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Washington State and GOP Vote Counting Fraud?

I've been getting a lot of mail from people asking for my take on the news about the Washington GOP primary. Most have wanted me to debunk rumours about vote fixing there, the way that I tried to debunk the rumours about the Democratic votes back in New Hampshire. Well, sorry to disappoint those of you who were hoping for a nice debunking of the idea of fraud, but to me, something sure looks fishy. For those who haven't been following: over the weekend, Republicans had primaries and/or caucuus in three states. In the first two - Kansas and Louisiana - McCain got beaten, badly, by Mike…

The Statistics of the Surge

Over at Hullabaloo, Tristero is confused by Michael Gordon's claim that the surge has lowered the violence in Iraq: What I'd like to know, instead, is whether the conclusions he draws in the paragraph quoted are reasonable ones based upon the evidence he presents. Likewise, I'm aware of the "correlation does not necessarily equal causation" fallacy which Gordon flirts with. In this case, tho, I think it is very reasonable to assume that additional military power might "cause" decreased numbers of attacks. I just don't see them; the improvements, except as noted above, seem to be mostly…

Evo-devo on NOVA

Don't miss it! Tonight at 8pmET/7pm Central, NOVA is showing What Darwin Never Knew, a documentary about evo-devo. I shall be glued to my TV tonight! I just started watching it. So far, it's a nice little history of Darwin and his ideas; Sean Carroll is a good person to have talking up the story. It's nothing new yet, and nothing about evo-devo so far — I'm waiting impatiently for it. Twenty minutes in, we get a little embryology: limb rudiments in snake embryos, tooth rudiments in whale embryos, and branchial arches in human embryos. These are shown as uncompromising evidence of limbed,…

Evolution Produces Better Antenna; Casey Luskin Very Upset

It's always amusing to wander over to the Discovery Institute's blogs, and see what kind of nonsense they're spouting today. So, today, as I'm feeling like steamed crap, I took a wander over. And what did I find? High grade, low-content rubbish from my old buddy, Casey Luskin. Luskin is, supposedly, a lawyer. He's not a scientist or a mathematician by any stretch of the imagination. There's nothing wrong with that in the abstract; the amount of time we have to learn during our lives is finite, and no one can possible know everything. For example, I don't know diddly-crap about law, American…

DES Encryption Part 1: Encrypting the Blocks

As promised, now we're going to look at the first major block cipher: the DES. DES stands for "data encryption standard"; DES was the first encryption system standardized by the US government for official use. It's an excellent example of a strong encryption system; to this day, while there are several theoretical attacks, there's no feasible attack on a single DES-encrypted message that's better than brute force. The main problem with DES is the shortness of its key: only 56 bits, which makes it downright practical to implement brute-force attacks against it using today's hardware. DES…

Selection, drift, disease and complexity, all rolled into one....

One of the great things about evolutionary genetics is that it is such a diverse field in terms of the cognitive toolkit which one must access as a matter of course. Since R. A. Fisher's The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (along with the contemporaneous work of Sewall Wright and J. B. S. Haldane) we've been habituated toward thinking of evolutionary processes on an abstract level which might allow us to make general deductive inferences from first principles. Genetic drift, selection, migration, etc., are parameters which are used to construct models that allow us to generate…

Accelerated adaptive human evolution news

This google news query should get you to popular press articles. I'll start putting links to blogs when more come in. Blogs: One of the lead authors, John Hawks, promises lots of commentary this week. Greg Laden has some questions regarding the demographic assumptions. Steve Sailer with a round-up and Linda Seebach offers the bigger picture. p-ter offers some pointed criticisms. John Hawks does some rapid response. Eric Wang and Henry Harpending offer specific comments. John Hawks' summary for lay people (long). Shoshin goes over the theory too. Popgen Ramblings says simulation is…

