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Online campaigning - corporate style

It's not just McCain who does not understand the Internet, it's his operatives as well: Spread John McCain's official talking points around the Web -- and you could win valuable prizes! That, in essence, is the McCain campaign's pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of "AstroTurf" campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper. On McCain's Web site, visitors are invited to "Spread the Word" about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied…

Congratulations, Anton!

My friend (and the driving force behind all bloggy events in the Triangle area) Anton Zuiker has a new job! And not just any job - but a perfect job: In August, I will take a new job at Duke University Health System as manager of internal communications. This will be a chance for me to mold a communications strategy that uses traditional tools (magazines, newsletters, posters) with new media tools (blogs, videocasts, wikis). I'm looking forward to the opportunities and challenges. They really, really need Anton. Finding information online about anything that has to do with Duke University…

BlogTogether.org

Yesterday, a bunch of us (e.g., Paul, Brian, Ruby, Wayne, Jackson, Mark and me) got together for tea at Anton's house, analyzed the past year of bloggy activity and plotted to take over the world next year: meetups (a.k.a. beer-blogs-bowling events), science blogging conference, faithblogging, foodblogging, storyblogging and other events we are thinking of doing over the next year. The second Science Blogging Conference was a great success (see the ever-growing list of blog posts about it) and we intend to do it again next year. But this is certainly not the only thing we at BlogTogether do…

Google Earth on PLoS ONE papers

As far as I know, there are two papers on PLoS ONE so far that, as Supporting Information, have KML files readable by Google Earth: Naturalised Vitis Rootstocks in Europe and Consequences to Native Wild Grapevine and this week's Regional Decline of Coral Cover in the Indo-Pacific: Timing, Extent, and Subregional Comparisons. Just scroll down to the Supporting Information of those papers, click on "Map S1" and, if you have Google Earth you can explore the map of the area of study. If you are publishing a paper in an online, open access journal, think outside the box - there are things you can…

The Domesday Book On-Line

I'm not sure if this is really new, or just new to me, but via a mailing list, I learned that the National Archives of the UK has made the Domesday Book available on-line. What is the Domesday Book, you ask? At Christmas 1085 William the Conqueror commissioned a great survey to discover the resources and taxable values of all the boroughs and manors in England. He wanted to discover who owned what, how much it was worth, and how much was owed to him as King. It was a massive enterprise, and the record of that survey, Domesday Book, was a remarkable achievement. If you know what you're…

Facebook is a Mecca for sin

What an awful story: a young woman is murdered by her own father for online chatting. A woman was beaten up and shot dead by her father for talking online with a man she met on the website Facebook. The case was reported on a Saudi Arabian news site as an example of the "strife" the social networking site is causing in the Islamic nation. I don't think it's a web page causing the strife: I think it's a hateful cockamamie belief system. Don't blame our openness for your derangement, or our tolerance for your daughter-slaughtering monsters. A leading Saudi preacher told Al-Arabiya.net that…

Eight good essays on Mooney

There is a most excellent online seminar on Mooney's Republican War on Science going on over at Crooked Timber. The usual gang is reviewing it, with the addition of the inestimable Tim Lambert and Steve Fuller. Wait a minute…Steve Fuller? That Steve Fuller? Steve Fuller. Steve Fuller! Jebus. I saw some glimmers of some interesting ideas at the start of Fuller's ultimately long-winded essay, but they expired even before he started defending the "positive programme behind intelligent design theory" and collapsed into tired pro-creationism mode. When he called George Gilder and Bruce Chapman "…

Literature request

Here's a humble request of my readers. I'm looking for an article in a journal to which my university library does not offer online access. I'm interested in reading it, but not so interested that I'm wililng to pay the $40 to download it. If necessary, I can get it via interlibrary loan, but they'll just send me a poorly photocopied hard copy, possibly even a FAX. The article on evolution and cancer; so you can see why I might be interested. This is the article: B. J. Crespi and Summers, K. Positive selection in the evolution of cancer. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 81(3):407-24 (2006). Would…

Texas Official: Call it a "Creationism Degree"

