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SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 7/22-28/2009

This is likely my last update until the end of next week sometime, so feel free to use it for any new volcano news you might see. Look for the Erebus Volcano Profile to be posted on Friday sometime, followed by the vote for the next Profile. Next time I post I'll be (back) in the eastern time zone! With that, I leave you with the latest USGS/SI Weekly Volcano Report. Highlights (not counting Shiveluch) include: Small ash plumes were spotted several times from Batu Tara in Indonesia. Explosions, ashfall and earthquakes were reported at Nevado del Huila in Colombia. There were reports of…

NPR and Charleston Gazette tag team reporting about troubled emergency response at Upper Big Branch mine

One reporter from the radio world, Howard Berkes at National Public Radio (NPR), and the other from the print world, Ken Ward, Jr. at The Charleston Gazette have submerged themselves in interview transcripts from witnesses involved in the emergency response on April 5, 2010 at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine. About two dozen transcripts were released by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) on Friday, May 6, 2011 to the victims' families. Soon after, the investigative reporters were writing stories based on the transcripts. (To-date more than 250 individuals have…

Judith Curry Scores Own Goal in Climate Hockey

Did you ever read a textbook on economic history, or an in-depth article on the relative value of goods over the centuries expressed in current US dollars? Have you ever encountered a graphic that shows long term trends in rainfall patterns or other climate variables, using a couple of simple lines, designed to give a general idea of relative conditions during different eras? Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about. This is a graphic made by a major investment firm culling information from dozens or perhaps hundreds of sources into a single graphic. This is the graphic as it was…

Chapter 1: Variation Under Domestication

Man, this guy didn't know anything. I don't mean that as an insult. Darwin, as he admits, knew almost nothing about inheritance, about how variation is produced, or about the origins and history of domesticated plants and animals. You'd think that would be a handicap in using domestication as an analogy for evolution. And yet, in chapter 1 of the Origin, 'Variation Under Domestication', Darwin uses what little knowledge he has so deftly that nowhere do you feel his conclusions are outstripping his data. This, believe me, is quite a skill, both in a scientist and a writer. What, he asks, is…

Harassment, Anti-Gayness, Corporate Welfare

Three only vaguely connected items that I thought you might want to know about: From Amanda Marcotte: Skepticon Demonstrates That Pro-Fun Means Anti-Harassment From Jessica at The Friendly Atheist: Uganda Passes ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill From Think by Numbers: Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare Programs

Aaargh!

Why does Revere torment me so? He's got a collection of highlights from the current presidential campaign that make me want to secede from the union. Is Huckabee out of the race yet? I've been actively avoiding news from the Huckster lately, to prevent the awful symptoms of head-asplodey.

Morbid anatomy of the human brain

Plate XIII: Encysted tumour of the brain, from Robert Hooper's Morbid Anatomy of the Human Brain (1828). 14 more plates from the book, and many other wonderful vintage illustrations, can be viewed at Images from the Past. (Via where else but the excellent - and now 1-year-old - Morbid Anatomy?) 

Other Stories

Some stories we're reading but won't have time to blog: "Cutbacks Impede Climate Studies" from today's Washingotn Post "Exxon meets green groups as climate focus surges" from Reuters "How Should Scientists Work with the Media and How Should Journalists Report on the Debate Over Evolution?" from Evolution News & Views

Dear world

Just back from Egypt, and still not ready for craziness. So please no one steal a lot of emails from climate scientists and try to dishonestly present a few snippets from them as evidence of a global conspiracy, OK? Also, could everyone stop blogging for a day or two, just until I catch up? Thanks.

Billy's Best Buddy Billy: Order isn't order unless Billy or Billy say it's order!

