Search Content

Displaying results 6801 - 6850 of 87950

Project H.M., Phase I

IN February of this year, Jacopo Annese (above), a neuroanatomist and radiologist at the University of California, San Diego travelled to Boston to take delivery of a brain. For Annese, collecting brains is not unusual - he is, after all, director of UCSD's Brain Observatory, which will eventually become a comprehensive library of brains donated by people who had neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's Disease, as well as by healthy people of all ages. This time though, the brain he collected was very special: it belonged to the amnesic patient Henry Molaison,  who for more than 50 years…

How to Explain Science in Blog Posts

If you believe the maxim "the more the merrier," then you would have LOVED the session which I am proud to say was my first as a moderator. I wasn't alone - nine other fantastic people worked with me. Our collective goal was to do the impossible: to give a complete 101 on how to explain science in blog posts. Everything from style and tone to content even website design and marketing. All of it. In one hour. And, might I say so myself, we totally rocked it. This session took unconference to the extreme. Instead of having us stand up and talk at the audience, we split into five groups each led…

CVs vs. resumes: when it matters

So I ran across this thread, and it made me sad. (And no, not because it wasn't Ed Yong's blog, although that too.) It started off as a happy post: the author, Paula Chambers, is a PhD who began her own online community for PhDs seeking jobs outside academia. That's awesome. But when Chambers went to hire an assistant, and received applications from fellow PhDs (and ABDs - "all-but-dissertation" scholars), she was not impressed: I was and remain astounded by the failure of so many smart, educated people to follow instructions. It wasn't complicated. I asked for a résumé, cover letter, and…

Lejre Excavator Publishes His Views on the Figurine

Tom Christensen, who heads excavations at storied Lejre on Zealand, Denmark, has a paper about the lovely Lejre figurine in ROMU 2009 (full text on-line) and another one in the new issue of Skalk. Here he offers some well-chosen comparative material and presents his arguments for the figurine's gender and identity. Everybody agrees that the figurine's throne, with its wolf heads and pair of ravens, must depict Odin's high seat Hlidskjalf. Everybody also agrees that the piece dates from the 10th century. But Denmark's foremost experts on 1st Millennium dress (and myself) classify the person…

Advent Calendar of Science Stories 14: A Slip of Card

Scientific controversies aren't always settled by a single dramatic experiment, but it's a lot of fun when they are. It's even more fun when they can be carried out with, as the author put it, "without any other apparatus than is at hand to every one." I'm speaking in this case of the famous "double slit" experiment of Thomas Young, though if you want to be really picky about it, he didn't originally do it with a double slit, but a single "slip of card" that divided a beam of sunlight. Some distance away from the card, the overlapping light from either side of the card combined to produce a…

Black-eyed peas and collard greens: Happy New Year from the American South

To launch our 2010 blogging, here's a cultural take on our core theme of folk medicines and prescription drugs derived from natural sources (plants, fungi, marine creatures, and microorganisms terrestrial and aquatic). I've lived in the southern United States for a combined 15 years but it was only when I married into a southern family that I was assimilated into the tradition of eating collard greens and black-eyed peas to kick off the New Year. I'm told that the custom is a mashup of African American tradition adapted by southern whites that sustained all through the Civil War and the…

ScienceOnline'09: Interview with Stephanie Zvan

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Stephanie Zvan of the Almost Diamonds and Quiche Moraine blogs and co-moderator of the session on Science Fiction on Science Blogs, to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? I have…

Defending, Not Using, Victims

More than a few conservatives are upset about the Michael J. Fox commercials because they're unfair: how do you respond to the emotional pull of someone who has Parkinson's disease? If you watch the full-length CBS interview, Couric cruelly hammers Fox over and over with the question of if he overexaggerated his symptoms for the commercial (she's obviously trying hard to dispel the image of being the nicest of the big three anchors). But where she truly entered the realm of tastelessness was when she repeated Rush Limbaugh's charge that Democrats use victims for political purposes.…

Mystery Bird: Pine Siskin, Carduelis pinus

tags: Pine Siskin, Carduelis pinus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Pine Siskin, Carduelis pinus, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Richard Ditch, 2008 [larger view]. Date Time Original: 2008:04:16 08:46:29 Exposure Time: 1/319 F-Number: 5.60 ISO: 320 Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: Start at the back, start at the back! We see a short-tailed bird with a long wingtip, and both wing and tail show yellow: simple feather edgings in the wing, but a significant basal patch in the tail. Off the…

