Search Content

Displaying results 54451 - 54500 of 87947

Interplanetary collision called off

An asteroid heading for Mars is going to miss the angry red planet. Too bad, that would have been cool. But there is a very cool graphic that results from the science surrounding this non event. This is a moving GIF showing the evolution over time of the uncertainty region for the collision. You can see where mars was initially in the uncertainty region, and over time, as the uncertainty region became smaller and smaller, the planet moved first to the edge then entirely out of the region. Much like Barack Obama and the New Hampshire Primary. Oh well, maybe next time. Mars and Barack.…

The cat's out of the bag...

The recent release of the NAS tome on evolution, and how evolution is good and creationist is bad, has been picked up by the religious community. It was only a matter of time before they noticed. From the Ecumenical News International: The US scientific community has begun 2008 with a strong offensive on evolution in the educational system, which often evokes the ire of advocates of creationism, a belief that humanity, life and the universe were created in their original form by a deity. [source] There isn't much else. They don't seem to have much to say yet, other than the idea that…

New NGS Dino Project

National Geographic has a new project called Dino Death Trap. This is a movie due to be released on December 9th, straring the Junggar Basin of western China known as "The Pit of Death" is found. Don't miss it. In the mean time, you can go here and there is a live web cam in Central Park showing people walking by. You click on a button and it makes a dinosaur roar from the bushes near the people, and they piss in their pants and run away because they are scared of the dinosaur. Really, not kidding. Go do it now before the cops find out and remove it.

Planning on ever having an illness?

"Too bad for you..." says President George Bush. US President George W. Bush on Tuesday (Nov 13) vetoed a spending bill that aimed to boost federal funding for the National Institutes of Health. The bill, which was passed by Congress last week, sought to increase NIH funding by about $1 billion from a 2007 budget of about $29 billion to a 2008 budget of about $30 billion. In a statement released by the White House after Bush vetoed the bill, the president decried the Democrat-led Congress for engaging in what he called a "spending spree," and said that the legislative majority was "acting…

"The Creation Museum" Jessie and Casey Clausen on Atheists Talk #101, January 30, 2011

Creationism may seem like a joke to most atheists. After all, how could the univerese and everything in it be only 6000 years old, when the light from galaxies 10 billian light years away takes (you guessed it) 10 billion years to get here?That was the question I had initially asked when I heard that there are serious people who insist that the Biblical story of creation should be taken literally in all ways. I was using Man's Reason on which to base my beliefs that the universe is old. I wasn't going to the "true source" of all knowledge to get the straight dope on Creation. Details

The US House has just voted to repeal the health care reform law

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 245-189 to repeal President Obama's health care law. I'm sure I'm speaking to the converted here, but if you happen to live in a US Congressional district with one of those representatives who voted to repeal this law, I'd like to pass on one whopping big "Fuck You" for not doing enough in the last election. And, if you don't like that, feel free to send me one as well, because I live in one of those districts. My representative is a virtual clone of Michel Bachmann but without the big hair. And he will be hearing from me. Details.

Tucson Massacre Updates

A few new bits of information mainly from CNN: Giffords is able to respond to "simple commands" which causes "cautious optimism" among the Neurosurgeons. Giffords is the only person remaining of the wounded to remain in critical condition. Three are in serious condition, six fair, one released. The "Suspected Suspect of Suspicion" ... the second person of interest ... has been identified and ruled out. He was just some guy. Conspiracy theories in three ... two ... one .... Official charges have been made against Loughner. PDF Papers or an envelopewith the words "I planned ahead," "My…

The Goats are Everywhere. Burning.

Denialism and Customer Service What happens when it is your job to help people back out of mistakes, but you are an unrepentant skeptic and most of those people you are trying to help are ... not? ... I want to yell at the naturopath who tells me that vaccination is dangerous and that she is selling cures that help people avoid sickness. I want to tell them to stop it, to wake up and prepare for a new economy rather than allow themselves to lose out by hanging on to an old economy..... Goats on Fire From now on, we're calling it "Goats on Fire." Or, for short, GOF!!!

God: flat broke

God's money is no good. Kevin Russell found out it's not easy trying to cash a check from God. The 21-year-old man was arrested Monday after he tried to cash a check for $50,000 at the Chase Bank in Hobart that was signed "King Savior, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Servant," Hobart police Detective Jeff White said. I blame the televangelists. They're skilled at cleaning out the savings of old folks, and while they were vacuuming up social security checks, they probably siphoned off every penny He had. Don't worry about Him, though -- he's still got a lot of equity in gilt furniture and old…

Mars Climate Change Patterns Seen in Ice Caps

You may know that much of the climate change on earth over the last two million years-the coming and going of ice ages-is caused by the "orbital geometry" of the planet. The amount of planetary tilt and the time of year the tilt occurs change over time. When the Northern Hemisphere is less tilted towards the sun on June 21st, and at the same time the Earth is as far from the sun in its elliptical orbit as it ever gets, ice age conditions prevail. This makes ice ages on Earth pretty regular, cyclic, events.... ... Read the rest of this amazing blog post here!!!!