An alert reader pointed out that William Brookfield posted a response to my two part debunking of his argument for design based on a mangling of the second law of thermodynamics. I debated whether it was worth responding to; Mr. Brookfield's got so little readership that I never noticed his response in my referals, even though it was posted on July 3rd! I check my referals regularly (I'm obsessive about seeing who is linking to my blog), and I've never seen ICON-RIDS show up. But, today, I'm sitting in the hospital while my mother has knee surgery; I'm bored; and I have a throbbing headache…

Näkymä Lautalta

tags: view from the ferry, Suomenlinna, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day Näkymä lautalta (View from the Ferry). Photographed from the ferry that runs between Helsinki and Suomenlinna on Kalevalapaäivä (Kalevala Day). This is one of my favorite places to visit in Helsinki, Finland. Image: GrrlScientist, 28 February 2009 [larger view].

Back from ESA

We've returned from the 2009 Entomological Society of America meeting in Indianapolis. More on this later. For now, here are slides from two presentations I gave yesterday: Character Evolution in Heterospilus Origin of Pheidole obscurithorax Both talks report from ongoing research, so I should caution that neither of the studies has seen peer-review.

Oh rats!

As I was perusing YouTube I came across a video from National Geographic that I must admit was fascinating while at the same time disturbing. The video describes how rats are able to travel from the sewer into your toilet. Although this is reportedly an uncommon occurence, I will be sure to look before I sit from now on.

Time to sharpen your wits ...

... and get ready for the War on Christmas Here's a few opening remarks that may serve to inspire. Begin the War on Christmas from NoGodBlog.com It's "The War on Christmas" Season Once Again... from Crooks and Liars... Winning the War on Christmas Check this out: [from Stoptheaclu, a truly icky site] Stay tuned....

How to tell "white nationalists" from "white supremacists"

Reposted while I unearth myself from a bunch of work I have to get through. From the old TfK, and still relevant. The editor of the racist VDare.com explains that white nationalists are different from white supremacists becasue: They brush their teeth. This has been today's edition of the field guide to racial extremists.

Staph in food--what does it mean?

As Maryn McKenna and others have reported, a paper was released on Friday showing a high percentage of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus contaminating raw, retail-available meat products. There has been a lot of media coverage of this finding--so what does the study say, and what are its implications? More after the jump. First, a bit about S. aureus itself, and why this study was carried out. Historically, Staph has been a relatively common cause of food poisoning. The bacterium produces toxins that can collect to a high level when prepared foods are left at room temperature, such as…

Freelance chemistry for fun and (illegal) profit.

You know how graduate students are always complaining that their stipends are small compared to the cost of living? It seems that some graduate students find ways to supplement that income ... ways that aren't always legal. For example, from this article in the September 8, 2008 issue of Chemical & Engineering News [1]: Jason D. West, a third-year chemistry graduate student at the University of California, Merced, was arraigned last month on charges of conspiring to manufacture methamphetamine, manufacturing methamphetamine, and possessing stolen property. West allegedly stole…

Engineering Life: The Dog that Didn't Bark in the Night

Imagine that mad scientists defied nature and violated the barriers between species. They injected human DNA into non-human creatures, altering their genomes into chimeras--unnatural fusions of man and beast. The goal of the scientists was to enslave these creatures, to exploit their cellular machinery for human gain. The creatures began to produce human proteins, so many of them that they become sick, in some cases even dying. The scientists harvest the proteins, and then, breaching the sacred barrier between species yet again, people injected the unnatural molecules into their own bodies…

Mutation

Where the variation comes from. Evolution proceeds by the action of many different evolutionary forces on heritable variation. Natural selection leads to the increase in frequency of variation that allows individuals to produce more offspring who, themselves, produce offspring. Genetic drift changes the frequency of variation through random sampling of individuals from one generation to the next. Population subdivision divides the variation into isolated groups where other forces (selection, drift, etc) act upon it. But where does all this variation come from? Given the title of the post, the…

Its fun to snark

A headline which is doubtless a hostage to fortune. Anyway, I had fun deriding the Heartland Institute's failed wiki but, as frank points out in the comments, there is more fun to be had: you can look at Special:ListUsers. If you do this on a real wiki like wikipedia, you get an enormously long list, the first page of which consists of !, ! !, ! ! !, ..., ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !, after which whoever it was got bored. And who has been indefed since 2006. In fact, because of the way special characters list first, you have to page through thousands of…

Garden update: the harvest.

