Search Content

Displaying results 13701 - 13750 of 87950

A Secular Christmas

Jon Rowe has a wonderful post about Christmas from his secular perspective. It really is a must-read essay on the subject of how the secular and the religious co-exist and blend in American culture. As Jon puts it: Christmas perfectly exemplifies the larger phenomenon of the unique culture that is the West which has a religious (Jerusalem) and a Secular-Pagan (Athens) origin. Culturally, the West presently is and always has been every bit as much of a Pagan society as it is Christian. And what makes the West special is this unique combination, this tension between Athens and Jerusalem. The…

Darwin, Meet Frankenstein

Scientists have figured out many ways to study the origin of species. They can build evoluitonary trees, to see how species descend from a common ancestor. They can survey islands or mountains or lakes to see how ecological conditions foster the rise of new species. They can look for fossils that offer clues to how long ago species branched off from one another, and how their ranges spread or shrank. Now comes a new trick in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature: to test their ideas about how a new species of butterfly came to be, they essentially recreated it in their lab. The new species…

This is My Present?

Today is my birthday! And although I won't get the birthday spectacular that PZ did, I share my birthday with some magnificent company, Strauss, Ehrlich, Jones, Einstein, Jones, and Crystal.  Peter decided to get me riled up for the ol' b-day by sending a link to a website of the utmost stupidity.  Let's just say Peter knows how to push my buttons!  Original Quinton marine plasma is not just seawater. It is nutrient-rich marine fluid harvested from the depths of an oceanic plankton bloom. When taken orally, this Original Quinton marine plasma can restore cellular homeostasis and mineral…

Canadian Health Agency Drags Feet on Asbestos Report

Asbestos is internationally recognized as a carcinogen and blamed for 100,000 deaths each year, but neither the U.S. nor Canada has managed to ban its use. Two mines in Quebec still produce asbestos, and about 95% of their production is exported. Last year, The Globe and Mailâs Martin Mittelstaedt reported that Canadaâs government is a strong backer of asbestos, and spent roughly $19.2 million from 1984 to 2007 to promote asbestos use. In February, Mittelstaedt reported that Health Canada, the countryâs health agency, had âquietly begun a studyâ on the dangers of chrysotile asbestos. He cited…

Chuck Grassley's feet of clay

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure We've been rather kind to Senator Charles (Chuck) Grassley in the past. Yes, he's a right wing Republican with some really odious ideas, ideas for which he deserves to be criticized. But he's also been a champion of the Federal False Claims Act which has encouraged and protected whistleblowers to reveal how corporations have taken the taxpayer for a ride, something for which he deserves credit. Lately he has been on a tear about the ways Big Pharma has been buying influence with high profile medical professionals, with the direct implication that…

Where did syphilis come from?

Some infectious agents, it seems, have been with us since the rise of humanity. Bacteria like E. coli or salmonella don't appear to have one moment enshrined in history where they first appeared on the scene. They've probably long been with us, causing disease sporadically but not spectacularly. Other agents, however, seem to make their presence known. Syphilis is one of these. The first recorded outbreaks of syphilis (caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum) were documented in Europe in 1495. These weren't syphilis as we know it today. Currently, syphilis is…

Camazotz and the age of vampires

In the previous post we saw that vampire bats were more diverse and more widespread during the Pleistocene than are they today. Two things stand out (to me) as being particularly interesting; firstly, that some of these vampires seem to have differed in morphology, and therefore presumably in ecology and behaviour, from the living vampire species; and secondly, that some of these vampires survived until very, very recently. Here, we look at these two areas in more detail... What species were these fossil vampires feeding from? Of the three living vampires, both the Hairy-legged vampire…

Giant extinct vampire bats: bane of the Pleistocene megafauna

In the previous post we looked at the biology and behaviour of vampire bats. This time we're going to take things a little bit further... Prior to the spread of people and domestic livestock, it is thought that vampires (here we're mostly talking about the Common vampire Desmodus rotundus) most likely fed on capybaras, tapirs, peccaries, deer and birds, though we also know that they sometimes feed on fruit bats and reptiles. Populations that live on islands off the Peruvian and Chilean coasts feed on seabirds and sealions. Now that the Americas are full of millions of cattle, horses,…

