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Important Note for My Students

A while back, I noted that one student wrote on the all-important course evaluation form "He should wear more pink." I'm still not sure what that meant. Given that the second most ridiculous comment in that class was "[student name] is the worst Warcraft player ever," I should probably point our majors to this interview with an addiction doctor (via Jake): Having treated all types of addictions for more than 15 years, Orzack says there's little difference between drug use, excessive gambling and heavy game playing. And with millions of gamers hooked on mega-popular massively multiplayer…

Know Your Gadfly Theorists

One of the perks of this semi-pro blogging gig is that people have started sending me free copies of books about physics. I'm halfway through a new book on quantum mechanics at the moment, and a copy of Lee Smolin's forthcoming The Trouble With Physics is on its way. If you can't wait to hear what I have to say about the book (which might take a while, as I don't have much reading time any more), Bee at Backreaction has an advance review posted already. And if you can't get enough of Lee Smolin (Loop Quantum Gravity theorist and string theory opponent), she also has an interview with the man…

Internet Radio Severely Threatened

I'm a big fan of Pandora.com, a smart on-line radio station. It first asks you to name a number of songs, albums and artists that you like -- you can actually start with a single song. Then it figures out (with the aid of a huge database where music has been classified in detail according to a large number of parameters) what other stuff you might like -- and plays it to you. As you rate the songs it throws at you, it gets a better and better idea of what to give you next. But us Swedes are out of luck now. Because of a huge and sudden increase in the licencing rates Pandora has to pay, they'…

Anthro Blog Carnival

The forty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Hot Cup of Joe. Archaeology and anthropology, and all intended to recreate the lost 1921 short drama film The Great Day! Cast Arthur Bourchier - Sir John Borstwick Mary Palfrey - Lady Borstwick Marjorie Hume - Clara Borstwick Bertram Burleigh - Frank Beresford Adeline Hayden Coffin - Mrs. Beresford (as Mrs. Hayden Coffin) Percy Standing - Paul Nikola Meggie Albanesi - Lillian Leeson Geoffrey Kerr - Dave Leeson Lewis Dayton - Lord Medway Mrs. L. Thomas - Lord Medway's Mother L.C. Carelli - Semki Submissions for the next carnival…

Moving on Up...

I just bought a new house and today begins the process of moving in to it. If everything goes well, I'll be back online this evening after the cable installers leave. But I won't have phones until Friday morning when they come to set up all my phone lines (4 total, 2 business lines, a personal line and a fax line). All of my phone numbers will have changed, but my email address should remain the same. Tomorrow I move the heavy stuff, followed by days of moving the light stuff (mostly boxes of books) bit by bit. And all of that interrupted on Saturday by an end of the summer season lake party…

Science Promotions on the Web

Two links to things promoting science on the web: 1) What's the Greatest Innovation? Spiked online asked a bunch of famous people to describe the greatest innovation in their field, and compiled the responses. As with most of these things, there's some interesting stuff in the responses, and a lot of predictable answers of the form "The greatest innovation is the one that led to my personal research." 2) String Theory in Two Minutes or Less. Some time back, Discover ran a contest for videos describing string theory in two minutes or less, and they've put the top entries up on the web for a…

Fred Clark, Jim Henley, and Daniel Davies

Timothy Burke is disgusted with the New York Times, and soliciting nominations of people who would be more interesting on the Op-Ed page than the Times's current stable of established writers: As an extension of my last post, let me start the nominations for online writers that you feel like could serve as better columnists for the New York Times than most of the current group. Basic things to consider: reasonably good writers in stylistic terms, evidence that they could handle writing regularly and could write within the space constraints, evidence of the ability to surprise either in their…

Tara Smith: New Staph Strain Found in U.S. Pigs

A strain of drug-resistant staph identified in pigs in the Netherlands five years ago, which accounts for nearly one third of all staph in humans there, has been found in the U.S. for the first time, according to a new study. Seventy percent of 209 pigs and nine of 14 workers on seven linked farms in Iowa and Illinois were found to be carrying the ST398 strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The study marks the first time researchers have tested for the strain in the U.S., so there's no way yet to tell when or how it arrived or how widespread it may be, says Tara Smith…

