Search Content

Displaying results 11651 - 11700 of 87950

Another week of GW News, July 24, 2011

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdomJuly 24, 2011 Autobahn, Chuckles, COP17+, Horn of Africa, BBC Trust, Geoneutrinos Bottom Line, GFIs, Open Access, Cook, Post CRU Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Fukushima Talk Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production…

Comments of the Week #98: from Earth's extinction to chocolate's physics

“Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.” -Henry David Thoreau Oh, let's be real. While there was plenty to talk about here at Starts With A Bang, there was one thing that took over the news from everything else, the first ever discovery of gravitational waves! Sure, there were plenty of other remarkable stories, including: Are we due for an extinction event on Earth? (for Ask Ethan), Why do telescopes have holes in the middle? (for Mostly Mute Monday), What will it mean if LIGO detects gravitational waves?, The future of astronomy…

Comments of the Week: Final edition?

“You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.” -Cassandra Clare Well, the cat's out of the bag. A little over a week ago, Scienceblogs announced to us writers that they no longer had the funds to keep the site operational, and so they would be shutting down. They asked us to keep quiet about this, people didn't and now you know. As of the end of this month, there will be no new articles here on Scienceblogs, and hence, no more comments of the week or synopses, or a chance to interact here. So what can you do? Well, the top thing I'd like you to do is support me on Patreon,…

Ann Coulter versus physics: Guess who wins? (Better late than never)

I realize this is two weeks old, but I had this hanging around, making it still worthwhile to discuss, because it's been bothering me, and last week Coulter wrote a blisteringly stupid followup to her blisteringly ignorant column from two weeks ago entitled A Glowing Report on Radiation. She wrote this article in the wake of the fears arising in Japan and around the world of nuclear catastrophe due to the damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant caused by the earthquake and tsunami that hit northern Japan on March 11. Coulter was subsequently interviewed by Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly on…

Biology and the Scientific Method

I am currently teaching only the lab portion of BIO101 and will not teach the lecture again until January, but this is as good time as ever to start reposting my lecture notes here, starting with the very first one (originally posted on May 07, 2006) and continuing every Thursday over the next several weeks. Although this is old, I'd love to get more comments on each of those lecture notes. Did I get any facts wrong? Is the material inappropriate for the level I am teaching? Is there a bette rway to do it? Are there online resources I can tap into…

The bride of the son of the revenge of cell phones and cancer rises from the grave...again

I've caught some flak before over things I've written about the almost certainly nonexistent link between cell phones and cancer. Actually, it's not the kind of flak you probably think, unless you've been a long time reader and remember the relevant posts. You'd think it would be believers attacking the mean old skeptic for denying a link between cell phone radiation and cancer, thus making me (obviously) a shill for big telecom. Actually, it was flak from one physicist and at least a couple of skeptics, who didn't like that I actually left open the small possibility that it could be possible…

Was NIHâs Contractor Conflicted? And Does It Make a Difference? The Controversy Continues

By David Michaels The controversy continues over NIHâs review of Bisphenol A (BPA), and the agencyâs firing of Sciences International. Members of the NIHâs BPA Expert Panel have joined the discussion, through comments to the Pump Handle, assuring the public that their work was not not influenced by any potential conflicts. In addition, todayâs Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both have articles with additional details on the conflicts of interest that triggered the firing, along with comments on the process to date. There is also an interview with a panel member defending the quality of…

Physicians take lead role in confronting opioid misuse, but still face hurdles

This is the second in a series exploring the intersections between effectively caring for people living with chronic pain and the rise in unintentional poisoning deaths due to prescription painkillers. (The first post is here.) The series will explore the science and policy of balancing the need for treatment as well as the need to prevent abuse and diversion. This week's story looks at clinical efforts to reduce the risk of opioid abuse and overdose while still caring for patients; the next story will explore the role of public health officials in curbing opioid abuse. by Kim Krisberg Since…

Birdbooker Report 121

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. ~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books. The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…

New on...

...the intertubes. Busy week. Here are some good links: Leaving your literary estate to the public domain: This page has been circulating around the Web in recent days (apparently since February 26 or later). It depicts a sticker which an individual can apply to her ID card, in the manner of an organ donor sticker, indicating the individual wishes her copyrights to be released to the public domain upon her death. The cloning of the bulls: The story adds to last year's discussion about horse cloning (horserace horse cloning?). But here the main theme is the affection that owners have for…

How to Present Scientific Data

In the same basic vein as last week's How to Read a Scientific Paper, here's a kind of online draft of the class I'm going to give Friday on the appropriate ways to present scientific data. "Present" here meaning the more general "display in some form, be it a talk, a poster, a paper, or just a graph taped into a lab notebook," not specifically standing up and doing a PowerPoint talk (which I've posted about before). So, you've made some measurements of a natural phenomenon. Congratulations, you've done Science! Now, you need to tell the world all about it, in a compact form that allows the…

Suddenly, cuckoo bananas!

