Search Content

Displaying results 74751 - 74800 of 87950

Around the Web: The Academic Librarianship -- A Crisis or an Opportunity? symposium

This past Friday there was a one-day symposium on the state of academic librarianship at the University of Toronto entitled Academic Librarianship - A Crisis or an Opportunity?. In response to recent developments in academic libraries in Ontario and elsewhere, academic librarians are invited to gather to discuss the challenges facing the profession of academic librarianship today. This one-day Symposium will serve as an opportunity to hear stakeholders' views of the profession as well as an opportunity for academic librarians to explore ways of re-affirming the legitimacy and the integrity of…

My presentation for Scholarship in the Public Eye: The Case for Social Media

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I did a short presentation on Scholarship in the Public Eye: The Case for Social Media as part of a panel for a York Faculty of Graduate Studies Scholarly Communications Series. And yes, I was the Twitter guy, although some of the other presenters did talk about their use of Twitter. Basically, my point was that Twitter and blogs can be part and parcel of the research and research outreach life of academics. I mostly concentrated on Twitter, but I did try and make the same sorts of points about blogging as well as I spoke. Anyways, I thought I would share…

From the Archives: Natural acts: A sidelong view of science and nature by David Quammen

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 Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one.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 Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, is from February 24, 2008. ======= Just so you all know I don't just read the brightest, shiniest, newest books. I also read some old classics too. And classic…

Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, Fall 2010

As usual, lots of terrific articles are included in this issue. More and more, I wonder why a scitech librarian would publish their articles anywhere else, especially in a toll access journal. Old Words, New Meanings: A Study of Trends in Science Librarian Job Ads by Brenna K.H. Bychowski, Carolyn M. Caffrey, Mia C. Costa, Angela D. Moore, Jessamyn Sudhakaran, and Yuening Zhang, Indiana University Increasing the Visibility of the Library within the Academic Research Enterprise by Annette M. Healy, Wayne State Universitty Science Seeker: A New Model for Teaching Information Literacy to Entry…

Monday Bookish Fun: Give someone you love a scary book!

You know, there just aren't enough useless holiday excuses to give books to people. Giving books as presents has to be one of my all-time favourite things to do in life -- especially the opportunity to give books to my family! So, it seems that Neil Gaiman has a really, really good idea. I propose that, on Hallowe'en or during the week of Hallowe'en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they'll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they'll enjoy. I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R…

Announcing 'The Synapse': A Neuroscience Carnival For ScienceBlogs & Beyond

Earlier this month, ScienceBloggers Jake Young of Pure Pedantry and Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle got to talking about how, given how many neuro-philes now blog at Sb, it could be fun to start a homegrown neuroscience blog carnival. Jake picked up the ball and ran, organizing most of Sb's other neuro-bloggers and a healthy handful of bloggers from outside the network to create the first edition of the brand-new neuroscience carnival. The ScienceBloggers agreed on the name 'The Synapse' (also-rans included 'Organ of Destiny,' 'Wider Than the Sky,' and the utilitarian 'Carnival of…

Around the Web: A quick list of readings on "predatory" open access journals

As a kind of quick follow up to my long ago post on Some perspective on “predatory” open access journals (presentation version, more or less, here and very short video version here) and in partial response to the recent What I learned from predatory publishers, I thought I would gather a bunch of worthwhile items here today. Want to prepare yourself to counter panic around predatory open access journals? Here's some great places to start. How to talk about “Predatory” Publishing: Reclaiming the Narrative Beyond Beall’s List: Better understanding predatory publishers Blacklists are…

Friday Fun: Six open access myths put to rest

It's been kind of a crazy week for me, so I haven't really had much of a chance to contribute to or even read a lot of the Open Access Week calls to arms out there right now. So I thought I would kind of commandeer my Friday Fun silly lists habit and redirect that energy to open access. So here it is, from Peter Suber: Open access: six myths to put to rest The only way to provide open access to peer-reviewed journal articles is to publish in open access journals All or most open access journals charge publication fees Most author-side fees are paid by the authors themselves Publishing in a…