Here's a novel idea for creationists: Be honest! As you know, the Institute for Creation Research is trying to get an online Masters Degree in "science education" approved in Texas. A faux committee comprised of nincompoops and creationists has approved the degree at the first stage, and it is now being considered by the Texas higher education commission. (Details here) A recent report indicates that the Texas Commissioner of Higher Education has chimed in on the suggestion that this degree simply be called a "degree in creation studies." Interesting solution. Apparently, one of the…

Thinking about teaching physics

Sometimes (ok - just once) I get asked for recommendations about reading material on the ideas of teaching physics. I used to recommend Arnold Arons book on teaching introductory physics. Still, that is a classic and a great resource. However, there is a better one. Teaching Physics with the Physics Suite - Edward Redish Originally, this was kind of like the instructor's manual that went with one of the big name intro-physics books (maybe the new version of Halliday and Resnick). But this book is way more than an instructor's manual. What is even better is that it is online and free (see…

Is our children learning?

The NYTimes (also International Herald Tribune which I mentioned before) piece on book-reading, the Web and literacy of the new generation, has provoked quite a lot of interesting responses: SciCurious: But this change in internet language has happened very quickly, almost as as fast an an invading force. Is it here to stay? Is I gonna haf 2 strt riteing all my posts liek this? And is this an acceptable change to the language? Are these new grammar and spelling rules that we should teach in the schools as evidence of language evolution? Samia: My one issue with printed media is that I…

An Innovative Use of Twitter: monitoring fish catch!

From NC Sea Grant: ....At nearly every fisheries management meeting he attends, Baker hears the same complaint: North Carolina's recreational fishermen don't have to account for their catch. Two years ago, during a regional meeting about snapper and grouper, Baker looked down at his hands and finally saw a possible answer: his mobile phone. "I wondered if you could send a text message to a computer database somewhere instead of just texting from phone to phone," he says. "And if you could do that, maybe that was something recreational fishermen could do to track their catches and fishing…

Gullhögen Barrow Report On-Line

As an undergrad and PhD student in the 90s I heard a lot of rumours about the 1988-93 excavation of Gullhögen, a barrow in Husby-Långhundra parish between Stockholm and Uppsala. These rumours held that the barrow was pretty weird: built out of charcoal (!), unusually rich, and sitting on top of unusually rich Roman Period graves. Supposedly, someone was out here re-sieving spoil dumps to collect individual gold filigree grains. Few really knew much about Gullhögen. In a 2001 Fornvännen paper, Kent Andersson could make only the briefest of mentions of some Roman glass and a gold ring found at…

Reading Diary: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua

Sydney Padua's The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is one of the most flat-out entertaining books I have read in a very long time. You should buy this book. Your library should buy this book. Buy a copy of this book for all your friends. What's all the fuss? TTAoLaB is a graphic novelization of the lives of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, those wacky pioneers of computers and programming. But TTAoLaB isn't really just a novelization of their lives -- really only the first chapter or so pretends at any kind of historical accuracy. What it is is an imagineering of what their…

The future of "integrative medicine" is now, unfortunately

I was depressed yesterday. I've been on vacation this week (staycation, actually, as I stayed at home and didn't go on any trips); so you would think it would take a lot to depress me. It did. Scott Gavura over at Science-Based Medicine wrote about how another once-proud academic medical center, the University of Toronto, is letting the Trojan horse that is "integrative medicine" into the halls of its medical school and school of pharmacy. As I frequently say, much to the annoyance of advocates of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine," what "integrative…

Live From Netroots Nation!

I'm blogging live from a very hot Austin, Texas, at the Netroots Nation conference! Officially, Netroots Nation (formerly YearlyKos) "amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate." They're certainly right about that free exchange of ideas—I've eaten free pastries from an Oregonian who's running for Senate (thanks, Jeff Merkley!), chatted with a physicist who used to work with Carl Sagan (and yes, the legendary astronomer was apparently just as charismatic…

Hey sperm donors, could DNA testing be hazardous to your wealth?

