this story follows a trail of individuals that even Kevin Bacon would be proud of. The cast includes: a UBC student, her sister (also a UBC student), a senior level biology course, the course's teacher and the course's teaching assistant. As well, there is another teaching assistant - this one from the History Department (not Biology), and for the rest of us here, this TA is sort of the antagonist. Oh, and the aforementioned biology course focuses on the theory of…

Thanksgiving Dinner with a Side of ER

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I was reading the Web this morning, and this story reminded me of a Thanksgiving a couple years ago. The news story is about how Thanksgiving dinner can cause flareups of gout. Gout -- if you don't know -- is an inflammatory joint disease caused by the deposition of little crystals of uric acid. Uric acid is a compound found in many types of food and drink. It is actually a product of purine metabolism (purine is a component of DNA). Foods that have the most purines are meats -- particularly sweat meats. Here is a list of danger foods. Eating lots of…

How The Brain Manages Conflict: Global and Local Conflict Adaptation Effects

If you encounter a difficult situation, you may be extra careful afterwards, even in a different or unrelated situation. This intuitive statement has recently been confirmed in a laboratory task, and extended to show that such carry-over "conflict adaptation" effects may affect the speed with which you approach subsequent tasks very differently from how it affects the probability of making a mistake. A task often used to look at conflict is the flanker task: when subjects must respond to an arrow symbol that is surrounded by other arrow symbols, responses will be faster when the surrounding…

Can You Solve This Nearly 300-Year-Old Medical Mystery?

(updated below)      Image: Henri Gervex (1852-1929)     Doctor Preau Operating at the St.     Louis Hospital.Honoured SIR and MADAM, In researching the history of science one often comes across bizarre claims about the natural world that reveals the limit of knowledge available to researchers of the past. However, sometimes a case comes up that seems to be a genuine mystery even today. Such is the case for this eighteenth-century woman who was afflicted for two years with what her doctor referred to as "hairy crustaceous substances" that were voided in her urine. On July 16, 1733 a Mr.…

Hormones are a real turn-on for velvet bellies!

Living in a world of sunshine and electricity, we tend to take light for granted. Heck, we complain when clouds diminish our bright sunny rays. But dip just beneath the surface of the ocean and light becomes a rare commodity. More than half of the light that penetrates the ocean surface is absorbed in the first three feet. As you go deeper, different colors disappear. Red is the first to go, followed by yellow and green, until you're truly immersed in murky blue. At about 200 m deep, there is so little light that plants cannot survive, as there isn't enough light energy to power…

Tar Heel Tavern #87

Welcome to this week's edition of Tar Heel Tavern, a roundup of all that is good about blogging from the state of North Carolina. If I missed your submission or if it's Sunday morning and you think, "Dang, I forget to submit anything," just fire me an e-mail and I'll quickly add your work. So, let's cut to the chase: Of all the posts, nothing captured Fall in North Carolina like the beautiful pictures Laura sent in from Moomin Light from her annual two-week trip to the mountains. Down in the state capital, there's one more day left: Mr. R reflects at evolving education on this year's visit…

The Friday Fermentable: The New Mexico edition, part 2

Before we embark on another edition of The Friday Fermentable, the Pharmboy and everyone at Terra Sig sends out their best wishes to actor, Robin Williams, and his family. Mr Williams' publicist announced earlier this week that the Academy Award-winning actor and brilliant comedian has checked into an alcohol rehabilitation center following a recent lapse in his 20 years of sobriety. The Friday Fermentable is dedicated to the responsible enjoyment of alcoholic beverages as just one facet of a richly-experienced life journey. However, we recognize that many of us share a genetic…