Owing to the fact that the snail eradication project (or at least, my direct involvement in it) is on a brief hiatus while I'm on the East Coast (and while my yard is still in Northern California), I'm going to be bringing you up to date on the garden in whose service I have been trying to control the gastropod population. Long time readers may recall that the raised garden beds are almost a year old. We actually didn't get the first seeds planted in them until near the end of July, 2008. Some of the seeds we planted then are just now giving us plants that are ready to harvest. Our onions,…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Virtual Reconstruction Of A Neanderthal Woman's Birth Canal Reveals Insights Into Evolution Of Human Child Birth: Researchers from the University of California at Davis (USA) and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) present a virtual reconstruction of a female Neanderthal pelvis from Tabun (Israel). Why Coral Reefs Around The World Are Collapsing: An explosion of knowledge has been made in the last few years about the basic biology of corals, researchers say in a new report, helping to explain why coral reefs around the world are collapsing and what it…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Giant Dinosaur Posture Is All Wrong: Sauropods Held Their Heads High, Research Finds: Famous depictions of the largest of all known dinosaurs, from film and television to museum skeletons, have almost certainly got it wrong, according to new research. Oldest Evidence Of Leprosy Found In India: A biological anthropologist from Appalachian State University working with an undergraduate student from Appalachian, an evolutionary biologist from UNC Greensboro, and a team of archaeologists from Deccan College (Pune, India) recently reported analysis of a 4000-year-old skeleton from India bearing…

More thoughts on animal research: Pets and wild animals benefit, too

Every year people adopt pet dogs, cats, birds, and other creatures and take them to their local veterinarians for all the usual vaccinations and exams. The usual vaccinations protect your pets from diseases like rabies, distemper, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, and Feline Leukemia. But it's not just pets that get protected by vaccines. Agricultural creatures: fish, chickens, sheep, cows, pigs, and horses receive vaccines and increasingly, wild animals are getting vaccinated, too. One example comes from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. They are looking at ways to…

CDC: U.S. life expectancy declines, death rates up for heart disease, diabetes, unintentional injury

For the first time in more than two decades, U.S. life expectancy has dropped. This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in 2015, U.S. life expectancy at birth was 78.8 years — that’s a decrease of 0.1 year from 78.9 years in 2014. Among males, life expectancy went from 76.5 years to 76.3 years; among females, it went from 81.3 years to 81.2 years. According to news reports on the findings, no one single factor caused the drop, but it’s still a cause for concern. Over at The New York Times, Katie Rogers reports: Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy and…

CDC: Between 2000–2014, measles vaccine prevented more than 17 million deaths

I usually shy away from getting too personal in my work. But in the spirit of Thanksgiving and as a new mom, I was thinking about things for which I’m particularly grateful. One of the first things that came to mind as a public health reporter? Vaccines. So, in that vein, let’s celebrate some new and promising numbers on the worldwide effort to eliminate measles. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data on progress toward measles elimination since 2000. That’s the year the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals, which included a goal to…

Kepler's Real Spacecraft

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain You've all heard of Kepler before, including the exoplanet-finding spacecraft named after the famed 17th Century astronomer. Johannes Kepler is probably most famous for his laws governing the motion of the planets, which cemented the heliocentric model -- and not the geocentric model -- as the best description for the motions of objects in our…