This Week at the Institute: The Mechanics of Life and a Quantum Amplifier

This week's Weizmann news stories: A "steam release valve" for inflammation, a "brake" for cell division and an "amplifier" for quantum signals. The steam release valve mechanism also involves an amplifier - one that ramps up the inflammation signal in response to viral attack on a cell. When the signal reaches its peak, it trips a nearby protein called caspase-8, which then kills the amps, damping the signal back down. The scientists think that failures in this mechanism could be behind various inflammatory diseases. The brake on cell division turns out to be our old friend p53. Thirty…

Food Crises and Technological Phobia « Biofortified

Recently,  a number of very informative article about global food security, genetically engineered crops and the CA labeling initiative  have been published. Here I provide links to a few:   Food Crises and Technological Phobia « Biofortified. GMO Crops: To Label Or Not To Label http://j.mp/S3ie0i  Scientific and Academic Community Responds to CA initiative on#GMO Labeling http://www.noprop37.com/press/scientific-and-academic-community-responds-to-qualification-of-ballot-measure-mandating-labeling-of-genetically-engineered-foods/ … Stop worrying; start growing - Fagström &al (2012) - EMBO…

Plant Physiologist Helen Stafford leaves Reed College $8M

Applause for Plant Physiologist Helen Stafford who bequeathed an astonishing $8M to Reed College in her will. As a woman scientist in the 1950s, Stafford was ineligible for many jobs. Reed College, not deterred by her sex, offered her a position. She went on to establish a successful career and inspired many young scientists. Here is a short story of how she influenced my career. The windowless room, dank an dark, was not an obvious place for inspiration. I took notes, wondering if I would be able to glean anything meaningful from Professor Helen Stafford's (1922-2011) meandering lecture. I…

Introducing the PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows

"Whether it's the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create twenty-first century jobs--today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation." - President Barack Obama At a time when our nation and our planet face unprecedented challenges, the sciences have a more important role to play in society than ever before. Yet today surprisingly few working…

Women Who Changed the World Through Science: Shirley Ann Jackson

(Science Question of the Day: Motivating and preparing the next generation of innovators in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is a national mission for Shirley. Read and share her story, and then ask yourself: Am I doing all I can to prepare?) For more than a decade, the name Shirley Ann Jackson has been synonymous with excellence in scientific achievement. Time magazine in 2005 described her as "perhaps the ultimate role model for women in science.”  No doubt, she is deserving of such accolades.  A noted theoretical physicist, Shirley is president of Rensselaer…

A pox on them all

I really regret ever recommending Kay Hagan. That race has taken a turn from a vivid example of anti-atheist bigotry on Dole's side, to one where all sides are taking turns bashing the godless to wash off the taint of association with us subhumans with no faith. Greg Laden has a couple of examples of the way the media is sliming us. Kay Hagan herself has a counter-ad that closes with an admonition against "making false witness against fellow Christians". Well, gosh, that's mighty white of her. Wouldn't it have been enough to leave off those last three words? Or was that the really important…

Catalysis at the Nobel Laureates Meeting

When the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald received the Nobel prize for his research on catalysis in 1909 he probably didn't expect that his field of work would still be one of the most important topics in modern chemistry one hundred years later. Nevertheless all three Nobel Prizes in chemistry in the last years were given to scientists that worked in catalysis research. One of them, Gerhard Ertl will be giving a talk on the catalysis happening when solids are coated with gossamer surfaces. The scientist got the Nobel prize in 2007 and named his speech "From atoms to complexity - reactions on surfaces…

The Buzz: Bunk Data Formed Vaccine-Autism Link

The author of the 1998 paper that fueld the anti-vaccination movement by asserting a link between MMR vaccinations and autism was recently found to have falsified his original data. The Sunday Times reports that the study's author Andrew Wakefield "changed and misreported results in his research" which was originally published in The Lancet medical journal in 1998. "He is the man who almost single-handedly launched the scare over the MMR vaccine in Britain," wrote ScienceBlogger Orac from respectful Insolence in his coverage of this revelation. Related ScienceBlogs Posts: Scientific…

What's New on ScienceBlogs.de

Last week, it was a dramatically exploding turbine at a wind-power farm in Denmark. Here's what's driving the conversation this week at our partner site, ScienceBlogs.de: Genetically Modified Food Europeans are famous for their reluctance to accept genetically modified crops and foodstuffs. But their suspicion of GMOs isn't unanimous: "Corn, whether it is genetically modified or not, looks the same and tastes the same," writes Tobias Maier at his blog, WeiterGen. This week, he wonders aloud why the European Ministers of Agriculture continue to vote against the admission of genetically…

