Search Content

Displaying results 13501 - 13550 of 87949

Monckton flunks Latin

This is the very first paragraph of Monckton's response to Gavin Schmidt's demolition of Monckton's paper on climate sensitivity. For the second time, the FalseClimate propaganda blog, founded by two co-authors of the now-discredited "hockey-stick" graph by which the UN's climate panel tried unsuccessfully to abolish the mediaeval warm period, has launched a malevolent, scientifically-illiterate, and unscientifically-ad-hominem attack on a publication by me. Monckton goes on to make many more ad hominem attacks on Schmidt. And what are the ad hominem attacks that Monckton alleges that…

Understanding Antibiotic Resistance: Finland and Why We Need a National Healthcare System

A recent article that examined the relationship between antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance in Finland made me realize one very sad fact: what is easy to do in Finland is nearly impossible in the U.S. because we lack a national healthcare system (note: I'm not talking about how healthcare is paid for which is an argument about reimbursement, but a uniform system of record keeping and informatics protocols). Consider this from the introduction (italics mine; citations removed for clarity): According to current Finnish care recommendations, the first-line antimicrobial agents for the…

Crazy talk from ministers

We've got a fine gang of nuts coming up through the religious ranks right now. There are some real lunatics associated with Sarah Palin: she's linked to her home-town priests, Ed Kalnin and Thomas Muthee, who are linked to Morningstar Ministries and Rick Joyner. These cranks have a plan. Muthee is an international celebrity for his role in a series of documentary videos, seen by millions worldwide, that claim Christians can reduce crime, murder, traffic accidents, addiction, and environmental degradation by driving out, from cities and towns, demon spirits and accused witches. I am most…

Deplorable behavior of Indonesian Ministry of Health

The failure to have sequences from Indonesia made available to the world's scientific community continues to be a scandal. Whose doorstep to lay the blame? There would seem to be three possibilities: WHO, the scientists who do the sequencing, and the Government of Indonesia. An official from the government has already said they would consider a request for release favorably if one were made, but WHO admits they have yet to make one. Meanwhile, sequences often appear in GenBank upon publication of a paper. The available evidence, therefore, suggests WHO is guilty of not pressing the…

Life Science and Physical Science Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Life Science. From Flickr, by jurvetson Physical Science. Bubbles falling from a canopy of leaves. From Flickr, by jurvetson Reader comments of the week: On the Life Science channel, Tetrapod Zoology follows up its Sea Monster week with a teaser: The tree-climbing dinosaurs are coming. The post features the following alluring sketch to tantalize readers: Reader Zach Miller is skeptical: Tree-climbing dinosaurs? That's un-possible! Everyone…

Life Science and Physical Science Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week! Life Science. Baby birds awaiting a meal. From Flickr, by SuperFantastic Physical Science. Chemoluminescent luminol. From Flickr, by everyone's idle Reader comments of the week: On the Life Science channel, ERV introduces the pol gene, which codes for all retroviral enzymes, in Intro to ERVs: ENZYMES! The post is the final installment of ERV's crash course series in endogenous retroviruses. Reader dreikin liked it so much he wrote: I have a…

Education & Careers and Politics Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week! Education & Careers. From Flickr, by foundphotoslj Politics. Barack Obama supporters fill the Excel Center in St. Paul, Minnesota as he claims victory. From Flickr, by shiladsen Reader comments of the week: On the Education & Careers channel, ERV laments the lack of funding for research scientists in What ya wanna do when you grow up? As an aspiring P.I. she fears that many brilliant plans never come to fruition without the money to…

Education and Politics Weekly Channel Highlights

Each week we post a new picture and a choice comment from each of our nine channels here at ScienceBlogs on our channel homepages. Now, we're bringing you the best of the week in daily postings that will highlight individual channels. We've already seen what the Life Science, Physical Science, Environment and Humanities channels turned up; below, please find our favorite pickings from the Education & Careers and Politics channels: Education & Careers. From Flickr, by Don Fulano Reader comment of the week: On In defense of amateurs, Brian Switek of Laelaps discusses a discouraging…

