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The strange sex lives of bone-eating whaleworms

For at least 30 million years, bone-eating worms have been making their homes in the bodies of decomposing whales on the seabottom, but the rotting cetacean carcasses are not just food sources for the polychaetes. The term "worm" immediately conjures up images of the red, squiggly things which crawl all over the sidewalk after it rains, but this imagery does not fit the boneworms of the genus Osedax. These worms start off life as sexless larvae, and the timing of their arrival at a whale corpse makes all the difference as to whether they will be male or female. If the larva lands on the…

Lying with Statistics: Abortion Rates

Via [Feministe][feministe], we see a wingnut named Tim Worstall [trying to argue something about sexual education][worstall]. It's not entirely clear just what the heck he thinks his argument is; he wants to argue that sexual education "doesn't work"; his argument about this is based on abortion rates. This is an absolutely *classic* example of how statistics are misused in political arguments. So let's take a look, and see what's wrong. [feministe]: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/07/10/lies-damn-lies-and-sta… [worstall]: http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2006/07/…

Buttars on a Roll

Here comes Chris Buttars again, putting his rank ignorance and utter lack of critical reasoning skills on display in an op-ed piece in USA Today. Buttars has it all figured out, folks. Evolution is all about destroying God and that's that. We might as well close up the Evil Atheist Conspiracy right now; a halfwit State Senator from Utah has nailed us. The campaign to eliminate God from the public forum has been going on for decades, having accelerated greatly since the Supreme Court's ill-advised decision in 1963 to eliminate prayer from public schools. And I believe those fighting against…

Nightline is a Disgrace

So I watched Nightline tonight, buoyed by the fact that the clips that appeared on the website earlier today were not too bad from the atheist standpoint (as I described here.) I should have known better. Having just watched the actual show, it is clear that they had no intention of giving any sort of accurate picture of what either side said. Instead, the goal was to play in to the standard script in which the fanatical Christians are presented as lovable, but simplistic, while the atheists are presented as dogmatic and obnoxious. Almost nothing from the clips I viewed this afternoon…

The machine that identifies images from brain activity alone

Modern brain-scanning technology allows us to measure a person's brain activity on the fly and visualise the various parts of their brain as they switch on and off. But imagine being able to literally see what someone else is thinking - to be able to convert measurements of brain activity into actual images. It's a scene reminiscent of the 'operators' in The Matrix, but this technology may soon stray from the realm of science-fiction into that of science-fact. Kendrick Kay and colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley have created a decoder that can accurately work out the one…

Saturn Emits Energy Unevenly

click image to make it gigantic This false-color composite image, constructed from data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows Saturn's rings and southern hemisphere. The composite image was made from 65 individual observations by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer in the near-infrared portion of the light spectrum on Nov. 1, 2008. The observations were each six minutes long. In this image constructed from data collected in the near-infrared wavelengths of light, scientists designated blue to indicate sunlight reflected at a wavelength of 2 microns, green to indicate…

One can only assume this is a late April Fool's joke

Billy Dembski's "research" assistant Joel Borofsky writes, Don’t teach the Holocaust! It might offend people!: From the "London Times" Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to cause offence to children from certain races or religions, a report claims. A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to "shallow" lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association. The report, produced with funding from the…

Applied Molecular Evolution: The Evidence in Favor of the Tripoli Six

The five nurses and one doctor (the Tripoli Six) accused of infecting hundreds of patients with HIV in Libya are awaiting the verdict of their trial, expected to be handed down on December 19. The second trial concluded on November 4 -- the original guilty verdict was overturned. I previously mentioned that the molecular evidence (DNA sequences from HIV taken from the patients) did not support a guilty verdict. Nature has published the results of an analysis of those DNA sequences that suggests the doctors were not responsible for the HIV infection. A description of that evidence is below the…

KITP: extragalactic x-ray binaries in cluuusteeerrrrsss!

it is still raining?! so we have an east coaster telling us about actual data on x-ray binaries in clusters, globular clusters in other galaxies... there is an open-to-the-program-members blog over on the cluster09 wikispace. It has some good summary of yesterdays in depth discussion on runaway mergers in the afternoon session. Chandra image of NGC4697 so our pivot point is the issue of low mass x-ray binaries (LMXBs) - mass transfer binaries, with compact primary, generally a neutron star, and a companion with a mass lower than some vague mass that is either about a solar mass, or…

Deadly legacy of coal mining: a thousand new black lung disease cases

I’m still haunted by the voice on my car radio. It was one of those “NPR moments.” We were parked at our destination, but there was no way we were getting out of the car. National Public Radio’s (NPR) Howard Berkes was reporting from eastern Kentucky and interviewing Mackie Branham. The 39 year old coal miner gasped for air over every word. Chills ran up my spine. Branham's lungs were hardened by coal mine dust. It was painful to listen yet the perfect punctuation for a powerful story. Berkes’ reported findings of an NPR investigation of the incidence of the most severe form of coal workers’…

Weekend Diversion: The Last Detox Diet You'll Ever Try!