Birdbooker Report 110

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

Moving Overseas, Part 6

Today was a breakthrough because I view everything very differently than I did yesterday or three days ago, and because I made significant progress towards my goal. In fact, I made so much progress today that I even decided upon a tentative target departure week that I am working towards (I've even narrowed my departure down to three days within that week). But more about that later; let me tell you what I've managed to accomplish today. First, I called my USFWS agent, Katherine, and I learned that I have my CITES permit (she gave me the CITES permit number, which I need to begin working…

An Open Letter to the World on the Governmental Destruction of the Environment in Canada

I've been posting quite a bit recently on the disastrous record of the current Conservative government here in Canada, especially in regards to how they treat information, science and the environment. Sadly, I have way too many posts in the works along these lines. The other day a post I saw on the Deciphering Science blog that really blew me away. It perfectly captures every important detail about the Harper government and their total contempt for science and disregard for the environment. And with the author's kind permission I'm reposting it here, from May 18, 2012: An Open Letter to the…

Elsevier's new sharing policy: A step in the wrong direction

Elsevier has released a new scholarly article sharing policy which is definitely more disappointing than really any cause for cheer. Basically the crux is that the only place that authors are allowed to have the final publication version of an article in a non-open access Elsevier publication is on the Elsevier website itself. Of course, after any embargo period has elapse or if the author has paid an author processing charge and published in a hybrid or gold open access journal, they are allowed to post the article on their own webpage or institutional repository. During the time that the…

Books I'd Like to Read: Making the world a better place

It's been quite a long while since I've done a "books I'd like to read" post, that's for sure. This fall seems to be have a particularly exciting list of books so I thought I'd pull some of them together (as well as some older books) here for all our enjoyment. These are all books I don't own yet, so they are not part of my towering to-read list. Yet. I'm on sabbatical this academic year so I am trying to read and review books more diligently, aiming for about one per week. Maybe some of these will appear reviewed on the blog in the not too distant future. Enjoy!   WTF, Evolution?!: A…

The Most Important Water Stories in 2015

By Peter Gleick, Brett Walton, J. Carl Ganter Water was a Top Risk on the 2015 Global Agenda In early 2015, participants at the World Economic Forum, a who’s who of the political and business elite, ranked water crises as the top global risk. Water was also a key factor in the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a blueprint for international development over the next 15 years. Ensuring safe drinking water and sanitation for all by 2030 is one of six water goals for the SDGs. In December at the UN climate change conference in Paris,…

The California Drought: Almonds and the Bigger Picture

[As part of the Pacific Institute’s ongoing efforts to evaluate the impacts of the California drought and offer strategies, technologies, and policies to reduce those impacts, we are presenting a series of short assessments on “Understanding the Numbers.” This piece is the part of that series.] California is a wonderful place to grow food. The climate is highly favorable; soils are some of the best in the world, it is located well to serve global distribution markets with major ports and other transportation infrastructure; and normally, some regions are relatively well-watered. Normally. In…

When it comes to immunity, plants and animals are much alike

The last common ancestor of plants and animals may have lived 1 billion years ago. Plants and animals have occasionally exchanged genes, but for the most part, have countered selective pressures independently. Microbes (bacteria, eukaryotes, and viruses) were omnipresent threats, influencing the direction of multi-cellular evolution. Receptors that detect molecular signatures of infectious organisms mediate awareness of non-self, and are integral to host defense in plants and animals alike. The discoveries leading to identification of these receptors and their ligands followed a similar…

To prep or not to prep? That is not the question.

A long story in The York Dispatch discusses personal preparation for a pandemic. Taking personal responsibility is a good thing, although it means different things to different people. I have reserved my energy for community activities. I don't have a stash of Tamiflu or water or canned goods, despite the fact we have written (often) here about the possibilities of supply chain and infrastructure. With the understanding I am not against personal prepping, I would still like to urge both some caution and perspective. Here's some of the news story that attracted my attention, with some of my…

Trouble at another NIH institute

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is the only one of the NIH institutes whose mission clearly has public health at its core. At least it was the only one. Now there are none, thanks to the narrow vision and autocratic management of its Bush appointed Director, Dr. David Schwartz. In the two years he has been at the helm we have seen morale plummet, emphasis change from public health and toward clinical medicine and a variety of scandals plague what was once the proudest and most public spirited member of the NIH family. Schwartz, like other Bush appointees, has a…