Watching Mel Gibson Movies

Several people have responded to my post about Mel Gibson by saying that they'll never see his movies again. I have to confess to being baffled by that. I don't get it when those on the right do it and I don't get it when the left does it either. When those on the right freaked out about the Dixie Chicks because they criticized the president ("on foreign soil", they always add, as though that is the least bit relevant - does the validity of a criticism change as it crosses a border?) and started burning their records and boycotting their concerts, I frankly thought they were acting like…

May Pieces Of My Mind #2

Tree house ruin, Saltsjö-Boo Listening to the classic rock station in the car, I turned it off in the middle of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under The Bridge". Two days later I turn it on again and find myself in the middle of their "Scar Tissue". Heh. American podcaster talks about someone named Rothschild (pronounced "roared-shilled"), consistently pronounces it "rots-child". Norwegian reggae: Bo Mærøy and the Whalers. I love Google Inbox’s snooze feature. Takes a huge load of stress off to be able to decide at what date and time I want to attend to a given letter, and then just forget…

Keep an eye on Polk County, Florida

It may be our next trouble spot. They have a creationist majority on the school board, and they're saying stuff like this: Despite the Pennsylvania case, some school board members want both intelligent design and evolution taught in Polk schools. They say they have received numerous e-mails and phone calls in support of intelligent design. "My tendency would be to have both sides shared with students since neither side can be proven," Tim Harris said. Tim Harris, you're a moron. You need to recognize this fact soon, so that your self-confident ignorance doesn't lead your school district into…

Conflict Frame to play out in Minneapolis…tomorrow

When I saw Chris Mooney in NY this week, the first thing he did was throw a blow — he punched me in the shoulder. Oh, he said stuff like "hello" and "good to see you," but I think that was just to throw me off my guard. And then we threatened to buy each other beer — in Mooney's case, bad beer — so you know this is going to be a ferocious grudge match. You'll want to be there. Here's the announcement: SPECIAL EVENT: Speaking Science 2.0: New Directions in Science Communications Friday, September 28, 2007 7:30 p.m. Bell Museum Auditorium $5 Suggested Donation Seed magazine writers and…

Fixing Education: DonorsChoose Fundraiser 2008

As we have the past few years, the folks here at ScienceBlogs will be running a fundraiser for the educational charity DonorsChoose. If you haven't been around for the past versions, the way it works is you go to their site via my challenge page, and review proposals submitted by teachers asking for funds to buy materials or put on programs that would benefit their students. If you find one you like, you give them money, and that money goes directly to the teacher making the request, to fund the proposed items. Because everything's more fun when it's competitive, there's a challenge aspect to…

The MAA Reviews the BSB

The Mathematical Association of America has now posted a thorough review of the Big Sudoku Book. The review is by Mark Hunacek, of Iowa State University. His verdict: This is a delightful book which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. In some sense it is hardly surprising that I would enjoy it, since I enjoy Sudoku, mathematics and good writing, and this book combines all three of these. However, I doubt anyone needs to enjoy all three to enjoy this book; a person with very limited background in mathematics, or a person without much experience solving Sudoku puzzles, could still find something…

The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act

Yes, this is old news.  I've written about it before, as have numerous other progressive scientifically-oriented bloggers.  But now that there is an opinion piece featured prominently in the New York Times, perhaps the issue is gaining momentum. href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18kennedy.html?hp">Cows on Drugs By DONALD KENNEDY Published: April 17, 2010 NOW that Congress has pushed through its complicated legislation to reform the health insurance system, it could take one more simple step to protect the health of all Americans. This one wouldn't raise any taxes or make…

How to get your lab up and running in 10 easy steps

Step 1. Spend all of your start-up money. Or not. Step 2. Who needs lots of lab renovations? Just use a space last used by another department. Cabinets are cabinets after all. But be sure to call Health and Safety to dispose of any left-behind chemicals you find. Step 3. Buy one large piece of lab equipment and some field equipment. Field equipment doesn't need anything more than storage space in your lab, so that simplifies set up substantially. The large piece of lab equipment will either come with a technician to get it set up or with very good instructions and support to get it working…

