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dissed

Big F.U. from the Science and Technology Facilities Council to the astronomical community. The UK STFC is expected to formally announce its final response to the 7% effective cut in its programs (after inflation and "Full Economic Costs") on Dec 11th. (Hm, the UK is putting in its version of Full Cost Accounting - I am so sorry...) The Royal Astronomical Societ and the Institute of Physics are fighting a rearguard action on the cuts, the most immediate being withdrawal from Gemini. Last week the RAS and IoP announced they would have a joint community meeting on the cuts on Dec 13th. Today a…

Salvage Florida thread

It bodes ill for a certain southern state that my mailbox overfloweth with tales of idiocy from Florida … it's gotten to the point where I cringe a little bit when I see "Florida" in the subject line, because I know it's going to be another delusional school board, another wacky letter to the editor, another Floridian complaining that his state isn't as stupid as it sounds from all the news. Even the Florida Citizens for Science blog is a reservoir of terrible stories right now. So I'm going to abstain for a little while from the Florida bashing and give the good guys a chance to catch up.…

Anti-Gay Thugs Sentenced in San Diega

From SignOnSanDiego: Three men who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a series of brutal beatings after a gay pride festival were sentenced Monday to prison terms. James Carroll, 24; Lyonn Tatum, 18; and Kenneth Lincoln, 24, pleaded guilty on Friday in San Diego Superior Court on the second day of their preliminary hearing during which they heard testimony from three victims. Prosecutors said Carroll, Tatum and a boy assaulted six men with a baseball bat and a knife as the men were leaving the annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Festival in Balboa Park on July 29. Judge…

New Neutrino Masses

If you'd like some, you know, physics from your physics blogs, here you go: Andrew Jaffe points out new results on neutrino oscillations from the MINOS group, providing new limits on the differences between the masses of different neutrino flavors. You can also read the Fermilab press release, which as a bonus contains some wonderful examples of stilted "quotes" constructed by cutting and pasting text from emails. I've recently become sort of tangentially (very tangentially) involved in efforts to detect both neutrinos and dark matter, so I'm a lot more interested in these sorts of stories…

Ask Ethan #48: Where does cosmic rotation come from? (Synopsis)

“In my better sense of mind, I know that I’m far from alone and far from the worst, and the earth keeps spinning. Everything keeps moving, with or without me.” -Phil Anselmo The Universe is a chaotic place, where nothing truly exists in isolation. Even if, at the moment of the Big Bang, nothing in the Universe was born having had any interactions with anything else, that state wouldn't have lasted for long. Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration. Even the most pristine "baby picture" of the Universe we have comes only after astronomical numbers of interactions for each and every…

Musical Skiing

Dear Reader, I've just passed a lovely hour skiing on the golf course, and I am very happy. It's -6 centigrade, loads of snow and Mr Sun is shining from a blue sky, accompanied by his pale-countenanced Sister Moon. People and dogs were out in force and we all smiled at each other as we met in the tracks. With my trusty handheld, I snapped the above pic, and it also played me wonderful music: Norway's finest rock band, the Brimstone Solar Radiation Band; those lovely eclectic Philadelphians, Maggi, Pierce & E.J.; some jazzy hippie stylings from Chrysalis with the divine Nancy Nairn on the…

Although, actually, Darwin is literally dead

The Second Edition of the Darwin is Dead carnival is up. I think we can declare that the "Darwin is Dead carnival" is dead now. Orac seems to have had a little problem tallying up the entries, but out of 7 links: Three are satires of ID and creationism. One is a press release from the Discovery Institute. One is more PR from the Institute for Creation Research. One is PR from Answers in Genesis. Precisely one is an actual blog entry from a sincere creationist (who, by the way, thinks "irreducible complexity" is a serious problem for molecular biology, and therefore has demonstrated that he…

Changing Odds on New Nominee

A commenter on In The Agora pointed out that Judge Garza is not actually from New Orleans, but from Texas. His office is in Texas, he himself is from Texas, but the 5th Circuit that he sits on is headquartered in New Orleans. Edith Clement, on the other hand, is a judge on the same circuit but she is actually from New Orleans. She was in private practice in New Orleands for nearly 20 years before being nominated as a Federal judge. And remember that Clement was the one everyone thought was the nominee the night before and the morning of the John Roberts announcement, so she is obviously on…

Massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in Gulf of Mexico

Like rumours of Mark Twain's death, the claims of the disappearance of BP's oil spill have been greatly exagerated. From the Times-Picyune of New Orleans. Additional photos here. These pictures are only a few days old. Watch/Listen/Read this interview from DemocracyNow! as well: we hear that five million barrels of oil were released from the Macondo well. We know that [ 362] miles were oiled in four states, 400 species of animals threatened from this, 400 controlled burns that killed hundreds of sea turtles and untold numbers of dolphins and sea mammals. We're told that it's over, that…

One-of-a-Kind Killer Whales Doomed by Exxon Valdez

Most of Prince William Sound's animal populations will someday recover from the lingering effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. One, however, will not: a community of killer whales unlike any other in the world. "It's a separate population. Their genetics, their acoustics, are different from any other killer whales that we see in the north Pacific," said Craig Matkin, director of the North Gulf Oceanic Society, who has studied the region's whales for three decades. Known to researchers as the AT1 pod, the whales' home range fell within the 11,000 square miles of crude oil dumped by the ship…

McCain PWNED by Minnesota. Race Over.*

Thank you thank you thank you all Americans from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Great White North to the Rio Grande. We accept your adoration, we revel in your awe. We, the Minnesotan. Yes. Sometimes we mess up. Like when we sent Norm Coleman instead of Walter Mondale to the Senate in a fit of Passive Aggressive Rage (PAR) stemming from the inhumility while we commemorated Paul Wellstone. But now, we make that all up and more. We, the Minnesotan, now hand you the very head of the Republican John McCain. Bow to us, as we have done this for you, for all of you. I give you The…

Academic Poll: Formula Sheets

In the basement, across the hall from my lab, there are three plastic-covered collages made up of formula sheets from long-ago exams. One of my colleagues let the students in a Physics for Pre-Meds class write whatever they wanted on one sheet of paper to bring into the final, and made art from the collected pages after the test. I was thinking about this last night as I graded last Thursday's exams, looking at the formula sheets I collected from the students. The range of things that people decide to immortalize on paper is pretty impressive. Of course, such sheets are not universally loved…

E.B. White on Rachel Carson

"Why should a poison...spray enjoy immunity [while] endanger[ing] the public health?" Circa 1964. In The New Yorker. Right here. With nary a mention of Charlotte or her web. Add it to Tim's posts about poorly equipped, intellectually speaking, Rachel Carson critics. A quote from White: In the lower Mississippi, fish have been dying from a cause as yet undetermined. In Oklahoma, quail are not hatching their full clutches of eggs. In Maine, salmon bearing a rich payload of DDT have been taken from Sebago. In the Gulf of Mexico, shrimpers are wondering whether their catch will be next on the…

I'm in OpenLab 2008!

I'm honoured to have been included in this year's OpenLab - a compilation of 50 of the best posts from the last year, taken from a diverse array of science blogs. My piece on Space Invader DNA has made the cut (although not as ironically so as Abel's vasectomy liveblogging meisterwork). I was always quite proud of this - it's a great story, it deals with horizontal gene transfer, which is a pet-favourite topic of mine, and the scientist who did the work actually commented and took questions from other commenters! And already, the extra attention from the piece has drawn the notice of a…

The mystery of deformed frogs

Frog with an extra foot. Image from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Image of a frog with a missing leg from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Since 1995 deformed frogs have been turning up. Call them the canaries in the coal mine for environmental health. Frogs are showing signs of some kind of stress. So is it a parasite? Pollution? A natural phenomenon? Cannibalism? Fungus? Ultraviolet light? Something in the water? Video from YouTube The tap water data referred to in the video in which they placed embryos in tap water collected from different sites in Minnesota…

Orly Taitz and Tropical Storm Grace

Earlier today, Birther Leader Orly Taitz took time away from her busy schedule to explain the connection between Barack Obama's birthplace and Tropical Storm Grace to this reporter: "If you look, you will see that the storm is just like Obama. It has come from Africa and turned everything left. But it's not a legitimate storm, so it will not do anything significant." When informed that the storm had actually turned to its right, Taitz replied: "Look, if you don't know left from right there's really no point talking to you because you will never see what is so totally apparent - the…