Clock Tutorial #4: On Methodology

I wrote this post back on January 23, 2005. It explains how clock biologists think and how they design their experiments: So, are you ready to do chronobiological research? If so, here are some of the tips - the thought process that goes into starting one's research in chronobiology. First, you need to pick a question. Are you interested in doing science out of sheer curiosity to discover stuff that nobody knew before (a very noble, but hard-to-fund pursuit)? Or would you prefer your work to be applicable to human medicine or health policy, veterinary medicine, conservation biology, or…

ClockTutorial #1 - What Is Chronobiology

This is the first in a series of posts from Circadiana designed as ClockTutorials, covering the basics of the field of Chronobiology. It was first written on January 12, 2005: There are traditionally three approaches to research and teaching of physiology: biochemical, energetic, and homeostatic. The three are by no means exclusive and all good physiologists will include all three in their work and teaching, but each with a different emphasis. Biochemical approach is typical of human/medical physiology. Physiological mechanisms are described at lower and lower levels, until the molecules…

Afghanistan: Out Now

If the UK invaded and occupied Massachusetts because the IRA raised money and housed some of its members in South Boston I think most people would say that was not just a mistake but wrong. Assuming for the moment that the GOP was in charge and had no interest in defending the state, I can predict with some confidence that Massachusetts's citizens would fight back (as they did once before) and make it very costly for the British to stay. Logistically how could the British leave without losing face and suffering a crushing geopolitical defeat? The answer is simple: use boats (and now) planes.…

Ferreting out how swine flu crowds out seasonal flu

Yesterday one of the questions we asked was whether swine H1N1 would replace seasonal viruses this season. In previous pandemics one subtype completely replaced its seasonal predecessor: in 1957 H2N2 replaced the H1N1 that had been coming back annually at least since 1918; only 11 years later, in 1968, a pandemic with H3N2 replaced the H2N2. H2N2 is no longer circulating but in 1977 an H1N1 returned and has been co-circulating with H3N2 since then. This was a new situation. We could ask why this hadn't happened before with H2N2 and H1N1 or H2N2 and H3N2 or all three together; or we could ask…

Transmission, pathogenicity, virulence and vaccines, I.

CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recently rolled out their 2009 Recommendations. It's for seasonal flu, for which a vaccine exists, not for swine flu, for which there is (as yet) no vaccine. There is a lot to say on the subject of vaccines (see what we've said over the years under the vaccine category), but this seems like a good time to review some basic terminology, including what is meant by vaccine efficacy or effectiveness and how it is measured or estimated. There's a lot to say, so we'll split this into two posts, and in this one we'll go over some terms and…

Will Big Coal get its ash kicked?

One tradition of News Years Day in the US is the college football bowl game. When I was young I always watched the Rose Bowl (my state university was in the Big Ten league), but I have gotten away from it and don't expect to be glued to the TV today. But there will still be something glued to the football field, at least metaphorically: the dirty leavings of "Clean Coal." An American college football field is 120 yards long and 53.34 yards wide. That's 6400 square yards. Last week a retention pond containing coal ash from a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal fired power plant let loose 5.4…

More about the adapting bird flu viruses

Stories on the wires this weekend highlight a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggesting that some bird flu viruses are adapting to the human respiratory tract, thought to be a prelude to increased transmissibility and possibly ushering in a pandemic of influenza in humans. We need to sort out a number of things here, beginning with the idea that "avian influenza viruses" are mutating in a way woy to make humans more vulnerable. Let's take it apart. First, influenza. Influenza can either be a syndrome (a package of clinical symptoms and signs…

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Blake Stacey

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked my Scibling, Blake Stacey from the Science After Sunclipse blog to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? For example, what is your Real Life job? Nominally, I do "complex systems modeling and analysis", but the projects I work on are…