Good Times in Richmond

I had a pleasant trip down to Richmond on Wednesday. I spoke to a small crowd of twenty people about evolution and creationism and all that jazz. I think most of the audience was to the left of me on these issue. Whenever I said something about evolution challenging religion it was all smiles and encouragement. When I said something about how many religious folks have made their peace with evolution, suddenly everyone was sucking on lemons. At any rate, I felt a little cheated that I did not have any frothing creationists giving me grief during the question period. The talk itself, alas, will…

Uncertain Dots, Episode 4

I didn't advertise it heavily this time, but Rhett and I did another G+ hangout yesterday, and the video is online now: We talked for a while about the wonders and importance of VPython coding (including some "Oh, I should totally do that..." moments), where we get post ideas (including a discussion of luge physics), briefly about how we put stuff together for posts, and a bit more about physics education research and why it's really difficult. I had hoped to throw together a quick post about the luge thing for today, but that's probably not going to happen, so you'll have to settle for the…

Physics Research Survey and Contest

One of my colleagues at Union is doing a physics education research project with a summer student, and is using an online survey to collect data. Obviously, the more people respond to the survey, the more scientific it becomes (subject to the limitations imposed by relying on self-selected Internet samples, of course), so I offered to plug it here. Here's the blurb and link: I'm doing a summer research project at Union College with a student, and I need as many people as possible to fill out a survey that we created. If you complete the survey by 11:59pm (EST) on Sunday, August 11, 2013, you…

links for 2009-02-24

editors / 23 / 02 / 2009 / Views / Home - Inside Higher Ed Inside Higher Ed has done a comprehensive redesign of the site, including a bunch of new features. The best online academic journal just got better. (tags: academia computing internet) The Reality-Based Community: Annals of sexist oppression "In the middle of a long thread on a writers' list-serv, provoked by my post on fashion models, it occurred to me that one of the unrecognized ways women are kept dependent and threatened is simply denying them pockets. This is more important than one might think, right up there with hobbling…

The Chronicle morning round-up

Waiting for that coffee to take effect but want it to appear you are doing something scholarly? Have a look at this pair of highly-read posts at The Chronicle of Higher Education: We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research The most-viewed article of the last two days at the online presence of the nation's leading higher ed publication, this team-authored position piece has been a magnet for criticism. The thread of 102 comments (thus far) is as worthy of your time, if not more, and the humorous and insightful payoff by commenter #100 is clever and spot-on, IMHO. Why 'Female' Science…

Just posted: tenure-track cell biology assistant professorship at Univ of Colorado Denver

Here's a new tenure-track faculty position just posted at Science. A great position in a great department at a great school in a great place to live. IMHO, of course: The University of Colorado Denver Department of Cell and Developmental Biology in the School of Medicine We invite applications for an Assistant Professor faculty position in the areas of cellular and molecular biology, broadly defined. Successful candidates will be expected to establish a vigorous, innovative and independent research program and participate in teaching. They will join a highly interactive, interdisciplinary…

On the Road: This Week at Stanford; Next Week in Boston at Northeastern University

On Friday I will be taking part in the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program at Stanford University, speaking to attendees about how the public uses science information online. Whether news, YouTube, blogs or social networking sites, what does research tell us about the best way to engage key audiences? Sponsored by the Woods Institute for the Environment, the Leopold program "advances environmental decision-making by providing academic scientists with the skills and connections needed to be effective leaders and communicators." Next week, on Wed. Sept. 12, I will be in Boston at Northeastern…

Project for Excellence in Journalism Releases First Weekly News Agenda Analysis

Every Tuesday, the Project for Excellence in Journalism will be releasing their weekly news index report, an analysis that tracks the major stories across media sectors including daily newspapers, online news, network TV news, cable news, and radio. Last week was the first report for 2007. According to their numbers, the top story across all outlets was the official takeover by new Democratic Congressional leadership, which made up 15% of the overall newshole. That was followed by the death and state funeral of Gerald R. Ford (12%). The debate over U.S. Iraq policy finished third at 9%. By…

