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Introducing Chris Mooney TV

So: Searchles has created an awesome new widget that I'm sure is going to catch on like wildfire. It has allowed me to create a web "channel" where all of my various YouTube and Google videos can be shown on one screen. When new videos come online, I can also change the order in which they appear on my channel, so the freshest one is always playing first. So: Feel free to press play to watch, and the forward and back arrows to change videos. Meanwhile, the "Menu" button lets you see what you're choosing. Isn't this cool? P.S.: Note that apparently the window above will not look right…

'The Beauty and Sexiness of Science and Technology'

Go visit AAAS for their news release on my recent panel at the 33rd Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy. New Media Pioneers Convey the 'Cool' of Science [27 May 2008] Speaking at the 2008 AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy in Washington, D.C., the speakers showed off online islands with virtual telescopes, blogs that network millions of science aficionados around the world, and media empires that include dozens of blogs and glossy publications that reveal the beauty and sexiness of science and technology. My entire talk is now now available here and you can also…

Thursday morning miscellany

I'm a little bit late on this one but I wanted to say "Welcome!" to the latest member of the Sb collective All of My Faults Are Stress Related. It's good to have another geo-blog around the place. The first edition of ART Evolved has been posted. The inaugural edition features a slew of wonderful ceratopsian images, and I can hardly wait until the next edition (featuring synapsids). During the Saturday night dinner at Science Online '09 I had the chance to chat with Karen James and Glendon Mellow and together we came up with an idea to raise some support for the Beagle Project. (…

Catch Me on the Radio This Morning

My apologies about the lack of blogging--I've been running around New Orleans, and it's been hard to get online. I hope to post more soon, but in the meantime, a brief announcement: I'll be appearing on EarthBeat Radio later this morning--10:20 ET--and you can listen to the webcast at the WPFW site. The show host is Mike Tidwell, author of Bayou Farewell, and I'll be appearing with Joe Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served in the Clinton Department of Energy. His blog, Climate Progress, is here. Anyhow, I hope you'll listen in. I am sure the recent Supreme Court…

Babies in brain scanners

(Image credit: Karolinska University Hospital) A study led by neuroscientist Peter Fransson of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden shows that there is spontaneous activity in at least 5 resting-state networks in the brains of sleeping babies. Fransson and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 12 sleeping babies, for 10 minutes each. They found that there was activity in parts of the brain associated with the processing of visual, motor and auditory information. This type of activity had previously been observed in sleeping adults, but until now…

I should have picked a catchier title for my blog

because then maybe it would have been mentioned in the New York Times: Seed Media, which produces science publications in print and online, is seeking to broaden its audience - and its appeal to advertisers - by introducing on Monday a network of blogs, or Web journals, devoted to science and science-related subjects. The network is to be made available on a Web site, scienceblogs.com, that is now operating in beta, or test, mode. The Web site will initially bring together 15 blogs bearing names like Adventures in Ethics and Science, Cognitive Daily, Living the Scientific Life and Stranger…

Bio:Fiction

Two videos that Patrick Boyle and I made were selected for the Bio:Fiction Film Festival! One of the prizes is an online audience award, and you can watch and rate all of the films! It's such an honor to be part of this festival and to be showing our work next to that of so many amazing artists, scientists, and filmmakers, and we would be super thrilled if you voted for us! Here are our videos! First, the world premiere of Compound 74, a fictional documentary about a possible future of synthetic drug design through synthetic biology: And second, the commercial we made for Ginkgo BioWorks--…

The Scientific Activist Is on Twitter

Although people who know me can attest that I made countless assurances that I would never do such a thing, I have once again succumbed to the relentless force of progress, and I'm now on Twitter. Check me out. I'm actually finding it quite useful, and I'm currently using my feed to provide updates on new blog posts, to pass along interesting links I won't get around to blogging, to give other random thoughts, and to interact with my online network in general. I've put a widget on the sidebar of my blog, but if you're interested you can also follow my Twitter feed to stay up to date on all…

Great White Sharks Off of LA Coast!