The Science Spring Showdown Sweet Sixteen: Fossil Fuels vs. Erlenmeyer Flask

It's Friday afternoon, and scores are in for the Erlenmeyer Flask vs. Fossil Fuels game at Chemical Arena. Erlenmeyer Flask went into the first quarter hoping to contain Fossil Fuels. The team (sometimes known by its nickname, Conical Flask), clearly—and of necessity—adheres to the philosophy that the best offense is a good defense. As long as it could keep Fossil Fuels from getting out there and running amok on the court, Erlenmeyer Flask had a chance. The strategy worked like a charm for Erlenmeyer Flask for the first three quarters of the game. Fans in the stands—including a dazzling array…

TB to go doesn't go anywhere

It is not news that the Atlanta lawyer who had/didn't have Extremely Drug Resistant TB early in the year didn't infect anyone when he flew -- against advice or was it against orders? -- from Europe back to the US via Canada and through New York despite a no fly (or not?) order from CDC (or DHS?). Everything about this case was cocked up -- the diagnosis, the communication with the patient, the communication with the public, the communication between federal agencies, state agencies and local health agencies (see our posts here). The fact that no one who sat close to him or further from him or…

More excellent reporting on grain bins and temporary workers

I wrote earlier this week about the excellent work NPR and the Center for Public Integrity did for an in-depth series on worker deaths in grain bins. Now there are even more stories on the subject, including a PBS segment and several pieces in the Kansas City Star. Plus, Salon has published "When workers die: "And nobody called 911"" by CPI's Jim Morris and WBEZ's Chip Mitchell. It's a chilling follow-up to the reporters' earlier piece, "They were not thinking of him as a human being," about temporary worker Carlos Centeno, who died from severe burns after plant managers refused to call 911…

Twittering in the classroom

Readers may be interested in participating in this, from Dave Wessner at Davidson College: Building on a project I piloted last fall, I will explore the potential role of Twitter more intentionally this fall in a course I teach on HIV/AIDS at Davidson College. I invite you to join me in this exploration. Here are a few details: Basically, I am interested in extending the class conversation outside the classroom walls and beyond the appointed class hours. I want the students to begin thinking on their own about what aspects of the subject (HIV/AIDS, in this case) truly interest them. I want to…

Pepper viruses populate people poop

Have you ever wondered what kinds of viruses can be found in human waste? Mya Breitbart and team have been sequencing nucleic acids from fecal samples in order to find out. You might expect that we'd find viruses that infect humans or viruses that infect the bacteria in our gut. I wouldn't have expected to learn the result that they found. A large number, 60% of the viral DNA sequences were from unknown viruses. That's not a surprise. The surprise came when they looked at the RNA viruses. Instead, the viral sequences most often came from a plant pathogen called the pepper mild mottle…

The "state" of the US workforce depends on who you ask

The new chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor the Workforce will hold the panel's inaugural hearing on Wed. Jan 26, 2010. The topic: the "State of the American Workforce" with invited testimony from the current Governor of Virginia, president of a conservative think tank, a North Carolina small businessman representing the National Association of Manufacturers, and an economist from a progressive think tank. I'm eager to hear how the witnesses and the Committee members characterize the strengths of and challenges faced by U.S. workers. Will any relay this kind of account…

US uninsurance rate keeps dropping, especially in Medicaid expansion states

The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics has published an early release of findings on US health insurance coverage from January - March 2015, and the numbers show a continued decline in the number of US residents without health insurance. The report presents findings from the National Health Insurance Survey, and the headline estimate is that just 9.2% of people (29 million) were uninsured at the time of the interview. That's down from the same time period last year, when 13.4% lacked insurance coverage. The report notes that since 2010, the decline in uninsurance among adults ages 18…

The Big Bang Wasn't The Beginning, After All

"Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang." -Alan Guth Did the Universe begin with the Big Bang? When we discovered the cosmic microwave background, and its properties matched exactly the prediction of the Big Bang theory, it was a watershed moment for cosmology. For the first time, we had uncovered the origins to the entire Universe, having learned where all of this came from at long last. Emerging from a hot, dense, expanding, and cooling state, the matter-and-radiation-filled early Universe gave…

Ask Ethan: How far is the edge of the Universe from the farthest galaxy? (Synopsis)

“Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.” -Alan Guth When we look to the deepest reaches of space, we can look for the “first” of any type of object. The first galaxy, the first star, the first light from the CMB, or even the first signals from the Big Bang, like gravitational waves. Yet these signals all have very different redshifts from one another, and perhaps more puzzlingly, lie at extraordinarily different cosmic distances from us. Looking towards the north pole of the Milky Way galaxy, we…