It's Come to This: I'm Outsourcing Blogging to Australia

I have been meaning for some days now to point your attention to my new article in the June issue of Scientific American called, "What Is A Species?" The hard copy is worth tracking down because it's got a lot of excellent illustrations and sidebars. SciAm has the full article online for subscribers, and I've posted the text over at carlzimmer.com. There's so much I could say on the topic--pointing out how the recent news on polar bear extinction raises the question of how distinct polar bears are, for example--but I am scurrying in the shadow of a rising wave. (Attention people of Portland,…

Blogger personality type

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) attempts to classify each pesonality into one of 16 types described by the four letter codes in the table below. TypeLogic has descriptions of all the types, as well as a FAQ. You can find your out own type in this on-line test. If you have a blog you can enter your type in the table below. [Go here to see the table and the form.](http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/survey/myersbriggs.html) Google Directory has a huge pile of links on the MBTI. I think some of those people take it way too seriously. This page has some…

Happy Birthday, Darwin!

In middle school, my friends and I secretly referred to athletic jocks as "creationists." The joke was, of course, that they -- with their neanderthal postures, fixation on brute strength and obsession with the less decorous emissions of the human body -- were "less evolved." Of course, this is before teaching evolution in schools was made illegal (or whatever). It is in this spirit of snickering precociousness that I offer my birthday greeting to Charles Darwin, who would have been 200 years old today. Thanks, old chap! Many accolades are due; in your honor, and at the behest of SEED…

A look inside a water beetle

Just in case you were ever wondering what a beetle looks like on the inside, here is a computed microtomography video of a Dryops water beetle. Other researchers are using this tool to examine the anatomy of various extant and extinct organisms. In fact, there is an online digital library of specimens that you can explore at The University of Texas at Austin (sponsored by the National Science Foundation). Here are a few of my favorites: Panaque cf. nigrolineatus, Royal Pleco Catfish Dr. Nathan Lujan - Texas A&M University Juvenile Gila Monster (Heloderma suspectum) (false-color 3D…

It's up to you now...

So I have this bad habit of ending up in twitter conversations with Scicurious. Last time, I ended up looking at the taste of dolphin semen. This time I have somehow agreed to a challenge: if I get to 2000 twitter followers by the end of April, I'll do a remake of Rebecca Black's Friday. For those who don't know what I'm referring to, let me show you: Yeah. I'll have to do a science-related remake of that. Video and everything. I'll leave it to the masses to decide if such a thing should be made, or if it would be too blasphemous to the good name of science. Past remakes of mine have…

Casual Fridays: Color differences

We've been doing a lot of social psychology on Casual Fridays lately, what with gift preferences and email sign-offs. So this week we thought we'd get back to basic perception research. We'll see if we can uncover fundamental perceptual differences with a simple online test. I can't tell you much more about the study with spoiling the results, but this one should be quick and fun, so why not give it a try? Click here to participate in the study. As usual, the study is brief, with just 11 quick questions, so it should only take a minute of your time. You have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on…

Eureka!

My contribution to the Sb-wide Zombie Day will soon be posted, but if you need something to sink your teeth into before then, check out today's new issue of the Times of London science magazine Eureka (included inside the Times, for UK readers). Inside you will find two stories by me - one on paleobiology in the 21st century and the other on our changing view of tyrannosaurs - and you can access them online behind a free registration wall. It was a wonderful opportunity to write for Eureka, and I am indebted to editors Mark Henderson and Antonia Senior for their support and the freedom to…

The Science of Communication: What We Know We Didn't Know But Convinced Ourselves Otherwise

At the risk of getting more comments about framing...In January I spoke at the 2008 American Meteorological Society meeting's 7th Communication Workshop, and the audio and powerpoints are now online. Many or most of the panelists--and especially myself and Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan--are making "framing science"-type arguments, but of course, there is no real controversy over them because we're applying them mainly to global warming, not evolution. Anyways, you'll need the WebExPlayer, but I encourage you to check out the session. The panelists were myself and Arthur Lupia,…

Do you know what today is?