Because I am having so much fun at mah conference, I missed my chance to plug a Q&A ninja/journalist Trine Tsouderos hosted with Paul Offit, vaccine inventor. Im sorry you all missed the chance to participate (Im hoping most ERV readers are Respectful Insolence readers, so you all got the info that way). I mean, Im having so much fun interacting with people working with HIV-1 vaccines right now, and I get all giddy nuts about that, and you all could have gotten a taste of it by having the chance to interact with Dr. Offit. I sorry :( BUT! On the bright side, the Q&A was recorded and…

The mojo of open journalism, plus that itchy beta thing

Me (right) hypnotizing Carl Zimmer just before the Rebooting Science Journalism session at ScienceOnline 2010. It worked. Carl had planned to use his 5 minutes to just say, "We are DOOOMED." Instead he talked about duck sex. I've been meaning for two weeks now to post on ScienceOnline 2010 and the Rebooting Science Journalism session, in which I joined Ed Yong, John Timmer, and Carl Zimmer as "unpanelists." Lest another frenzied week delay me further, here's my addition to the #scio10 #reboot corpus. Journalists-v-bloggers is (almost) dead Many at the conference, and pretty much everyone…

Depopulation by vaccines?

After all the years that I've been writing about vaccines, the science behind vaccines, and how antivaccinationists twist that science to turn what are arguably the greatest medical achievement of medicine and have saved arguably more lives than any other medical intervention devised by human minds into toxic cesspits of horrific chemical corruption that cause autism and destroy children, I thought I had seen it all. And perhaps I have. Sadly, seldum does any new bit of pseudoscience or new fallacious argument trying to claim that vaccines are dangerous surprise me anymore. That didn't used…

The Open Laboratory 2009 - the submissions so far

Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 260 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays): A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks! A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…

The Open Laboratory 2009 - the submissions so far

Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 260 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays): A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks! A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…

The Open Laboratory 2009 - the submissions so far

Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 250 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays): A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks! A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…

Faster Than a Speeding Photon: "Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam"

There have been a lot of pixels spilled over this faster-than-light neutrino business, so it might not seem like something I should take time away from pressing work to write up. It is the story of the moment, though, and too much of the commentary I've seen has been of the form "I am a {theorist, journalist} so hearing about experimental details gives me the vapors" (a snarky paraphrase, obviously). This suggests that there's still room for a canine-level write-up going into a bit more depth about what they did and where it might be wrong. So, what did those jokers at CERN pull this time?…

The Tiltboys

In my earlier post, I mentioned Perry Friedman as a member of the infamous Tiltboys and it reminded me that I should write something about them and get the word out about some hilarious reading you can do. If you have any interest in poker at all, I guarantee that you will enjoy reading about this group of guys. Even casual poker fans may recognize Phil Gordon, the ring leader of the bunch, as the expert commentator on Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown (it's a very bad show, actually, amusing only for the behavior of the celebrities once in a while). Phil has also finished 4th in the World…

An embarrassing critique of "The Enemies of Reason"

A couple of weeks ago, before I went on vacation, the BBC aired a two-part documentary by Richard Dawkins entitled The Enemies of Reason. Part One dealt primarily with the paranormal and various New Age phenomena, while Part Two, which aired mere days before my London trip, dealt squarely with alternative medicine in an uncompromising fashion. One key segment of Part Two discussed the bizarre magical thinking that is known as homeopathy. Although I quibbled a bit about certain aspects of how Dawkins presented homeopathy, overall I thought it was the best deconstruction on video of the…

White Man's World: A Racist View of Native America?