Mitt Romney Buys Conservative Support

As the presidential primaries for 2008 slowly approach, we're seeing the expected heavy swing to the right by several on the Republican side. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, though, seems to have taken things a step further by attempting to buy the support of right-wing organizations: In the months before announcing his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts contributed tens of thousands of dollars of his personal fortune to several conservative groups in a position to influence his image on the right. Last December, a foundation…

A personal heroine: Henriette Davidson Avram

This is my blog post for Ada Lovelace Day, on which we celebrate technical achievement by women. I'm writing it the day before, and setting it to post at midnight. I hope someone is writing a biography of Henriette Avram. I will be first in line to buy it. I desperately want to know how she did what she did. Her achievement is generally, and appropriately, recognized as a technical one: designer and implementer of the MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) format still in use in hundreds of thousands of libraries worldwide. If that had been all: dayenu, it would have been enough. For all its…

I'll try that Nunavut Merlot, please...

This week's 'Ask A ScienceBlogger' focuses on reports such as those in National Geographic and DailyKos that global warming is having, and will progressively have great influence, on wine grape-growing. The idea is that grapes grown for premium wine production are much more sensitive to climate than table grapes or many other agricultural products, making them an excellent living laboratory 'canary in a coalmine." A very appropriate question this week as we launched our feature, The Friday Fermentable, last week. This issue has been bandied the wine industry over the last several years but…

A shift in focus

I've altered the tagline on this blog slightly, to reflect where it seems to be going. (I am not in control here; I am merely the author-function! Sorry, sorry, lit-crit joke.) At the same time, I've been thinking a lot about library collections, what's in them and how it gets there. (I'm teaching a graduate course in collection development at the moment, which has of course bent my thoughts in that direction.) Here's where I'm sitting, and my commenters (who are smarter than I am) are welcome to challenge me. When collection development came into its own in academic libraries, forty years or…

Water, Security, and Conflict: Violence over Water in 2015

Since its founding in 1987, the Pacific Institute has worked to understand the links between water resources, environmental issues, and international security and conflict. This has included early analytical assessments (such as a 1987 Ambio paper  and this one from the journal Climatic Change) of the risks between climate change and security through changes in access to Arctic resources, food production, and water resources, as well as the ongoing Water Conflict Chronology – an on-line database, mapping system, and timeline of all known water-related conflicts. In 2014, an analysis of the…

Naptime! Read this and have a coronary ... or take a nap. It's your decision.

Kuroda Seiki, "A Nap," 1894. from Kuroda Memorial Hall online I love midday naps, and before I had kids and all time evaporated, I used to take 2 or 3 a week: Kick back the recliner, shut 'em for 20-30 minutes, and wake up a new man. Worked for Churchill during the war, so why not for me? Like a run or a good night's sleep, it was an investment of time that made me both happier and more productive. Yet, stupidly, few of us take them these days. Why not? We can't afford the time. Or so we think. The study below suggests that perhaps you may well get the time back, in spades, by living…

Sperm: As Strong As Ever?

Source. Sperm counts declining due to environment and chemical hazards is, seemingly, commonplace knowledge. But a startling study just published in the journal Epidemiology debunks the concept. Highlighted in The Science Times of The New York Times {June 7 edition}: But now 15 years of data from 18-year-old Danish men taking their military physicals show no decline in sperm counts, after all. The idea that sperm counts were plummeting began with an alarming paper published in 1992 by a group of Danish researchers. Sperm counts, they reported, declined by 50 percent worldwide from 1938 to…

The Poetry of Science IV

Manot Cave cranium With a skull and Keats, there was little choice but to write about the new online items in rhyme. So with apologies to Shakespeare, Keats and the scientists, as well as the people at SpaceIL, here are today's grab bag of poems. As usual, follow the links.       On a Lone Cranium Alas poor Yorick – We can only know Where you lived all those eons ago Walking, did you take those others in stride; Human, yet strange, as they strode alongside? Did your children wander forth, Searching for a greener North? Can your skull, a bit of bone, Tell us where our seeds were sown?   To…

Around the Web: Libraries as humane workplaces, Getting your EDU boss to tweet, Digital zombie scholars and more