It's Ardipithecus day! No, not that one, but the other one, Ardipithecus ramidus, which paleoanthropologists have been studying for the past 15 years. Over 45% of the skeleton of this hominin was found in the early 1990's, but outside of a brief initial description no further details about Ardipithecus ramidus had been published until today. Later this afternoon Science will launch a webpage containing multiple print articles and online features chock-full of details about this early hominin. (Word has it that an entire University of California Press volume will be devoted to Ardipithecus…

Taking the "Expelled Challenge"

Earlier this year, intelligent design advocates were trumpeting the forthcoming "fall of Darwinism" with the release of the propaganda film Expelled. The film stirred up some controversy, had a modest (at best) showing, and generally preached to the choir, but it didn't seem to have as momentous a reception as the filmmakers were hoping for. I was curious about what the entire film was like, but I wasn't about to support the people behind it by seeing it in theaters or purchasing a DVD. Last week, however, I noticed that Netflix has added Expelled to a list of movies subscribers can watch for…

PZ, Stop Picking on the U of Michigan

PZ Myers, despite being at a large Midwestern state school, has decided to pick on my current academic home, the University of Michigan. Why, you ask? Well, yes, a few students are doing something rather silly. Engineering senior Israel Vicars didn't think it was a coincidence when he walked by a drunken girl who had fallen over in a parking lot and desperately needed help. Vicars attributes his ability to safely return the girl to her residence hall to the power of united prayer. Fostering that united prayer is what the campus program 40 Days of Prayer is all about. Apparently a lot of…

Middlebury students no longer allowed to cite Wikipedia

Lazy Middlebury students have lost a valuable resource: Middlebury College history students are no longer allowed to use Wikipedia in preparing class papers. The school's history department recently adopted a policy that says it's OK to consult the popular online encyclopedia, but that it can't be cited as an authoritative source by students. The policy says, in part, "Wikipedia is not an acceptable citation, even though it may lead one to a citable source." History professor Neil Waters says Wikipedia is an ideal place to start research but an unacceptable way to end it. Here is my thing. I…

The Synapse and Other Links

The second edition of The Synapse is up over at A Block Around the Clock. I especially liked "Are You Conscious of Your Precuneous" and Ethics at the Dawn of the Neurotechnological Age." Elsewhere, John Hawks tackles Aymara, "the future is behind us" thing, with some links to some nice discussion at Language Log as well. Three Quarks Daily links to a Scientific American article about how we cognitive scientis, and other scientists, are stealing humanity. Chris Chatham has a nice post at Developing Intelligence compiling the various points and counterpoints in the discussion of brain imaging…

You Look So Pretty In That Red Dress

href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081104/ap_on_fe_st/odd_vote_in_ambulance">SAN ANTONIO – Betty Owen is 92 and after a stroke four years ago, needs a feeding tube and can't walk. But she was determined not to miss Tuesday's election. She arrived at her polling place on a gurney in an ambulance, where an election judge and support worker climbed aboard with an electronic voting machine and let her cast her ballot. "And you have voted," precinct judge Sam Green said after Owen pushed the red button finalizing her choices. "You know, You Look So Pretty In That Red Dress." Owen…

Imagine being unable to perceive music

Imagine listening to a piece of music, and perceiving a rattle of pots and pans instead of the harmony of the combined component sounds; or developing an insatiable desire to play the piano after being struck by lightning; or to be able to reproduce a complex piece of music after hearing only once, despite being blind, autistic and needing round-the-clock care. People with these conditions are among those encountered by Alan Yentob, in a documentary called Oliver Sacks: Tales of Music and the Brain, which was broadcast on BBC1 last night. As its title suggests, the programme features…

The Strange Case of the Woman with a Breast on her Foot

Stevie C sent along this article on An unusual presentation of supernumerary breast tissue (just what were you googling for, Stevie?), in which a woman reports an annoying growth on her foot, and when examined, is discovered to have a breast growing there, complete with nipple and fatty tissue (but in this case, no glandular tissue). It's in the Dermatology Online Journal, not the Onion. I hadn't heard of this before myself, but it's fascinating. These supernumerary breasts can pop up all over the place, including the face, back, and thigh (and foot, obviously). They can be functionally…

The 50th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: Carl Sagan (Pseudo) Memorial/Demon-Haunted World (Pseudo) Homage