Interview by Jimmy James Bettencourt It was dark and the streets were wet as I pulled out of the ER where I had seen enough carnage for the night and found the highway heading straight into town. Right away there was a sense of trouble and randomness in the air as police cars careened desperately across the on-ramp and onto the grassy median in pursuit of something a bit more exciting than a box of donuts. Their flashing lights caused most of the cars on the ramp to squeeze sheepishly to the side, allowing me to pull around them and get out onto the road five minutes quicker. I was going to…

Steve Jobs and pancreatic cancer, revisited

Another day, another grant. Well, not exactly. We have a visiting professor in town, and I have to give a talk at our department research retreat today. Between going out to dinner, working on the talk, and working on the grant, another day has passed without new Insolence. Bummer. But that pales in comparison to having learned last night while at dinner that Steve Jobs has passed away. Apple fanboy I may be, but I was surprised at how much the news saddened me. It did, however, make it easy to figure out what post(s) I would rerun today. In 2008 and 2009 I did a series of posts about…

Another Week of GW News, August 24, 2008

Sipping from the internet firehose... This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup (skip to bottom) August 24, 2008 Top Stories:Ghana, Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Arctic Geopolitics, Grumbine, World Water Week Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science, Hanson,…

A little too much credulity from a Chicago Tribune reporter towards alternative medicine

I had been planning on finally getting around to writing that review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion that I've been meaning to write since I finally finished the book two weeks ago. Then a Google Alert hit my mailbox last night for a preset search that I keep active on "Abraham Cherrix," and the article that the link in the search results lead to not only contained a a disturbing amount of credulity towards alternative medicine (in the form of he-said-she-said "balance" when two outlooks are not anywhere near equally supported) but offered a positive portrayal of Abraham Cherrix and Dr.…

From each according to their nature, to each according to their nature

Why do humans cooperate? Why do we behave "altruistically"? These are the sort of "big" questions which the human sciences explore. From the vantage point of evolutionary biology there has been a long history of exploring, and attempting to explain, altruistic behavior. And yet such questions weren't always considered of great value, the great W.D. Hamilton was discouraged from his exploration of this topic by his department head. At one point he took up carpentry to furnish for himself an income while he pursued his science in his spare time, so pessimistic was he about receiving academic…

Am I the only one who wants to see a review of Canadian Federal Science Library infrastructure?

I'm afraid the answer to that might be "Yes." Perhaps I'm the only one who's still interested and perhaps not, but there seems to be little movement towards launching a review of Canadian Science Library infrastructure. Why do I think such a review is a good idea? First of all, I've documented the devastation wrought on that infrastructure under the Conservatives. Not only do I chronicle the destruction, but at the same time you can clearly see from the assembled articles I link to in that post how much the various opposition parties -- including the now-in-government Liberals -- used those…

Nationalism is not Patriotism

Here's another topic seen through the Lakoffian looking glass (July 23, 2005): ----------------------------------------------- Why is there a widespread belief that the difference between patriotism and nationalism is one of degree: loving one's country versus loving it even more? I think that the difference is not quantitative but qualitative - the phrase "love for one's country" used by the two kinds of people (patriots and nationalists) is based on very different meanings of the words "love", "for", "one" and "country". I am assuming that this confusion arises from the fact that…

Nationalism is not Patriotism

Here's another topic seen through the Lakoffian looking glass (July 23, 2005): ----------------------------------------------- Why is there a widespread belief that the difference between patriotism and nationalism is one of degree: loving one's country versus loving it even more? I think that the difference is not quantitative but qualitative - the phrase "love for one's country" used by the two kinds of people (patriots and nationalists) is based on very different meanings of the words "love", "for", "one" and "country". I am assuming that this confusion arises from the fact that…

Brian Leiter vs the National Review Online

One of the best blogs to read on both legal issues and evolution is that of Brian Leiter, director of the Law and Philosophy Program at the University of Texas Law School. He writes fairly extensively on evolution and the ongoing controversy of Intelligent Design. Recently, he took to task a young Harvard law student named Lawrence VanDyke, who had written a positive review of a pro-ID book in the Harvard Law Review. Leiter wrote a rather scathing review of VanDyke's book note on his blog. The book in question was Darwinism and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of…

Did the President's Nominee for Science Advisor Say He Thinks A Billion People Are Gonna Die?

No. But that's apparently not enough to keep some people from making the claim. There's a story that's making the rounds on some right wing blogs that John Holdren said, at his confirmation hearing, that he thinks that 1 billion people will die as a result of global warming by 2020. So far, that claim has been made at The National Review Online by Chris Horner: Just got this e-mail from someone up on the Hill, regarding John "Clearly NOT the 'Science' Guy" Holdren's confirmation hearing as (of all things) chief science advisor to the president). I do think it's fair to say we told you so…

Straw men and projection: Tools of quacks and conspiracy theorists to deflect critical thinking

As hard as it is for me to believe sometimes, I've been at this blogging biz a long time--well over six years now. However, I've been engaged, in one form or another, in combatting pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and crankery online since the late 1990s. Although I try hard not to fall into the same cognitive traps that a certain pediatrician to the stars does, namely considering my own anecdotal experience to be superior to controlled studies, that is not to say that personal experience is without value. At least, that's what I was thinking when I came across Steve Novella's post A failure to…