10 Reasons Why Your (EDU) Boss Should Tweet The digital scholar - which way to go? Facebook is scaring me #ArsenicLife Goes Longform, And History Gets Squished Science Online: London 2011 - Keynote, Michael Nielsen - Video & Storify Op-Ed: Stop Feeding Facebook, It's Time for Moderation Bibliographies (CS scholars should post copies of articles on their websites) Reading, Risk, and Reality: College Students and Reading for Pleasure Access to scientific publications should be a fundamental right Honor Your Campus Library Academic Publishing and Zombies Who killed videogames?…

New program for middle and high school students encourages STEM participation

In the increasingly competitive and admissions-driven world of high school, learning doesn't always come cheap. SAT-prep programs and college admissions counselors charge a pretty penny for the advantages they (claim to) bestow upon anxious juniors and seniors, and even younger students, including those in middle school, are feeling the pressure. But what about families who can't afford exclusive prep courses? Enter USAGraduate.com, a interactive online competition free to students in grades 6-12 that aims to engage students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects. The…

Today is the LAST day to submit your entry for the Jingle Contest!

Today is the day! It's the last day jingles uploaded!! Next week will be the "American Idol" of the USA Science and Engineering Festival when our finalists will go to a public VOTE to help us decide on the best jingle!! Yes...YOU dear readers will get to help decide on the USA Science and Engineering Festival's jingle. So...here are some details: Prize for the winning Jingle: $500 (and knowing that your Jingle will be heard and sung by hundreds of thousands of science enthusiasts across the country) Submission Deadline: April 30, 2010-->THIS FRIDAY! How to submit your jingle to the USA…

Jingle Contest Ends TOMORROW!

Tomorrow is the last day to get your jingles put together and uploaded. Next week will be the "American Idol" of the USA Science and Engineering Festival when our finalists will go to a public VOTE to help us decide on the best jingle!! Yes...YOU dear readers will get to help decide on the USA Science and Engineering Festival's jingle. So...here are some details: Prize for the winning Jingle: $500 (and knowing that your Jingle will be heard and sung by hundreds of thousands of science enthusiasts across the country) Submission Deadline: April 30, 2010-->THIS FRIDAY! How to submit your…

Jingle contest ends THIS FRIDAY!

Just a few more days to get your jingles put together and uploaded. Next week will be the "American Idol" of the USA Science and Engineering Festival when our finalists will go to a public VOTE to help us decide on the best jingle!! Yes...YOU dear readers will get to help decide on the USA Science and Engineering Festival's jingle. So...here are some details: Prize for the winning Jingle: $500 (and knowing that your Jingle will be heard and sung by hundreds of thousands of science enthusiasts across the country) Submission Deadline: April 30, 2010-->THIS FRIDAY! How to submit your jingle…

Jingle Festival Deadline: THIS FRIDAY!!

Just four more days to get your jingles put together and uploaded. Next week will be the "American Idol" of the USA Science and Engineering Festival when our finalists will go to a public VOTE to help us decide on the best jingle!! Yes...YOU dear readers will get to help decide on the USA Science and Engineering Festival's jingle. So...here are some details: Prize for the winning Jingle: $500 (and knowing that your Jingle will be heard and sung by hundreds of thousands of science enthusiasts across the country) Submission Deadline: April 30, 2010-->THIS FRIDAY! How to submit your jingle…

DNA Day is on the way!

The American Society for Human Genetics is sponsoring the second annual DNA Day Essay contest. If you are a high school teacher here's your chance to combine an interesting assignment along with a contest. This year's essay questions are: If you could be a human genetics researcher, what would you study and why? In what ways will knowledge of genetics and genomics make changes to health and health care in the US possible? The rules are here at GenEdNet.org I also have an animated tutorial at Geospiza Education that might be of some help. The tutorial is titled Allelic Variants of…

Admirable....not necessarily accurate...regarding science...in a movie!?