ICR surrenders in one battle

The Institute for Creation Research had been trying to get approval from the state of Texas to offer graduate degrees in science education — they failed. Now they have actually publicly admitted defeat, which is gratifying to see. So we won't be seeing a wave of teachers with master's degrees in science ed and absolutely no science training emerging from the state. Instead, though, they'll be offering this: Replacing it, apparently, is the ICR's School of Biblical Apologetics, which offers a Master of Christian Education degree; Creation Research is one of four minors. The ICR explains, "Due…

CNN: Cutting Science, and Kicking It On the Way Out the Door

It seems just days ago that we learned CNN is cutting its science unit, including Miles O'Brien, who took global warming very seriously. And then last night, a guy who wasn't cut, meteorologist Chad Myers, popped off as follows: "You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant...Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big - I think we're going to die from a lack of fresh water or we're going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure." This was part of a Lou Dobbs program that also featured a global…

Blogs are Muffins! And Bloggers are the Muffin Militia!

On Tuesday, The Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a panel on "The Health Blogosphere: What it Means for Policy Debates and Journalism," starting with a twenty-minute keynote from HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt (yes, he has a blog). The webcast is here. My favorite quote, from Tom Rosenstiel at the Project for Excellence in Journalism: Blogs are like muffins. They range from everything from bran to chocolate cake. They're more of a shape than they are defining a particular type of content, and I think that the point that they put you in the conversation, and tonally there's a similarity, and…

Escherichia Ophelia

The very epitome of bioephemera, from Microbial Art: Artist JoWOnder presents a pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia created with bacteria. The demise of the painting is filmed using time-lapse photography, showing a story of death and creation of new life. The colors and animation for '6 Days Goodbye Poems Of Ophelia' were created in a laboratory at Surrey University UK with the help of microbiologist Dr. Simon Park. When displayed in 2010, this will be an outdoor video installation of Ophelia with poems submitted from the public. Composer Milton Mermikides will be producing a sound track…

If capillaries were jewelery. . .

While we're on the bioanimation topic, I recently heard from Jess at Nervous System, who sent me links to some animations of their new jewelry line, hyphae, "growing" in virtual space. Check it out: Hyphae - growth of the Vessel Pendant from Nervous System on Vimeo. They explain, Hyphae is a collection of 3D printed artifacts constructed of rhizome-like networks. Inspired by the vein structures that carry fluids through organisms from the leaves of plants to our own circulatory systems, we created a simulation which uses physical growth principles to build sculptural, organic structures.…

The Stupidest Things Ever Said, Number 2: The Free Speech Edition

Continuing Orac's quest for truly stupid quotes from The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said calendar, this time a couple of tasty stupid morsels about free speech: Here's entry number 1, from the February 17, 2007 entry in the calendar: "We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech!"--Dr. Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women's Studies at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, commenting on the resignation of Dr. Richard Zeller, who wanted to teach a course in how liberalism has led to political correctness. Here's entry number 2, from the July 4, 2001 entry: "What we have is two important…

The French are about to Ban the Veil

The French have moved one step closer to banning purdah and other veil-wearing in public. In France, this intolerance of religious freedom /slash/ protection of vulnerable populations from the patriarchy is a feminist issue. Would this be the final paragraph of the final chapter of the recession of Islam (from France) following its high water mark in 1492? Details: France's lower house of parliament has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would ban wearing the Islamic full veil in public. There were 335 votes for the bill and only one against in the 557-seat National Assembly. It must…

Global Warming Links

From the Onion: Critics Blast Al Gore's Documentary As 'Realistic' Not from the Onion: Republicans gave out free snow cones to students for an event they called "Global Cooling Day." From Ringworld: Gareth: You may care to reflect on another category of best-seller - the astrological predictions that sell well each new year. They don't prove that astrology works (because it doesn't), but it shows some people think it does. Ken Ring: Wrong, it proves it does work or the same people wouldn't keep buying it. Probably wouldn't work for you though. Many people don't know what astrology is.…

Aspergerâs Syndrome

People who suffer from Asperger's Syndrome have grave difficulties with social interactions because they have trouble in reading other people's emotions. I recently read an interesting interview with Bram Cohen (the inventor of BitTorrent) who suffers from Asperger's. Which brings us to Tim Blair. After his latest attack on Lancet study blew up in his face, Blair's response was to claim that I suffered from Asperger's syndrome. (No link, find it yourself if you care.) Unfortunately, this sort of behaviour from Blair is all too common. After Darp Hau commented on the way Blair made fun…

Earthquake Zones and Nuclear Power Plants - A Clarion Call?