Time-Resolved Studies of Ultracold Ionizing Collisions

This paper is the third of the articles I wrote when I was a grad student, and the first one where I was the lead author. It's also probably my favorite of the lot, not just because of the role it played in my career, but because it packs a lot of science into four pages. The whole thing is summarized in this figure from the old NIST web page, which is a simplified version of Figure 2 from the paper itself: This shows the collision rate as a function of time after we hit a cold sample of atoms with a 40ns pulse of laser light tuned near the atomic resonance frequency. As discussed in the…

Hobbits Alive?

The feud over Homo floresiensis, the little people of Indonesia, centers on whether they were an extinct diminutive species that evolved from some ancient hominid, such as Homo erectus, or whether they were just pygmy humans, perhaps suffering from some disease. The leading skeptic, paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob, has claimed that there are pygmies living not far from where the fossils were found, on the island of Flores. I came across a short item at Japan Today about a scientific expedition to study the pygmies, which was based on an article in Kompas, an Indonesian publication. The…

I get email

Greg Abell wrote to me, requesting answers to his questions, which he doesn't ask, and since he caught me in a cranky moment, I felt like answering. Hello, I wanted to ask a professional scientist how something can come from nothing? No, you didn't. You wrote as an excuse to preach at me, and are not asking any sincere questions. You're a phony. If there is no God, you have to prove how this is possible. Matter had to come from somewhere. Space had to have a beginning. Time also has to originate right? Ask a physicist. I'm a biologist. It says so right over there under my picture to the…

The mostly South Asian origins of Indian Muslims

Dienekes points to a new paper which attempts to quantify the genetic ancestry of South Asian Muslims into indigenous and exogenous components: Islam is the second most practiced religion in India, next to Hinduism. It is still unclear whether the spread of Islam in India has been only a cultural transformation or is associated with detectable levels of gene flow. To estimate the contribution of West Asian and Arabian admixture to Indian Muslims, we assessed genetic variation in mtDNA, Y-chromosomal and LCT/MCM6 markers in 472, 431 and 476 samples, respectively, representing six Muslim…

Public health classic: Surgeon General's 1964 Report on Smoking and Health

The Pump Handle is launching a new "Public Health Classics" series exploring some of the classic studies and reports that have shaped the field of public health. If you have a favorite Public Health Classic to recommend, let us know in the comments. And if you're interested in contributing a post to the series, email us at thepumphandle@gmail.com (send us a link to the report or study along with a sentence or two about what you find most interesting or important about it). As we add more posts to the series, they'll all be available in the "Public Health Classics" category. A headline from…

Eta Carinae's 21-Year Outburst: A Cosmic Instant Replay!

"Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world." -Carl Sagan Nothing lasts forever in this Universe, not even the seemingly timeless stars in the sky. At any moment, any one of the brilliant, twinkling points of light from across the galaxy could run out of fuel, ending its life as we know it. It's happened a number of times before in recorded history, and will no doubt happen again. With a typical supernova rate of one per galaxy per century, we've got a number of nearby potential candidates for what the next supernova to occur in the Milky Way…

Overturning assumptions: why genes matter in history

Martin had a comment below: You equate language groups with ethnic, even political, groups. That's quite a stretch. Western archaeologists abandoned that idea in the 1970s. I think I should expand a bit on my comment where I address Martin's assertion. I think I made it pretty clear that when it comes to burial styles or pottery motifs I render unto archaeologists their expertise, on the other hand, there's the old joke that archaeologists reduce the entirety of the past to material artifacts. Obviously such remains loom large because we unfortunately have no access to time travel machines…

Temnospondyls the early years (part II)

At last, I fulfill those promises of more temnospondyls. Last time we looked at the edopoids, perhaps the most basal temnospondyl clade: here we look at the rest of the basal forms. Scary predators, marine piscivores, late-surviving relics, and some unfortunate beasts burned alive in forest fires... Studies on temnospondyl phylogeny mostly agree that 'post-edopoid' temnospondyls form a clade, the most basal members of which include Capetus, Dendrerpeton and Balanerpeton (Milner & Sequeira 1994, 1998, Holmes et al. 1998, Ruta et al. 2003a, b) [though some workers have found some of these…