U Chicago Prof Dies of Plague?

An American scientist studying the origins of Black Death has died from an infection linked to the disease. Professor Malcolm Casadaban was killed by a strain of the bacteria responsible for millions of deaths over the centuries, officials at the University of Chicago revealed. An autopsy on the 60-year-old professor showed no obvious cause of death, except for the presence in his blood of the bacteria Yersinia pestis. This strain of the plague is not thought to be fatal. It has actually been used as a vaccine. Obviously, there may have been complications of some kind. There is no known…

Norman Borlaug has died

Norman Borlaug, of the University of Minnesota, DuPont and the Rockefeller Foundation has died in Texas at the age of 95. You may well owe your life to Borlaug. Prof Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for agricultural innovation and the development of high-yield crops. The Green Revolution helped world food production more than double between 1960 and 1990 with Asia, Africa and Latin America in particular benefiting. The Nobel Institute said he had helped save hundreds of millions of lives. Prof Borlaug died late on Saturday evening at his home in Dallas from complications with…

Babies are getting smaller

Not the actual babies, but the birth weight of the new ones. Just a snippet; I've not looked into this yet. But given that human size goes up and down over secular time, this probably would mean (if it means anything at all) that we've peaked out with whatever causes that cycle: Birthweights in the US are falling but no one knows why, according to a study of 36.8 million infants born between 1990 and 2005. A 52-gram drop in the weight of full-term singletons - from an average of 3.441 to 3.389 kilograms - has left Emily Oken's team at Harvard Medical School scratching their heads. source

Reich gets reamed

My response to this odious essay by Dale Reich was, well, terse. He wrote a very silly editorial in which he claimed to have doffed the mantle of his faith to see what the life of an atheist was like, and found it empty and hateful…and his conclusion was to insist that we atheists need to start living up to our philosophy and be mean and brutal and cruel. The heartening thing is that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where it was published, now has an editorial in reply and a set of letters from readers that unanimously condemn Reich's ignorance. It's good to see reason winning a popularity…

The 90th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: Coming at you from Down Under

Better late than never (for me to announce it, I mean), the 90th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has descended upon the blogosphere from Down Under, this time brought to you by prominent Australian skeptic and battler against woo, a guy who's even harsher on antivaccinationists than I am, Peter Bowditch. Go forth and enjoy! Next up on July 17 is Sorting Out Science. Start getting your best skeptical writing together and join us back here in two weeks for a little summer skepticism. Guidelines for submissions and the schedule can be found here, and if you want to host one of these check out…

The real appeal to ancient wisdom

As many who take an interest in this subject know, one of the most common arguments that advocates of various medical woo often make is the appeal to ancient wisdom. They seem to think that if a treatment is old (homeopathy, acupuncture, various "energy healing" methods), there must be something to it because otherwise it wouldn't have persisted. (Never mind that belief in ghosts and evil spirits, for example, has persisted for many thousands of years.) Here is an explicit description of just what some of this "ancient medical wisdom" is, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, namely…

Comment snafu resolved

If you've been having trouble commenting, you're not alone—the comment form quit working for me a couple days ago. I wrote in to Erin, and from where I'm sitting, the problem has been fixed. If you're not getting comment-form love, email me at dorothea.salo at gmail and I'll see what I can do. Speaking of comments: I am despotic about them, I'm afraid. If I suspect you're a spammer, or if I'm sure you're a timewaster, your comment will silently disappear. I don't expect to have to pull the trigger often (even spam levels around here have been muted), but a warning is only fair.

The Birds and the Bees

PHOTO CREDIT: M. Walters, University of Canterbury Like bees, birds are important plant pollinators. Scientists have provided evidence that declining bird populations have negatively impacted plant reproduction. They found that on islands where bird populations have dwindled, the density of Rhabdothamnus solandri shrubs (shown above from figure 1 of the article) have also declined. This was attributed to reduced pollination and seed production. The full article appears in Science Magazine. This decline in both the birds and the bees could be devastating for plants around the world.…

I agree with Lott

By popular request I'm going to comment on Lott's LA Times oped on the assault weapons ban. Basically, I agree with Lott here. As I noted earlier the ban doesn't make sense. However, Chris Mooney has a point when he writes: Providing balance is one thing, and it's something op-ed pages should strive for. But if op-ed editors can't get the other side from a credible expert---which Lott emphatically isn't---they shouldn't just publish anybody for the sake of having different perspectives represented. It's not as if the LA Times couldn't have found someone…

Flu season continues its early jump

Last spring, when the flu season is usually winding down, we had a "second flu season" brought to us by the novel H1N1 ("swine") flu. After school let out for the summer, the numbers declined, but not to the usual low summer rate. Now, as fall begins, flu is picking up again---fast. Pandemic swine flu is hitting our naive population fiercely. From the CDC Red is this year This graph clearly illustrates the high baseline during what would normally not be flu season, and the early peak which we are (hopefully) approaching. This correlates with my own clinical experience. It's gonna be a…

DonorsChoose--you did it again!