This map shows a heatmap of 175,000 4.5+ magnitude earthquakes since 1973 based on data from the USGS (United States Geological Survey). And worldwide locations of nuclear power stations using information from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). An alarming number of nuclear power plants are located within active earthquake zones. Will this be a clarion call for more stringent safety standards? According to the maptd blog: Following the incidents at nuclear power plants in Japan after the earthquake I was wondering which power stations around the world are near active…

Pesky Drosophilids

As I was working on my computer (in my office) this afternoon, a small critter was flying around my head. Based on my current location (in a building housing at least 3 Drosophila labs) and my previous whereabouts (our lab's fly room), I surmised that this was most likely a member of genus Drosophila. My suspicions were confirmed when, at 7:45pm (about 3 hours after I first noticed the pest), she (I think it was a she from the quick glance I got) landed on my computer monitor. Upon closer inspection (although not long enough to adequately surmise the sex) I noticed the fly was too lightly…

Cheetah Loose on Delta Flight

* You are now free to be devoured by a cheetah * From the AP: ATLANTA - A Delta baggage worker got a bit of a fright when she opened a jetliner's cargo door and found a cheetah running loose amid the luggage. Delta spokeswoman Betsy Talton said Friday that two cheetahs were being flown in the cargo area of a passenger flight from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta a day earlier when one escaped from its cage. Talton said the airline summoned help from an Atlanta zoo but not before the Cheetah had devoured a stewardess and three others that had tried to use plane's restroom (Zooillogix may or may not…

Dolly comes ashore Part 5

We can't joke around too much about this Hurricane Dolly, I'm afraid. The weather is not terrible here in Corpus, but conditions are rapidly deteriorating in Brownsville. We now have reports of tornado warnings in nearby counties, and confirmed power outages for more than 9000 people. News reports are forecasting an incredible amount of rain (up to 15 inches). If i remember right, that would be the equivalent of a 5 foot snowstorm in the Northeast. From the Associated Press: Dolly, upgraded from a tropical storm Tuesday, had sustained winds of 95 mph, just short of becoming a Category 2…

Friday Deep-Sea Picture (03/27/08) : Arctic ice cover

Isn't it ironic that the International Polar Year falls on the year with the least Arctic ice cover? The North Pole is now literally on thin ice. Scientists are predicting a seasonally ice free Arctic by 2030. The image above illustrates the changing extent of Arctic sea ice over the last fifty years, from 1953 to 2005. Median Arctic ice cover has dropped from 8 million sq km to less than 6 million sq km over the last 20 years, down to nearly 4 million sq km since 2004. The graphic is lifted from an article by J. Stroeve et al called "Arctic sea ice plummets in 2007" in the weekly…

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 8/5-11/2009

Even the SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Report seems a little light -- welcome to the dog days of summer! Highlights from this week's report include: "Thunderous sounds", incandescence and small plumes (hundreds of meters) with more frequent seismicity at Ibu in Indonesia. A sharp increase in sulfur dioxide output was noted at Mayon in the Philippines on August 4 - from ~700-900 tonnes/day to almost 2,000 tonnes/day. ~3,000 meter/10,000 foot gas-and-ash plume from Bagana in Papua New Guinea - you can see it on this recent NASA Earth Observatory image. Ash/gas plumes from Sakurajima in Japan rose to…

Eruption at Shiveluch from space

Shiveluch volcano in Russia. Image courtesy of KVERT. Over this past weekend, Shiveluch in Kamchatka experienced a plinian eruption, producing a 7-km / 23,000 foot ash column. The NASA Terra satellite caught a great image of the ash plume over the snowy landscape of the Kamchatkan Peninsula on April 26, 2009. KVERT issued these comments on the current eruptive activity: Seismic activity of the volcano slightly decreased but continues to remain at high levels. A continuous spasmodic volcanic tremor and series of weak shallow events continue to registering at volcano at present. According to…

Kasatochi ash causing airline cancellations

The current eruption at Kasatochi is causing a lot of flight cancellations for flights from Alaska to points in the continental US. The ash is swirling its way around the Aleutians along flight lanes (see above), with the ash drifting southeast over the Alaska Panhandle and could hamper air travel in Alaska and Canada for days according to the USGS (although Alaska Air says it might start flying again later today). As for the eruption itself, not much new news beyond the initial impression that the volcano went from quiet to explosively erupting to produce at 35,000 foot (~10,000 meter) ash…

Go see my brother-in-law Off-Broadway

The AP reviews my brother-in-law's play: Campy aliens no drag in 'Devil Boys From Beyond': You can tell from the title that "Devil Boys From Beyond" intends to be fun, and the campy production that opened Saturday night at New World Stages does not disappoint. It's a satiric, raunchy, all-male spoof of low-budget science-fiction films from the 1950s, performed with gusto by the talented cast.⦠Robert Berliner is all lockjawed uprightness as Mattie's booze-yearning, unfaithful former spouse. "Your pen is as poison as the blood in your veins," Greg snarls at Mattie, just one of the many…

Irrational animus?

