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Where There's Liquid Water...

Enceladus, a tiny moon of Saturn, suddenly gets interesting. It may be spewing liquid water. And since the only life we know of needs liquid water--and since Enceladus may now be the second place we know of in the solar system with liquid water--I want to buy a ticket there. Details and pictures here.

Is USDA serious? Inspecting a chicken in 1/3 of a second?

[Update below, 9/26/2012] When Secretary of Agricultural Tom Vilsack announced in January the USDA's proposal to modernize the poultry slaughter inspection system, he promised several things.  He said the new system would save taxpayers and poultry producers money while improving food safety.   (In "The Age of Greed," law professor Rena Steinzor explains on whose backs those savings are borne.)  Secretary Vilsack also insisted that USDA inspectors "will continue to conduct on-line carcass-by-carcass inspection as mandated by law."  That requirement is a long-standing provision of the Poultry…

ScienceOnline2010 - a brief introduction and history

Almost four years ago, after attending several technology and blogging conferences, I thought it would be interesting to have a conference for science bloggers to get together. Other science bloggers showed interest, but I wasn't sure it would be possible to actually organize one. Then, Anton Zuiker took me aside at one of the local blogger meetups and suggested that it was possible and we should do it ourselves, right here in the Triangle. Anton Zuiker is a veteran blogger (see how many years back you can go in his archives!) particularly interested in medical blogging, foodblogging and…

Undercover Brother and Sister: The Right Online Edition

You might have heard that last weekend, Netroots Nation, a progressive organization, had its annual convention. Oddly, Right Online, a conservative organization, also its annual meeting--in the same hotel. So two Netroots Nation attendees decided to go undercover. Needless to say, comedy ensues. Here's a taste: I give Elon a once over. He could not be dressed more inappropriately for a giant Republican-o-rama. I think some sort of effort was made with a buttoned up black cardigan over a clean white t-shirt but still, having done some reconnaissance work walking around the public areas of…

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) will present some simple and fun DNA-related activities at the Expo

Extract DNA from a strawberry? Make a DNA bracelet? Check out the National Human Genome Research Institute booth and what they have happening at the Expo! Find more info here. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) will present some simple and fun DNA-related activities at the inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. on Sat., Oct. 23 and Sun., Oct. 24. Instructions and resources related to these activities will be highlighted here on Sat., Oct. 23 for those who can't come to the Festival in Washington, D.C.. All of these activities can be done at…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants: travelers from afar

Today I'll mention a few of the people who are traveling from afar. Fabiana Kubke is a professor of anatomy at University of Auckland (yes, birds brains! I hope we find some time to talk shop while she is here). Yes, that is Aucklans in New Zealand! Dr.Kubke blogs on Building Blogs of Science which is also cross-posted on her SciBlogs blog. At the conference, Fabiana will do a demo of The Science Media Centre and the SciBlogs - the first science blogging network in New Zealand (if I understand correctly, they even call each other SciBlings!). You can also follow her on Twitter Jelka…

Good Ol' Dlamming is Back

And wouldn't you know it, he's making ignorant statements again. I know you're as surprised by that as I am. Finally, I noticed Ed Brayton is back complaining about anti-gambling laws again. Now he's up in arms about the arrest of a Carruthers (there's an English name), a UK citizen who runs a vast online-gambling empire... the gentleman in question was arrested while switching flights at a US airport. To quote Ed, "they're already engaging in vast overreach by arresting foreign citizens for doing something perfectly legal in their countries." Now, there may be perfect valid reasons to allow…

Women in IT Survey

From the WEPAN listserv: What influenced you to pursue a career in information technology? What could we learn from you and other women working in IT that will increase the number of girls and women who are interested in the field? The K-12 Informal Education Hub of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), led by the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA), is conducting a three-phase study to determine what experiences or factors influence females to pursue work in information technology (IT). Study results will help guide efforts to increase the number of women entering…

This is a Scam

I know you know this, but does everybody? It is a new approach to getting your banking details. Please pass it around. Would you like to work online from Home/Temporarily and get paid weekly?We are glad to offer you for a job position at our company. We need someone to work for the company as a Representative/Book keeper in your country. This is in view of our not having an office presently in your country. My name is Kachy Williams working as a Sales Consultant Manager for a fabric company in United Kingdom called Dhillon Fabrics. I found this medium an opportunity to contact you and…

Two Great Boston Public Library Exhibits

(from here) The Honoré Daumier exhibit is at the Central Library and is phenomenal. The BPL also has a great online exhibit of old travel posters (the amount of stuff the BPL has is incredible--if only there were more funding to exhibit it all...). Check them both out.