Figure 1: Great White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias. I saw this clip on the news last night, but when I went to look for the video online, it hadn't been uploaded yet. How awesome to find it this morning, already blogged by my friends at LAist! This video was caught at Will Rogers State Beach in Malibu. Great whites are known to frequent these waters during the summer, so this isn't much of a surprise, but how cool to see the video of them breaching like that!!? At least one of the sharks caught on video has been confirmed by experts at the local non-profit Shark Research Committee to be a…

Suppression of tumor growth by the BRCA1-associated protein-1"

I am happy to report that my research paper on a protein implicated in breast and lung cancer, called BAP1 (BRCA1-associated protein-1), was recently accepted for publication in the journal 'Cancer Research'. As you know, my research studies are in the field of cancer biochemistry and for the past few years I have been working on the BAP1 protein-a deubiquitinating enzyme. The paper is entitled "BAP1 is a tumor suppressor that requires deubiquitinating activity and nuclear localization". This paper is particularly special to me because it is my first peer-reviewed scientific publication (…

Hockey Fights Cancer

This weekend I attended the NHL All-Star game in Atlanta and was impressed to learn about the Hockey Fights Cancer program. Hockey Fights Cancer is a joint initiative founded in December 1998 by the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association to raise money and awareness for hockey's most important fight. According to the Hockey Fights Cancer website, the organization has raised over $6 million to support cancer research through fund-raising initiatives such as the annual Hockey Fights Cancer On-Line Charity Auction. If you want to help in the fight…

The Future of Science is Art

My recent article in Seed is now online. Here is the nut graf: The current constraints of science make it clear that the breach between our two cultures is not merely an academic problem that stifles conversation at cocktail parties. Rather, it is a practical problem, and it holds back science's theories. If we want answers to our most essential questions, then we will need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress. The article was really an extension of the argument I…

Dubious benefits versus profits in chemotherapy

At the monthly faculty meeting of our cancer center the other day, we had just finished listening to an invited talk by an ethicist about medical technology and the ethics of end-of-life care, when one of my colleagues happened to mention an article in the New York Times about how a perverse incentive system encourages oncologists to use chemotherapy even in patients for whom it may not benefit or may only provide marginal benefit. It's rare for something in the news to mesh so closely with the topic at hand; so I couldn't resist looking up the article, which appeared Tuesday morning, and was…

The Whole Foods Wars

It's the latest bourgeois battle: a bunch of angry supermarket shoppers, led by Michael Pollan, are criticizing Whole Foods for not living up to their organic values. While the stores are filled with billboards extolling the virtues of small farms and local produce, Whole Foods gets most of its provisions from big agribusiness, albeit with an organic label. From the Times: While many shoppers find the new stores exhilarating places to shop, the company also faces critics who feel it has strayed from its original vision. In angry postings on blogs, they charge that the store is not living up…

EE Times Group Announces Recipients of 'Student Reporter' Grants to Attend and Report on the USA Science & Engineering Festival

Great info on EE Times Group, one of our Sponsors', Grants for Student Reporters. These students will come to the Festival. Read more here. Washington, DC-area Middle School Students to Serve as Technology Journalists for EE Times' Innovation Generation Website at the Festival Download image SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- EE Times Group, a UBM company and the daily source of essential business and technical information for the electronics industry's decision makers, today announced the two middle schools who are the recipients of its "Student Reporter" Transportation Grants to attend…

Louisiana's Governor Signs Anti Evolution Bill

Cletus From the National Center for Science Education: Over the protests of leading scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, Louisiana's governor Bobby Jindal signed Senate Bill 733 into law, twenty-seven years after the state passed its Balanced Treatment for Evolution-Science and Creation-Science Act, a law overturned by the Supreme Court in 1987. News of Jindal's approval of the bill was buried in a press release issued on June 25, 2008, in which Jindal listed seventy-five bills he…

Breast cancer information on the Internet

It figures again. I go a few days without Internet access again, and not only does Generation Rescue take out a full page antivaccination ad full of stupidity in USA Today, which I couldn't resist opening both barrels on earlier, but a study's lead senior author is someone I know (albeit not well) about three topics I'm very interested in: breast cancer, health information on the Internet, and so-called "complementary and alternative" medicine. Not surprisingly, in my absence blog stalwarts Abel Pharmboy and Steve Novella already beat me to it in fine form. You might ask if that would in any…