Climate change and the Great Lakes

The latest vandalism from the Dork Side is censoring the concept of "climate change" from a Wisconsin governmental website (Snopes; see-also Sou and of course half your fb and Twitter feed). As Sou points out this minor vandalism seems to have over-excited certain sections of the denialist crowd, which is to be expected: they need a constant stream of news, and are on edge waiting for Trump to do something thrilling. This latest episode has no obvious connection to Trump, and indeed has no clear author. So you don't have to go elsewhere, a present-day snapshot is this and an older pre-…

Science blogging: an exploratory study of motives, styles, and audience reactions

Via sekrit, in the Journal of Science Communication, comes a deeply flawed article, Science blogging: an exploratory study of motives, styles, and audience reactions by Merja Mahrt and Cornelius Puschmann. The flaw, you'll be unsurprised to learn, is that it doesn't mention "stoat". I'm not sure that all the rest of it is too interesting either. This paper presents results from three studies on science blogging, the use of blogs for science communication. A survey addresses the views and motives of science bloggers, a first content analysis examines material published in science blogging…

WorldNutDaily Stupidity on Teen Pregnancy

If there's one thing you can rely on in this world, it's knowing that the Worldnutdaily's writers can be counted on to write something completely contrary to reality at least a dozen times a day. Here's today's example, from Kevin McCullough's column about Hillary Clinton promoting the use of condoms: It was no secret that condom use in America under her husband's leadership was at an all time ... er ... high. A lot of things were: the flow of pornography, teen pregnancy, abortion and, yes, the use of, discussion of, demonstrations in public schools of ... condoms. The italics, for some…

Promoting a few links up top

The open thread produced a couple of interesting articles I thought worthy of highlighting. The first is a story from Canada about the growing godless movement. It's very positive and avoids the cheap tactic of presenting this as a scary or worrisome prospect. Ms. Gaylor [of the Freedom From Religion Foundation], who said her group has grown from 7,000 to more than 10,000 since the fall, is not sure that the recent rash of books is winning converts to atheism, but she is certain it is emboldening those in the closet. When Herb Silverman became a professor of mathematics at the College of…

Jon Rowe on Religion and the Founders

Jon Rowe has another excellent essay on the role of religion among the founding fathers. He draws on an op-ed piece by Mark Lilla in the NY Times on the same subject. Lilla rightly hammers the "schlock history written by religious propagandists like David Barton" while pointing to more serious scholarly efforts at defining the role of religion among the founders. Rowe quotes this from Lilla: What distinguished thinkers like David Hume and John Adams from their French [Enlightenment] counterparts was not their ultimate aims; it was their understanding of religious psychology. The British and…

Quantization of Books 4: How Many Books Is That Again?

I've toyed around in the past with ways to use the Amazon sales rank tracker to estimate the sales numbers for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It's geeky fun, but not especially quantitative. Yesterday, though, I found a reason to re-visit the topic: calibration data! OK, "calibration data" is probably too strong a description. "Calibration anecdote" is more accurate. Yesterday when I went into work a little after 10, a comment somebody made sent me to the actual Amazon page for the book, where I saw a little note next to the price information saying "Only 5 left (more are coming)-- order…

Your Friday Dose of Weird: Two new Cambrian critters

When it comes to aliens, Hollywood really does not have much imagination. Most extraterrestrials that have appeared on the big screen look very much like us, or are at least some kind of four-to-six-limbed vertebrate, and this says more about out own vanity than anything else. It would be far more interesting, I think, to take the weird and wonderful organisms of the Cambrian as inspiration for alien life forms, and two new critters have just been added to the odd Cambrian menagerie. A restoration of Herpetogaster collinsi by Marianne Collins. From Caron et al, 2010. What was three…

I am not a cow, milk comes from a cup, and other hard lessons (Mommy Monday)