Stockholm County in the Bronze Age, New Anthology

Half a year ago I gave a talk about sacrificial sites to a Bronze Age seminar at the Stockholm County Museum. Now the contributions have appeared in a fine little volume in Swedish that can be read on-line for free or mail-ordered from the museum. Thanks, editors, for swift and accurate work!

The memory molecule

My first contribution to the Scientific American Mind Matters website is now online. The article, called "The Power of the Memory Molecule", is about the recent study which showed that memories can be selectively erased from the brains of mice by altering levels of the enzyme αCaMKII.

Programming note.

I'll be offline until Sunday evening (California time). This means comments you submit between now in then will dangle in the aether until I'm back online, but please don't let that put you off from commenting if you have something to say. Hope your weekend is a good one!

Online chemistry resources from the Journal of Chemical Education.

Another dispatch from the BCCE: The Journal of Chemical Education (or J Chem Ed, as we call it in the biz), is, in fact, targeted to an audience of chemical educators. Its website has the online version of the journal, plus some resources for teachers of chemistry at the ChemEd Resource Shelf. If the full array is too overwhelming, you can check out Hal's Picks monthly recommendations for what to read. You may be surprised at how many of the picks are not officially chemistry (or even science) books, but each of them has some interesting, useful, or funny connection to matters scientific.…

Neuron publishes online readers' comments

The editors of the journal Neuron are now publishing readers' comments on the journal's website. Comments can be made online for any paper published in the journal, including all of those in the online back archive. Neuron is owned by Elsevier, and the decision to publish online readers' comments is an interesting one. This is because although Elsevier is one of several publishing giants who have been vehemently opposed to the open access movement, it is now following in the footsteps of the open access Public Library of Science journals, which began publishing readers' comments earlier this…

Harry Potter and the Labrador Retriever Problem

The BBC has done a poll about unread books, and found some results that at first might appear surprising: Some 35% of those who bought or borrowed Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre's story of a US high school massacre, admitted not finishing it. The figure was 32% for the fourth instalment in the Harry Potter series, while 28% said the same for James Joyce's Ulysses, third on the list. In reality, though, I think this isn't terribly surprising, because it's a variant of what I think of as the Labrador Retriever Problem. It's got that name because when I went to buy homeowner's insurance before…

Hiatus

This evening was the convocation for our honors students and featured the largest graduating class ever from our College. Tomorrow I prepare to head off to Woods Hole for the MBL-ASU History of Biology Seminar. While I will have access to the Intertubes while there, I'm going to probably take a break from blogging, recharge, and figure out what I want to do over the summer break. In short, I'll be back online after the 20th.

You Gotta Believe

A couple of weeks ago, when I bought the new Hold Steady album, I also picked up Sam's Town by the Killers. I bought it in spite of some pretty harsh reviews, but in the end, I think that The Onion's AV Club got it right: The Killers have created a batch of easily digestible pop songs that would be disposable if they weren't so catchy; in other words, they've more or less done their job. Sure, it would be nice if the hooks were sharper, and if songs other than "When You Were Young" could approach "Mr. Brightside"-like enormity, but overall, Sam's Town stays the course the way a sophomore-…

It is Elegant, but is It Feasible?