Dave, Andy, and Georgia and their unbelievable, ridiculous fable

David Menton, Andrew Snelling and Georgia Purdom, three creationists working at the Creation "Museum", have written an outraged op-ed correcting some misconceptions about them. I read this far before I had to stop: For one, the guest columnist, Roger Guffey, claimed there were no "serious" scientists who are creationists. We are full-time Ph.D. researchers with the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis in Northern Kentucky, and we will be helping to design the full-scale Noah's Ark and other attractions to be built north of Lexington. There are thousands of serious scientists who doubt…

Fear and Loathing from the Discovery Institute

Very early this morning, the Discovery Institute's Rob Crowther posted an article over at the DI's "why's everyone always picking on us" blog. I'm not exactly sure what inspired Rob to get some work done late on a Saturday night, but the result is an article that's so chock full of hysterically absurd misrepresentations and bizarre claims that it's impossible to resist the urge to comment. The apparent cause for Rob's rant was his displeasure with an op-ed that was published in the Austin American-Statesman on Friday. The op-ed was written by the past-president, president, and president-…

Do chimps understand what Jon Stewart (or another chimp) believes?

Take a look at this video from last night's episode of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show." If you'd like, you can skip past all the political snark to the 4:47 mark to watch Jon bring cognitive psychology into prime time (or at least latenight cable)! That's right; you saw it: Jon Stewart mentioned the psychological concept of "object permanence" on national TV. Object permanence was introduced by Jean Piaget as a way of measuring the growing cognitive ability of children. Three-month-olds don't have it; most 6-month-olds do. More recently, researchers have investigated similar milestones in…

The World According to Genesis: Humanity

So in chapter 2, we shift stories. Now we have a story that is far older than the first chapter, and is regarded by scholars as the "Yahwist" creation story, and it focuses primarily on humans. The story is far more familiar than the first chapter is (the first few sentences notwithstanding), so we can be pretty brief. Here, the deity is referred to as "YHWH Elohim", and is translated in English as "LORD God". YHWH is the ancient name for a Phoenician deity of the inhabitants of Canaan. We don't know exactly how it was pronounced, but problably it is said as "Yahweh". In the Canaanite…

Humility among scientists

Yesterday, Revere (Effect Measure) threw down the gauntlet challenging those critical of alternative medicine to examine work done at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2000 on the medicinal properties of chicken soup. The news release cites work that a chicken/vegetable soup, but not simple chicken broth, inhibits in vitro neutrophil migration, or chemotaxis. Inhibiting the migration of this class of white blood cells might reduce the nasopharyngeal symptoms of the common cold, thereby providing some evidence that grandma's chicken soup might very well help one feel better during…

Understanding the gender gap in science -- a personal perspective

In 1981, the economist Lester C. Thurow wrote an article for the New York Times entitled "Why women are paid less than men." If you have a subscription, you can still read it on the Times web site. My copy comes from an anthology I edited in 1992. Thurow's conclusion: The decade between 25 and 35 is when men either succeed or fail. It is the decade when lawyers become partners in good firms, when business managers make it onto the "fast track," when academics get tenure at good universities, and when blue collar workers find the job opportunities that will lead to training opportunities and…

How to make your eye feel like it's closed, when it's actually open

This morning I went into the darkest room in our house (the kids' bathroom), closed the door, and turned off the lights for 5 minutes. There was enough light coming in through the crack in the door that after a minute or two I could begin to make out shapes in the room: A towel rack, the shower curtain. My eyes had adapted to the dark condition. Then I closed my right eye and covered it with my hand. I turned the lights back on, for a minute, until my left eye had adapted to the light. Then I turned the lights off. I could still see the towel rack and shower curtain with my right eye, which…

Do toddlers fill in the gaps when learning language?