It's the Research that Matters

Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake notes an article in Science about a survey of undergraduate research. The actual article is behind a paywall, but you can get access to the survey reports from SRI directly, which is even better. The study finds a large number of benefits from undergraduate research, from increased confidence to improved knowledge of graduate school. Students who have done research are about twice as likely to pursue a Ph.D. as those who haven't, and the more research they do, the more likely they are to pursue careers in science. The conclusion is strikingly simple, and I'll copy…

Links for 2010-11-26

Gender gap in physics exams reduced by simple writing exercises, says CU-Boulder study "Women are underrepresented and on average perform more poorly than men in introductory physics. But a recent study finds that this gap arises predominantly from differential preparation prior to college and psychological factors, rather than differences in ability. And the effects of these psychological factors can be largely overcome with a brief writing exercise focusing on important values, such as friends and family, learning or even music. This simple "values affirmation" writing exercise generally…

Eastern North America is the Asian Lady Beetle's Bridge to the World

Harmonia axyridis, the Asian Multicolored Lady Beetle If I had to pick the most annoying insect in Illinois it'd be Harmonia axyridis. This lady beetle was introduced to our continent as a control agent for aphids but became a pest in its own right. It consumes not just aphids but all manner of other insects, including beneficials like native lady beetles. Swarms of them descend into our houses in the fall. They get just about everywhere. They have a noxious odor. And they bite. A study out in PLoS One byLombaert et al has determined that our local beetles here in eastern North America are…

March Meeting Summary

I'm heading home from the March meeting, after giving my talk this morning and then having a nice lunch with graduate (and one undergraduate) students at a "Meet the Experts" lunch. Yeah, somehow I slipped by the guards! Luckily a real expert was there, in the form of Paul Kwiat, so all was good and the students didn't learn anything to disastrous. "What I learned at the March meeting" below the fold. Things I've learned at the APS March meeting: There are a lot of physicists. Even if you don't count the particle and nuclear and gravitational physicist who have their own meeting. Oh,…

Fewer homicides after gun control introduced in NSW

Andy Freeman said: Why doesn't Lambert tell us about pre-control crime and murder rates and trends in Oz and compare them to post-control rates and trends? If gun control actually worked in Oz, the introduction of controls was associated with a good change in the rate trend. Could it be that there wasn't a good change associated with the introduction of controls? "Homicide: The Social Reality" by Alison Wallace, published in 1986 by the NSW bureau of Crime Statistics and Research is an extensive study of all homicides in NSW from 1968 to 1981. This contains a graph detailing the homicide…

The Integrative Biology of Exercise VII - Day 2

Mitochondria produce more than just ATP Anatomy of a mitochondrion from Wikimedia Commons Pinchas Cohen from the University of California - Davis presented data showing that mitochondria produce more than just ATP. They also make several peptides that can each affect our physiology. Some help cells respond to insulin better, some help with weight, some regulate cell metabolism. What is even more impressive is that some of these peptides have been shown to slow down the development of atherosclerosis or Alzheimer's, and some even help prevent side effects from chemotherapy in animals. Maybe…

2015 Experimental Biology - Day 3

Monday was a great day for comparative physiology at EB! I saw several highly notable posters and seminars that I would like to share with you: Image of a deer mouse from www.calphotos.berkeley.edu Catherine Ivy, graduate student at McMaster University compared deer mice that were raised at high altitudes versus those raised at lower altitudes and found that the ancestry of the animals was actually important in regulation of breathing and gas exchange in the lungs. Perhaps not surprisingly, acclimation to hypoxia also influenced both variables as well. Image of a guinea pig from…

Animal Magnetism - Part II

Magnetite in a fish nasal cell. Image: The Scientist from Herve Cadiou, University of Cambridge In a prior blog, we talked about different animals that are able to sense the Earth's magnetic field. The mystery of how fish, and perhaps other animals, do this may be solved. Animals use the magnetic field like a compass. This is an important skill especially to migratory species who don't have the benefit of Google Maps. It is sort of a built-in GPS system. Dr. Michael Walker from the University of Auckland discovered that brain cells connected to the nasal cavity of fish can be stimulated by…

Oooo Prizes! Best Science Blog Post Of The Year, Anyone?