"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people." -Orson Welles I just completed my 35th trip around the Sun yesterday, which was a great time! But, it got me thinking, has my time in this world resulted in a build-up of toxic substances in my body? Is there any way to get rid of them? Is there anything, as Olenka & the Autumn Lovers might sing, that can get me Clean? Well, maybe there is, if you look in the right place! Image credit: http://www.cleansevsdiet.com/. *NOT* an endorsement, by any means! Think your kidneys and liver aren't…

Publishers Remove Climate Change Denialism From Texas Schoolbooks

I just got this press release for the Texas Freedom Nettwork, passing the good news on to you: PUBLISHERS REMOVE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIALISM FROM TEXAS TEXTBOOKS; PUT EDUCATION AHEAD OF POLITICS Texas State Board of Education must still vote on adopting the revised textbooks FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 17, 2014 Publishers have agreed to correct or remove inaccurate passages promoting climate change denialism from new social studies textbooks proposed for Texas public schools, a coalition of science and education groups announced this afternoon. This news comes as the State Board of Education…

Happy Earth Day, 2011 Edition!

"We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." -Bill Anders, Apollo 8 Astronaut This Earth Day, I think -- for anyone interested in space, astronomy, or the Universe -- gives us perhaps the best opportunity to look back on our planet as we understand it now, having traveled so far away from it. It was only, believe it or not, back in the 1940s that we first photographed our planet from high enough up to directly observe that, in fact, the Earth is curved! The above image, from 1948 in space over New Mexico, was the first panorama…

Monkey poop! ... and the evolutionary power of HIV

The story of 'How we know where HIV-1 came from' is really cool-- A group of researchers went into the jungles of Africa, collected lots of monkey poop, and figured out pretty much the exact colony of chimpanzees that transmitted their SIV into humans, which lead to the HIV epidemic we know today. Those researchers have struck brown gold again! Eastern Chimpanzees, but not Bonobos, Represent a  Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Reservoir There are lots of different kinds of 'HIV'. Apparently, all of the  HIV-1 (Group M is causing the HIV epidemic in humans, and then Group N and O) we know today…

Science Funding to be Slashed Under Stimulus "Compromise": Call Your Senators NOW!

TPM has a list of stimulus cuts that a group of senators led by Democrat Ben Nelson and Republican Susan Collins have proposed. The cuts are at 77.9 billion and growing, and include a great deal of the science-related spending. On the chopping block: 750 million - half the proposed increase - of funding for NASA exploration 1.4 billion - from the NSF line. That's the entire proposed increase 427 million - 1/3 of the proposal - from NOAA 218 million - almost 40% - from NIST 1 billion - 38% - from the DOE Energy Efficiency/Renewable Energy line 100 million - from the DOE office of science line…

A novel axon guidance mechanism

[Introduction|Part 3|Part 4] Lopez-Bendito et al (2006) show that pathfinding of thalamocortical axons (TCAs) requires the formation of a permissive corridor through non-permissive territory, and that this corridor is generated by cells which undergo a tangential migration from the lateral ganglionic eminence (LGE). TCAs arise in the dorsal thalamus, and follow a stereotyped pathway into the developing neocortex. Initially, they are repelled by Slit 1 and Slit 2 expressed in the hypothalamus. They extend rostrally into the telencephalon and turn sharply before extending dorsolaterally to…

NASA is Twittering Phoenix

Every few minutes I get an email from NASA telling me which button they've pressed on the Phoenix Robot, recently landed on Mars. And I'm only slightly exaggerating. OK, I'm exaggerating a lot. The latest: Phoenix has been commanded to move its arm: Scientists leading NASA's Phoenix Mars mission from the University of Arizona in Tucson sent commands to unstow its robotic arm and take more images of its landing site early today. The Phoenix lander sent back new sharp color images from Mars late yesterday. Phoenix imaging scientists made a color mosaic of images taken by the lander's…

