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How do kids decide robots are worth talking to?

Kids love robots. I have a three-year-old friend who can identify the 1950s cult icon Robbie the Robot at 20 paces. My own son Jim could do an impressive multi-voiced impression of R2D2 by age five. Now that real robots are beginning to be everyday household items (when I was a kid, if I'd known I'd be able to buy a vacuum-cleaner robot from Sears when I was a grown-up, I'd be ashamed to learn that I never actually bought one!), one wonders how real kids will respond to them. When, for example, might a child begin to believe that a robot has a conscious mind, and that humans might…

DonorsChoose Time for ScienceBlogs!

This year I'm taking part in the the DonorsChoose fundraiser taking place at ScienceBlogs. DonorsChoose is a website where teachers can ask to have small teaching projects funded, and potential donors can peruse the proposals can fund ones that seemed worthwhile. Many of the teachers who submit proposals to DonorsChoose are in areas of the country with poor educational funding and high poverty rates, and are for basic teaching materials. I'm trying to raise $1000 to fund three projects, described below: 1. I Want To Go To College But How Do I Do That? This proposal, submitted by a concerned…

Mommy Monday: A taste of a different life (what I've learned)

A quick synopsis of the back story: Minnow is intolerant of dairy, soy, and corn, and since I am breast feeding her, I've been on a three month elimination diet. Because of Minnow's intolerances, about 99% of prepared and restaurant foods are out. The full back story is here. My experiences on an elimination diet have made me much more aware of what life must be like with a disability. This might sound odd at first, but bear with me for a second. I walk into a grocery store or a restaurant, and I can't participate in (i.e., eat) most of the offerings. I have to carefully scan the list of…

Chris Green - Tasmanian Hero

I met Chris Green on a boat in Lake Titicaca in September, 2007. Immediately we realized that we had something in common...Weird animals, well kinda. For starters, I just write about weird animals, and Chris actually works with them. Also because he lives on Tasmania, he doesn't really consider the animals he works with weird; they are pretty much the most normal animals he can think of...Whoa, that's deep. Normal day at the office... If Andrew and I were trying to make a joke about a typical Tasmanian person, we'd probably use Chris' resume as material. He has spent the last few years at a…

I guess J. B. Handley isn't so proud of Age of Autism after all...

Remember the truly despicable and disgusting post by Age of Autism, in which its enemies were portrayed in a crudely Photoshopped picture as preparing to eat a dead baby for their Thanksgiving feast? It was an image that I likened to the blood libel against the Jews, as did Rene at EpiRen in a much more detailed post. It's gone now. If you go to the link, earlier this evening you'd get a message "Nothing to see, move along now." Now, if you go to the link, it's a blank page. Fortunately, for now at least, the it's stlll cached in Google, and I, of course, have saved web archives, a screen…

My brief moment of fame

Hrm. Well. Since so many people are emailing me about this (I guess the book is officially out now, since so many are reading it), I'll come clean: I am mentioned briefly but flatteringly in Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). I'll spare you all the mystery, and quote it here, blushingly. It's on page 69, in a section titled "The Neville Chamberlain School of Evolutionists" (no, I'm not one of the members, I'm a critic; but as you can tell from the title, it's a strong criticism of a school of thought that says we must appease the fence-straddlers who fear the…

A Love/Hate Thing for Spring

This is supposed to be my favorite time of year. Things are blooming, memories of winter are fading, waterfalls are melting, and the trees are turning green. It's that last one that always gets me... I've always considered it to be a magical moment when the trees change in spring. Not the gradual show of colors we see in the fall, spring brings an abrupt explosion of color. Not only are the greens striking and vivid after months of winter grey, but the white and pink blossoms on the apple and cherry trees are a crowning touch. I've been anxiously eyeing the tall maple tree (Acer rubrum) in my…

"Scientific" Whaling

Japan managed to buy enought votes at the recent meeting of the International Whaling Commission to pass a resolution declaring that the moratorium on whaling was meant to be temporary and is no longer needed. The resolution is not all that significant from a practical standpoint - it takes a super-majority to actually end the moratorium, and Japan's going to have to bribe a bunch more countries before they hit that mark. However, it apparently did enough for the morale of the Japanese whalers enough for them to unilaterally declare that they are going to increase their "scientific" whale…