3 Quarks Daily, a fantastic blog which covers everything from science to art to politics, has annouced that it will start giving out "best of the year" awards for blog posts from around the internet. The Science category starts now, with nominations being accepted until June 1st. There will then be public voting on the winners, narrowing the expansive list to 21, and then a panel of judges will further whittle them down from 21 to 6, with the top 3 winners picked by an expert and announced June 21st. The 'Top Quark' gets $1000 - so it's definitely worth being entered in! I know a lot of you…

The Tripoli Six and the Scientific Evidence

A scientific paper just published in the journal Nature provides an in-depth scientific analysis of the evidence in the case of the six medics on trial for their lives in Libya. Scientists obtained RNA sequences from the HIV virus present in 44 victims who had been treated outside Libya. They used well-established techniques for determining evolutionary relationships to see if the infection came from a single source, and they used what we know about the rate at which HIV evolves to determine when the infections began at the hospital. The analysis demonstrates, beyond even an unreasonable…

National Journal Cover Story on Science and Politics

Check it out here. In my view, the piece is kinda all over the place. It argues that left and right are both bad when it comes to the treatment of science, but really the only case study adduced on the leftwing side of things is the attack on E.O. Wilson and sociobiology from way back when. I too agree that the left is not immune from criticism when it comes to its treatment of science; I merely ask that we keep a sense of perspective when weighing the sins from the different sides on this subject. I appreciate that the author of the National Journal piece, Paul Starobin, cited my work.…

Concluding Remarks on Alberto

Jeff Masters gives us a useful rundown on Alberto's life history; here's the part I find most interesting: Alberto formed from a tropical wave that moved off of the coast of Africa on May 30. The wave tracked farther north than usual for June, entering the eastern Caribbean on June 5, and the western Caribbean on June 8. The wave interacted with the unsettled weather of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which has been able to push unusually far north for this time of year. The interaction between the ITCZ and the African wave produced Alberto on June 9. It is uncommon for a June…

Obama Unleashes Stem Cell Research, Moves to Restore Scientific Integrity

In the looking glass world of some conservatives and contrarians, the Democratic war on science continues today....just see here for proof. Not only has our new president reversed Bush's stem cell policy, and directed his science adviser--who really, really needs to be Senate confirmed--to "develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making" (something I and many others have called for). But in some ways better still, he has given a big speech about embryonic stem cell research that is scientifically accurate, cautious, and does not oversell its potential--…

#2: Shanghai Museum and Underground Boat Rave

The Shanghai Museum houses 5 floors of ancient Chinese artifacts ranging from carved jade to Buddhas to painted scrolls, and was built in the early 90s. As a neat coincidence, there was also an exhibit of American Art rotating through the museum which featured famous works by artists including Warhol and O'Keeffe. Below are some pictures of artifacts I saw (yeah, they let us take pictures!), which I wish I could tell you more about but the captions were in Chinese. The oldest things in the museum were from the 30th century, BCE. The jade carving exhibit was unbelievable. This picture…

Christian nations don't have no ornery bears

Some fundamentalists have a weird obsession with animals. One in particular is Bryan Fischer, disturbing homophobe, who is outraged at the latest tragedy in which a man was killed by a grizzly bear. It shouldn't have happened. Why? Because in a god-fearin' country, animals will be tamed by god. History reveals that God's covenant with an ancient nation suggests that one of the consequences for a nation which walks in his statues is that it will have nothing to fear from wild animals. "If you walk in my statutes...I will remove harmful beasts from the land" (Lev. 26:3,6). … Earlier this year…

Dismal, yes, but is it science?

As I was driving home from work today, I was listening to Marketplace on public radio. In the middle of a story, reported by Nancy Marshall Genzer, about opponents of health care reform, there was an interesting comment that bears on the nature of economics as a scientific discipline. From the transcript of the story: The Chamber of Commerce is taking a bulldozer to the [health care reform] bill. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported the Chamber is hiring an economist to study the legislation. The goal: more ammunition to sink the bill. Ewe Reinhardt teaches economics at Princeton. He…

Earliest Known Abalone Discovered

May 18, 2008 -- A tiny abalone specimen 5.9 mm in length and approximately 78 million years old (putting it in the middle Campanian Stage of the Late Cretaceous) has been documented from rocks in the Garapito Creek area of Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles County by Lindsey T. Groves and John M. Alderson of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in the latest issue of the molluscan journal The Veliger. Fossil abalone of the Late Cretaceous Epoch are extremely rare, previously known from two species: one from San Diego County (approximately 70 million years old) and another from Puerto…