Not just stupid, but dangerous

Joe Mercola's website has always been a "target-rich environment" for quack hunters. His rants against vaccines, his incorrect flu information, his support of homeopathy, and just about everything else at his website comes free of evidence and full of unfounded assertions (as well as some seriously side-splitting giggles). But his latest post up at---where else?---the Huffington Post is patently dangerous. It is entitled, "Why You Shouldn't Drink Pasteurized Milk". If he had gone into the high caloric content of milk, the possible uses of alternative sources of calcium and other nutrients…

Rockfall "snuffs out" the Halema'uma'u vent?

The Halema'uma'u Crater at Kilauea on June 29, 2009, prior to a rockfall on June 30th that has blocked the vent. Image courtesy of HVO. There is a bit of a buzz today about significant rockfalls that occurred in Halema'uma'u Crater at Kilauea on June 30th. Some articles have suggested that the rockfall has "snuffed out" glowing vent in the Crater. Well, this is partially true. HVO is reporting that the glow that has been seen at Halema`uma`uma has been, in fact, gone since the rockfall. Here is the report of the event: A sequence of rockfalls, some quite large, within the Halema'uma'u vent…

Where the scelidosaurs and iguanodontians roam

Before I begin, let me say: yay Raeticodactylus. Would say more but haven't had time (plus I've had no internet access for the last few days). Last year Dave Martill and I published part 1 of our review of the British dinosaur fauna (Naish & Martill 2007). While several published lists provide overviews of Britain's dinosaur assemblage (Swinton 1934, Olshevsky 2000, Weishampel et al. 2004), it seemed like a good idea to produce a more extensive review, especially given the substantial taxonomic confusion that surrounds British dinosaurs, and the large amount of recent work that has…

Politics and Medicine Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large version of the Politics and Medicine & Health channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Politics. The 2008 Democratic ticket for the White House. From Flickr, by bobster1985 Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by Scoro Reader comments of the week: The Politics channel is all over Sarah Palin this week, but Mike the Mad Biologist reminds us she's not the only one running in From Food Stamps to the Presidency? Maybe a Safety Net Isn't TEH EVIL. While the Republican party often criticizes Barack Obama for supposed elitism, Mike points…

Where is the light coming from?

Today's reading is "Prior Knowledge on the Illlumination Position" by Pascal Mamassian and Ross Goutcher of the University of Glasgow (Cognition, 2001 [PDF link]). When we see an embossed seal such as a notary stamp, how do we know which parts are convex (bumps) and which are concave (dimples)? When we look at such a seal through a microscope (or even a toilet paper roll), so that we don't know where the illumination is coming from, we can't tell what's up and what's down. This effect was first recorded in 1744, and first accurately explained in 1786 by David Rittenhouse: we assume the light…

Public Input Requested on Manatee Issue

Good news! Florida is opening a public comment period from May 1-June 14, and the decision about whether to downgrade their status from endangered will be postponed until after that period. The final plan will be presented to commissioners in September. If approved, the state will upgrade the manatee's status from endangered to threatened. That would mean scientists believe the species has rebounded from the brink of extinction. The US Fish and Wildlife Service had recommended changing the manatee's federal status from endangered to threatened in Florida and Puerto Rico after deeming it no…

Phoenix landing photo

This: Is a picture of Phoenix landing on Mars, taken from above. One always wonders where the camera operator is during these things.... PASADENA, Calif. -- A telescopic camera in orbit around Mars caught a view of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suspended from its parachute during the lander's successful arrival at Mars Sunday evening, May 25. The image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks the first time ever one spacecraft has photographed another one in the act of landing on Mars. Meanwhile, scientists pored over initial…

From the top of the world to the bottom of ancient seas...