Birds in the News 106

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Black-necked weaver, Ploceus nigricollis. Image: Basia Kruszewska, author of India Ink. [Wallpaper size] Birds in Research A native Hawaiian bird has surprised researchers with its ability to survive malaria, apparently thanks to a number of resistant populations that have spread throughout the Hawaiian forest. The discovery hints that genes for natural resistance to the avian disease may lurk inside the genomes of many of Hawaii's endangered birds. Two years ago, researchers reported that one species, the amakihi,…

Reference Assistant (Map & GIS / Science), York University Libraries

The following is a job posting for the York University Libraries for a Reference Assistant position. Note that a library degree is not required. The job involves both regular science reference and supporting maps & GIS users and will be both in my unit and the Map Library here at York. For basic questions about the science-y part of the position, you can contact me at jdupuis at yorku dot ca. For the maps/GIS part, you can contact Rosa Orlandini at rorlan at yorku dot ca. Posting Number: YUSA-7280 Position Title: Reference Assistant (Map & GIS/Science) Department: Steacie Science…

Reimagining the University Press and the Post-Collections Library

A portentous-sounding title for a not-so-portentous post, full of half-baked thoughts and idle musings. I was just thinking about the recent Jounal of Electronic Publishing issue on Reimagining the University Press and without actually reading very much of the issue in question (ignorance is so liberating sometimes...) the most pressing question in my mind was: So what exactly do we need university presses for anyways? And I got to thinking some more and figured that there are probably tons of people in university presses thinking to themselves, So what exactly do we need academic libraries…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Monarch Butterflies Help Explain Why Parasites Harm Hosts: It's a paradox that has confounded evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859: Since parasites depend on their hosts for survival, why do they harm them? A new University of Georgia and Emory University study of monarch butterflies and the microscopic parasites that hitch a ride on them finds that the parasites strike a middle ground between the benefits gained by reproducing rapidly and the costs to their hosts. The study, published in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of…

Cool posts from InsideHigherEd

Usually every day brings one or two interesting things at InsideHigherEd, but today is a bonanza. The Ed Tech Sonic Boom Today, we are able to leverage a set of well-developed and stable technologies to build in pedagogically advanced active learning methods into a wide variety of courses and modes of instructional delivery. To be a great teacher it is no longer a prerequisite to be a dynamic and gifted lecturer. Rather, faculty can partner with learning designers, librarians, and teaching specialists to create dynamic, student-centered courses that allow students interact and create with…

Revenge of the pollsters

The pollsters in question being Bray and von Storch, who get ratty on Prometheus about Gavin "too sexy for my model" Schmidt's RC piece dissing their latest survey. Slightly confusingly, although the piece is signed by B+vS, it says I am a sociologist and Hans von Storch is a climate scientist... I attend first to the blog posting... which suggests to me that Bray wrote it. I'm going to go with the asserted attribution for the moment. Anyway... oh, before I head off, there is also First a thanks to those... who contributed favorable comments on the RealClimate blog. Yup, thats science for you…

Collaborative Community Legislation

Senator rel="tag">Dick Durbin has started a project using an innovative method of writing legislation: href="http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=318">What should be America's national broadband strategy? by: Dick Durbin Sun Jul 22, 2007 at 13:06:58 PM EDT (This diary will remain at the top of the page for the next day. New content will continue to appear below. For example, check out Jenifer Fernandez Ancona's The Role of Candidates in Movement-Building, and Matt's Why Are Men Overrepresented in CNN/Youtube Debate Submissions? - promoted by Chris Bowers) Today I'm…

The Illusion of Net Neutrality

Jurvetson's Flickr photostream Do you think that there should be universal access to the internet, regardless of how it is accessed? Should the internet be regulated by the federal government? If so, to what extent? Is "Net Neutrality" possible? For now, "neutrality" when it comes to accessing the internet is an illusion. These questions, to some degree, have been addressed by the approval of new rules by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today. Below are some key things to consider: Excerpted from an NPR story today: A divided FCC has approved new rules meant to prohibit…

Books: "Snooze...Or Lose! - 10 "No-War" Ways To Improve Your Teen's Sleep Habits" by Helene A. Emsellem, MD