Maybe you did it for the extra cash. Maybe you wanted to be part of the sperm cube public art project. Whatever the reason, it's possible, just possible, your sperm took on a life of it's own, once you left it. And now that a genome is no longer an entirely personal bit of information, you may be in for a surprise meeting someday, with the end result. That's right. Male adoptees are getting their DNA tested and getting information about their possible surnames. According to the BBC news: At least 30 men registered with US consumer genetic testing firm Family Tree DNA have found their…

Myers Blasts Wells on Embryology

I have been neglectful in not linking to this post by PZ Myers, wherein he exposes the highly dishonest tactics of Jonathan Wells in chapter 3 of his new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. It's pretty much just a rehash of the Haeckel material from Icons of Evolution, which just reminds us again of three things: that creationists never seem to learn from previous mistakes, that all they have, now and then, is a set of arguments against evolution, and that those arguments rely on misrepresentation of the evidence and the views of scientists in order to…

Giant Mucus Blobs Increasing

National Geographic reports on a new consequence of global climate change: giant, mucus-like sea blobs.  They've been around for a while, actually, but now there are more of them.  style="display: inline;"> This is from the on-line article, href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs.html">Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger.  The danger comes from the fact that these blobs harbor bacteria: The study team discovered that the blobs are hot spots for viruses and bacteria, including the deadly E. coli. Coastal communities…

On VP Choice, Obama Plans to Use Email and Text to Tell Supporters Before the Media

Will Joe Biden get the VP nod from Obama? Obama is expected to announce his VP choice in the next 24 to 36 hours and the selection won't be unveiled by way of the usual media leak followed by a press conference. Instead, in a sign of Obama's new model of campaigning, the digitally networked candidate plans to first announce the selection by way of early morning e-mails and text messages to his millions of online supporters and then to take advantage of a full day's news cycle of coverage. This type of "special access" granted to his digital network is a novel and easy way to reinforce the…

Why does Tim Worstall hate corrections?

Instead of correcting his erroneous post Tim Worstall has put up another post coming out against corrections. This time it's about an inaccurate textbook. Can you pass the test at the book's online study centre? Question 16. True or False? Worstall claims that book is accurate, offering this interesting argument: But many other problems are much less clear-cut. Science doesn't know how bad the green-house effect is." Indeed this is so. Climate sensitivity (how much warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2) is the most important unknown at present. The IPCC thinks somewhere from 2…

Behe: spanked again

Behe's ideas have been rejected by his colleagues; it seems those ideas were also the subject of a public forum at his university, with essays on the issue available online. During the fall semester, a Chaplain's Forum held on campus to offer differing perspectives on the contentious issue drew a standing-room-only crowd. The six faculty members who participated addressed the implications of intelligent design for science and for religion. This series of essays, which grew out of the Lehigh forum, is intended to shed light on an issue that all too often engenders only heat. Behe's essay is…

Adapting-In-Place Guest Post Week 3

M. is due with her baby any minute now, so at some point there may be a hiatus, but for now, she's got a lot to say about what her family is thinking about.  You can read her bio here. This week I did some very hard work for this class.  I have to admit, it wasn't anything exactly on the homework, but there is a hard decision my family needs to make and this class has allowed me to approach it from a new angle and I think opened up the discussion more between me and my husband. Basically, we have to decide whether to stay in Maryland, where we have a lot of friends, a pleasant house and…

When Cheap Food Isn't Cheap

The Miami-Herald is reporting today that food stamp use has more than doubled among Floridians in the last three years: More than 2.5 million Floridians are on food stamps, up from three years ago where 1.2 million residents received assistance. That's according to records kept by the Department of Children and Families, which administers the program. DCF Secretary George Sheldon told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Tuesday that Florida's food stamp rolls grew the fastest in the nation since 2007. Some of this is due to increased efforts on the part of states to expand access, but it is also,…

The Amazing Meeting 5.5, Plantation, FL

I wrote this last night in Florida, but the hotel wifi was on the blink, so I couldn't get it on-line. I am now at Newark airport in New Jersey, having just eaten my first bowl of matzoh soup. Oy vey, good stuff! Audience frowning in concentration I've been to gaming conventions and academic conferences and recently my first blogging convention, and now I've experienced my first skeptics' convention: The Amazing Meeting 5.5, a 1.5-day mini-con hosted by the Amazing Randi himself. James Randi demonstrating Geller-like powers Friday offered a solid four-hour round-robin lecture on podcasting…