A lot has happened since the mention of the AIG bonuses yesterday on this weblog. The media is overflowing with stories on it, and people are frothing with rage from high to low. In the age when many people are becoming aware of the power of "animal spirits" and the economic irrationality which emerges from psychology, it seems like we've swung to the other extreme from exuberance. In fact, swung might indicate a smooth continuity which just doesn't reflect reality, rather, the mental state of the populace has snapped. I was IMing with a friend who has been abroad for the past 3 months, and…

Bee Colony Collapse Is Associated with a Virus

We don't know if the virus is the causal agent, but a recent Science paper used a metagenomics approach to find that bees from colonies that have collapsed are infected with a virus (and it's the same virus in different colonies). Essentially, the researchers ground up bees, sequenced the whole mess, and using previous genome data, subtracted out the genome of the honey bees. What was left were some bacterial symbionts, and in the failing colonies, a virus. From the BBC: But in 2004, beekeepers began seeing and reporting a new and serious phenomenon, in which entire colonies would desert…

There Is No Social Security Crisis: Just Ask China

I haven't ranted about the non-existent Social Security crisis for a while. Thankfully, Bob Somerby does some very good myth-busting of the 'worthlessness' of Social Security IOUs--that is, the Social Security Trust Fund: It's true, of course, that the SS surpluses of the past twenty years (the so-called trust fund) have been borrowed and spent. (That's the system Congress put in place when it raised payroll taxes in the 1980s.) But then, the federal government borrows lots of money, from lots of sources, and all of that money has been spent! Duh. The government doesn't borrow money so…

Brain & Behavior and Technology Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large version of the Brain & Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Technology. Reflections from the nose cone of a propeller plane. From Flickr, by Katie@! Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by jamesfischer Reader comments of the week: On the Brain & Behavior channel, Steve of Of Two Minds shares a video in which one man recreates The taste of the Star Wars Imperial March - if you had synaesthesia. Using the tastes corresponding to different musical intervals reported by an actual musical synaesthete in…

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. From Flickr, by woodleywonderworks Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by Noël Zia Lee Reader comments of the week: In I'll see you at the debates, bitches..., Bora of A Blog Around the Clock posts Paris Hilton's now-famous response to a John McCain campaign video that compares Barack Obama—negatively—to celebrities like Hilton and Britney Spears. "Who is hotter," Bora asks, "Paris Hilton or Barack Obama?" Reader J-Dog admitted that…

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 atomicjeep Physical Science. From Flickr, by blondyimp Reader comments of the week: On the Life Science channel, Laelaps delves into an 18th century quibble in Thomas Jefferson's All-American incognitum. The American incognitum, which can be seen in an 1816 Edouard de Montule painting included in the post, is now known as the American mastodon, Mammut americanum. Back in 1781, however, Thomas Jefferson used the…

The invisible data of Isabella Karle

When finding a female scientists' data turns into an archeological treasure hunt. A few months ago, I decided it would be interesting to celebrate various scientific contributions by making images of chemical / molecular structures in the Molecule World iPad app and posting them on Twitter  (@MoleculeWorld).  Whenever I can, I like to highlight scientific contributions from women on their birthdays.  Tomorrow's post will feature Dr. Isabella Karle, an x-ray crystallographer who worked on the Manhattan project and solved structures of interesting molecules like valinomycin and a South American…

linkedy links I

time for all new linkedy links here at the new digs Quantum Frontiers - a new blog from the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, with kickoff by John Preskill hisself. Question of the day: explain quantum mechanics in five words My attempt: Probability Amplitudes, Observables don't Commute Good to know John still does khakis and chalk, but we gots to know: does he still have the diet pepsi? Took me years to break the habit... not that I was overly impressionable as a tender young grad turkey taking QFT or anything. Subtleties of the Crappy Job Market - for Scientists, that is.…

Vox Day is a White Nationalist, who'd have thought?