One of the amazing things about learning language is that children rarely hear language sounds in ideal acoustic environments. Maybe other people are talking in the background, or the dishwasher is running, or the TV is on. Yet somehow children they learn words just the same. By the time we're adults, we've become experts at filtering out irrelevant sounds and patching together meaning out of the cacophony of everyday life. As one example, listen to this short clip of me saying the word "dinosaur" three times. I edited the "s" sound out of the first "dinosaur," so you can clearly hear me…

Isle Royale Travelogue Day 5: Rock Harbour to Raspberry Island and Scoville Point, and return

This is another excerpt from our travel journal to Isle Royale. The first day is here; second day here; third day is here; fourth day is here. Photos by me, text by my husband. Thursday May 29 Rock Harbour to Raspberry Island and Scoville Point, and return It is the last full day on the island, and once again we had great hopes and plans for awaking early in order to go do much stuff. Atop the list was Raspberry Island, a one-mile canoe ride away over a not-very protected part of Rock Harbour. We had been foiled in our attempt of this trip by the wind on Wednesday, but were hoping that an…

Creationist Museum Wishes Genesis Wasn't Filled With Pesky Nudity

The Flying Spaghetti Monster would not be pleased to learn that the world's first (and I desperately hope, only) Creationist museum will soon open in a bustling part of backwood Kentucky. This $25 million Disney-fied, anamatronic monstrosity is dedicated to presenting the biblical creation story as factually accurate. The Creation Museum - motto: "Prepare to Believe!" - will be the first institution in the world whose contents [editor's note: and ideas].... are entirely fake. This museum is the brainchild (and I use the word 'brain' loosely) of one Patrick Marsh, an ex-employee of Universal…

A few thoughts on female academics and children.

Since I read it last Friday I have been meaning to say something about this article in Inside Higher Ed about why female academic appear to have lower birthrates than male academics and than female professionals in other fields. Of course, between work and family obligations (and grinding fatigue) it's taken me until now to get to it. Is this a clue of some sort? Luckily, Sciencewoman has written a thoughtful and detailed rumination, and she links to Dr. Crazy's, Mommy Prof's, and Dean Dad's fine discussions, too, so I can keep it brief. From the outside, academia looks like a perfect…

Car Buyers Are Dumb v.2

In response to my blog yesterday about America's continued love affair with horsepower and V8 engines, I recieved an excellent comment. It's worth a read: If you ask people why they drive 4WD SUVs you get a number of answers, usually associated with safety, or power and control. While many early SUV models were available in 2WD versions, people overwhelmingly prefered 4WD. Yet repeated usage surveys in the 90s showed only about 10% of SUV drivers ever used 4WD. What gives? Why are people buying the extra design, precision engineering, and transmission weight and buying the extra gas to haul…

How insects and crustaceans molt

I was mildly surprised at the reaction to this cool timelapse video of a molting crab — some people didn't understand how arthropods work. The only thing to do, of course, is to explain the molting process of insects and crustaceans, called ecdysis. Let's go back to the basics first. In the beginning was the epithelium, a continuous sheet of linked cells that envelops multicellular organisms. These are living, dividing, dynamic cells that are flexible, can repair damage to themselves, and represent the boundary between the carefully maintained internal environment of the organism, and the…

Giving the Lie: Blogs and Scientific Criticism

I have been slowly wading through A Social History of Truth, Steven Shapin's study of how early modern English gentleman's etiquette was appropriated for scientific purposes - primarily to help decide who to trust, and to handle disagreements about the nature of the world. While Shapin doesn't move beyond the context of early modern England or speculate about what modern scientific culture might have inherited from the founders of the Royal Society (doing so properly would be an awful lot of work), he discusses several concepts which I have very much enjoyed comparing to the interactions I…

Amphibian Disease Heats Up

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 Helicobacter pylori that causes over 80% of stomach ulcers, once thought to be primarily caused by stress. This turned medical dogma upside-down and earned them the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine . Even microorganisms aren't safe from other microorganisms, with bacteria, for example under constant…

Is Oxford Shortchanging Its Students Through Overspecialization?