"Heresy" versus "true belief" in the epidemiology of secondhand smoke

I'm not sure what to think of Michael Siegel. I'm really not. Even now, I remain of two minds on him. Dr. Siegel first came to my attention back in July, around the time I was getting into online tussles with a certain opponent of indoor smoking bans, before which I had never heard of him. He's a Professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at Boston University School of Public Health who's made quite a reputation for himself casting a skeptical eye on what he considers to be extreme exaggerations, bad science, and even lies about the risks of tobacco and secondhand smoke. My…

Hansen et al: Global climate changes as forecast by GISS 3D model

Hansen's 1988 paper that Pat Michaels misrepresented in testimony is not available online. I've put some extracts here. Hansen, J., I. Fung, A. Lacis, D. Rind, Lebedeff, R. Ruedy, G. Russell, and P. Stone 1988. Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model. J. Geophys. Res. 93, 9341-9364. Abstract We use a three-dimensional climate model, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) model II with 8° by 10° horizontal resolution, to simulate the global climate effects of time-dependent variations of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols.…

Bad science about GMOs: It reminds me of the antivaccine movement (Thanksgiving edition)

Well, Thanksgiving's over, and the orgy of consumerism known as Black Friday is in full swing. Personally, I have to work, at least part of the day, and I don't go anywhere near the stores on Black Friday anyway. I haven't for years. So we might as well briefly discuss a bit of science today. It won't be long (by Orac standards), but there was a tidbit of news that hit the blogosphere on Thanksgiving Day that caught my interest. Apparently the execrable study by Gilles Séralini on the effect of using feed made from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on rats is heading for retraction. You…

Fear and loathing and vaccines

As hard as it is for me to believe when I look back at it, I've been writing about the antivaccine movement now for more than seven years here on this blog and combatting it online for at least a decade now. I like to think that over the years my response has evolved somewhat. Back in the beginning, I used to be a bit more—shall we say?—insolent in dealing with antivaccinationists. It's an easy thing to do because so much of what antivaccinationists write and say is just so darned idiotic. Indeed, even today, I still have a tendency to slip back into my old ways when an antivaccinationist…

Another Week of GW News, May 3, 2009

Sipping from the internet firehose... This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Another Week of Climate Disruption News Information overload is pattern recognition May 3, 2009 Chuckle, Top Stories:Major Emitters, IHDP, Central Asian Water, ADB Report, EGU, Tim DeChristopher Melting Arctic, Arctic Council, Geopolitics, Wilkins Disintegration, Climate Crunch, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle,…

When surgical PIs attack (the lab, that is)

Yesterday I came across a blog exchange between Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hydeand fellow SBer Physioprof about principal investigators (PIs) who still do experiments in the lab. For those not in the science business, a "principal investigator" is in general the faculty member who runs the lab and whose grants fund the salaries of the postdocs, graduate students, and technicians working in the lab. J&H pointed out (correctly) that few PIs who have been faculty more than five years do any actual lab work anymore and described the case of a PI who persists in doing experiments himself,…

Another week of GW News, October 31, 2010

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Information overload is pattern recognitionOctober 31, 2010 Chuckles, COP15, COP16+, Nagoya, Geoengineering, Extinctions, Fisheries, Pakistan GFIs, UNGCF, Kasatochi & Salmon, Cook, Multinational Deniers, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Narwhals, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes…

Another Week of GW News, November 11, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week in the Planetary Crisis Sipping from the Internet Firehose... November 11, 2012 Chuckles, COP18+, Post Sandy, Athena, PwC, Extremes, Ice Ages, World Bank, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Food Production Hurricanes,…

Sex On The (Dreaming) Brain

Last week I asked if you would be interested in my take on this paper, since it is in Serbian (and one commenter said Yes, so here it is - I am easy to persuade): Stankovic Miodrag, Zdravkovic Jezdimir A., and Trajanovic Ljiljana, Comparative analysis of sexual dreams of male and female students (PDF). Psihijatrija danas 2000, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 227-242 Here is the English-language Abstract: The subject of research is analysis of connection between sexuality as instinctive function and dreams with sexual content as cognitive function. The sample consisted of 656 students, 245 males and 411…

Friday Weird Sex Blogging - Sex On The (Dreaming) Brain

(First posted on February 5, 2007) Last week I asked if you would be interested in my take on this paper, since it is in Serbian (and one commenter said Yes, so here it is - I am easy to persuade): Stankovic Miodrag, Zdravkovic Jezdimir A., and Trajanovic Ljiljana, Comparative analysis of sexual dreams of male and female students (PDF). Psihijatrija danas 2000, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 227-242 Here is the English-language Abstract: The subject of research is analysis of connection between sexuality as instinctive function and dreams with sexual content as cognitive function. The sample consisted…