We've mocked Vox Day in the past for his creationism, his sexism, and his general stupidity which is of course matched with the usual crank traits of egotism, and unshakeable certainty. Today though, I he's apparently gotten even worse, endorsing white nationalism and defending the anti-Obama secessionists. His essay, in essence, says the only thing keeping him from migrating to a new country is there just isn't anywhere left that's all white. Via rightwingwatch: Is the secession of several American states truly unthinkable? Is the breakup of the United States of America really outside the…

Swine flu: 20 US cases now identified [UPDATED--6 Canadian cases also confirmed]

According to new information from the CDC, in addition to the 2 cases in Texas, 7 in California, and 2 in Kansas, the 8 in New York have now been confirmed, and an additional case has also been confirmed in Ohio (I've not seen any info on that case)--UPDATED below. Investigations are apparently ongoing in at least 2 Canadian provinces, also (British Columbia and Nova Scotia). An investigation is also ongoing in New Zealand after teenagers took a trip to Mexico and have shown flu-like symptoms. Concerning to say the least, but crof and revere both have some excellent posts to keep things…

Friday Not-So-Random Five, December 29

Friday Not-So-Random Five I decided in honor of the new year, I'd do something a bit different this week. Instead of doing a random shuffle on my IPod, I separated out my favorites of the modern classical pieces that I discovered this year. Some of these are brand new recordings just released this year; others are older recordings that I just happened to discover this year. 1. **Igor Stravinsky, "Suite #1", from "Shadow Dances" performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.** Beautiful piece for a small orchestra. Very typically Stravinsky; some strange tonalities, but they're mostly very…

KITP: Z and M

Debra Fischer talking about correlations between metallicity and mass of stars and planets Two samples: Coralie data from Santos et al and Lick/Keck data need to get uniform sampled subsets, looking at giant mass planets known (cf Santos et al 2004, Fischer & Valenti 2005, Udry & Santos 2007) trend to N ~ Z2 for short orbital period giant planets over -0.5 < Z < +0.5 everyone is redoing their analysis, remeasuring Z and making use of bigger samples, longer observing stretches and higher velocity sensitivity (and hence lower mass planets) surface gravity, g, confounds Teff…

US uninsurance rate continues to decline, but state actions threaten gains

The latest findings on US health insurance coverage from the first quarter of the current year continue what is becoming a familiar story: The portion of the US population without health insurance continues to decline. This year, the estimate from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics is that 8.6% of US people of any age were without health insurance at the time of interview from January - March 2016. As it did last year, the report highlights the difference between states that have accepted the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and those that have not: In Medicaid expansion…

UK CO2 (again)

Interesting little snippet on the news this morning: the EU carbon trading scheme is in some trouble, with prices heading down, because countries have issued excessive permits. Oops: someone has been careless (or naughty: I wonder which?). But thats for another day: today is: Reducing CO2 emissions from the UK power sector: A report for WWF-UK by ILEX Energy Consulting, May 2006. Whether its at all reliable I can't really guess. Its got lots of acronyms and tables and figures to baffle the unwary, though. Its only about CO2 from power. Its own take is: The analysis shows that relatively minor…

Turn off the bloody Bat-Signal! Bats huge reservoirs of viral disease

Know what sounds like fun? Testing almost 5,000 bats and over 4,000 rodents, from all over the world, for a cadre of viral infections ;) Im not kidding! Bats host major mammalian paramyxoviruses Think about this: Where did, say, measles, come from? How were humans originally infected? Where were they infected? Just because we have a vaccine for the measles that crossed over into humans that works really well-- what if a different version, not susceptible to our vaccine, crosses over again? Can it happen again? Without understanding a viruses past, you cannot adequately prepare for the…

What better place to find new organisms than a boiling pit of acid, amirite??

SWEEEEET! Scientists found a brand new branch of organisms in the boiling acid pools or Yellowstone National Park! Identification of novel positive-strand RNA viruses by metagenomic analysis of archaea-dominated Yellowstone Hot Springs HA! Before we had only found DNA viruses in these pools, DNA viruses infecting archaea. Youngs troupe of scientists thought there might be more... but how do you find something if you dont know what you are looking for? Well, with viruses we have some clues. There are some things viruses have that us 'normies' dont have. Like, RNA viruses need an RNA-…