"Ph.D. programs don't really attract the most exceptional students," he said. I was having dinner with a few professors and graduate students from the Oxford Department of Biochemistry last night when one of the professors made that assertion. The topic of conversation was why so many graduate students in our program seem to lack a broad knowledge of areas of biochemistry outside of their specific area of research. Feeling slightly offended, and fueled by the copious quantities of wine we had consumed, I pointedly asked, "Have you actually seen any figures that would back that up?" He hadn…

Research on The Origins of Maize (Corn)

Corn (maize) was domesticated in the earlier part of the Holocene in Mexico from a wild plant called teosinte. Subsequent to the discovery of this area of origin by MacNeish, a great deal of research has gone on to track the spread of maize across the New World, its diversification, its effects on Native American lifeways, and so on. How do you tell if corn was grown in a particular area? There are several possibilities, including looking for pollen in swamps and lakes or at archaeological sites, finding macro-fossils (don't be fooled by the name .. macrofossils are tiny, like individual…

"Outing" anonymous bloggers: A favorite technique of antivaccine cranks

A reader of this blog was outed by a moron posting as "Mark" on the Age of Autism blog. I will not link to the outing, nor will I link to Age of Autism. I have, however, kept a nice screen shot of the page, just in case someone over there has an attack of conscience, and I will also comment on the observation that "outing" its enemies is a favorite technique of cranks in general. However, it seems to be a particular favorite of antivaccine cranks. So is hypocrisy, it would appear. After all, "Mark" did not post under his full name but only under his first name, while he thinks nothing of…

You say you want a revolution

Medical science rarely undergoes revolutionary changes. Progress tends to be slow and steady, with new ideas undergoing extensive investigation before being implemented. This pace can be frustrating and every once in a while, someone comes along who thinks they have discovered The Secret to It All. Despite the apparent insanity of such grandiosity (or perhaps because if it), you can always rely on the Huffington Post to give it a platform. (Interestingly, most of these Ideas can't be simultaneously correct, but that doesn't seem to bother HuffPo). The latest Revolutionary Thinker is Dr…

No arguments allowed

Tim Blair posted this accusation that the UN was lying about the tsunami relief effort: Via Diplomad, some comments from the UN's Jan Egeland: In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. <...> Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an "air-freight handling centre" in Aceh. Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers - 90 of them - which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food,…

An Experiment of One (Water Version)

It has been said that running training and the resulting personal performance level is an experiment of one. While there are certain general training characteristics to which all humans undoubtedly respond, the speed and level of adaptation to a specific training stimulus vary from individual to individual. Further, there is little doubt that the individual's response changes over the long haul. Next month I'll be turning 50, and like most competitive runners, I look forward to moving into a new age group. (No more pesky and quick 40 and 41 year olds to worry about.) Unfortunately, my zeal,…

Wandering Megaraptor

When I wrote about the new sauropod Futalognkosaurus dukei last October, I noted that the authors of the paper describing the animal also included a brief summary of the other animals found nearby. Remains of crocodiles, fish, and pterosaurs provided some clues as to the paleoecology of the area about 90 million years ago, but one of the big surprises was a big honkin' claw from Megaraptor. At first the remains of Megaraptor were thought to represent a coelurosaur, but the complete hand has shown that it is probably either a spinosaurid or carcharodontosaurid. A recent study of the hand,…

Unconscious Shopping

Another week, another fascinating seminar over at Mind Matters. The paper in question concerns a topic near and dear to me: decision making. Here's the abstract: Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing. On the basis of recent insights into the characteristics of conscious and unconscious thought, we tested the hypothesis that simple choices (such as between different towels or different sets of oven mitts) indeed produce better results after conscious thought, but that choices in complex matters (such as…

Bush's Instincts

It's one of those tired cliches: Bush makes decisions with his irrational "gut instincts," instead of relying on "careful analysis". Paul Krugman, in today's Times, end his columns by repeating this cliche: Luckily, we've got good leadership for the coming storm: the White House is occupied by a man who's ideologically flexible, listens to a wide variety of views, and understands that policy has to be based on careful analysis, not gut instincts. Oh, wait. That's what an economist would say. Classic economics assumes that everybody - even George Bush - is capable of rationally analyzing a…