That is what the SEED overlords are asking this week: What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally. Jeff Goldblum comes to mind.... But no, the most admirable thing a movie can do about science is make it look cool to kids. Many kids' movies (and TV shows) are doing a pretty good job at turning science-geeks into superheroes. My all-time-favourite is Jimmy Neutron. Why? Jimmy is not just an inventor and engineer (like Dexter, for instance) but a real scientist…

Craig McClain talk at Sigma Xi

Although I've known Craig McClain for a few years now, both online and offline, I only had some vague ideas about what kind of research he is doing. I knew it has something to do with the Deep Sea and with the evolution of body size, but I did not know the details. So, when the opportunity arose to hear him give a talk summarizing his work, I jumped to it and went to see him on Tuesday at Sigma Xi as a part of their pizza lunch series. First I have to say that Craig is a great speaker (if you are looking for one for a seminar series, this is useful information for you) - it was fun and very…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Jonathan Eisen is a Professor at UC Davis, Academic Editor in Chief of PLoS Biology, author of the Evolution textbook, a blogger and a twitterer. At the conference, Jonathan will lead the session "Open Access Publishing and Freeing the Scientific Literature (or Why Freedom is about more than just not paying for things)". Russ Williams is the Executive Director of the…

Heat wave!

The temperatures are soaring out here in Morris, Minnesota, rising to a balmy -9°F/-23°C today, after a miserable week in which both our cars show signs of failure (one is still dead in the driveway) and we discovered the limitations of our house heating systems and insulation — once Spring arrives, some lucky contractor in our neighborhood is going to pocket a bunch of our money to fix this place up. But today…woo hoo, gang, let's get out on the deck and barbecue. Or not. Now I'm wishing I could have made it to the Science Online '09 conference, in tropical North Carolina. Unfortunately,…

Compare and Contrast, Part 6

Compare this.... ....to this: Now go back to all of these Compare&Contrast videos. I have paired them, IMHO, in a reasonable way. But what I did is not watch them, but LISTEN to them instead. So, if you have time and inclination, do the same: start the video and minimize the page and listen instead of watching. When watching, a lot of things are distractions and everyone looks better. But when I just listened, the Republicans sounded much weaker. McCain's voice is shaky and betrays his age. Palin sounded like one of those 'mean girls' in high school running for class president…

Debate! Open Access for the Public

Go to Mimi's place and state your position: For a long time, if you wanted to read up on science news or get background information for research, you had to hope that the media got it right, have a subscription to a few journals ( there are thousands though, so you are missing out), or be lucky enough to work at an institute/organization that gives you access to journals online and has a few (hundred) bound copies. Before legislation was passed to make NIH funded research available to the public after a year, no one really knew what was going on in the world of research and development. This…

A 40-hour workweek?

In academia? See what they say: Mad Hatter EcoGeoFemme ScienceGirl Jennie Mad Hatter again DrugMonkey Laurie Granieri ScienceWoman Telecommuting has its perks. But working only 40 hours is not one of them. Especially in my case in which the line between work, blogging, schmoozing and fun is blurry. Is posting this weekend post to be considered work (building and keeping my own community that, tomorrow, will click on a link to PLoS) or pleasure (doing what I always did - reading interesting stuff online and sharing with my readers)? Both? Who's to tell? I have fun doing it. But I have…

I forgot all about Molly!

Here it is, mid-August, and I just let it slide…I noticed the nagging comments back when I was away, but then let them slide until I suddenly remembered today that there was some administrative chore I'd been neglecting. It is now corrected, and the latest Molly Awards for June are now online. My apologies. There were two winners this month. The first is Jadehawk, and it's about time. You guys have been throwing votes her way for so long, and at last they reached critical mass. The second winner is a bit troubling. You voted for a fundamentalist Christian on my blog, and I almost decided to…

The SSA needs YOU

Our trip to the Creation "Museum" was sponsored and organized by the Secular Student Alliance, a wonderful organization that helps build and support freethought on college campuses all across the country. The meeting this past weekend, for instance, was for training student representatives in how to grow and maintain their campus groups. I have good news and bad news, though. Here's the good news, and it is exceptional, wonderful, excellent news: secular student groups are booming, popping up all over the place, and there's no end in sight. Look how SSA has grown: The bad news, though, is a…

Friday Fun: Students Blame Innovative Incentive Program for Tricking Them into Learning

What can I say, The Cronk is my new Internet crush. I think I might be stalking them. But in a good way. In any case, check this out: Students Blame Innovative Incentive Program for Tricking Them into Learning Psychology professor Edgar Stevens is a popular topic of conversation at Farmington College today as he has become the center of an unusual campus debate. Stevens, a recent recipient of the Farmington Innovative Teaching Citation, inspired heated conversation at the recent Student Government Association (SGA) meeting as a result of an assignment in his second-tier psychology course.…