Distracted at #scio2010

I am going against the herd here at ScienceOnline 2010 — I am not tweeting and blogging throughout the event, but am just sitting back and enjoying the talks, while all the nerds are pounding away at their keyboards. (Note sneaky implication that I am not a nerd with the rest of 'em.) However, I did just do my interview with Reddit, so it's all recorded and done with and merely awaiting editing and publishing. It will probably be available online on Tuesday — be patient, I'll put up a link when it is available. I will remind you also that tonight at 9pm EST I'll be helping to raise money for…

Teaching the Mad Biologist

Someone is using a post from this blog for a course. The ongoing corruption of the youth of America continues.... I noticed links from this website, which is an online syllabus for a course on digital curation. The course seems interesting (even if the description is written in that jargony, coursebook way): Digital curation focuses on the active and on-going management of digital artifacts through their lifecycle, particularly by maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use. Curation activities and policies enable data discovery and…

Lights! Camera! Evolution!

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is expanding its on-line video presence with its new YouTube channel! Here you'll find reports from the evolution/creationism wars -- footage of contentious testimony, landmark and illuminating speeches, conference coverage, excerpts from television appearances, and presentations. In the future, look for classroom videos, tutorials for teachers, videos contributed by NCSE members, and much more. When you visit the NCSE YouTube channel, check out a couple of key areas. At top right you'll see the latest, hot video. (In this case, executive…

Around the Web: Librarians and change, Amazon self-destructing

Change Rhetoric: Good and Bad Three challenges: Engaging, rightscaling and innovating Time for a little dissent To Be Or Not To Be A Library Director How to Answer “So You Need a Degree to Do That?” Putting Things in Perspective Here’s how Amazon self-destructs Amazon vs. your public library Small Pieces Loosely Kludged: Peer Review and Publication in Math Scholarly Communication The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology…

EMBL Online Symposium: No travel costs! Attend for free!

The EMBL graduate students have organized an ingenious conference titled: Life Sciences - Shaping the Future. Learn about Omics and Systems Biology from speakers like Leroy Hood, Stuart Kim, and Ronald Krause (and more). Explore options for career development, and learn how you can join the Web 2.0 science revolution in the session on scientific communication. The conference will take place Dec. 4th-8th, 2006. Don't worry if you don't have a plane ticket or a place to stay, you're virtually there. How? It's all on-line. Some of you might be wondering how a virtual conference works. 1…

Newsflash! Mercola bemoans ignorance of Americans! Offers to help for only $25/month!

I'm off to the west coast (of Michigan) for a few days, and if I don't blog, I shall die...or something. So I have a few posts from my old blog to share with you. This is rich. This is really rich. Mercola is speaking out against the one thing that keeps him in business: the scientific illiteracy and credulity of Americans. He bemoans ignorance that leads to beliefs such as "the Sun revolves around the Earth", or the bird flu panic. Then, presumably with a straight face, he invites you to join his "inner circle", further perpetuating ignorance, and relieving you of the inconvenience carrying…

Misc. link-lovin', and an appeal

A bit busy today, so I'll direct you elsewhere for some good reading. First, afarensis is thinking about re-naming his blog Aetiology Jr. after writing another post on bacterial meta-genomics in the sea; Mike discusses the Republican War on Epidemiology; John has more about the candiru I mentioned here, and Joseph revisits probiotics. Second, as mentioned, an appeal. Some of you who are Panda's Thumb readers may remember this post from November, mentioning the death of Allan Glenn (aka "WinAce" from Wonderful World of WinAce). If you've not seen that site before, check it out--it's…

Open Science Proposal

Cameron Neylon is putting together a proposal for a UK research council to fund a network with the general theme of 'e-science enabling open science'. The network would fund meetings and travel with the specific aim of driving the open (notebook) science agenda forward. Cameron explains this in a couple of blog posts that I urge you to read: E-science for open science - an EPSRC research network proposal, Follow on to network proposal and The research network proposal - update II. The proposal would be to support 2-3 meetings over three years, including travel costs, and provide funds for…

SEED Magazine Sponsors a Writing Contest

Do you have opinions about the future of science in the USA? What does that future look like? What should the role of science be in America and how is your vision different from today's reality? What should America do to preserve its role as a leader in scientific innovation? I know that many of you, dear readers, are good writers and that you think deeply about these and other topics, so now you have the chance to share your opinions with the editors and readers of SEED Magazine. Seed Magazine is pleased to announce its first annual science writing contest. This contest is now accepting…

Looking for a summer internship? Like environmental microbiology?