As Urbanization Week continues, Liz Borkowski put up a great post about feeding cities that includes a nice, rational (look at the comments for more good stuff) discussion of the idea of Vertical Farming. I'm glad to see the issue come up, because it has so much power. I'm grateful to Liz for providing such a balanced and rational discussion, since most of them aren't. I don't think I'm even overstating when I say that every time I go somewhere and talk about food, someone asks me what I think of the idea of Vertical Farming. It is the cool, trendy idea about feeding cities that gets tons…

Voices of Experience at Firedoglake Book Discussion

On Saturday, Firedoglake hosted an online discussion on David Michaelsâ Doubt is Their Product: How Industryâs Assault on Science Threatens Your Health â and David was lucky to have the chat hosted by Jordan Barab, whose wonderful Confined Space blog provided so much inspiration for The Pump Handle. In his introduction, Jordan not only did a terrific job summarizing the lessons contained in the book, but added some telling details from his own decades of experience promoting workplace health and safety. Here he is describing the demise of the long-awaited OSHA ergonomics standard: I first…

Darwin Quotes

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.

Darwin Quotes

I have called this principle, by which, each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. - Charles R. Darwin, The Origin of Species (ch. III) Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Celebrate Darwin Day Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin by yourself.

2008 Science Blogging Anthology Published

The 2008 Open Laboratory anthology collecting last year's best science blogging is now available on paper and for download. I'm not featured this year, but I was one of the judges, and I can tell you there's some great stuff in there. Jennifer Rohn of Mind the Gap put it all together. Buy one for your mom!

Friday Fun: New craze of 'Working' sweeping the internet

With The Onion implementing a new paywall with non-US users, I'm forced to look for a new source of cheap amusement. Yes, I'm too cheap to pay for The Onion online. For a paper copy, I'd easily pay $5 per week but online infotainment has no monetary value for me, and I suspect for anyone else. Writers starving? At a fundamental level, I'm ok with that. Hey, Onion, good luck with the new system. Can't win either way? Anyways, if you Yanks are going to make me pay, I'll be turning my comical attentions to Canada's colonial master -- the Brits. And that brings us to News Biscuit! And this…

Science Online Together 2014: Who are all the librarians? Who are all the Canadians?

I'll be at Science Online Together for the next few days. I missed last year so I'm really looking forward to getting back into the Science Online swing of things. As is occasionally my habit, I'll be listing here some attendees that are either Canadian, librarians or, in a few select cases, both. I'm adding websites and Twitter handles in the lists, but only if they're included in the directory listing. Librarians KT Vaughn Karen Ciccone Michael Habib (Twitter) Stephanie Brown (Twitter) Barrie Hayes (Twitter) Laksamee Putnam (Twitter) Zoe Pettway Unno (Twitter) John Dupuis   Canadians…

DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge 2009 Now Underway

This week kicked off the 2009 Donors Choose Social Media Challenge--a program ScienceBloggers take part in annually to help public school teachers build scientific literacy, engagement, and excitement among their students. DonorsChoose.org is an online charity where public school teachers from across the country submit requests for specific needs or special projects in their classrooms, such as microscopes for biology lessons or notebooks for a writing workshop. Readers can browse these requests online, and choose any classroom they'd like to donate to. The program has been an important event…

The changes in the business of science

In the comments to this recent post, Pedro Beltao points out his recent post - Opening up the scientific process - which I would suggest you read. First reaction will probably be - ah, how idealistic! But it will make you think, I believe. Many elements are already happening, e.g., open-source journals, open comments on online journal articles, as well as blogs and wikis that report research in real time, e.g., Useful Chem Experiments, RRResearch and UsefulChem Wiki. The world of academic science is slow-moving and resistant to change, but it is already changing nonetheless. And, as each…

The Flocking Party

Today, Chris Landau sent me a link to his Master's Thesis entitled The Flocking Party. Chris is in the MFA department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. This a fascinating online production that describes one week in the life of two fictional young scientists, Frank, and his brother, Calvin, as presented in Frank's online journal. This very basic science fiction story takes place in the near future in the lab of the shadowy Doctor Harp: in the year 2035, Frank is studying invasive bird species that have been infected by the mysterious Hebbets virus. Hebbets virus is an innovative…