Leakegate: Jonathan Leake gets Sunday Times banned from EurekAlert

This Jonathan Leake story on the evolution of Polar Bears broke the embargo on this PNAS paper. Ivan Oransky quotes PNAS media and communications manager Jonathan Lifland: The majority of our infrequent embargo violations are accidental and typically the result of mislabeled copy that does not properly list the 3 p.m. EST Monday embargo expiration. We have a separate situation with the Sunday Times of London. With EurekAlert, we have prevented their editors and reporters from accessing the embargoed news section of EurekAlert, which is where pre-print copies of our articles are accessible…

Russian geography students rescued from drifting ice floe

Two post-graduate students from Moscow State University were rescued on Tuesday after the ice floe they were sampling broke off and drifted out to sea. The pair had been measuring the thickness of the sheet ice covering the White Sea when the incident occurred. The unnamed student is rescued from the ice floe Part of a team of twelve students and two teachers from the Faculty of Geography on a short expedition to Pertominsk, a remote area in the far northwestern edge of Russia. The man and woman were separated from the rest of the group around 4pm, when strong winds caused a 12 by 16m…

How A Barack Obama Hug Led to the Harlem Shake

It was an unexpected journey, from the George W. Bush Shake, the Barack Obama Hug to the Harlem Shake. Appreciation from the President of the United States is one of the highest honors any American can receive. No, it wasn't me, but the best part is that it was one of our students. I have been very fortunate in my own education having learned from two mentors awarded the National Medal of Science (Prof. Tobin J. Marks and Prof. Stephen J. Lippard.) Each received a hearty handshake from President George W. Bush. Perhaps some of my work in their labs helped get them there, along with a…

The African Buffalo

The African Buffalo is NOT a bison, and it is NOT a "water buffalo" (it is not even the same genus as water buffalo). But like these other beasts, it is a kind of cattle. The scientific name of the African Buffalo, or Cape Buffalo, is Syncerus caffir. Only the most cynical taxonomists would support the continued use of this term. "Caffer" is the same word as "Kaffir" which in modern usage has the same connotation as "Nigger." The term "caffir" or "kaffir" has been dropped from other species names, but as far as I know, not yet from the Cape Buffalo. I don't know why. This particular…

Seeing through windows - light and dark

Here is a picture of something you have seen before. These are two pictures of the same location in my house. The one on the left is taken when the Sun was up outside and the other one when it was dark outside. For both pictures, I had the same lights turned on inside. So, why does it do this? Why can you see stuff outside when it is bright outside, but you don't see a reflection of the stuff outside? Why when it is dark outside, does the opposite happen? You know what I am going to do next, right? Diagram. Here is a diagram for when it is dark outside. The person can see the blue…

Thursday Throwdown: Stromboli's tiny bubbles, Hawaiian lava flow update and recovering from Eyjafjallajökull

Lots of little pieces of news I've run across ... time to play a little catch up. Stromboli: A volcano after Don Ho's heart. Every once in a while, my RSS feeds will dredge up some articles from years gone by ... and this week there were two New York Times pieces that are a few years old, but interesting nevertheless. The first is about research conducted by Dr. Robert Sohn at WHOI on explosive undersea eruptions. The second is work by Corr and Vaughan about finding subglacial volcanism in Antarctica. Both are interesting reads if you missed them (like I did) the first time around.…

Fast Friday Flotsam: Volcano updates a'plenty!

Leaving for Death Valley tomorrow - I'll be sure to take some pictures of Ubehebe Crater and the volcano at the Mirage. This will likely be the last new post until about a week from now, but look for the Erta'Ale Volcano Profile, maybe a new Mystery Volcano Photo and I'll leave a thread open for any new volcano news. Colima in Mexico. Eruptions reader Tim Stone sent me this image from Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi's Twitpic feed - it is a stunner of the caldera on Jebel Marra in Sudan. The only known historical eruption for this volcano was ~2000 BC within the Deriba Caldera, but it has…