My regular readers are probably aware that the topic of adolescent sleep and the issue of starting times of schools are some of my favourite subjects for a variety of reasons: I am a chronobiologist, I am an extreme "owl" (hence the name of this blog), I am a parent of developing extreme "owls", I have a particular distaste for Puritanical equation of sleep with laziness which always raises its ugly head in discussions of adolescent sleep, and much of my own research is somewhat related to this topic (see the bottom of this post for Related Posts). So, I was particularly pleased when Jessica…

An antivaccine "Thinker" calls for a boycott

There is a perception that strikes me as common enough to be considered "common wisdom" that antivaccine views are much more common on the "left" of the political spectrum than they are on the "right." I've discussed on multiple occasions how this perceived common wisdom is almost certainly wrong, or at least so incomplete as to be, for all intents and purposes, wrong. Frequently, the accusation that the left is antivaccine, usually coupled with the stereotype of the crunchy, affluent, liberal elite living on the coasts being antivaccine, is often thrown back by conservatives stung by…

Quick ConvergeSouth08 recap

I am back from the 4th ConvergeSouth, the do-not-miss Greensboro conference about the Web, blogging, journalism and community (and the model/inspiration for our own science blogging conferences, including the third one) . Big kudos to Sue Polinsky, Ed Cone and the cast of thousands for putting together the meeting again, making it better and better every year. And of course, thanks to Dave Hoggard for hosting the legendary BBQ with (even more legendary) banana pudding. I rode to Greensboro with Kirk Ross and came back home with Anton Zuiker, having interesting conversations with each. Dave…

Science News

Clipped from CultureCat Bacterial Communication Pathways; Super Computer to Mimic Brain Language Area; CDC: Breastfeeding Gap in US. Hospitals; Online Checklist of Bee Species; Bird Flu Strains that have Acquired Nasty Properties MIT researchers unravel bacteria communication pathways MIT researchers have figured out how bacteria ensure that they respond correctly to hundreds of incoming signals from their environment. The researchers also successfully rewired the cellular communications pathways that control those responses, raising the possibility of engineering bacteria that can…

Government transparency groups ask Labor Dept to restore info scrubbed from website

The Pump Handle reported on May 4, 2012 that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) had scrubbed clean its website of documents on an abruptly withdrawn proposed regulation to protect young workers from being injured or killed in agricultural jobs.   Two weeks later, a group of organizations dedicated to government transparency and accountability wrote to Obama Administration officials asking them to "re-post the documents online relating to now-withdrawn proposed rules concerning child labor in agriculture." The DOL's Wage & Hour Division proposed in August 2011 a rule to prohibit children…

The wonders of melatonin

Arousal of a thirteen-lined ground squirrel from hibernation. By Uncredited; Walter L. Hahn [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons   In a new study published in the American Journal of Physiology Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, researchers at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse were interested in understanding how thirteen-lined ground squirrels protect their brains during arousal from hibernation. This is a period of time in which the animals experience major changes in their body temperature and increased blood flow to the brain. The researchers knew that levels of…

Nature Publishing Group and the University of California – Some pointers and thoughts

Besides watching this like the finals of Olympic hockey, I've been seriously impressed with the thoughtful and insightful commentary from a huge bunch of my libr* online contacts. Interesting stuff, too, from scientists and other folks interested in scholarly communication. About the confidentiality of the discussions.... Walt Crawford reminds us of various freedom of information requests and state laws in California that essentially mean that the terms of the final agreement won't be confidential Beth Brown thinks that this can only help with transparency in the future - which would be a…

Friday Flotsam: Iceland update, Kilauea slows down, videos of Colima and more!

News! Colima in Mexico erupting in 2008. The current activity at Eyjafjallajökull is more-or-less unchanged, with strombolian activity producing a 3-4 km tall ash-and-steam plume and the lava flows at the crater moving northward towards the GÃgjökull glacier. You can check out an extensive page on the state of this eruption at the Nordic Volcanological Center - along with a new page with thermal and LIDAR information on the eruption from France. The Icelandic Met Office notes that the lava has been producing meltwater from the glacier - which many Eruptions readers have noticed as floods…