(Final) Day 4 of flu virus sharing summit: meeting ends in qualified success

Yesterday was the fourth and final day of the important Geneva summit on sharing flu virus isolates. Like premature news of Mark Twain's death, the Reuters report the meeting had failed was exaggerated. On the contrary, the summit appeared to have moved things forward. We have the latest, below. You can find previous happenings and background here, here, here and here. Status mid-day, Day 4 (3:26 pm Geneva time, November 23), as reported by Ed Hammond: Some Things That Happened in the Night Session of Day 3 and Morning Session of Day 4 These sessions were the final negotiations before…

An anti-open access extremist claims he only opposes open access extremism. Let's look at the record.

In an Open Letter to the American Chemical Society my Scibling Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science, an ACS member, asked several pointed questions about how the Society was running its publications. One of the flagship publications is Chemical & Engineering News, whose editor in chief, Rudy Baum responded to her via email and she posted it, without comment, on her blog. That is right and proper. But I am under no constraint, so I will comment. If I were polite, I'd say Baum's response was disingenuous. But I'm not so polite, so I'll just say I don't believe him.…

ConvergeSouth05 - Local Online Alt Media

I see this session as the seed for this year's theme of ConvergeSouth. Continuing the ConvergeSouth coverage... Saturday early afternoon: Exposing a little organizational glitch - Roch Smith's session moved to a different room (Hoder was absent), yet there was no sign posted at the old venue, nor an announcement. So, by the time I and a few others figured it all out, we came in late and missed the opening spiel. I hope I did not miss too much. At the beginning, Roch asked people why they blog. Nobody said therapy, although I feel it may be the real reason why I blog and why, I suspect, many…

What you don’t know could hurt you: Petition asks EPA to limit duration of chemical trade secret claims

It may come as a surprise to those not familiar with the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – the primary law that regulates chemicals used in the US that go into products other than cosmetics, drugs and pesticides – to learn that about 15,000 chemicals on the TSCA inventory have their identities claimed as trade secrets. According to an analysis included in the petition filed with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on August 21st by Earthjustice and five other non-profits, approximately 62.5 percent of the 24,000 chemicals added to the TSCA inventory since 1982 cannot be “…

A Practical Playbook to help primary care and public health team up

Brian Castrucci, who’s worked in city and state health departments and is now Chief Program and Strategy Director at the de Beaumont Foundation, likes to ask people two questions: Do you know who your primary care provider is? And, Do you know who’s head of your local public health department? The fact that many people can answer the first question but not the second, he says, demonstrates why public health needs to partner with health care. “US medical providers are giving people some of the best medical care in the world, but if they’re returning patients to communities and environments…

The new year brings movement on minimum wage, new hope for federal action

The day I spoke with Idaho minimum wage activist Anne Nesse, it was quite cold in her hometown of Coeur d'Alene — 29 degrees, to be exact. The harsh winters came up more than once during our conversation about low wages in the northwestern state. “We’re at the bottom,” Nesse said. “We have the lowest wages in the whole nation and we’re cold up here.” Staying warm should hardly be a luxury in a state notorious for its cold winters, but keeping up with basic necessities can be a challenge for Idaho’s working families. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Idaho leads the nation in the…

Economists’ flawed argument on OSHA’s “flawed” analysis of proposed rule to protect silica-exposed workers

Two economists, funded by right-wing, university-housed think tanks, recently submitted their views on OSHA's proposed rule to protect silica-exposed workers. Michael L. Marlow with George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, and Susan Dudley of George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center, describe OSHA's proposal as flawed, sloppy, weak and unsubstantiated. Funny, those are some of the terms I used to describe their analyses. Marlow offers a litany of cockamamie reasons that OSHA should scrap its proposed rule. He says, for example, that OSHA needs to consider a wider set of…