Tiny frogs and giant spiders: the best of friends

The recent discovery that some Asian microhylid frogs frequent the dung piles of elephants has gotten these obscure little anurans into the news, possibly for the first time ever. Microhylids - or narrow-mouthed frogs - are not exactly the superstars of the frog world: they're only really familiar to specialists, despite the fact that (as of June 2009) they contain over 450 species distributed across Africa, Madagascar, the Americas, and Asia. However, some more recent research on the group shows that, like so many animals, they're really quite interesting once you get to know them... You…

Olson and the Meaning of Liberty

Over at PseudoPolymath, Mark Olson has what I regard as a very oddly reasoned post about the meaning of liberty in the Declaration of Independence. He has been reading a book called Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Fischer, which according to his recounting, details 4 different waves of immigration to America in 4 different areas of the country and how their views on various things differed. In particular, he notes that they had different conceptions of what the word "liberty" meant. Based upon this, he makes a rather odd argument that concludes that the word "liberty…

Comments of the Week #68: from the Multiverse to Pluto

“Just as a Chihuahua is still a dog, these ice dwarfs are still planetary bodies. The misfit becomes the average. The Pluto-like objects are more typical in our solar system than the nearby planets we first knew.” -Alan Stern The last week here at Starts With A Bang saw some great articles that went from Pluto to stars to nebulae to the theoretical limits of our understanding of everything. When we put it all together, here's what we've covered: Is the multiverse science? (for Ask Ethan), The best discoveries from the High Sierra Music Festival (for our Weekend Diversion), The beauty of…

Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology

From SCONC: Thursday, March 5 7 p.m. What Good is it to Feel Good? The Science of Positive Emotions From our "what the world needs now" file, Dr. Barbara Frederickson, head of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab at UNC will share thoughts from her new book, Positivity. You can strengthen relationships, relax the mind and relieve stress by thinking positively. Part of the Current Science Forum at Morehead Planetarium, UNC.

Harry-est Towns in America

Which towns in the USA have ordered the most copies of the latest book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? According to Amazon, the top ten "Harry-est" towns in the United States include 4 from Washington state, 3 from Virginia, 1 each from Texas, Pennsylvania and New York state. I guess it is time for me to order my own copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. . tags: Harry Potter, books

RIP Maurice Sendak

The author of the historically transformative and widely loved book "Where the Wild Things Are" had died. He was 83. Standing with a character from his book Where the Wild Things Are, author and illustrator Maurice Sendak speaks with the media Jan. 11, 2002, at the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York City. Sendak died in Danbury, Conn., on Tuesday. He was 83. Story from NPR, photo from Spencer Platt/Getty

Jellyfish Fossils

Researchers just published their discovery of four types of well-preserved fossil jellyfish in the open-access journal PLoS ONE (go Bora). The jellies are from about a half a billion years ago and not much seems to have changed in their physiology. Utah, of course, is no longer under the sea. See if you prefer this image from the journal: Or this image from The New York Times:

Republican war on science continues

It seems the Republican party in the US is continuing its war on science they don't like. The Sex Drugs and DNA Blog reports that House Republicans vote AGAINST science integrity amendment. The amendment would have protected scientists from censorship by governments and their officials, from victimisation by supervisors when they are doing good science, and from political litmus tests for employment in government agencies. Via Scientific Activist.

My Apologies

Folks, I suffered from a major computer crash today, which prevented me not just from blogging but even from posting others' comments. It was a stressful, hellish day, but I managed to recover somewhat towards the end, and now I'm semi-operational again. Anyway, I won't be blogging more today, but I do want to let those in the Boston area know that I'll be speaking at the Tufts Fletcher School tomorrow night. More info here. Unfortunately, I I didn't get to practice my speech quite like I would've wanted to today due to the aforementioned technological catastrophe. It's a new one and, I think…

Heath News

Angst-ridden teens have different brain structures: study from PhysOrg.com It turns out your mother was right: angst-ridden teens really do have something wrong with their heads. [...] Who benefits from antidepressants? from PhysOrg.com A new study published today in PLoS Medicine suggests that antidepressants only benefit some, very severely depressed patients. [...] A Quick Comparison of the Clinton and Obama Health Care Plans is at The Scientific Activist.