Twitter Is a Cocktail Party That I'm Not Invited To

As I go through my daily routine, I find myself sort of out of phase with a lot of the Internet. My peak online hours are from about six to ten in the morning, Eastern US time. That's when I get up, have breakfast, and then go to Starbucks to write for a few hours. This means that most of the other people awake and active on my social media feeds are in Europe or Australia. And my standard writing time ends right around the time things start to heat up in the US. I do continue to have access to the Internet through the afternoon, of course, but unless I have a deadline coming up, I'm often…

Overseers on the Galtian Planation

I've always understood why the very rich would favor economic ideologies that support their self-interest. What I've never quite understood is why so many people who aren't Galtian overlords buy that crap. Lance Mannion puzzles over the same thing (italics original): The Koch Brothers are under a different delusion, that we live in a feudal society and they are Medieval land barons and the rest of us are their serfs and retainers. Never mind them for now. I'm talking about the retainers. The country is lousy with people who are essentially corporate flunkeys who think they are John and…

'Deserving' Public Spending, Fiscal Conservativism, and the New Welfare Queen

A while ago, I made the following observation in "A Nation of Deluded Dependents" about how many who receive government assistance don't even realize (or perhaps admit) that it's government assistance: This seems a case of willful ignorance by definition. Government aid is for lazy slackers, for 'welfare queens', and, in some people's minds, for those people. Decent, hard-working people don't receive government aid, even when they do. In other words, any program that helps middle-class people, people like themselves, is, by definition, not aid, because government aid is inherently…

Big Sh-tpile and Why Geithner's Plan Won't Work

Paul Krugman succinctly lays out why the Geithner/Obama* plan won't work: Yes, troubled assets may be somewhat undervalued. But the fact is that financial executives literally bet their banks on the belief that there was no housing bubble, and the related belief that unprecedented levels of household debt were no problem. They lost that bet. And no amount of financial hocus-pocus -- for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to -- will change that fact. You can't walk back a lost bet, and doubling down isn't an option. We can spin this around and around and throw up spaghetti code arguments,…

Around the Apocalyptic Web: The sharing economy and getting paid for your work

I find the whole idea of a "sharing economy" where people barter and exchange and free up excess capacity in their own lives and situations to make others' lives a little easier and cheaper an interesting notion. And worthwhile. After all broadly speaking the open access and open source movements do partake of this same spirit. Libraries too, in that we pool the resources of a community to acquire stuff for the benefit of all the members, so that everyone can share the wealth. But is there a dark side to sharing? With the advent of companies like AirBnB and it's ilk not to mention the whole…

Why is this night different from all the other nights?

Or, to tell the traditional Passover joke: A Jewish physicist in the UK was about to get knighted by the Queen. There was a long line of recepients waiting for the ceremony and they were all instructed what to say/chant once they come to face the Queen. The physicist kept silently practicing the obligatory words, but when his time finally arrived he got so nervous he forgot what he was supposed to say. So he started singing the only song he could remember "Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh mikol haleilot..." The Queen looked at him, then looked at her advisor and asked: "Why is this knight…

I don't believe in colleges and universities, I believe in libraries

A thought experiment. It all started with this Ray Bradbury quote in the New York Times: "Libraries raised me," Mr. Bradbury said. "I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years." I've bolded the chunk that has resonated most strongly around the Internet, especially Twitter where it was widely tweeted and retweeted. The tweeter that most piqued my interest was…

The Great Labor Department Conspiracy to fake new jobs

One of the characteristics of defective thinking, particularly of cranks (see theHOWTO) that we've discussed on scienceblogs is their poor ability to process information that is contradictory. Last week there were some interesting reports on a study which suggested those who believe in conspiracy theories can hold two seemingly contradictory pieces of information in their heads and not see the conflict. For instance: "The more people were likely to endorse the idea Princess Diana was murdered, the more they were likely to believe that Princess Diana is alive," explained Douglas. People who…

The Geekoff Intensifies

Orac is refusing to surrender and acknowledge the obvious fact that he simple *is not* as much of a geek as I am. So I am obligated to point out several further facts in my attempt to make him surrender the crown of geekiness. ---------- First: compare our professsions. Orac is a cancer surgeon: a person whose professional life is dedicated to *saving peoples lives*. There are people living today who would be dead but for the efforts of Orac. It is an honorable profession, deserving of nothing but respect. In contrast, I am a software engineering researcher; aka a professional computer geek…

A DIY biology project idea: making yeast that sense heavy metals

I don't know if any DIY biologists are looking for projects, but I think engineering yeast with a gene to detect heavy metals might be a good DIY biology project and I have some ideas for how to do this. What are the advantages of using yeast and working on this kind of problem? This could have a socially beneficial result. Contamination of soils, water, and even toys with heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and others, is a growing problem. If DIY biologists could make a cheap test, it could be helpful for a large number of people. Yeast, at least the ones I'm thinking about, Saccharomyces…

Congratulations to Occupational Health & Safety Honorees!