Arts Education

Reposted from last year: Michael Posner and Brenda Patoine make a neuroscientific case for arts education. They argue that teaching kids to make art has lasting cognitive benefits: If there were a surefire way to improve your brain, would you try it? Judging by the abundance of products, programs and pills that claim to offer "cognitive enhancement," many people are lining up for just such quick brain fixes. Recent research offers a possibility with much better, science-based support: that focused training in any of the arts--such as music, dance or theater--strengthens the brain's attention…

Grit

I had an article in Boston Globe Ideas section on the psychology of grit. For more on the subject, check out the incredibly interesting work of Angela Duckworth. You can also take the grit survey here. It's the single most famous story of scientific discovery: in 1666, Isaac Newton was walking in his garden outside Cambridge, England - he was avoiding the city because of the plague - when he saw an apple fall from a tree. The fruit fell straight to the earth, as if tugged by an invisible force. (Subsequent versions of the story had the apple hitting Newton on the head.) This mundane…

Effectiveness of HPV vaccines: Reporters ought to read their own stories

An LA Times report on a study of the HPV vaccine summarizes it by saying "Overall, the new results indicate that the vaccine is not living up to its initial prospects." But is that true? Here's what the reporter said mere paragraphs earlier about the findings: Among women who had not previously been exposed to types 16 and 18, the vaccine reduced the risk of precancerous lesions caused by those two strains by 98%. "The overall message, in my mind, is that among susceptible young women, the vaccine was highly effective in preventing HPV-16 or -18 precancerous cervical lesions," [study author…

Market Bubbles and Human Nature

Alan Greenspan seems to have discovered the irrationality of human nature. In his recent appearance on the Daily Show, he lamented the stubborn persistence of financial bubbles, from junk bonds to dot-com stocks to real estate. (For a thorough history of bubbles, from tulips to today, check out this book.) John Stewart confessed that Greenspan's gloomy view of human nature - we are all gullible fools - bummed the expletive out of him. (Greenspan, of course, could also be rationalizing away his own failure to deflate either the dot-com bubble or the real estate bubble.) But why are bubbles so…

Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice?

Yes, the review you've all been waiting for. Before I start, let me point out that this has been discussed by WE at WUWT, who has pointed out the obvious problem. It has also been mentioned by KK, though that appears to be more of a meta-discussion about the paper's reception rather than the paper itself. [Note: follow-up here.] To quote KK: But back to the show. One commenter at WUWT, noting the negative reaction to Judith, gives her a backhanded compliment when he writes: I have to applaud Judith Curry on having the guts to present her paper in the boxing ring of climate blogs where the…

The Norms of Society and Presidential Executive Orders UPDATE

A brief update: This morning, Senate Republicans set aside the rules that say that both parties must be present, with at least one member, for a committee vote to advance a Presidential nominee for a cabinet appointment. In other words, as outlined below, our system is based not only on enforceable laws but also on rules that only work if everyone involves agrees to not be the bully on the playground who ignores the rules. The Republicans are the bully on the playground. The system requires honest actor playing by agreed on rules. So, without the honest actor, you get this. This fits…

Wells' flagrantly false commentary on Hox complex structure

This evening, I am watching an episode of that marvelous and profane Western, Deadwood, as I type this; it is a most excellently compensatory distraction, allowing me to sublimate my urge to express myself in uncompromisingly vulgar terms on Pharyngula. This is an essential coping mechanism. I have been reading Jonathan Wells again. If you're familiar with Wells and with Deadwood, you know what I mean. You'll just have to imagine that I am Al Swearingen, the brutal bar-owner who uses obscenities as if they were lyric poetry, while Wells is E.B. Farnum, the unctuous rodent who earns the…

Food Again

This post ties together a number of themes that I have been harping upon for the past few years.  First, from Greg Mankiw's blog: href="http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/11/whats-wrong-with-efficient-scale.html">What's wrong with the efficient scale? Reuters reports:     President-elect Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to cut billions of dollars from wasteful government programs....An obvious example, Obama said, were reports of crop subsidies to farmers who make more than $2.5 million per year. Like President-elect Obama (but unlike candidate Obama), I am all for getting rid of…

Stanislaw Burzynski and the cynical use of cancer patients as shields and weapons against the FDA: Has the FDA caved?