New flows at Kilauea

Not to feel left out from all the action going on in Alaska, Kilauea in Hawai'i has a new lava flow issuing from the Thankgiving Eve Breakout (TEB) vent area. It sounds like a fairly small flow and none of the flows have reached the ocean. The TEB was the November 21, 2007 event where activity migrated away from the Pu'u O'o area to a new vent to the east.

Incest & delayed mother, an analogy

Will Saletan makes an analogy between cousin marriage and delayed (i.e., 40something) motherhood: If Bittles' numbers are correct, they substantiate a somewhat embarrassing point made by defenders of cousin marriage. Embarrassing, that is, to all of us good Western folk who turn up our noses at the practice. The British Down's Syndrome Association has posted a chart showing the risk of producing a baby with the syndrome at various maternal ages. From age 20 to age 31, the risk doubles. From 31 to 35, it doubles again. From 35 to 38, it doubles again. From 38 to 41, it more than doubles again…

What Do You Say to the Last Man to Die For Outrage Over Shoddy Nation Building? On the Misuse of the Pronoun "We"

Suffice it to say, the average Iraqi citizen has had a crappy deal from Bush's Excellent Adventure (and that's a macabre understatement). Courtney Martin, who unintentionally demonstrates the uselessness of 'progressives' with a piece on the potential withdrawal from Iraq. It starts off well: Iraqi citizens shouldn't be the only ones infuriated by our military's half-assed effort to rebuild a nation that we so righteously destroyed not so long ago. Americans should also be outraged. We should be fuming. This war was fought in our names, and now shoddy infrastructure and broken promises will…

Life Science and Physical Science Channel Update 9-29-08

In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Life Science. A cheetah in the San Diego Wild Animal Park. From Flickr, by HBC4511 Physical Sciences. A Foucault pendulum in Milan, Italy. From Flickr, by sylvar Reader comments of the week: This week on the Life Science Channel Ed Yong looked at a study showing Elephants recognise themselves in mirror. Based on similar experiments performed on primates, the experiment places a piece of tape on an animal's face and has the animal look in a…

Education and Politics Weekly Channel Update 9-24-08

In this post: the large versions of the Education and Career and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Education and Career. From Flickr, by foundphotoslj Politics. British anit-war protest. From Flickr, by dAVIDb1 Reader comments of the week: The big news this week in Education and Careers was the new paper in the Public Library of Science by ScienceBloggers Nick Anthis, Shelley Batts and Tara Smith. The paper examined how blogging could be used to enhance scientific research. Drug Monkey was one of the first to blog about it, saying: It is…

Life Science and Physical Science Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Physical Science. Neon lights in an Arizona movie theater. From Flickr, by cobalt123 Life Science. From Flickr, by law_keven Reader comments of the week: In Sputnik Challenges Our Current Definition of Life, GrrlScientist discusses a surprising new discover—a miniscule virus which actually infects other viruses. The new "virophage," as it's been named, is the first such species known. It calls into question the legitimacy of viruses as living…

Solving a problem in emergency evacuation

I really like this story, which I got from Medgadget (hat tip). It's about a new product, designed by a student, Mr. Edwin Yau of the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. It was the winner of the (Australian) Dyson Design Awards, and it looks like it deserved it. Mr. Yau's design for the StairbustA addresses a major problem in any emergency evacuation and also in just moving sick people from one spot to another. I know about this because I worked my way through school as a "transporter" in a hospital radiology department. Here's the description of the StairbustA: The StairbustA is an…