Marching Toward Doomsday

This Wednesday, the world will officially creep closer to nuclear apocalypse, according to the Doomsday Clock maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The symbolic Doomsday Clock counts down the minutes to midnight, which represents the moment of global disaster. The Clock is currently set at seven minutes to midnight and will, presumably, move forward on Wednesday. "The major new step reflects growing concerns about a 'Second Nuclear Age' marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing…

Where is NASA Headed? Hear What This Leading Policy Expert Has to Say

As deputy administrator of NASA, Lori Garver is NASA's second in command. She works closely with its administrator to provide leadership, planning, and policy direction for the agency. Together they represent NASA to the Executive Office of the President, Congress, heads of government agencies, international organizations and external organizations and communities. She also oversees the work of NASA's functional offices. Lori's confirmation as deputy administrator marks the second time she has worked for NASA. Her first period of service to the agency was from 1996 to 2001. She first served…

Earthquakes, Climate Change and Oil Spills Are Just Part of the Job for Marcia McNutt at USGS

Overseeing the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) - the country's largest water, earth and biological scientific and civilian mapping agency -- seems a natural fit for Marcia McNutt. She's a Navy Seals-trained underwater demolition and explosives expert, earthquake scientist, avid lover of the ocean -- and a leading geophysicist who brings vast academic and scientific background to her post. As the first woman director of the USGS in the agency's 131-year history, Marcia was nominated to the post by President Obama in 2009 and later approved by the Senate to head USGS's mission of serving as…

Learn About the Man Behind the Effort to Build the 1st Successful Bionic Arm

The human hand - four fingers and a thumb. When we lose it due to injury, we've lost something that truly makes us human. That's a key reason why the Pentagon's "Revolutionizing Prosthetics" program, a $100 million multi-disciplinary effort in science and engineering is so important. It is working towards building a robotic arm with a fully functioning hand -- a feat never before accomplished in medicine. The need for such a development is accentuated by the number of wounded soldiers returning home after service in Iraq and Afghanistan, many having suffered the amputation of their arm. "We…

What's Behind the Mysterious Death and Disappearance of Honey Bees and What Impact is this Having on the Globe's Ecosystem

Bees represent some of the most resilient, adaptable and enterprising insects on earth. Not only that, they pollinate about one-third of all the food we eat. So when honey bees began dying or disappearing at alarming rates in the U.S. and around the world more than four years ago, scientists such as Nifty Fifty Speaker Dennis vanEngelsdorp, as the acting Pennsylvania state apiarist (beekeeper) and one of the nation's most prominent advocates and researchers of bees, was naturally deeply concerned. "Bees and other pollinators are a barometer and referendum on the state of our environment,"…

How Pulsars and Gravitational Waves are Changing the Face of Physics

Like the stars she studies, Nifty Fifty Speaker and astrophysicist Maura McLaughlin has reached some lofty heights in her young career as she works to shed further light on the Universe and the physical laws governing it, including Einstein's theory of relativity. Maura is an assistant astrophysics professor at West Virginia University where her work mainly involves researching neutron stars - burned out remnants of stars known as pulsars that are formed in supernova explosions following the collapse of massive evolved stars. "These exotic objects are more massive than the Sun, and can spin…

NASA Joins USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington Download image WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is joining more than 500 science organizations in Washington this weekend to inspire the next generation

NASA will be at the Festival and at the Lockheed Martin Stage there will be panel discussions with astronauts. WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is joining more than 500 science organizations in Washington this weekend to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers during the first national science and engineering festival to be held in the nation's capital. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The USA Science & Engineering Festival, which began Oct. 10 with activities…

Science, Intrigue and Mystery Top Agilent's Festival Exhibit

Agilent is excited to host an exhibit featuring a "mystery solving" theme. This is your chance to don a lab coat, examine evidence and use hands-on testing techniques to solve a mystery. Support for events that engage and inspire students in science is one of the ways that we at Agilent invest in everyone's future. Darlene Soloman "Excellence in science education is crucial to worldwide progress and continual improvement in quality of life," said Darlene Solomon, Ph.D., Agilent chief technology officer. "By highlighting what's cool about science and engineering, the USA Science &…