Oscarian Archaeology Journal On-Line

In its formative late-19th century decades, Swedish archaeology had three journals with a nationwide scope (sometimes also covering Norway with which Sweden shared a king at the time). All three were published in Stockholm by the same small group of people: the Royal Academy of Letters had the academic Antiqvarisk Tidskrift för Sverige (1864-1924) and the more pop-sci-orientated Vitterhetsakademiens Månadsblad (1872-1907), and the Swedish Antiquarian Society had Svenska Fornminnesföreningens Tidskrift (1871-1905). The two latter merged in 1906 and took the name Fornvännen. This journal is…

The 49th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: The Medium is revealed

Those of you who have been kind enough to submit your skeptical blogging to this week's edition of the Skeptics' Circle may have been puzzled by the replies you received. It appears that DoC relied upon a certain medium to transmit the entries telepathically or by distant reading to DoC. Well, now that the Circle is here, it would appear that DoC is AWOL. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view), the Medium has taken a hand and channeled the entries to a certain very famous deceased skeptic named Harry, who is as we speak transmitting them from the other side to…

Biology of Genomes meeting report

Regular readers will be aware that my last attempt to report on the presentations at last month's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Biology of Genomes meeting resulted in some controversy, as well as some fruitful (if sometimes heated) discussion on the topic of conference blogging. My next attempt will likely prove less divisive: I was kindly invited to write a meeting report by the journal Genome Medicine, and the full text of the article is now available free online. Given the brevity of the article and the scope of the journal I've focused my coverage on the presentations most relevant to…

Rev. Haggard to get online MA in Psych - Also no longer gay.

I'm proud to report that Ted Haggard is no longer gay since he underwent three whole weeks of very intensive counseling. He was so impressed with his counseling that him and his wife are going to attend university and get their masters degrees in psychology (I'm psyched he's joining me in my chosen profession!). It sounds like they'll be going to Phoenix Online University or somewhere similar and hopefully counseling people to ungay themselves just like he was so successful in doing! All praise Rev. Haggard! The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced…

Google is building its own Wikipedia

Google is building its own version of communally-constructed online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which consistently ranks among the most visited websites in the world. The Internet search powerhouse is inviting chosen people to test a free service dubbed "knol," to indicate a unit of knowledge, vice president of engineering Udi Manber said Friday in a posting at Google's website. "Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it," Manber wrote. "There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there…

Boston of the Future Viewed from 1908

The Boston Public Library has a really cool exhibit about postcards related to Boston. Here's one I thought was funny from 1908 (based on the postage, I think it's 1908): I want my own unidirigible! Too bad Boston doesn't really look like this.... If you can't get to the library, the postcards are online here.

Blogging Professor!

Is this the first such thing? A faculty position at UNC school of journalism. From the job ad: This person should be highly skilled in writing and editing online news, in blogging and in developing news content for the web. Apply if you think you can and want to do this.

Physicist Finishes 3rd at WSOP

I didn't realize that Michael Binger, who recently finished 3rd in the WSOP main event and won $4.1 million, is a PhD physicist. Seed Magazine did, however, and they've got an interview with him online. Very cool. I know that Sean Carroll, cosmologist from the University of Chicago, plays poker as well.

An "arrogant medico" makes one last comment on dichloroacetate (DCA)

I love it. You see I noticed an old "friend," the Herbinator, making this comment about me regarding dichloroacetate: I was listening to CBC Radio - the Current, as is my want, and there was a show on about DCA, or Dichloroacetic acid. DCA is a molecule so simple and cheap to make that drug companies are unable to patent it ... so they simply pass on researching it. Some say that DCA is a most excellent and effective cancer treatment. I have to confess that I had never heard of DCA before. And so I perked an ear toward listening to the radio show as simplicity itself and uppity people…

New (and final?) Notes from Underground

The latest edition of the myrmecological newsletter is online here. It may well be the last, according to editor Gordon Snelling: We have close to 200 members and I can count on two hands the people that have regularly supported Notes by sending in material for publication... I feel like I am banging my head on a wall at times and honestly I am losing the motivation to keep this going. Notes from Underground has come and gone before. The printed newsletter was inaugurated in 1988 by Harvard…

Wealthy white people get more sleep

I did not find it surprising. If you have money, you can buy yourself time - to exercise, to eat a good meal at a nice restaurant or to fix healthy food at home, and to sleep as much as your body needs. As a result, you will be healthier overall. You can read about the study here (hat-tip:Sleepdoctor)

Will the rich save the planet?