The newspapers this last week were full of science stories, exhibiting the broad diversity and strangeness of life on our planet. Here are some of the highlights: Seeds are preserved in an Arctic vault in Svalbard, preserving humankind's agricultural legacy: Crop seeds are the source of human sustenance, the product of 10,000 years of selective breeding dating to the dawn of agriculture. The "doomsday vault," as some have come to call it, is to be the ultimate backup in the event of a global catastrophe -- the go-to place after an asteroid hit or nuclear or biowarfare holocaust so that,…

Tons of new sauropod papers in Paleobiology

For those of you who love sauropods, you'll definitely want to check out the latest issue of Paleobiology. I don't have enough time right now to give each a full treatment, but here's a brief summary of each; "Modeling growth rates for sauropod dinosaurs" (Thomas M. Lehman and Holly N. Woodward) - Sauropods were the largest of dinosaurs (and among the largest animals to have ever lived), but how quickly they attained their huge sizes has been hotly debated. Determining how quickly sauropods attained adult size has major implications for considerations of dinosaur metabolism and body…

Eyjafjallajökull eruption update for April 26, 2010

Night image of Eyjafjallajökull erupting on April 24, 2010. Image courtesy of James Ashworth. A quick update on the Eyjafjallajökull eruption: Not a lot to report in terms of changes in the volcanic activity at the volcano. The update from the Icelandic Met Office last night sums it up nicely: Overall activity similar as yesterday. Eruption seen from west in the morning - north crater still active. External water has not affected vent activity much since 18 April. Geologists' field observations (2-10 km from vents) show that explosivity is magmatic and that the tephra produced since 18…

Reptile & Amphibian Day at the Museum

News from SCONC: The NC Museum of Natural Sciences presents Reptile & Amphibian Day on Saturday, March 15 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dozens of displays, activities and presentations highlight reptiles and amphibians from North Carolina and around the world. Here's your chance to get up-close and personal with hundreds of live animals, from giant pythons to bearded dragons. Meet reptile expert Dr. Brady Barr, the first person to capture and study all 23 crocodilian species in the wild.

Brown people are all the same (perhaps)

New paper in PLOS Genetics, Low Levels of Genetic Divergence across Geographically and Linguistically Diverse Populations from India. Here's the conclusion: Populations from India, and groups from South Asia more generally, form a genetic cluster, so that individuals placed within this cluster are more genetically similar to each other than to individuals outside the cluster. However, the amount of genetic differentiation among Indian populations is relatively small. The authors conclude that genetic variation in India is distinctive with respect to the rest of the world, but that the level…

Environment and Humanities & Social Science Channel Weekly Update 10/28/08

Hello again, ScienceBlogs enthusiasts. Today we will be taking a look at this week's hot posts in the Environment and Humanities & Social Science channels. I'm Arikia Millikan, your ScienceBlogs intern, and I'll be your guide. Environment channel photo. The PPL-owned nuclear cooling towers in Conyngham and Salem Townships, Luzerne County. As seen from the Council Cup scenic overlook. From Flickr, by Nicholas T Environment October 27, 2008—There is perhaps no image more awesome and terrifying than that of the atomic bomb. It is the one thing (that we know of... LHC black hole dragons…

DROP THAT CELL PHONE NOW!!!11!!!

DROP YOUR CELL PHONE NOW!!!!111! (don't send me the bill for the replacement) I'm sure others will cover more of the scientific details, but science aside, we should examine why today's statement on cell phones out of Pittsburgh is so ridiculous. Setting aside the lack of data connecting cell phones and health problems, this is horribly irresponsible. Here's the thumbnail: an alarmist report was released by the UP Cancer Institute's Center for Environmental Oncology. It was apparently targeted at the university community, and stated that despite lack of current evidence, the community should…

The snake that eats toads to steal their poison

Many animals use poisonous secretions to protect themselves from predators. But poisons are complex chemicals and can take a lot of energy to make. Why invest in them, when you can steal someone else's? Poison thieves are well-known in the animal kingdom. Many species of brightly coloured poison arrow frogs acquire their poisons from beetles, while some sea slugs make a living by hunting for jellyfish, transporting their stinging cells into their own limbs. Now, another species joins this guild of thieves - the tiger keelback snake, Rhabdophis tigrinis (image right, by Deborah…

Climate Paranoia

Over at ClimateAudit Steve McIntyre complains that Al Gore loving Google has dropped ClimateAudit from their search results: I've noted from time to time that climateaudit.org ranked extremely high on many google searches. One of the ways to find articles here has been to simply use google. I often do it. Today when I googled "climateaudit curry", I found no link to climateaudit. In comments, John A blames Gavin Schmidt's orbital mind control lasers: *[Update: John A says he was referring to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Which is still nuts.] Time to write a nice letter to Mr Schmidt, methinks.…