Science for Citizens

We are very pleased to announce our partnership with Science for Citizens, a brand new website co-founded by Darlene Cavalier (who blogs as the Science Cheerleader) and Michael Gold (a former science editor and writer). This site aggregates citizen science projects (also known as amateur science projects or participatory research) and enlists volunteers to get their hands dirty with science. Discover Magazine calls it the Amazon.com of citizen science, Innocentive gave it two big thumbs up on Monday, and this week, the NSF Science and Media site said "Sci4Cits may be the solution to…

NSF Funding opportunities for Two Year Colleges

The National Science Foundation recently announced an ambitious plan to transform biology education across the United States called "Vision and Change." Funding for this mission is being provided by a new NSF grant program called "TUES" for Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science. This finding may have been a surprise to some, but two year colleges have a disproportionate impact on biology education in the U.S. (1, 2). At least half of the country's biology students are enrolled at two year colleges. Additionally, community colleges often provide the only college-level biology…

Scenes from the Rally to Restore Insanity

My heart sank as I stood on the Metro platform at the Zoo stop and watched the second completely full train pull away. All those stories of people in Japan pushing people into trains started to make sense. It seemed there was no other way to get on the train and getting the rally looked impossible. I didn't know what to do so I got on a different train and rode in the opposite direction. Two stops later, the crowd didn't quite as bad and now, I didn't have any other way to get back to the hotel anyway. I moved with the crowd, slipped into the still-packed train and tried not to take up…

Digital Biology Friday: All mutations are not alike

Like biology, all bioinformatics is based on the idea that living things shared a common ancestor. I have posted, and will post other articles that test that notion, but for the moment, we're going to use that idea as a starting point in today's quest. If we agree that we have a common ancestor, then we can use that idea as a basis to ask some interesting questions about our genomes. For, example, we know that genomes change over time - we've looked at single nucleotide changes here and here, and we've seen that large chunks of DNA can move around here. So, it's interesting to consider…

New Wheels on Mars

Despite NASA's teasing prospect of a crash landing, the Curiosity rover touched down on Mars without a hitch.  It is the biggest, most expensive, and best-equipped scientific instrument to ever reach the Red Planet.  On Thoughts from Kansas, Josh Rosenau writes: With its plutonium-fueled power plant, its robotic arms, and its rock-destroying lasers, Curiosity’s goal is to survey Mars and dig into the planet’s past.  It will track the geology of the planet in greater detail than any previous rover or lander has done.  It will take pictures with higher resolution and greater sensitivity than…

Endless Questions?

What's better than an answer to a question? More questions, perhaps? ScienceBloggers have been very quizzical the last few days, beginning with Jason Rosenhouse on EvolutionBlog. After co-authoring Taking Sudoku Seriously with Laura Taalman, Rosenhouse wondered if 17 is really the minimum number of clues needed to solve a Sudoku puzzle. Although no one has ever generated a workable 16-clue puzzle, proof has been out of reach—until now? On Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel considers the possibilities when a supernova remnant has nothing to show at its center. It could be the result of two…

The 2010 Pi Day Pie Bake-Off Heats Up

Either we set our oven temperature too high or the competition is heating up here in the 2010 Pi Day Pie Bake-Off. Yesterday we posted Annie Wang's Archi-meaty pie, Leigh's Rabbiteye Blueberry Pie, and Stephanie's "Grown-Up" S'mores Pie with Guinness, and ScienceBloggers James Hrynyshyn and Pamela Ronald posted their own Strawbarb and Swiss chard-Gruyere pies, respectively. Today we bring you three more: Mareena Wright's Cauchy's Coconut Cream Condensation Test Pie, Zinjanthropus's USO and Banana Pie with Anthropoid Bread Crust, and Nathan Lau's Chocolate Haupia Pie. We're starting to wish…

The Quest for Fitness—Join the Party

Resolutions are one thing, but change doesn't happen overnight. If you find yourself not living up to your goals, don't put them off for another year; regardless of the date on the calendar, every day is a chance to get something right. There is a growing buzz here on ScienceBlogs about health and fitness, and we invite all our readers and bloggers to join the discussion. ERV kicks things off, wondering why there aren't more scientific voices to guide those on the quest for personal health through the "minefield of woo" that promises miraculous ways to get in shape. Ethan Siegel responds on…