Save the planet? Buy it: Millionaires are purchasing entire ecosystems around the world and turning them into conservation areas. Their goal? To stop environmental catastrophe. But will they know how to do it well? Will they inject some of their own incorrect ideas into their projects? Who will they listen to when designing these? Will their kids continue?

Darwin Quotes

The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith? - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.

Darwin Quotes

On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: "An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'" - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.

Sourdough and Sunflower Seeds

We rarely buy bread. Instead I bake. Tonight's production involved a 5-day sour dough and a bag of roasted sunflower seeds. Pretty good, though I overestimated the amount of salt on the seeds and overcompensated. The sour dough was just for flavour: I can't wait for a proper lactobacillum leavening, so I put yeast in. [More blog entries about baking, bread; bakning, bröd, surdeg.]

Orcas Work Together for Adorably Tasty Meal

A pod of Orcas surrounds a seal on an ice sheet and creates waves to try and knock it off. This reminds me of when you buy a candy bar and it gets stuck by the wrapper and you have to shake the machine to get it out. Thanks to Zooillogix reader extraordinaire Don Quixjote (aka ali) for forwarding along.

Chirality matters...

Even in cosmetics. The scientific tour de force doesn't stop there; they also give you lessons on deuterium oxide, fullerenes, and liquid crystals. The deuterium oxide thing is puzzling - another cosmetics company purports to sell spritzers of D2O. It's almost enough to make you buy some just to stick in the NMR to see if they're for real.

Getting Your Science Online: Presentation at Brock University Physics Department

It seems that Brock University in St. Catherine's, Ontario really likes me. Two years ago, the Library kindly invited me to speak during their Open Access Week festivities. And this year the Physics Department has also very kindly invited me to be part of their Seminar Series, also to talk about Getting Your Science Online, this time during OA Week mostly by happy coincidence. It's tomorrow, Tuesday October 23, 2012 in room H313 at 12:30. Here's the abstract I've provided: Physicist and Reinventing Discovery author Michael Nielsen has said that due to the World Wide Web, “[t]he process of…

Online Weekly Colloquia?

Recently I've been thinking it might be fun to set up some sort online weekly colloquia in quantum computing. Fun? Well, okay maybe that's not quite the right word. But it would be an interesting experiment. So I went out looking for good live webinar/videoconferencing software and well...I was a bit disappointed. Sure there are a lot of videoconference companies out there...which almost all have limited version for use for free. But these limited versions almost all seem to restrict to only a few participants. Anyone know of some software which might be appropriate for attempting to…

The Scientific Paper: past, present and probable future

A post from December 5, 2007: Communication Communication of any kind, including communication of empirical information about the world (which includes scientific information), is constrained by three factors: technology, social factors, and, as a special case of social factors - official conventions. The term "constrained" I used above has two meanings - one negative, one positive. In a negative meaning, a constraint imposes limits and makes certain directions less likely, more difficult or impossible. In its positive meaning, constraint means that some directions are easy and obvious and…

The Scientific Paper: past, present and probable future

A post from December 5, 2007: Communication Communication of any kind, including communication of empirical information about the world (which includes scientific information), is constrained by three factors: technology, social factors, and, as a special case of social factors - official conventions. The term "constrained" I used above has two meanings - one negative, one positive. In a negative meaning, a constraint imposes limits and makes certain directions less likely, more difficult or impossible. In its positive meaning, constraint means that some directions are easy and obvious and…

Why the Price of Milk Matters.

In what is undoubtedly one of the more spectacular cases of bad staff work in recent political history, Rudy Giuliani flunked the "Mr. Candidate, what's the going price for a gallon of milk?" pop quiz. (His estimates for the prices of milk and bread were substantially too low, but he was pretty close on the gallon of gas question.) Some bloggers - both conservative and liberal - and some mainstream media commentators have been wondering what the big deal is. Mr. Giuliani, they point out, probably doesn't buy his own milk, and even if he does his mind is probably on other things. More than…