Yes, it's that time again, time for another Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Given that yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan at the too-young age of 62, this edition of the Circle, posted at Humbug! Online, is a tribute to the man and his dedication to science and skepticism. Theo has decided to arrange it in a similar fashion to the chapters in what is arguably Sagan's greatest book: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Next up to host the first Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle of 2007 is See You At Enceladus. If you're a blogger trying to follow…

Visualizing Data

A friend wanted me to see this public service announcement, which is an excellent visual display of quantitative information and a good way to provoke guilt: When he sent me the link, he routed me through this awesome blog called Information Aesthetics that has been around since 2004 (where have I been?!). It's an excellent compilation of some stylized substance that I have just begun to explore. One of the first gems I came across was a link to the Personas exhibit currently on display at the MIT Museum. Personas uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a…

Mapping the colours of NYC's skyline in real time

Artist Mike Bodge has unveiled a nifty project to chart the colour of the sky above New York City in real time. A camera installed in his office snaps a picture of the skyline every five minutes, and analyses the image to calculate its average colour. The varying shades of blue, grey, orange and black are posted online in a never-ending mosaic. Mike says: Many of my projects tend to be about New York City, as it's a place i'm constantly inspired by. I have a great view at my office overlooking the East Village neighborhood and I've done time lapses and other things but none really…

ScienceOnline10---preparation phase

I'm giving two sessions at ScienceOnline10. The first, which I will be co-hosting with Dr. Val Jones, is entitled Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything. I've given similar talks to physicians, but given that Val and I may be nearly the entire medical team at the conference, we'll probably let the conversation branch out significantly. If you're interested in the session, please go to the conference wiki and let us know what you're thinking. Val is a great public speaker and I have a set of points I'd like to hit on, but this is supposed to me more…

8 Foot Octopus 15 Inch Box

Our friends at the New England Aquarium pointed us to these nifty shots of their giant Pacific octopus squeezing itself into a small acrylic box for some delicious crab. As part of regular enrichment activities for the octopus, aquarist Bill Murphy hides food in plastic boxes with different types of "locks" the octopus must figure out. In this case, the box being used had a hole in it created by the aquarium's previous resident octopus and, rather than open the top, the octopus just sort of poured himself in. When the aquarium really wants to frustrate their octopus, they just give it a…

Olympian Jonathon Edwards Now an Atheist

UK gold medalist in the triple jump, Jonathon Edwards, long known for his wear-it-on-your-sleeve Christianity, has admitted to apostasy. Here is an article in The Times Online. It's a good read. Here's an out take: Once you start asking yourself questions like, 'How do I really know there is a God?' you are already on the path to unbelief," Edwards says. "During my documentary on St Paul, some experts raised the possibility that his spectacular conversion on the road to Damascus might have been caused by an epileptic fit. It made me realise that I had taken things for granted that were taught…

Rachael Maddow Heard It Here First...

JustaTech commented last night: Zuska, I saw this story [about the carwash for the shooting victim] on MSNBC last night (9/1) (The Rachel Maddow Show). So at least the liberal-leaning national media has also noticed. I suppose this falls under tootin' my own horn, but one of Rachael Maddow's producer's contacted me by email in response to my original post on this story. They wanted help in getting in touch with the young woman, which I could not do, but I did provide them with the link to the story done by local news outlet WPXI - which is excerpted in the segment on the 9/1 Maddow show…

Silent but deadly

Via Peezee. , you're now logged in! Below you'll find your test result. After, continue on to your homescreen to discover what we're about. continue to OkCupid homescreen > Rogue Ninja You scored 7 Honor, 2 Justice, 6 Adventure, and 8 Individuality! You are as quiet as the wind, deadly as a viper and you follow no master. You are a Rogue Ninja. Let no one say you are without honor, lest they meet a quiet and questionable end. Dress as you like and keep your knives close. You'll do just fine…

From the Archives: Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder by David Weinberger

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, is from August 14, 2007. (Weinberger left a detailed comment at the original post, for those that are interested.) ======= David Weinberger's…

Thar's gold in them thar "cures"!