One of my favorite parts of the American Public Health Association annual meeting is the Occupational Health & Safety Section's awards lunch. It's always inspiring to hear about and from the award recipients, who bring dedication, creativity, and much-needed stubbornness to the cause of ensuring safe and healthy workplaces. The 2011 honorees are: Alice Hamilton Award: Martin Cherniack of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW), author of the book The Hawk's Nest Incident: America's Worst Industrial Disaster Lorin Kerr Awards: Lamont Byrd of the…

Pimp Me New Cars

As Kate and I set out to run errands the other day, the "Service Engine Soon" idiot light came on in my car (a 1999 Ford Taurus LX). This may or may not mean anything-- Kate got one of those in her Prius a while back and it was nothing-- but if it's actually an indicator of anything serious, I'll be in the market for a new car. I was already planning to unload this car in December, because the warranty on the rebuilt transmission runs out not long after that, but if I'm facing more than $1,500 in repairs, we'll bump that up. So, my question for the bloggeratti is this: What kind of car should…

Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys [Library of Babel]

I first encountered Matt Ruff on Usenet, as a poster on rec.arts.sf.written. When I found out he had books published, I picked up Sewer, Gas, and Electric, which was good enough to put him on the buy-immediately list. Of course, that hasn't cost me a great deal of money, as he's only written two books since then, Set This House in Order back in 2003, and the new Bad Monkeys, which I bought and read on the way to St. John. Bad Monkeys is the story of Jane Charlotte, a woman who is in prison for a murder that she cheerfully admits committing, who has a remarkable story to tell. She claims to be…

An Open Letter to the People of London

Hey, I just wanted to drop you all a note to say sorry about that football game yesterday. I know I've already admitted that rugby is a superior game, but honestly, the NFL can do better. You see, the thing is, the Miami Dolphins are a really bad team this year. And the New York Giants, much as I love them, have a long history of playing down to the level of their opponents. You match those two up anywhere, you're going to get pretty much what you got yesterday. I'm just sorry it had to happen in your fine city. (Though, honestly, the conditions of the field didn't help. You know, in American…

I've eaten food, hell yeah. And some of it's good too.

But most of it isn't. You've eatin it, this food they speak of, good or bad or middling. I bet. No no, think again. I'm sure of it. I think later today I'll do it again. Mmmm, foody. I'll be posting something next week in response to this week's wildly interesting "Ask a Scienceblogger" topic of Organic Food. They query: What's up with organic foods? What are the main arguments for buying organic? Is it supposed to be better for me, or better for the planet, or what? Are organics, in any sense, worth the higher price?... For today, this Friday, here's a discussion forum from The Nation…

All over the 10 o'clock news...

John Mayer told us that "when you trust your television/What you get is what you got/Cause when they own the information, oh/They can bend it all they want." Well, it turns out it's worse than that - even if you think you're somewhat knowledgeable in an area, the media's coverage may affect the way you think. At least that's what a new study published in PLoS ONE has found when it comes to diseases. Researchers at McMaster University wanted to see how media coverage of diseases affects the perception of their prevalence and severity. To do this, they asked undergraduate and medical students…

The Manatees of Crystal River

Many of you will recall my passion and compassion for the illustrious sea cow (and for those of you who haven't watched it, the exploding manatee heart is a must). A few weeks ago, after I attended the International Coral Reefs Symposium I went back to my old stomping ground (water?) of Crystal River, Florida, to visit these gentle giants. I have been traveling to Crystal River off and on for 10 years and, even over this brief time, I have witnessed a shifting baseline... Crystal River is a beautiful area, particularly in the early morning when the fog clings to the water and air is filled…