Tripoli 6 trial: 114 Nobel Laureates speak up

Contrary to expectation, the trial of the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor for capital crimes in a Libyan court did not conclude yesterday but was continued until November 4 to allow the prosecutors to answer arguments by the defense that Libyan authorities have framed the Tripoli Six. Meanwhile in a significant development over one hundred Nobel Laureates have sent a letter to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya protesting the exclusion of scientific evidence potentially exonerating the defendants. From Declan Butler's blog: In the letter, to be published online this week by…

Cancer Breakthrough 20 Years in the Making

Last month, Penn Medicine put out a press release heralding a "cancer treatment breakthrough 20 years in the making." In a small clinical trial, three patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) were treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T cells. Just a few weeks after treatment the tumors had disappeared, and the patients remained in remission for a year before the study was published. The release didn't, however, explain those "20 years in the making." In 1989, Prof. Zelig Eshhar of the Weizmann Institute's Immunology Department first published a paper…

MSHA said WHAT about asbestos?

The Associated Press is reporting that last month MSHA inspectors found tremolite asbestos at a quarry owned by the Ash Grove Cement Company, part of its Kaiser plant in Jefferson County, Montana.  The article quotes MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere saying that asbestos is present in the pit as âisolated occurrencesâ due to geologic intrusions in certain zones of the quarry. Isolated occurrences?....of asbestos? I pray this quote was taken out of context.  Surely no one at MSHA would dare minimize the serious risk to workers' health from exposure to asbestos---even if the source of…

What Exxon Knew and When?

Eli is, in my view, rather over-excited by insideclimatenews's Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago. The interesting question that remains is that since they did not disclose their knowledge to shareholders, will some lawyers get rich? is, I think, not an interesting question at all. The answer is No - at least, they won't get rich by winning payouts against Exxon because of this. All this seems like a re-tread of the similarly unspectactular The Climate Deception Dossiers? insideclimatenews breathlessly tells us that Top executives were warned of…

Caribbean Fish Populations Declining For At Least A Decade

A new study published online in Current Biology has analyzed the results from over 48 population studies in the Caribbean from 1955 - 2007, and the results aren't pretty. Caribbean fish have been declining in a big way for at least the past decade, and the culprit isn't commercial fishing. The study used meta analysis to look for trends across trophic groups, locations, fishing status, and overall density at over 300 different reefs. What they found wasn't good. Not only are species falling from fishing pressures, species which aren't commercially fished are losing numbers, too, suggesting…

Happy Birthday, Ellen!

I should have posted this yesterday but wasn't able to...so this is a belated birthday celebration for Ellen Swallow Richards. Thanks again to Penny Richards for sending along the following information. December 3, 1842--birthdate of Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911), first woman admitted to study at MIT. She was a chemist; she was also married to the head of the mining engineering department. She worked to establish the Women's Laboratory at MIT (1876-1883), and had an (unpaid) instructor's position teaching chemistry courses. She was the official water analyst for the Massachusetts…

Science swirling down the drain

Lots of stuff about the intersection of science and politics in the US today—here are three things to read over breakfast. Bruce Sterling suggests that American science is experiencing creeping Lysenkoism, and reports that "the Bush administration has systematically manipulated scientific inquiry into climate change, forest management, lead and mercury contamination, and a host of other issues." He predicts a rather grim end for our science and science policy. Before long, the damage will spread beyond our borders. International scientific bodies will treat American scientists as pariahs.…

Math in Medicine

One of our constant themes is the innovative ways that tools and ideas from math and physics can lead to new insights in the life sciences. Take, for example, a recent study produced by a group that included a professor of mathematics, an oncologist who works in pharmaceutical research and has a Ph.D. in mathematics, an electrical engineer and applied mathematician who is doing a postdoc at Harvard Medical School, and physicians in a medical center research lab. The idea was to create a mathematical model of a medical syndrome – in this case neutropenia, the low counts of the white blood…