New Dinosaur Species from Niger

Just reported in PLoS ONE is a new dinosaur. Spinophorosaurus nigerensis Here are the salient facts: Species name: Spinophorosaurus nigerensis Who found it: Scientists with the State Museum of Natural History Braunschweig, Germany, and the Paldes Project (led by the Paleontological Museum of Elche, Spain) Kind of dinosaur: Basal sauropod Time period: Early and Middle Jurassic (about 200 to 170 million years ago) What the finders say about it: "There are very few complete skeletons of basal sauropods," Remes explains. However, complete finds are crucial for the scientists in order to…

Finns as European outliers

Dienekes points to another paper on European population substructure, Genome-Wide Analysis of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Uncovers Population Structure in Northern Europe: In this study, we analysed almost 250,000 SNPs from a total of 945 samples from Eastern and Western Finland, Sweden, Northern Germany and Great Britain complemented with HapMap data. Small but statistically significant differences were observed between the European populations...The latter indicated the existence of a relatively strong autosomal substructure within the country, similar to that observed earlier with…

News from the other side of the world

Or from your side of the world, if you're down there in the southern hemisphere and in a very different time zone from us Americans. From Australia, we have news of a powerful program on vaccination. It juxtaposes the story of young Dana McCaffrey, a 4-week-old girl who died of whooping cough, with the anti-vaccination crusader Meryl Dorey, who at one point claims that no one "is going to die from [whooping cough] today", and who says that she treated her own unvaccinated children with homeopathic medicines. Guess which one looks like an uncaring idiot? The news is less cheering from New…

French Policy Discriminatory and Oppressive

I've written quite a bit about the French law forbidding students from wearing "visible religious symbols" or clothing. Howard Friedman is reporting that the French government has now decided, after much lobbying, that Sikhs can wear patkas (an under-turban) or headscarves, but not turbans, in school. Meanwhile, no other religious group has gotten such a dispensation from the government. Muslims are forbidden from wearing headscarves or burkas, Jews from wearing yarmulkes and Christians from wearing visible crosses. The current French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, said several months…

Sexuality in old age and other interesting stories

Sexuality in old age Human beings are living longer, women more so than men. Among people 85 years of age and older, there are 4 men for every 10 women. What happens to sexuality in older age? Read more in this BBC News story or from the original NEJM paper. Cut Calories and live longer-latest research A University of Florida study shows just how much the body benefits when it "goes green," at least if you're a rat: Cutting calories helps rodents live longer by boosting cells' ability to recycle damaged parts so they can maintain efficient energy production.More from Science Daily. New…

Others in Siberia

The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia: With the exception of Neanderthals, from which DNA sequences of numerous individuals have now been determined...the number and genetic relationships of other hominin lineages are largely unknown. Here we report a complete mitochondrial (mt) DNA sequence retrieved from a bone excavated in 2008 in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia. It represents a hitherto unknown type of hominin mtDNA that shares a common ancestor with anatomically modern human and Neanderthal mtDNAs about 1.0 million…

Another example of a dangerous jump

Check this out. So, the guy jumps from 150 feet into some cardboard boxes. Why are the boxes important? You want something that can stop you in the largest distance to make your acceleration the smallest. Here is my Dangerous Jumping Calculator. Basically, you put in how high you will jump from and how much distance you will take to land and it tells you your acceleration. You will probably need this G-force tolerance info from wikipedia. One problem - this calculator doesn't really work for this case. It doesn't take into account air resistance. Does air resistance even matter in this…

Redoubt Weekend Open Thread

Image courtesy of AVO/USGS by Ron Beck. Shows an ash plume from Redoubt (tan) on March 26 from a Landsat 5 satellite. I'll be "off the grid" for the weekend at a wedding, so I thought I'd leave this open for any Redoubt news Eruptions readers hear over the weekend. Feel free to leave comments about the developments up in Alaska. Currently, AVO reports that seismicity is lower since the eruptions this morning. They indicate that eruptions will likely occur without warning from here on in. There are also some new articles on how the eruption is affecting air travel, including cancellations of…

The genetics of politics

Political Behavior through the Lens of Behavior Genetics: These are all fascinating questions and Fowler and colleagues are only beginning to uncover the answers. I anticipate that Fowler and his partners in crime will continue to leave a trail of evidence from which we can build an even stronger case for a political science which does not make assumptions that are at odds with stylized facts from behavior genetics. Or, for that matter, at odds with facts derived from any of the other scientific disciplines from which the "genopolitics" crowd draw inspiration. Read the whole thing, as the…