Minnow and I are really good at the breast-feeding thing. It makes her happy and gives her nutrition. It makes me happy and gives me cuddle time. We like breast-feeding and don't intend to wean anytime soon. BUT... Minnow has now transitioned to the toddler room at daycare. And in the toddler room at daycare, they don't serve bottles on demand. They serve milk from a cup at meals. It was a rough week for both of us. We've been trying to introduce cow's milk from a cup for the past two weeks. Our goal is to get Minnow drinking cow's milk by day and mommy's milk by night. But each time the…

The Australian's War on Science 71: Mitchell Nadin misrepresents

Stop me if you've heard this before -- The Australian has published a story with a picture of a bloke standing on a beach to prove that sea levels aren't rising. Mitchell Nadin tells us: At 73, former CSIRO engineer Denis Whitnall has seen many things -- but rising sea levels isn't one of them. Looking out over the Pacific Ocean from the back of his waterfront property at Avoca, on the NSW central coast, Mr Whitnall shakes his head as he talks about a grim report commissioned by his local council in 1995 that predicted some houses along the beachfront, including his own, would be subject to…

Why Spiders Aren't Insects III: Opportunity in the Wake of Mass Extinction

So far we have established that spiders are distinct from insects for two reasons: physiology (mouth parts, body plan, respiratory structures) and more importantly, evolutionary history (or phylogeny, as scientists call it). But where did spider's come from? How did they come to speciate ? The answer, like many in invertebrate paleontology, is cloudy. Organisms without hard, thick shells rarely become fossilized. In fact, for any organism's parts to become fossilized, even vertebrates, is a profound rarity, as Bill Bryson illustrates in A Short History of Nearly Everything: Only about one…

Junk DNA Redux

My little screed on junk DNA elicited some good feedback, including a comment from Dan Graur. In a somewhat ill-thought out rant, I implied that anyone who uses the term 'junk DNA' should be ostracized from the scientific community (or something along those lines). I restated my opinion in a far more diplomatic manner in the discussion that followed in the comments: junk DNA is an appropriate term for DNA that serves no function (non-transcribed, non-regulatory, and non-structural), but we should refrain from using that term for all non-coding DNA. I elaborate my opinion and reference a…

A Beary Long Winter

This winter really made me think hibernating animals had the right idea. I'd love to just sleep away the six-month cold front, and wake up as refreshed as ever. Now, as great as that sounds, there are a few minor things I'd have to worry about - you know, my heart stopping, bone loss, small things like that. I'm jealous of bears because they don't have to worry about any of that; they have so many cool adaptations that allow them to hibernate! Let's start with their hearts. A recent study published in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology explains changes in Grizzly bear hearts as they…

The Demarcation Problem and Truth

Telic Thoughts responds (sort of) to a point I made yesterday. In the course of arguing that creationists and postmodernists talk about science the same way – as "microfascist," etc. – I pointed out a TT post with some confused thoughts on demarcation between science and non-science. Macht replies: I wasn't talking about what was true and what wasn't true - I was talking about what the motivations for the demarcation problem are. Which I understood. My point was that this view of the demarcation problem as fundamentally political is exactly how postmodernists approach it also. My point…

Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week! This week's Medicine & Health photo was kindly submitted by one of our own bloggers, the Neurophilospher. Medicine & Health. Surgical saws at the Wellcome Trust's Medicine Man Exhibit. From Flickr, by mcost Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by DerrickT Reader comments of the week: On the Medicine & Health channel, revere takes on Big Pharma in Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline to its scientists: fuck off. The pharamaceutical…

Brain & Behavior and Technology Weekly Channel Highlights

Each week we post a new picture and a choice comment from each of our nine channels here at ScienceBlogs on our channel homepages. Now, we're bringing you the best of the week in daily postings that will highlight individual channels. We've already seen Life Science, Physical Science, Environment, Humanities, Education and Politics and Medicine & Health; below, please find our selections from the Brain & Behavior and Technology channels: From Flickr, by ul_Marga From Flickr, by chaosinjune Reader comments of the week: On Office noise: Are your homicidal thoughts about your…