Sweet dreams for the super paranoid

If you are so paranoid you have trouble sleeping, the Quantum Sleeper is just the thing for you. It's a bed made to protect you from biological and chemical terrorist attacks, natural disasters (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes), kidnappers/stalkers and features bulletproof "saferoom" protection (hat tip Boingboing). The basic Quantum Sleeper unit consists of an aluminum bed frame and headboard with polycarbonate, bullet proof plating that is designed to provide a protective barrier (shielding) between a perpetrator or environmental condition and the homeowners or occupants. The…

Immigrants and TB: not a threat

Immigrants traditionally get blamed for a country's ills and historically they have been feared for their ability to bring disease as well. The recent cases of the traveling lawyer (and here, passim)and the Mexican businessman with TB raised concerns that tuberculosis would be brought to the US or other low TB incidence countries by immigrants or travelers from countries where TB was prevalent. Now a new study from Norway suggests this doesn't happen: Immigrants from countries with high rates of tuberculosis who move to countries of low TB incidence do not pose a public health threat to…

Lions' manes

I saw this ScienceDaily report earlier today and thought: "What's new?" I recall a study with similar conclusions from just a couple of months ago, and even that was not that new - I used the example in teaching about 5-6 years ago (then dropped the example as the literature got more and more contentious). But a few minutes ago, Afarensis posted about this and cleared it up for me - the previous study was from zoos and this one is from the wild. Also, the new study incorporates ontogenetic data - the effects of age. So, the size and color of the lion's mane is not driven by sexual selection…

Daylight saving time and public health consequences

It started with a yawn. Then a conversation about whether daylight savings time (DST) begins too early in the year. "On Monday, kids will be going to school in the dark and with one hour less sleep," said my mom. My brother remarked: “There are more accidents in the days immediately following the time change.”  I was skeptical about his car accident remark, but didn’t want to open my mouth without some facts. Here’s some of what I learned with just a minute of searching on PubMed. Researchers with Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences assembled data from U.S. fatal automobile…

Holocaust Children, part V (guest post by Mom)

Here is the fifth and final installment of my Mother's travelogue. Feel free to ask questions. I will try to copy and post her published chapter from the book "We Survived" in about a month from now. Family Tuesday, November 13th A beautiful, sunny day. I am trying to make myself look nice for the re-union with eight members of my family. They are coming from different parts of the country . We are meeting in the restaurant "London" at 10.30. A couple is coming from the North - a far-away kibutz - but that has not prevented them to be the first to arrive. I invited Isabelle to meet…

The 2010 North Carolina Science and Engineering Fair

The 2010 North Carolina Science and Engineering Fair will be held at Meredith College in Raleigh on March 26th-27th. You can see the details here. The part that is open to public will be on Saturday March 27th from 2:30 - 4:00 pm. From the NC Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Center: Young scientists from across the state will gather at Meredith College in Raleigh on Sat., March 27, to participate in the N.C. Science and Engineering Fair (NCSEF). Students from 3rd grade through 12th grade will present original science and engineering research. NCSEF showcases the highest level of…

Airbourne fraction

AF (ie, Airbo(u)rne Fraction, ie the proportion of emitted CO2 that stays in the atmos, the rest being sunk in land or ocean) is in the news; I wrote up part of it recently (and detected some nonsense about it a year ago). There is a PNAS paper, Canadell et al; Eli has already done it. When talking about the N Atlantic results, I was unwise enough to say "But airbourne fraction is still about 55%, so this can't be happening globally." This was in the context of the North Atlantic halving its uptake, which I instinctively thought couldn't happen globally or it would be obvious in the CO2 data…

Please Don't Play Games With My Date and Time Data

An Open Letter to All Software Developers, I don't like changing, shifting, cutsie, idiotic date formats, and I don't like rounding off much either. Many systems that provide information on date and time make unwrarented and embarrassingly stupid assumptions about what you want to know. In Movable Type, the system designers assume that if a post is set up for the future by a few days, that I don't care what time of day it is scheduled for. WTF is that all about??? A scheduled post for two hours from now is listed with the date/time "2 hours from now" but a post scheduled for 48 hours from…