Fact or Friction: Slow Earthquakes

Earthquakes are once again in the news, this time in Mexico. Although it is only the biggest quakes that make international headlines, we might take a minute to contemplate other quakes - the ones you'll never feel. So-called "slow" or "silent" earthquakes slip so softly they don't even show up on regular seismographic equipment. As the name implies, slow quakes release the energy built up along the fault over hours or even days, as opposed to mere seconds for a fast, shaking quake. So why should we care about what happens in earthquakes that even scientists have barely noticed? For one…

The Clade

Introducing The Clade. It has now been launched and you can read all about it and see the first contributions (and perhaps decide to join in and contribute yourself): The Clade will bring together environmentally concerned writers, artists, photographers, videographers and podcasters who want to go beyond "environmentalism as usual." Environmentalism encompasses wilderness protection and human social justice, women's rights and artistic freedom, online organizing and solitary contemplation. We intend to reclaim environmental journalism from the Hearsts and Knight-Ridders of the world, to open…

Journalism schools behind the times

Alana Taylor is in J-school at NYU and is not happy with the way she gets unprepared and mis-prepared by the old-timey professors for the journalism of the future: What is so fascinating about the move from print to digital is the freedom to be your own publisher, editor, marketer, and brand. But, surprisingly, NYU does not offer the kinds of classes I want. It continues to focus its core requirements around learning how to work your way up the traditional journalism ladder. Here is the thinking I find here: 1. Get an internship at a magazine or newspaper. "This is good for your resume…

Do Serbian scientists need a blog of their own?

Not that it costs anything to have one... Yet, the Konsortium of science libraries in Serbia is seriously contemplating shutting down their KOBSON blog, an invaluable tool in science communication in the region. Danica, who the regular readers of this blog are quite familiar with as she is the Number One Champion for Open Science and Web 2.0 science in Serbia, has put a lot of effort into building the online infrastructure for Serbian scientific communication, including the KOBSON blog and the KOBSON wiki, as well as teaching and preaching to the local scientific community about the…

Crisis Planning and Personal Interventions Class Starts TOMORROW

I still have spaces in this class, which is designed to help others sort out the complicated intersections of multiple crises.  The class is taught by both me and my husband, Eric Woods. This is an exciting class for us to be teaching, since it combines so many of our strengths and experiences.  Eric has a Ph.d in Astrophysics from Harvard and a BA in Physics from MIT, and has been teaching environmental physics for an number of years at SUNY Albany.  I'm a member of the board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA), and a long time writer on energy, climate and environmental…

Future Great Experiments

Looking at the ScienceBlogs front page, I suspect that I may be well out of my league, especially when it comes to posting frequency. There's just no way I can post that many entries in one day, especially not a day like Thursday. In addition to my lab this morning (in which half the students were using a Michelson interferometer to measure laser wavelengths and the index of refraction of air, while the other half measured the speed of light-- it was like a "Greatest Experiment Nominee" re-enactment event. Only with lasers...), we had a visit from Dave DeMille of Yale, who I had invited a…

Intervention in NSA Lawsuit

I find this highly amusing. The folks at StopTheACLU think that they're actually going to be able to intervene in the ACLU's lawsuit against the NSA. Intervention is a term of art in the law. It means that you actually get added as a party to the proceedings. An attorney named Debbie Schlussel, who appears to be more of a spokesmodel than a scholar (her bio notes proudly that her online fan club is the second largest, behind only Ann Coulter), is apparently going to file motions to intervene on behalf of citizens who disagree with the ACLU and our pals at StopTheACLU jumped at the chance to…

February Pieces Of My Mind #1

Veneer inlay, Ewald Dahlskog, Stockholm's China Theatre. Me and Cecilia von Heijne have just submitted our paper on the coins from Skällvik Castle to a numismatic journal. Yay! Current Swedish Archaeology has just published my enthusiastic review of Cecilia Ljung's doctoral thesis on 11th century burial monuments. Well done, Doctor! Danish is such a badass language. It's got words like skaktavlkvadre -- note the VLKV sequence there -- and then you just pronounce everything like you're extremely drunk. I demand that everyone in Sweden pronounce "Skälboö" as if it were an English word:…

Media alert!