Anthro Blog Carnival

The forty-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's blog. Archaeology and anthropology, and all about luta livre! Luta livre is a broad term referring to wrestling in Portuguese. In Brazil, it may also refer to a martial art that resembles catch wrestling. With the introduction of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, where Brazilian fighter Royce Gracie dominated the field with apparent ease, many English language martial arts publications rushed to find and translate older Brazilian articles regarding the history of Gracie jiu-jitsu. It was common knowledge that the…

Transitional Fossil Evidence Challenge

My friend Wesley Elsberry has updated the Transitional Fossil Evidence Challenge (TFEC) and posted it on his blog. The TFEC has a long history in online discussions of evolution and creationism, particularly in the talk.origins newsgroup, but as far as I know this is the first time it has been extended to the blogosphere. It was developed many years ago in response to the constant claim that there are no transitional fossil sequences in the world. This claim is mindlessly repeated by creationists, virtually none of whom have ever examined a fossil in their lives. In order to credibly make…

Another Positive Review of the BMHB!

That's the Big Monty Hall Book for those unfamiliar with the local slang. The review appeared in the May issue of The American Statistician, not freely available online, alas. The author was Michael Sherman of Texas A & M University. Here's the opening: Jason Rosenhouse states on the last page of his book that he encountered much “incredulity” at writing a “whole book” on the “Monty Hall problem.” I confess that I was one of the incredulous upon picking up this book. After reading it, however, I have quite a different view. And just what is this new view of which he speaks?…

links for 2008-07-10

In Grad Admissions, Where Is Class? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs "A study just published in PS: Political Science and Politics suggests that in graduate departments, class may be nowhere to be found in admissions decisions." (tags: academia class-war social-science humanities science) Dennis Overbye -- Talk to the Newsroom -- The New York Times -- Reader Questions and Answers - Question - NYTimes.com Q&A with one of the best in the business. (tags: science journalism) Uncool, man. Just uncool. at Tobias Buckell Online "I've since learned…

links for 2008-04-25

Princeton scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter "Writing in the April 24 issue of Nature, the scientists report that they have recorded [the quantum Hall effect] in a bulk crystal of bismuth-antimony without any external magnetic field being present." (tags: physics experiment materials news science) 'Buckypaper' stretches in a strange way - physicsworld.com "[R]esearchers in the US have discovered that some types of buckypaper -- sheets made of woven carbon nanotubes -- increase in width when they are stretched" (tags: physics materials science experiment news) immlass:…

links for 2008-03-01

slacktivist: More on subsidiarity "[W]here it exists here in America, inefficient Big Government tends to be the direct and predictable result of anti-regulation, anti-government laissez-faire and libertarian-ish ideologies" (tags: economics politics US society) Second Law of Thermodynamics with Discrete Quantum Feedback Control You still can't win, but you can do a little better than with a classical heat engine. (tags: physics quantum energy science articles) Control of Interaction-Induced Dephasing of Bloch Oscillations They manage to maintain quantum oscillations in a BEC in an…

The blogging hiatus is close to an end. Really.

I'm forever apologizing for the lack of blog activity.  Sorry.  I know. I owe my vast and loyal readership (Hi Mom!) an explantion.  Behind the scenes here at Myrmecos Industries we are 90% done with a significant overhaul of the ant photo collection.  Essentially, the content of myrmecos.net is moving to the galleries at www.alexanderwild.com, with a significant restructuring of the latter to accomodate an orders-of-magnitude increase in imagery. The process involves a lot of time-intensive tasks like captioning and keywording, as well as retouching older photos and adding in completely…

National Academies Wants Your Input on Science Outreach

The National Academies is doing some preliminary pilot research on a new communication initiative. As part of that process, they want to find out what science blogs readers think are the most important and pressing issues in science. Below is a description and a link to an online survey that they would like readers to take a few minutes to complete. What topics in science, engineering, and medicine matter most to you? The National Academies are interested in developing useful and engaging print and web-based educational materials on the topics that you'd like to learn more about. They…