The 2009 Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates in Environmental Microbiology at UNLV is now accepting applications. This NSF supported program provides undergraduates with an opportunity to perform independent research under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Students will collaborate with faculty mentors in developing and carrying out hypothesis-based projects on microorganisms from diverse habitats such as hot springs, the deep terrestrial subsurface, hypersaline lakes, arid soils, and ephemeral water sources. Students may also choose to explore the mechanisms of magnetotaxis,…

Fornvännen's Summer Issue On-Line

A teenage boy carved this imagery, along with some lines of runic script copied from a book, onto a Viking Period whetstone he found in a Sigtuna spoil dump. Read it all on-line, Open Access! Lars Larsson presents some Late Palaeolithic antler artefacts from Scania. Olle Andersson makes and tests lots and lots of spearheads to investigate how the Iron Age ones found at Uppåkra got all bent and curled up. Helmer Gustavson announces the confession of the man who faked the Sigtuna runic whetstone, and looks at how scholars have dealt with this strange object in their writings. Timo Salminen…

More Surveillance Authority Overreach

Not only do they want to know every single phone call you've ever made, they also want to know every single webpage you've ever visited: The Justice Department is asking Internet companies to keep records on the Web-surfing activities of their customers to aid law enforcement, and may propose legislation to force them to do so. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales held a meeting in Washington last Friday where they offered a general proposal on record-keeping to a group of senior executives from Internet companies…

(OT) US Press - growing a spine?

This is not directly climate related, but it does pertain to the media and its abject failure to take its responsibilities towards democracy more seriously.  Via The Huffington Post, I read these strong words from an angry press towards a secretive Whitehouse Administration: Speaking on behalf of the White House Correspondents Association, I can say a broad cross section of our members from print, radio, online and TV have today expressed extreme frustration to me about having absolutely no access to the President of the United States this entire weekend. There is a very simple but important…

A workshop on transitioning back into academia

The ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change received an award from the National Science Foundation ADVANCE program to hold professional development workshops for Ph.D.-level women in industry, research labs, consulting, or national labs who are interested in transitioning to academic careers in STEM. The first workshop will be held October 18-20, 2009 in Seattle. A recent press release about the workshops is at: http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?id=49062 The workshop speakers will primarily be successful women faculty members who began their post-Ph.D. careers in industry, research labs…

Open Access Talk

Last week, before I headed to my current location in the land of Coca Cola and the Cartoon Network (the hotel is so nice here that when my friend stopped outside so that I could drop my bags off, the concierge asked him if he wanted would like some water while he waited), I attended a very inspirational talk on open access by Jonathan Eisen. The video is now available online (lecture 2.) Well worth watching as it was a good talk laying out the case for open access to research journals (which Eisen makes sure to delineate from open science. Say the word open science, I guess, and some…

warm waters = smaller fish

Image of yellowfin tuna via Wikimedia Commons. I love fishing. As with every fisherman, I have my fair share of "the one that got away" stories steeped in *mostly* truth. So, you can imagine my interest in reading research that shows fish appear to be shrinking in warming waters. Warm waters carry less oxygen, which makes it difficult for fish to breath...especially larger fish. Metabolism is also higher in fish living in warm waters. Higher metabolism means the fish need more oxygen. The gills of fish are responsible for extracting oxygen from water and when they reach their maximum…

Avoid racists wearing 'intellectual' garb

[via Times Online] Dr Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and author of "Avoid Boring People", says that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true". Did he really say that? Sheesh. Here's a sensible response to that from the same article Commenting on Dr Watson's current views about race, Steven Rose, a…

Would You Like To Stretch Your Donors Choose Dollars?