The makers of Expelled have just issued an "online media alert" in response to a critical review of their movie, as some readers have forwarded to me. It's hysterical. We already had our first security breech [sic] and are asking YOU now for your support to stand up for EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Hosted by Ben Stein, EXPELLED contains a critical message at a critical time. As an underdog in Hollywood right now, we need your support. Recently Robert Moore, a film critic from The Orlando Sentinel pretending to be a minister, snuck into a private screening, did not sign a Non-Disclosure…

Hmmm...I found the moral philosophy of chimps more convincing

My colleague in the philosophy department here at UMM, Tamler Sommers, has a couple of interesting interviews online, one with Frans de Waal and another with Jonathan Haidt. de Waal is good — there's some cool stuff in there about altruism and politics. Haidt … well, again, I find myself with mixed feelings about his work. The "social intuition" model, where people make emotional judgments and then makes intellectual rationalizations after the fact, sounds reasonable to me. But then, he goes on to make these arguments about "four pillars of morality" — harm, fairness, purity, and duty — that…

Links for 2009-11-30

On false dichotomies : Thoughts from Kansas "To the degree that I object to "New Atheism" (an ill-defined entity to which I am not entirely unsympathetic), my objection is to this precise aimlessness. By embracing Radical Honesty and railing against evidence-based communication strategy, they seem to be coming out against clearly stated goals, yet they complain when people refuse to treat them as a serious political movement. Sorry folks, but political movements have clearly stated political goals, and take actions with an eye (however skewed it may be) toward making those goals real. If…

Best Physical Science Writing of 2008?

I didn't expect the post griping about the Best American Science Writing anthology to generate as much discussion as it did. Shows what I know. In comments, "bsci" made a good suggestion: Instead of complaining about this volume, I'd love it if you and your readers made a list of the best physics writing in the past year. I assure you that I would be one of many readers of the pieces on the list. That's a good suggestion, so let's put it out there: What were the best articles about physical sciences published last year? These could be in general magazines (The New Yorker, etc.), in science…

Breaking News: The Atta Phylogeny

Atta cephalotes carrying leaves, Ecuador Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution this morning has the first detailed molecular phylogeny of the leafcutting ant genus Atta.  MaurÃcio Bacci et al sequenced several mitochondrial genes and the nuclear gene EF-1a from 13 of the 15 described species-level taxa, using them to infer the evolutionary history of the genus. This is an important paper.  Atta is the classic leafcutter ant of the new world tropics and a model system for co-evolution among the ants, the fungi they cultivate, and a suite of microbes that either parasitize or protect the…

Moving in...

Greetings all, Not Exactly Rocket Science has now officially transformed and rolled out into the ScienceBlogs network. So to readers who have tracked me here, new Not-Exactly-Rocket-Science virgins, my new SciBlings, and people who have mistakenly stumbled here during their search for porn - hello! The blog is about explaining new research in a way that anyone can understand, regardless of their scientific background. I generally post about 3 times a week and more if time permits. Also, I'm giving a talk on science blogging this Thursday at London's Apple Store on Regent Street, alongside…

Der-der-der-DERR-der Der-der-der-DERR-de-DER-de-de-DERR-BOOM BOOM

For the last day, ScienceBlogs has been teasing some big news on Twitter. Perhaps we were all Belle de Jour in disguise? Maybe we would rip off our masks to reveal the mainstream media lurking underneath? Maybe we would even, gasp, shock, start blogging about science? No, it's none of these. The cat, now let loose from its bag/box in a flurry of collapsing probabilities, is that we're joining up with National Geographic for a big, sciencey love-in. There'll be a fair bit of cross-promotion on both sites, and we suddenly get access to a massive archive of pics and videos. And to clarify, Not…

Sunday brain-nuggets

To play my part as a good denizen of the blogosphere, I'm going to start providing a weekly selection of links to great posts from other blogs. These will either run every Sunday or every whenever-I-get-the-time... Without further ado: Brian Switek at Laelaps discusses living mammoth legends. SciCurious talks about ultrasonic frogs over at Neurotopia. Christie Wilcox at Observations of a Nerd covers research that suggests the largest pterosaurs may not have been able to fly. If it looks like a peer-reviewed journal and it sounds like a peer-reviewed journal, then it's a... massive ad for…