Sex On The (Dreaming) Brain

(First posted on February 5, 2007) Last week I asked if you would be interested in my take on this paper, since it is in Serbian (and one commenter said Yes, so here it is - I am easy to persuade): Stankovic Miodrag, Zdravkovic Jezdimir A., and Trajanovic Ljiljana, Comparative analysis of sexual dreams of male and female students (PDF). Psihijatrija danas 2000, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 227-242 Here is the English-language Abstract: The subject of research is analysis of connection between sexuality as instinctive function and dreams with sexual content as cognitive function. The sample consisted…

Far, far, sooner than expected, the monster returns to invade the Presidential campaign

Deep underneath the brick and steel of a nondescript building somewhere in Manhattan, within the very bowels of the city itself, not far from the Seed mothership, Orac waited. After over a year's absence, the monster had returned to consume the most unpalatable brain of a former Nixon speechwriter who had decided that he knew more about biology than biologists and that calling pseudoscience pseudoscience was akin to that tactics of Hitler and Stalin in suppressing dissent. Since then, Orac had noted an uptick in the monster's activity. Hooked into the primitive human computer network known as…

Another week of GW News, November 8, 2009

Sipping from the internet firehose... This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I ho8pe you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Information overload is pattern recognition November 8, 2009 Chuckle, Copenhagen, Barcelona, G20, EU-US Meeting, Rudd, SuperFree, Dogs, Bottom Line, Desertec Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests…

Another Week of GW News, April 15, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Anthropocene Antics Sipping from the Internet Firehose...April 15, 2012 Chuckles, Rio+20, Elgin, Fretwell, March, Maldives, Shakun, SREX Subsidies, GFIs, Hype, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food Riots, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Paleoclimate…

Gender-Bending Chickens: Mixed, Not Scrambled

tags: evolution, evolutionary biology, gynandromorph, bilateral gynandromorph bird, half-sider, mixed-sex chimaera, sex determination, molecular biology, genetics, developmental biology, endocrinology, birds, chicken, Gallus gallus, ornithology, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper, journal club Half-sider. Almost exactly one year ago, hundreds of American birders were thrilled by sightings and photographs of this remarkable Northern Cardinal, or Redbird, Cardinalis cardinalis, photographed in Warrenton, VA. Image: DW Maiden, 2 March 2009. I'll never forget…

Importance of History of Science (for scientists and others)

My SciBling John Lynch recently published a very interesting paper, on a topic close to my heart: Does Science Education Need the History of Science? by Graeme Gooday, John M. Lynch, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Constance K. Barsky. Isis, 2008, 99:322-330 This is a part of a broader focus issue of Isis on the topic of History of Science. I got the paper two weeks ago, but only now found some time to sit down and read it. And I was not disappointed! Fortunately for all of us, the entire paper is available online for free (yeah!), so you can read it in its entirety. While using the fight against…

Birds in the News #43

Western Grebe, Aechmophorus occidentalis copyright by Ted Steinke. Birds in Science; Researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, believe they have located a place in the brain where songbirds store the memories of their parents' songs. The discovery has implications for humans, because humans and songbirds are among the few animals that learn to vocalize by imitating their caregivers. In a paper published this week in the top scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, David Vicario and Mimi Phan of Rutgers, and Carolyn Pytte of Wesleyan University…

Lunch with Heather Perry

Last month, I travelled to Bristol to meet 37-year-old Heather Perry, one of a very small number of people to have voluntarily undergone trepanation for non-medical reasons. As we ate a pub lunch, I asked Heather about her experience. Below is a transcript of our conversation. M: How did you first hear about trepanation, and why did you decide to have it done? HP: The first time I heard about trepanation was when I was a kiddie. I was really into Bob Dylan and John Lennon, and I remembered that Lennon had mentioned that he wanted it done. He had spoken to Bart Huges about it, and Bart had…

How is it that I've never heard of David Avocado Wolfe before?

I've been at this skeptical blogging thing for over a decade now. I realize that I periodically remind you, my readers, of this and that perhaps I do it too often, but my reminders generally serve a purpose. Specifically, they serve to put an exclamation point on my surprise when I discover a new purveyor of pseudoscience and/or quackery that I had never heard of before but who is apparently fairly well known in the quackosphere. Such is what happened this week, when I learned of a man who appears to be challenging Deepak Chopra and Bruce Lipton for the title of most annoying mystical quack…