As I mentioned on Friday, I'm in Chicago right now attending the American College of Surgeons annual meeting, where I'll be until Wednesday afternoon. If there are any of my readers who happen to be surgeons attending the meeting, drop me a line and maybe we can get together. In the meantime, here's a blast from the past from the past. This post first reared its ugly head almost exactly three years ago; so if you haven't been reading at least three years, it's new to you. Unfortunately, I see nothing that has changed since I originally wrote this. If anything, I underestimated the problem.…

Feeding My Army

It is only on really stressful days when I refer to them as my unholy army of the night.   The rest of the time, at least at meals, it is just "my army" and we really do go through a stunning amount of food.                   For example, in late August, right around the time this photo was taken  (I can't usually post pictures of my kids, but this one, with no faces visible is ok - from left, R., Q., Z., and K., our four little ones who at the time ranged from 13 months to 3 1/2), I counted - we went through four large watermelons, 20lbs of peaches, 10lbs of apples, 6 quarts of plums, 4…

Reflections after Science Online 2010 (#Scio10)

I'm writing this while on the plane, flying back from a fantastic weekend in North Carolina. Before I can even begin reflecting on the past few days, I have to thank NESCent again for their generous travel grant which allowed me to go to Science Online in the first place. Without their funding, I'd have spent the weekend laying out on a beach instead of freezing my butt off with over 200 amazing people who, thought diverse in many ways, all have one thing in common: a passion for science communication. Sure, the beach would have been a lot warmer and more relaxing, but going to Science Online…

Making real changes in the landscape of science.

I want to commend to you a pair of posts that strike me as calls to action. Both relate to the oft-discussed "pipeline problem" in the sciences. And, I take it that both authors are interested in making science (and especially academic science) a less hostile environment not just for women, but for others who love science but, frankly, may not have much patience for current institutional or societal barriers to entry to the tribe of science. Responding to the recent NAS panel's finding that institutional bias is responsible for the lower rates at which women in science departments are hired…

23andMe targeting pregnant women using "mommy bloggers"

Personal genomics company 23andMe has just launched an online community of "mommy bloggers" - a move I can only describe as sheer marketing genius. I'll give you a moment to let the vision sink in. Imagine a group of women hungry for information about the best way to ensure the future health and wellbeing of their unborn children. Now imagine a website packed with sincere, caring mother-types - most of them well-established bloggers with a strong existing fan base - writing about the real day-to-day issues that mothers care about (in the words of one recruit: "momming, aging, and my twenty…

To My Esteemed Critics

Here at The Scientific Activist, we welcome criticism--intelligent criticism, that is (as opposed to unintelligible dribble like this). Besides, when it comes to boosting traffic stats, any link is a good link, so I thought I should give a shout out to some of the nice folks who linked to me over the last couple of days, even though they basically disagreed with everything I wrote. First up is Dr. Jim Hu--a professor of biochemistry at my alma mater, Texas A&M University--who runs a blog called Blogs for Industry. Although we are at odds on pretty much any every political issue, he's…

Modern Workers' Euphemisms

tags: employment, urban dictionary, modern euphemisms As our workforce has become increasingly hostile towards the very workers that it depends upon and our world at large has become hostile to the very idea of individuality, there have been new words developed that hide the true function of those who seek to destroy modern civilization as we know it. Below the fold is a list of a few of these euphemisms that were sent to me by a reader for you to enjoy; Blamestorming : sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible. Seagull…

Modern Euphemisms

I was looking through my unread emails and found a list of modern euphemisms, which was sent to me by a reader of mine. Since many of you reading today are at work, but wishing to be elsewhere, and probably won't get much done today as a result, I thought that today would be the perfect day to post this for you to enjoy. 404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. "Don't bother asking him ... he's 404, man." Adminisphere: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and…

Ruthlessness Gene "Discovered"

I wasn't sure whether to put the quotes around "Ruthlessness Gene," or "Discovered."  I suppose I could have just left them out entirely, but I have this urge to spice things up a bit with punctuation marks.  Don't blame me...it's genetic. Now, there is yet another correlation between a snippet of DNA, and a behavioral trait: href="http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080404/full/news.2008.738.html">'Ruthlessness gene' discovered Dictatorial behaviour may be partly genetic, study suggests. Published online 4 April 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.738 Michael Hopkin Selfish…