Call for coal companies to ditch law firm Jackson & Kelly

My jaw continues to drop when I think about the scathing reports this month from the Center for Public Integrity about the law firm Jackson Kelly and their scheming with clients to screw coal miners out of black lung benefits. In “Coal industry's go-to law firm withheld evidence of black lung, at expense of sick miners,” Chris Hamby explains the deceitful and devious manner in which Jackson Kelly attorneys intentionally withheld medical reports that validate diagnoses of serious respiratory disease in coal miners. The irony---the disgusting irony---is how coal operators insist that their…

Going Forward: On the Subject of the Previous Post

It is tempting to despair of all action. And sometimes those who despair are right. But sometimes they aren't. And this, I think is an important and central point for everyone who hits those moments when they simply don't believe society will self-correct in any measure from its impending ecological disaster. I should be clear - I don't believe it will self-correct in every measure, or even as much as I wish desperately it would. But I also do not believe that what one does to mitigate suffering, soften impacts, make life livable or plan for a better outcome is wasted. I'd tell you why…

Struggling for Health, Labor and Justice: Los Mineros of Cananea, Mexico

New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. By Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson We write to you as teachers and researchers concerned about the environmental and occupational health hazards impacting communities living and working in mining sites across North America and the world. Through our project, "No Borders: Communities Living and Working with Asarco," we have spent the last 5 years looking at those affected by and affecting the work of the Asarco corporation, one of the oldest and largest mining, smelting and…

Antibiotics in Meat Do Lead to MRSA in Humans

I was extremely disturbed to see in the NYT's letters a veterinarian's defense of the practice of overuse of antibiotics in animals that suggested transmission of resistant organisms does not occur. Nonsense! It is abundantly clear that antibiotic use in animals results in resistant strains that then colonize humans. They are being recognized as the newest reservoir for strains of MRSA. Unlike the GMO nonsense, this is a clear public health issue with a plausible (and demonstrated) mechanism of transmitted risk to humans. The author of the letter, Charles Hofacre, says two, wildly…

Why am I here? To bother you, of course

When I use the word "scientist", I mean something pretty specific---someone actually doing experiments and publishing the results. Some physicians are scientists. In fact, the MSTP that Mark H is a part of exists specifically to train doctors to do research and bring the results to the bedside. Most doctors aren't scientists, by my definition. But good doctors these days have to be able to read and interpret scientific literature if the wish to practice science-based medicine. I think of ScienceBlogs as a community of scientists communicating with the lay-public and other scientists. I'…

Selectivity from the Family Research Council

Some might wonder why I include some right-wing "family" organizations on the list of denialists. It's simple. In their efforts to oppose all forms of contraception, they routinely lie about the science behind the efficacy of condoms for STD-prevention (just like HIV/AIDS denialists), the efficacy of contraception, as well as social effects of contraception like the falsehood that contraceptive availability leads to promiscuity and higher STD transmission. Take for instance, the Family Research Council on emergency contraception. (republished from denialism.com - this was too good an example…

Campylobacter jejuni-Associated Guillain-Barré Syndrome: It's No Picnic

Student guest post by D.F. Johnston As the year marches forward, ever closer to that summer sun we missed so much during dreary winter days, we also get closer to the traditional summer picnics and barbecues. Sometimes, in our hurry to enjoy quality time with friends and family, we get distracted from our usual practices for proper food handling. We might try to get little Billy his hamburger before he has time for a full-fledged temper tantrum, so we hurry it along, figuring a tiny bit of pink in the middle won't be the end of the world. Or we might realize that we're short a couple of…

The ABCs (and DEGs) of hepatitis viruses

It's just not been Vegas' week. First a ricin-laced hotel room, then a clinic-associated outbreak of hepatitis C virus (and potentially hepatitis B and HIV) that could become enormous. Meanwhile, an outbreak of hepatitis E is raging in Uganda. So what are these virues, and how in the world could a medical catastrophe of this magnitude happen in the U.S.? More after the jump... The group of hepatitis viruses (A, B, C, D, E, and G) are related in name only. They've all been either associated with or found to cause hepatitis--inflammation of the liver. This can be acute inflammation (short…

Malaria: the cure for AIDS?