Iconic Curves #2: On Exponential Curves, “Hockey Sticks,” and Environmental Crises

On April 2nd, I posted three iconic graphs showing some of the clear observational evidence that we’re changing the climate. That post produced a substantial, and largely thoughtful response, and a request for more information and data along these lines. Here are three more, along with a bonus fourth, all with a theme of exponential growth – the powerful force that is behind much of the concern about climate change and many other environmental and social challenges. Figures like these are increasingly called “hockey stick” curves, after the work of Professor Michael Mann and others in the…

Bush administration's murderous incompetence continues

When the Topps Meat Company recalled 300,000 pounds of frozen hamburger on September 25 because of E. coli contamination that was bad. It got worse on September 30 when the recall was expanded to 21.76 million pounds, the third largest recall in US history. It got worse yet when it was revealed that 28 people in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania states have fallen ill from eating the contaminated meat. Maybe the worst yet comes from a Chicago/McClathy Tribune News Service report that the US Department of Agriculture waited 18 days after learning…

Welcoming the New Neighbours

I think we should take some pie over, in person. Discovery of a Binary Brown Dwarf at 2 Parsecs from the Sun - Kevin Luhman, ApJLetters in press. That is just over 6 light years away, making it the third closest system from the Sun, and the closest known substellar system, only the α Cen triple system, and Barnard's Star, an old red dwarf, are closer. Detection images for our new neighbour. The WISE discovery image is middle bottom, the Gemini image at the bottom right shows the resolved pair clearly. This is a spectacular and somewhat surprising discovery, that something could be this…

Inky-winky-binky-pinky

Via TW (who says Inflation's a tricky thing you know) this interesting inflation calculator. From the Torygraph, the Jetlev flyer. A ridiculous boys-toy, but it did cause my daughter to say "I must have one". Did I mention that reading the Torygraph in the Waitrose cafe is one of my guilty pleasures? Its not quite as good as it looks, because not only do you have a huge hosepipe trailing after you, there is also the jetski-like boat you're tied to (that's the Jetlev, not reading the TG). Also from the TG a delightful story about Empty wine bottles sell for £300 in China because, of course,…

It's Not Science Without Graphs

After months and months of nothing, behold! Signal! Explanation below the fold. What you're looking at here is a graph showing the signal from our optically excited metastable krypton source prototype. The red dots are fluorescence detected by a photomultiplier tube (PMT) from metastable atoms created in the source, and excited by a probe laser passing through the source region. The black dots show the intensity of another beam from the same laser passing through a plasma discharge in a vapor cell, which creates metastbles that absorb the light when the laser is at the right frequency. The…

PZ Myers Car Wrecked in Accident: Myers Suffers Minor Injuries (updated)

UPDATE: Read it in his own words! Relive the horror of the road! Cringe as you hear all the gory details of near death and automotive crunchiness, here at Pharyngula! Myers, trapped in remote region, unable to blog. UPDATE: Myers has been picked up from the scene by rescue vehicle dispatched from Morris, and is now en route to Saint Cloud airport. where he will take flight to Michigan. Pharyngula readers await direct word from Myers, who may be able to blog from airport. Approximate Location of Car Wreck University of Minnesota, Morris, Biology Professor and Science Blogger (…

Casual Fridays: Buffet-style restaurants -- Results are in!

Last week we asked readers how often they eat at buffet-style restaurants, where diners serve themselves unlimited portions of food from heated serving tables. The question was inspired by a post by ScienceBlogs editor Virginia Hughes, which was inspired by an innocuous comment I made as we were heading to our hotel restaurant table: "People in North Carolina are really into buffets." So, is North Carolina the champion state for buffets? Nope. In fact, North Carolina ranked 20th on our list. The number one state for buffets was Kansas, averaging 6 visits per month. Second on the list was New…

Postmortem sleeping beauties

Through the end of May, UMBC's Albin O Kuhn gallery is hosting a large exhibition of postmortem daguerreotypes, death masks, coffin plates, etc. from the collection of Dr. Stanley Burns. Medical ephemera always have an emotional valence, because they represent patients who suffered, struggled and eventually lost their physical battles. But this collection of memorials are about the survivors' needs, not the dead, and are thus particularly eerie and wrenching. From the curator: Trace the evolution of postmortem photography through 19th-century daguerreotypes and prints from Sleeping Beauty…