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." I know I've used that quote before several times over the 9+ years that I've been blogging. These days, I probably use it most frequently when it comes to the topic of Stanislaw Burzynski. Every time I think that I can give the topic a rest for a while (and, believe me, I do want to give it a rest), something invariably seems to happen to pull me back in. So it was yesterday when i was made aware of a new development so disappointing that I'm still wiping the dirt off my chin from my jaw dropping to the floor. Even more amazing is that…

Dichloroacetate and The DCA Site: A low bar for "success" (part 2)

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it. I say this in light of a commenter, who decided to show up in one of my old posts to claim "positive results" from dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule experimental cancer drug that has shown promising activity in rat models of cancer but has not yet been subjected to testing in human trials, and invite me to check out new testimonials. Because DCA is a small molecule that is inexpensive to produce and can't itself be patented (although a patent for its use in treating cancer, a weaker form of patent, is possible), pharmaceutical…

Diagnosing Dostoyevsky's epilepsy

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) is arguably the greatest novelist of all time. He cast a long shadow over world literature, and subsequently influenced many great writers, from Hermann Hesse, Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka, to Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jack Kerouac. Dostoyevsky had a profound insight into the human condition. He was much more than a novelist: he was also a psychologist and a philosopher. In his novels, Dostoyevsky explored subjects such as free will, the existence of God, and good and evil. The characters in his novels are most often portrayed as living…

Misconceptions in evolutionary biology

Chad Orzel is asking about misconceptions in science that irritate. Evolgen and Afarensis have chimed in. My problem is not an misconception, it is a pet peeve. As I've noted before, random genetic drift is a catchall explanation for everything. I am not saying drift is not powerful, it is the basis for the neutral theory of molecular evolution. This theory states that the rate of substitution on a neutral locus is proportional to the rate of mutation. Substitution would be when you have allele X at 99% frequency at time 1 and allele Y at 99% frequency at time 2 on a particular locus…

Scenes from Here

So I somehow forgot to mention when I went on maternity leave and promised to post on Thursdays that I meant I would start this Thursday, since I was on vacation last week.  Sorry 'bout that.  I will shamelessly blame the baby and sleep deprivation again. We spent much of last week visiting family near Boston, which was lovely - the transition with K. and C. really took it out of us.  I'm not a high-stress person, I tend to be pretty relaxed, but we really needed a break after two very hectic weeks and a lot of emotion.  Among other things, we had sent K. and C. home two days before the movie…

Acid mine outrage: How South African communities are affected by government and industry neglect

New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. Note from the editor of New Solutions: The Drawing Board: In the spirit of international solidarity, The Drawing Board has begun featuring articles from activists, researchers, and workers from around the world. It is our belief that we cannot effectively fight for social, economic and environmental justice in isolation, but instead must learn from and support one another. The parallels between Mexican workers' grievances and environmental catastrophes in Ethiopia are often…

CDC's NIOSH says WHAT about asbestos???

[Update 4/22/2011: see CDC's NIOSH corrects asbestos statement] It was almost too much to believe. Here I was attending the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization's (ADAO) annual meeting, mingling and learning from patients and researchers about asbestos-related disease, and I hear that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has just issued its treatise on asbestos. That document, called a "current intelligence bulletin" is supposed to convey the most up-to-date scientific information on a hazard and risk of harm…