Election highlights

Big stories of the day: 1 - Democrats sweep the House of Representatives. Many newbies are relatively conservative - we need to start retraining them. Watch out for Lieberman and what he does. 2 - Montana and Missouri races are not over yet, but look good for Dems. Virginia still has to count some regular ballots, the absentee ballots and provisional ballots tomorrow, plus an almost inevitable recount. 3 - South Dakota anti-abortion measure failed. Sigh of relief! 4 - Socialist Saunders wins. Who said moving to the right was neccessary to win? 5 - Repubs had nothing to run on, so they…

Elections

From today's Quotes of the Day: Tomorrow is election day in the US. At the table where I read, there is a stack of brochures proclaiming that each and every candidate is intelligent, honest, caring, devoted, hard working, well groomed, and straining at the bit to serve me and my community. Plus a few that say that the other guy is lying. My problem is that, with the two-party system, you only get to vote against one candidate in each race. Our elections are free, it's in the results where eventually we pay. - Bill Stern In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the…

Time

In my part of the world, and most of the US and Europe as well, there was a general agreement that all clocks would be set an hour off back in April. This may have made sense in a world in which most people worked on a single shift, and most factories were lit via skylights for that single shift, but it's absurd in the 24/7 world of this millennium. Fortunately, as of 2:30 this morning we've allowed to set our clocks back to the correct time. The computers switch automatically, I think I know how to set my wristwatch back (well, ahead 23 hours actually, it's digital), but millions will be…

Religion as the ultimate Big Mac

First, a warning: this is a link to a good science article, but it's hosted on the Suicide Girls site, which contains many pictures of young ladies with attitude and tattoos in a state of deshabille. You may discover you are blocked at work. But do persevere! It will be worth it even if you have no interest in naked women! Anyway, one of the broad points of dissension in the discussion of the evolution of religion can be split along one general question: was religion directly adaptive in the evolution of humans, or was it more of a side-effect of other useful cognitive and social properties?…

Could it be camouflage?

My dog has an interesting (okay, disgusting!) habit of rolling in the smelliest stuff she can find when we go on walks. Everything that I've read about dogs - and this probably includes fiction - explains her behavior as "the dog is hiding her scent." I know it seems odd that my dog rolling in smelly stuff should remind me of a post on Evolgen (Lab coats & Gloves), but he did make me wonder if he might have missed a reasons for some people dressing as they do. RPM looks at this issue from a very logical standpoint. Since he works in a lab, he thinks that the people wearing in lab coats…

The bird's eye view of bird flu is not that great

If you aren't worried about bird flu you probably aren't in the poultry business. The pandemic that has yet to materialize for humans is already here for birds, where it is called a panzootic. And it is taking a toll. When highly pathogenic H5N1 surfaced again in Germany and France in the heart of western Europe Japan banned imports of German poultry while Egypt banned French and German poultry. Egypt already has more bird flu than any country outside of Asia, so they are just trying to prevent a bad situation from getting worse. Meanwhile West Virginia's annual poultry festival was canceled…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Never too late to blaspheme

I missed it in December when PZ alerted us to the challenge of an afterlifetime: The Blasphemy Challenge. The "challenge" (scare quotes here because some of us find this pretty easy) is to declare your lack of faith with a YouTube video. The only requirement is that at some point you must utter the words, "I deny the Holy Spirit." According to the Challenge's sponsors, the "Holy Spirit" is an invisible ghost who Christians believe dwells on Earth as God's representative. Denying that this Holy Harvey exists is considered the ultimate sin: "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never…

Why the young think they are immortal (Virginia Tech, 2007)

It's a common observation that kids don't have a good sense of their own mortality. Whether it's from a deficit of wisdom, a surfeit of impulsiveness or adventurousness or even evolutionary reasons has been debated. I have my own ideas. I thought about them again in the wake of the melancholy events at Virginia Tech where 33 students and faculty died in a mass shooting in which the shooter took his own life. As a parent it was hard not to think first of the mothers and fathers who had sent their children to a good university in a safe environment, only to see their lives snuffed out by being…

Swedes think about bird flu

I admit to being prejudiced, here, but my experience living in Sweden (a long time ago, it is true), knowing a bit of the language and seeing what goes on there makes me think of the Swedes as one of the most rational people on earth. It's true most other peoples don't give them a lot of competition on that score, and I am sure there will be Swedes reading this who will protest I've done their country an injustice. It's far worse than I'm making out, they'll tell me. Sure. Come over here and live. Don't forget to bring your Swedish health insurance. We don't provide it here. Sweden is a small…

Is "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" a good bird flu policy?