Over at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles, the good doc brings up another instance of quackery from an unexpected source: Dr. Henry Heimlich, originator of the Heimlich maneuver for choking. While that procedure has clearly saved many lives, Dr. Heimlich doesn't stop there--he advocates using his maneuver for drowning victims and asthmatics, neither of which have been scientifically proven (and indeed, major medical associations have spoken out against them). Dr. Charles also reveals that Heimlich also carries out other questionable research, including deliberately infecting HIV+…

Obnoxious Answers to Obnoxious Questions

A few of my recent posts here appear to have struck some nerves, and I've been getting lots of annoying email containing the same questions, over and over again. So rather than reply individually, I'm going to answer them here in the hope that either (a) people will see the answers before send the question to me, and therefore not bother me; or (b) conclude that I'm an obnoxious asshole who isn't worth the trouble of writining to, and therefore not bother me. I suspect that (b) is more likely than (a), but hey, whatever works. Answers beneath the fold. ------------ **Question**: *Why are you…

Another effort to help rid a beach of plastic waste

Last weekend I did the beach clean-up thing again, and again I went along with my son, my mum (Sandra), and about 40 other people. There's always something new to say about the problem of litter and plastic pollution: once again, I thought I'd pen some random musings on the experience, and on the problem of litter and pollution in general. There's every reason to be depressed about the fact that, thanks to our species, many environments and ecosystems are royally screwed, but there's hope in the fact that more and more people are at least aware of the situation, and more and more are acting…

Clock Tutorial #4: On Methodology

I wrote this post back on January 23, 2005. It explains how clock biologists think and how they design their experiments: So, are you ready to do chronobiological research? If so, here are some of the tips - the thought process that goes into starting one's research in chronobiology. First, you need to pick a question. Are you interested in doing science out of sheer curiosity to discover stuff that nobody knew before (a very noble, but hard-to-fund pursuit)? Or would you prefer your work to be applicable to human medicine or health policy, veterinary medicine, conservation biology, or…

ClockTutorial #1 - What Is Chronobiology

This is the first in a series of posts from Circadiana designed as ClockTutorials, covering the basics of the field of Chronobiology. It was first written on January 12, 2005: There are traditionally three approaches to research and teaching of physiology: biochemical, energetic, and homeostatic. The three are by no means exclusive and all good physiologists will include all three in their work and teaching, but each with a different emphasis. Biochemical approach is typical of human/medical physiology. Physiological mechanisms are described at lower and lower levels, until the molecules…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

Hmm, I usually do this on Fridays, but I was busy. So here is a Saturday sampler of papers from all seven PLoS journals published last week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Melanopsin as a Sleep Modulator: Circadian Gating of the Direct Effects of Light on Sleep and Altered Sleep Homeostasis in Opn4â/â Mice: Light affects sleep in two ways: indirectly through…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Harmonics of Circadian Gene Transcription in Mammals: Circadian rhythms confer adaptive advantages by allowing organisms to anticipate daily changes in their environment. Over the last few years, many groups have used microarray technology to systematically identify genes under circadian…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Ecological Niche of the 2003 West Nile Virus Epidemic in the Northern Great Plains of the United States: The incidence of West Nile virus (WNv) has remained high in the northern Great Plains compared to the rest of…

Building an argument on emotional biases happens, but that doesn't make it true

Gene Roddenberry has often pissed me off. He didn't invent the stereotype, but he certainly crystallized it in popular culture with his Star Trek character, Mr Spock. What is the end result of intelligence and education? Why, an emotionless robot who assesses impossible probabilities instantaneously in his head and denies love and friendship. It's a caricature I run into all the time — I've lost count of the number of emails I've received informing me that True Scientists™ do not get angry about anything, and therefore everything I say is invalid. It's annoying, but mainly what it tells me is…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Patterns of Positive Selection in Six Mammalian Genomes: Populations evolve as mutations arise in individual organisms and, through hereditary transmission, gradually become "fixed" (shared by all individuals) in the population. Many mutations have essentially no…