I know I would. So how do you do that? Well, Seed Media Group will help you by matching your donation. The first $15,000 in donations made through the Scienceblogs Challenge will be matched by Seed Media Group through its Science Literacy Grants. From the press release: Seed Media Group is launching the Seed Media Group Science Literacy Grants, a commitment valued at $100,000 through a combination of cash (matching contributions of funds raised on its online community site Scienceblogs) and in-kind advertising (in its print magazine Seed and on Scienceblogs). Today, science affects every…

Friday Sprog Blogging (bonus reader participation issue): circus detectives.

Yesterday, the Free-Ride family visited Circus World. It was a full day, and we're still working on digesting the experience, but there were some animal performers that made an impression, including dogs, a pony, a camel, and an elephant. This put us in mind of our visit with Bora last July to the Circus exhibit at the Lawrence Hall of Science. That exhibit featured specimens (simulated and odorless) of droppings from various animals that have been part of traveling circuses. And here's where the reader participation comes in. For each of the following dung samples, (1) what is the animal…

New Year's Eve gabfest.

If I were not involved in preparing food for Casa Free-Ride's New Year's Eve celebration (after which, I will be joining my family members to celebrate and/or test our endurance in the face of fatigue -- I'll let you know afterward which of those it ends up being), I would totally be writing you a nice ethics-y and/or science-y post. Since I'm not, and since you appear to have a moment to be reading this, let's make it a party. Use the comments to share: What you're doing (or have done) to ring in 2010 What you're eating and/or drinking as part of your celebration Your hopes, fears, goals,…

Friday Sprog Blogging: Santa and science.

Other kids may be convinced that Santa Claus uses some kind of Christmas magic to get the job done. Not the Free-Ride offspring. They have told me that obviously, Santa is putting his trust in science. (And also technology. But the holidays are no time for ugly spats about disciplinary boundaries.) From the younger Free-Ride offspring: Santa needed to do research, of course, to work out the details of flying reindeer. Apparently, much of this was online research. (Also, it looks like Santa uses a MacBook.) From the elder Free-Ride offspring, two items science relies on: The elastic in…

Art and Human Evolution at the Black Dog Cafe

Please join Abbi Allan and me at the black Dog Cafe next Tuesday. Art and Human Evolution - June 14, 2011 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Are humans the only creatures who create art? At what point in human evolution did artistic creations become separate from tools, become art for arts' sake? What in us is so driven to create? Dr. Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist who has done research in human evolution as well as eco-tourism in South Africa. In his own words: "I think of myself as a biologist who focuses on humans (past and present) and who uses archaeology as one of the tools of the trade…

Share This Online, 334 Ways!

Enthralled by the power of online social networking and search engines to advance my research projects and feed my insatiable appetite for information, I was under the impression that things were more or less under control. I was wrong. It began innocently, with tentative explorations into Twitter feeds and Facebook pages from professional organizations, then expanded into LinkedIn. Whenever I find a new article of interest to my friends and colleagues, my instinct is to share with them, in the hope that they will learn from it and possibly use it in their work. As a scientist doing…

Dot-Mac Security Issue

Warning to Mac Users: Security Flaw with .Mac: "The de facto online connectivity software sold along with many Apple computers, .Mac, has a Web interface through which users can check their 'iDisk' while away from their own computer. However, there is no Log-Out button in this Web interface, so most users just close the browser and walk away... not realizing that their iDisk has been cached by the browser and that anyone who wants to can open up the browser, go back to the link in History, and get into their iDisk completely logged in. From here, files can be downloaded and/or deleted. This…

And Sometimes You Luck Out

From Science Online... In April 2006, Maya Tolstoy, a geophysicist at Columbia University, received some good news and some bad news during a research expedition at sea. The submarine volcano that she and her colleague Felix Waldhauser had been monitoring for years had recently erupted. This was exciting, because only a handful of other deep-sea eruptions have been detected (1), and it was the first time ocean-bottom seismometers were in place during such an event. However, two-thirds of the instruments were stuck in the new lava on the sea floor (see the figure). Would the remaining third…