An official at the new Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is complaining about the flood of information about emerging diseases produced by the internet: "A few years ago people were predicting that the internet and new technologies such as automated media scanning would make this task easier," said Denis Coulombier, head of the ECDC's Preparedness and Response unit, in a statement. "In fact, almost the reverse has happened," he added. "Epidemic intelligence officers in Europe are often so flooded with information that the 'spam' and 'background noise'…

How not to promote peace in the Middle East

This has been going on for years but it doesn't make it more acceptable: More than 3,000 Jewish settlement housing units are being built in the occupied West Bank where the Jewish population is growing steadily, Israel's anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now said Wednesday. In its annual report on settlements -- considered illegal under international law -- the organisation said the largest sites of construction were in Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit. In addition, another 90 caravans were added to wildcat outposts -- which unlike full settlements are not…

"...none of woman born"

When the witches in Shakespeare's MacBeth assured the great war captain that "...none of woman born/ Shall harm Macbeth", the Thane of Glynis didn't take into account that his undoing, MacDuff, was "from his mother's womb/ Untimely ripped," that is, born by Caesarian section. Today's MacBeth would have thought of it. For today MacDuff would not be an oddity, when childbirth is becoming decidedly unnatural. The Caesarian section rate hit a record high in 2005 (latest year for which we have figures), up nearly 50% in ten years. Now almost one in three babies (30%) come into the world…

Follow-up on the Polonium-210 murder

Having spent several posts on the science behind Polonium-210 (here, here, here), we thought we'd bring you a follow up on the case to date. The murder weapon seems to be a pot of tea. How very English: British officials say police have cracked the murder-by-poison case of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, including the discovery of a "hot" teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for Polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing. A senior official tells ABC News the "hot" teapot remained in use at the hotel for several weeks after Litvinenko's death…

Victory in Cincinnati?

We have a couple of comments from people who phoned the Cincinnati Zoo that suggest that the shameful pairing of the zoo with the Creation Museum is going to be revoked. I suspect that this was a case of an overzealous person in the marketing department grabbing an opportunity that sounded like good financial sense, without considering its implications to the educational and research mission of the zoo, and that the higher-ups with a bigger picture of their goals are a bit horrified, and are rapidly correcting the problem. It has been verified: zap, the combo tickets on the zoo's ticketing…

Down with the flu in the US: can you afford to stay home?

While we don't yet know with certainty the relative contributions of the three most likely modes of transmission for influenza (large droplets, small aerosols of viral laden material that remain suspended in the air for hours or days, inanimate objects like door knobs or desk tops), it is certain that if you are in the path of a cough or sneeze or even vigorous talking from someone actively shedding flu virus you are at risk. When it comes to delivering big time viral loads, nothing quite beats a vigorous cough or sneeze. Take a look: Of course it may not be so easy to "just stay home." The…

Old news: abstinence pledges don't work

Another study finds that abstinence-only sex ed is a failure. Not that it will matter, proponents of such fantasy solutions will just close their eyes and pray harder. Teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex as teens who don't make such promises -- and they're less likely to practice safe sex to prevent disease or pregnancy, a new study finds. You know what might work? Maybe the fans of abstinence only sex ed ought to distribute this study by Rosenbaum far and wide. It's saying that the people who make virginity pledges are more likely to be dangerously diseased or…

World Health Organization: a primer

Over the years we've written quite a bit (well over 3000 posts) here and on the old site at blogger.com. Some of them have been ephemeral comments, some of them whimsical and but many of them dealing with serious topics that couldn't be accommodated in the format of a single blog post. The ones explaining new results in influenza science sometimes take three or four installments. We've done a 17 part series giving a paragraph by paragraph, equation by equation explanation of a paper on mathematical modeling antiviral use in influenza for non technical readers, and another 17 parter on the…