CIFAR quantum postdoc

Postdoc with some awesome Canadian quantum researchers: Quantum Information Processing Program JUNIOR (POSTDOCTORAL) FELLOWSHIPS The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a private not-for-profit research institute. It is a catalyst for discovery, incubating ideas that revolutionize the international research community. CIFAR identifies emerging fundamental research questions concerning society, technology and the very nature of humanity and the universe, and creates interdisciplinary networks of leading scholars from around the world to explore them in a way that is…

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION IN THE STEM CELL DEBATE

This week all eyes will be on Capitol Hill as Nancy Pelosi and the newly elected House majority push for stem cell legislation that would override President George W. Bush's tight limits on research funding. Supporters will need to achieve a super majority in both houses in order to stave off a Bush veto. The Center for American Progress estimates that backers of the bill might be as many as 40 votes shy of a 2/3 majority in the House, but perhaps only one vote shy in the Senate. Both sides in the debate are geared up for a major political communication battle, and in a new "Science and…

National Geographic Gets Complex

Flowers, flagella, feathers. Life is rife with complex features--structures and systems made up of many interacting parts. National Geographic magazine asked me to take a tour of complexity in life and report on the latest research on how it evolved. What struck me over and over again was how scientists studying everything from bacteria to humans are drawn back to the same concepts--making new copies of old parts, for example, or borrowing parts of one complex trait to evolve a new one. And in each case, complexity opens up the way to diversity, because something many parts can be rearranged…

Examples of important persons dissing other important persons

Last semester I was fortunate enough to be involved with a UBC project (called Terry) that looks at global issues from a multidisciplinary angle. One of the things in my charge was arranging a kind of high profile speaker series, with an emphasis on bringing out individuals who are not only doing great things, but are also excellent engaging orators. This was wonderful in that I got to hang out with some pretty amazing folks. Anyway, the talks are all available online, a good portal for them being here, but I thought as bait, I'd present a few interesting, funny, at times poignant, and…

Cornell Road Report

In essence, it went like this: Getting to and from Ithaca was a !!%$^# nightmare. But once I got there, the talk went extremely well. I won't bother you with all the details about how my flight to Ithaca from LaGuardia, and my back-up flight to Syracuse, were both canceled. About how I then decided to rent a car and drive the 234 miles between New York City and the Cornell Campus. About how I met a vicious snow storm/flurry along I-81 N somewhere in the Poconos between Scranton and Binghamton that forced me off the road--I couldn't see two inches in front of me. About how I then found a…

Moving Day

Friends, readers, and new Sciblings: bioephemera has moved to a new home here at Scienceblogs! I'm happy to be here with so many bloggers I respect. And it gives me warm fuzzies to know they invited me to join them because. . . well. . . probably because they didn't have any blogs starting with b. If you're a regular reader from the old bioephemera, you'll notice some superficial changes. There's a new banner, and as part of my assimilation into the Sb collective, I must comply with this IKEA-esque, milquetoast color scheme. Sigh. But let's be honest; it is easier to read black text on a…

Brains under glass

light table with brain specimen slices National Museum of Health and Medicine Neuroanatomical collection A few months ago I took a tour of the National Museum of Health and Medicine's neuroanatomical research collection. It's a remarkable hoard of preserved and sectioned human brains, most sandwiched between plates of glass. Some of the specimens are quite old (the NMHM has specimens dating back to the Civil War). I took a few photos to show you what the facility is like. storage cabinets for NMHM's neuroanatomical collection The cabinets above house trays of glass slides containing serial…

Fear the omniscience of Orac, evildoers!

Orac knows all. Orac sees all. Orac discovers all. Anti-vaccine loons, know this and tremble, as Teresa Conrick over at J.B. Handley's--excuse me, Jenny McCarthy's--home for happy anti-vaccine propagandists has: While googling to find the Tribune article, I instead found Orac's site. Who is Orac? Well, suffice to say that he has some mysterious desire to want autism to be only a genetic disorder. He gets upset if you discuss vaccines or the environment as causative factors. The usual suspects of the neurodiverse world and the assorted anonymous Wackosphere characters were hanging out at…

Simon Caldwell is a liar

I don't think I've ever seen a more dishonest piece of reporting than this whoppper from Simon Caldwell at the Daily Mail: Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering. Needless to say, this story was linked by Drudge and all the other denialists…

Leakegate: Yes, Leake was responsible for that bogus story about the carbon footprint of Google

Oh look! Another Jonathan Leake story Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research. While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. "Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power," said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. "A Google…

Kids' Choice: Gym, Art or Science Class?