Bleached corals recover in the wake of hurricanes

In 2005, corals in the large reef off the coast of Florida were saved by four hurricanes. Tropical storms seem to be unlikely heroes for any living thing. Indeed, coral reefs directly in the way of a hurricane, or even up to 90km from its centre, suffer serious physical damage. But Derek Manzello from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administation has found that corals just outside the storm's path reap an unexpected benefit. Hurricanes can significantly cool large stretches of ocean as they pass overhead, by drawing up cooler water from the sea floor. And this cooling effect,…

In the red corner, John Lott; in the blue corner, John Lott

When I looked at the reviews of More Guns, Less Crime I wasn't sure that this review was written by Lott: If you are interested in the facts, read this book, July 10, 2000 Reviewer: A reader from Miami, Florida A couple of friends of mine have been nagging me to read this book for a couple of years. When the second edition came out I finally gave in and got it (for $9.60 I couldn't argue that the price was too high). Anyway, I am only sorry that I didn't read this book earlier. As an academic and a person who has been somewhat anti-gun, I had two reactions to the book... The only reason…

The Indiana Jones of Conservation Biology

posted by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum Around the corner from my lab at Duke is a bright sun room - which also happens to be the office of the Extraordinary Professor Stuart Pimm. Now mind you, I don't use Extraordinary loosely, it's quite literally his title at the Conservation Ecology Research Unit in South Africa where he's also a professor at the University of Pretoria. I knew I liked Stuart from the moment I entered his office. While I had read many of his books and scientific papers, it's always upon encountering someone firsthand that you're able to get a sense of who they are. Walking in,…

Hearing speech impaired voices

There's an interesting case study in The Lancet, about a woman who began hearing voices with speech impairments following a bicycle accident. The 63-year-old woman was treated at the University Hospital of Psychiatry in Bern, Switzerland, after falling from her bicycle and hitting her head. Following the accident, she suffered a brain hemorrhage and lost consciousness. Upon her arrival at the hospital, it was found that the woman had an aneurysm (a blood-filled dilation of a blood vessel in the brain). This was treated, and a craniotomy was performed to after tests showed damage in the…

Sorting the Pancakes that Make up a Genome

Genome rearrangements are fast becoming one of the most interesting aspects of comparative genomics (I may be slightly biased in my perspective). We have known for quite some time that genomes of different species (and even within species) differ by inversions of their chromosomes (this was first studied in Drosophila). In fact, some of the early work on the evolutionary relationships of species was done using chromosomal rearrangements. Additionally, there's a whole lot of important biological implications of rearrangements, including speciation, human disease, and the function of genes…

Social Status

In the latest Mind Matters, Adam Waytz (an old college friend, co-author of my favorite book on basketball, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, and now a post-doc at Harvard) writes about a fascinating new paper by PJ Henry on social status and aggression. If you've read Gladwell's excellent Outliers, then you're probably familiar with the work of Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen. They argued, in an influential series of papers, that landscapes more conducive to herding were more likely to have a "culture of honor," which led to increased violence. Here's Waytz: The story goes that…

85% of genetic variation is within groups...

...yes, true. On a typical single locus (on some loci, such as SLC24A5, most of the variation is between groups). But that doesn't mean that you can't use genetics to differentiate population clusters. Here are 938 individuals (the points) from 51 world populations (the color of the points) displayed on a figure with the two largest principle components of the variation. From Worldwide Human Relationships Inferred from Genome-Wide Patterns of Variation. Also see Lewontin's Fallacy.

jökulhlaup

There is a webcam from vodafone at the northwest side of the volcano - it caught the onset of the major flooding this evening Popup images - click to enlarge. Before: 14:02 local During: 19:04 local After: 19:19 after that there appears to be some haze obscuring the view... PS: aftermath 13:30 the next day - the white bits are chunks of ice from the glacier - BIG chunks of ice... From vodafone.is

Government Readers?

I was just looking at my sitemeter stats and found this rather interesting. I seem to have quite a few readers in government jobs because in the last hour I've had hits from the state government domains for Maryland, Virginia and Texas as well as a hit from the National Institutes of Health. I also had one earlier from an Air Force computer. I'm glad to have the readers, but don't let your bosses see you goofing off!