JWST: the knives come out

A House Divided Can Not Stand... As the American Astronomical Society tries to rally support for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which was deleted from the budget, with extreme prejudice, by the House Appropriations Committee, other players chime in, and they are not quite as enthusiastic. Spaceref published a copy of a letter from David Alexander of Rice University, Chair of the AAS Solar Physics Division. "...However, the cost of the JWST threatens to swamp us all and the AAS should be careful, as a multi-disciplinary organization, to balance the various concerns of each of its…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Here's one for bloggers to rip apart: Why Your Boss Is White, Middle-class And A Show-off: The way male managers power dress, posture and exercise power is due to humans' evolutionary biology, according to research from the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Girls Are Happier Than Boys At Primary School, Study Shows: Just over one quarter (26 per cent) of primary seven boys are completely happy coming to school, compared with 44 per cent of girls, according to a survey carried out by Queen's University Belfast and the University of Ulster. American Culture Derails Girl Math Whizzes, Study…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Darwin Was Right About How Evolution Can Affect Whole Group: Worker ants of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your fertility. The highly specialized worker castes in ants represent the pinnacle of social organization in the insect world. As in any society, however, ant colonies are filled with internal strife and conflict. So what binds them together? More than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin had an idea and now he's been proven right. Evolutionary biologists at McGill University have discovered molecular signals that can maintain social harmony in ants by putting constraints on…

A beginner's guide to making a phylogenetic tree

I made this video (below the fold) to illustrate the steps involved in making a phylogenetic tree. The basic steps are to: Build a data set Align the sequences Make a tree In the class that I'm teaching, we're making these trees in order to compare sequences from our metagenomics experiment with the multiple copies of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes that we can find in single bacterial genomes. Bacteria contain between 2 to 13 copies of 16S rRNA genes and we're interested in knowing how much they differ from each other. Later, we'll compare the 16S ribosomal RNA genes from multiple species…

Geothermal Energy on "Quirks and Quarks"

I know I am a bit late on this one, but CBC Radio's "Quirks and Quarks" had a very interesting segment on geothermal energy February 2. You can listen to the segment directly here. The page for that day's show is here, where you can read the following teaser and find links to related material: We're familiar with geothermal energy from mountain hot springs, geysers like Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park, and perhaps from the way Iceland has developed an entire energy system based on volcanic-heated water. However, geothermal energy is still just a niche player in the global energy picture.…

Happy Earth Day (from Space)

Note: This article first appeared here on Scienceblogs one year ago today. There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day, from sustainability efforts to simply appreciating nature. And while this is a beautiful shot of Forest Park right here in Portland, it doesn't compare -- in my eyes -- to the perfection of Earth as seen from so far away. In October of 1946, a V-2 missile was launched from New Mexico, straight up into the air. And at its maximum height of 65 miles (just barely into what was then considered outer space), it snapped the first photographs of the Earth from Space. (And you can…

The Perils of Planet-Hopping

Watch me as I gravitate (hahahahaha). -Gorillaz Gravity -- unbelievably -- is the weakest force of all. But if you get enough mass together, gravity will overwhelm even the strongest outside influence. A simple case-in-point? You take a rock that's massive enough, and gravity will crush it into a spherical shape, like it was nothing more than a drop of water. And here we live on the surface of one of the smaller gravity balls in our Solar System. XKCD has a wonderful illustration of this today (and click for full-size). The more massive and more compact your planet is, the harder it is to…

Earth Day from Space

There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day, from sustainability efforts (and check out our new blog, Guilty Planet) to simply appreciating nature. And while this is a beautiful shot of Forest Park right here in Portland, it doesn't compare -- in my eyes -- to the perfection of Earth as seen from so far away. In October of 1946, a V-2 missile was launched from New Mexico, straight up into the air. And at its maximum height of 65 miles (just barely into what was then considered outer space), it snapped the first photographs of the Earth from Space. (And you can click every image on this page…