Photo source. Teaching kids science has always been a challenge, but why? Isn't a child's nature to explore and discover new things everyday? Every child has this capacity and somewhere along the way many of them lose the spark, the joy of discovery. A survey by the recently launched laboratory facility for children, the L'Oréal Young Scientist Centre at the Royal Institution in the UK gave some good news and some bad news. The goal of this new facility is to "provide children aged seven to 18 and their teachers with an interactive, experimental space in which to explore science. " First…

Travel

Since I've been traveling in a foreign country for the last week - I was sipping sugary tea all over Turkey - I thought this article, published last year in McSweeney's Panorama newspaper, was slightly relevant. If nothing else, it's my personal attempt to justify both the annoying burdens of travel (especially foreign travel) and the self-indulgence of an extended vacation. I'm linking to the version of the article that was reprinted in the Observer, since that's online: It's 4.15 in the morning and my alarm clock has just stolen away a lovely dream. My eyes are open but my pupils are still…

Some love for the philosophers

No, not for me (although some comments elsewhere in the ScienceBlogs galaxy have been rather more anti-philosophy than pro); for John Perry and Ken Taylor, the guys who do Philosophy Talk on public radio (and on streaming audio on your computer). They've been doing the show for more than two years now. However, the seed money that got them started is dwindling. Here's their bleg: When we started, many people in radio took our ideas with a very large grain of salt. "Philosophy on the Radio?" they asked incredulously. "Two academics as co-hosts? A stream of professional thinkers,…

Birds in the News 180 -- Back in the USA Edition

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter A once-in-a-lifetime photograph of a Common (Eurasian) Kingfisher, Alcedo atthis. Image: orphaned [larger view]. Birds in Science For centuries, scientists have puzzled over why the toucan's bill is so remarkably large -- but now one team thinks it might have an answer. The researchers say that the toucan uses its enormous beak to stay cool. They used infrared cameras to show the bird dumping heat from its body into its bill, helping it to regulate its body temperature. The toucan has the largest bill of any bird,…

Next up on the Trump crazy train: A man who thinks that a "Yelp for drugs" will do a better job than the FDA

One of the most important, if not the most important, officials in the federal government responsible for applying science-based medicine to the regulation of medicine is the FDA Commissioner. As you might imagine, particularly after his having met with antivaccinationists like Andrew Wakefield and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., I am concerned, and I think I have good reason to be, about Donald Trump's plans for the FDA. After all, consider the people who have been under consideration for the post thus far (that we know of). First, there was Jim O'Neill, a flunky of Silicon Valley venture capitalist…

Collaborating on a data analysis project: students do the math with the Google Docs spreadsheet program

For many years, I had my biotech students do projects where each group of students would analyze their own data, in addition to all of the data gathered by the class. I would draw a table on the white board and each group would enter their data. At the end of the class, all the groups would copy all the results into their notebooks, then analyze them in Microsoft Excel. This worked pretty well, but it wasn't perfect. There were always cases where one group would be really slow, or someone had to leave early, or I needed to use the board and couldn't. And, this method certainly wouldn't…

You are all invited to ScienceOnline2010!

It is official - ScienceOnline2010, the fourth annual conference on science and the Web, will be held on January 15-17th, 2010 in the Research Triangle Park area (the exact location to be announced). Please join us for this three-day event to explore science on the Web. Our goal is to bring together scientists, physicians, patients, educators, students, publishers, editors, bloggers, journalists, writers, web developers, programmers and others to discuss, demonstrate and debate online strategies and tools for doing science, publishing science, teaching science, and promoting the public…

The Humane Society University Now Offers 4-year Degrees

I was surprised to learn that the fringe animal rights activist group, the Humane Society of the United States, has formed the Humane Society University which was recently granted a license to grant bachelor's degrees in three areas; animal studies, animal policy and advocacy, or humane leadership. They also are licensed to grant certificates for graduate study in those same areas. Required courses are offered online or at their Washington DC site starting autumn term in 2009. All students, who must have attained junior status elsewhere, are required to take two courses: Animal Protection…