Redoubt Eruption Update for 4/6/2009

Image courtesy of AVO/USGS by Cindy Koplin showing the ash fall in Homer, AK on 4/4/09 Not much new to report about the eruption at Redoubt beyond the fact that it continues. AVO has kept the warning level at Red/Warning after briefly dropping it to Orange/Watch on Friday night. The 15,000 foot / 5 km-tall plume on Sunday was mostly water and volcanic gases. Eagle-eyed observers also noticed a plume on the lower flanks on the north side of the volcano that is believed to be steam generated by block & ash flows interacting with snow or water. These flow block & ash flows are coming…

Neandertal phylogeography

Genetic Evidence of Geographical Groups among Neanderthals: The Neanderthals are a well-distinguished Middle Pleistocene population which inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East. Since the 1950s paleoanthropological studies have suggested variability in this group. Different sub-groups have been identified in western Europe, in southern Europe and in the Middle East. On the other hand, since 1997, research has been published in paleogenetics, carried out on 15 mtDNA sequences from 12 Neanderthals. In this paper we used a new methodology…

Swine flu: why are older people (apparently) less at risk?

There is as yet no vaccine for the novel H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic strain of influenza now causing widespread illness in North America and what appears to be the start of growing outbreaks in Japan and parts of Europe (but check out this excellent piece over at ScienceInsider). WHO says most developing nations are not able to track influenza, so what is happening in Africa and parts of Asia is not known with any confidence. While the clinical illness from this virus doesn't seem very different than seasonal flu, the fact that most of the world's population has no immunity to it means there is…

Defeating Hubble, from the ground!

"The Earth's atmosphere is an imperfect window on the universe... atmospheric turbulence blurs the images of celestial objects, even when they are viewed through the most powerful ground-based telescopes." -John Bahcall There's no doubt that the Hubble Space Telescope has given us some of the most spectacular, high resolution views of the Universe. From the most distant galaxies ever seen to stars here in our own galactic backyard, the Hubble Space Telescope has simply dwarfed anything we've been able to do from Earth's surface. Image credit: Bill Drelling. This is the globular cluster NGC…

Mirror images: You don't perceive the reflection, just the object

Take another look at this picture of the Rokeby Venus from last week's post on mirrors in art: Now, imagine you're actually in the room with Venus, as depicted in this painting. You suspend your astonishment long enough to conduct a quick test of the principle of how a flat mirror works. Consider what would happen to Venus' face in the mirror as you approach it. As you walk towards the mirror, would the proportion of the reflection taken up by Venus's face increase or decrease? In the painting, the face takes about 2/3 the width of the mirror. Would that proportion get bigger or smaller as…

Ethical Stem Cells Redux

In August, there was a big press tizzy about so-called ethical stem cells. In the paper, a group headed by Robert Lanza working at a company called Advanced Cell Technology claimed that they could take a single cell from a human morula and create a embryonic stem cell line from that cell. Admittedly, this was an exceptional scientific advance, but there were some serious caveats. First, the story was kind of hyped in the sense that the paper didn't actually show that you could do this without killing the embryo, they merely implied that it was possible. Second, I had some serious…

Africans Americans mostly West African, but some mostly European

I referenced a paper in PNAS yesterday, and I thought it might be good to actually point to it today. There's nothing that new in the paper. It confirms the finding that ~20% of the ancestry of African Americans is European, and, that African ancestry seems to be much more dominant when it comes to components of the genome presumably disproportionately contributed by females (2/3 of X chromosomes). In any case, the paper, Genome-wide patterns of population structure and admixture in West Africans and African Americans: Quantifying patterns of population structure in Africans and African…

Indonesia ties Vietnam for most bird flu deaths

Indonesia has now done in one year what it took Vietnam three years to "accomplish": rack up 42 deaths from bird flu . Indonesia and Vietnam are now tied for the most number of deaths from the disease, although Indonesia did it with fewer cases, a reflection of the fact the case fatality ratio in Indonesia is 78% (42/54), while in Vietnam it is 45% (42/93). The latest case is a 44 year old male who died on July 12 after being hospitalized with fever and respiratory difficulties of two days duration. He lived in a Jakarta suburb and was "reported to have had contact with birds." Whether this…

Best Science Books 2013: io9

Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets. From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here. This time it's io9 Holiday Gift Books for Lovers of Science and Science Fiction. Southern Light: Images from Antarctica by David Neilson Out of the Wild: Zoo Portraits by Boza Ivanovic, Barbara Stauss Earth from Space by Yann Arthus-Bertrand Beautiful Whale by Bryant Austin, Sylvia A.…