You guys are fantastic. You've fully funded another project. This one gets kids in a tough neighborhood focused on the outdoors in a positive way, exploring their environment. What a great project. I feel proud to have you as readers, and I'm even more proud I married a teacher. Teachers are working their butts off to get the basic needs of their students funded, and even little donations from others help them get there. These students are lucky to have teachers who care enough to go the extra million miles. Addendum Wow! You guys just finished funding another project, this one for…

Donors Choose---nice work, folks!

One of the projects on our list reached it's "fully funded" status! Now, donors from other challenges pretty much kicked our asses, but one of our readers helped, and we can be proud. But there are more projects to go, all of which help out Michigan classrooms that are desperate. I'm not going to pretend that we'll get all nine remaining projects on my list fully funded, but we can at least make a significant dent. Even small donations help, and they are, of course, tax deductible. If you can't give, spreading the word to others via twitter, email, and facebook is just as good---really.

What's this, then? HuffPo with disclaimers?

Remember the Quack Miranda Warning? You know, the magic phrase that makes all the crappy and dangerous medical advice you're about to give OK? Well, look what HuffPo's doing: Author's note: This swine flu story on alternative and complementary medicine is not meant to replace anything you hear from you doctor, the WHO or the CDC, but is meant to show you some natural ways to enhance your overall wellness in addition to any medication you may need either to prevent or treat the flu. Heh. Shit wrapped in gold foil smells just the same as shit in a brown bag tied with twine.

Indoctrination?

You know, people don't believe me when I say I don't give my kids weekly or daily instruction about atheism, but it's true: my daughter asked for my videos of "The Root of All Evil?" and "The God Who Wasn't There" for the first time the other day, and I let her watch them. She has posted her reaction. The sure sign that I didn't tell her what to think is that she likes the idea of the Brights movement, which I've curled up my lip at from the beginning. She also thinks Dawkins could have been a bit tougher. Uh-oh—if you think I'm ornery, wait until the next generation takes over.

Shark Jumps out of Tank into Pool at Atlantis Bahamas

From ABC4.com: A shark managed to jump out of its aquarium and onto a water slide at a hotel swimming pool used by guests. No one was in the pool at the time. The female reef shark leapt over the one foot high barrier and slid down the slide known as the Leap of Faith at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. Slide goes in the water? You go in the water. Shark's in the water. Sadly the pool chlorine and the shark didn't mix and the reef shark died shortly thereafter... but I can only hope that when it is my time to go, it is via a waterslide.

Eel Garden

The Crevices at 708 meters (2,323 feet) of a hydrothermal vent site are occupied by thriving aggregations of cutthroat (synaphobranchid) eels. These eels, which have now been identified as Dysommina rugosa, are known from trawl samples in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but have never before been studied in their natural habitat. The only common metazoan (multicellular) animals occupying these low-temperature hydrothermal vents, preliminary work indicates that they use the vent only as a place to live. They seem to feed not on chemosynthetic bacteria, but on crustaceans that pass by…

Incredible robot harvests timber underwater

Speaking of incredible deep-working freshwater robots (Texas rocks), LA Times Science section has a great story on the Canadian underwater lumberjacks at Triton Logging. Inc. The enterprise has developed a remote-controlled chainsaw-wielding submarine called the Sawfish to harvest cedar, pine, spruce and Douglas fir from water 200 foot deep in freshwater reservoirs created by dam construction. Triton's founder claims 45,000 untapped submerged forests exist in the world, and he's developing a fleet of remote controlled submersible chainsaws to harvest them. The whole operation is apparently…

Friday Deep-Sea Picture (03/02/07)

From MBARI: When MBARI researchers explore the seafloor below 1,000 meters, the most common fishes they see are rattail fish such as this Coryphaenoides acrolepis, which was photographed in Monterey Canyon. Rattails are are very curious and will come to investigate any disturbance on or around the seafloor. Presumably this helps them find food in the darkness of the deep sea. Rattail fish are caught and sold under the more palatable name, "grenadier." However, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program recommends that consumers do not purchase or eat grenadier because the…

A Map From the Murky Depths of Hell

I like maps...a lot. I get excited about GIS and the monthly map insert in National Geographic. A great map awakens the explorer in me. So when I saw the new map from CSIRO, I was torn. The map is brilliant, maybe too brilliant. The map shows the locations of offshore minerals near Australia. Copper, gold, silver, tin, topaz, tungsten, coal, bauxite...and diamonds. Why the recent interest in mining by India, Australia, Canada, and others. Mineral prices are high. The news is that the metal in a penny and a nickel are worth more than $0.01 and $0.05 respectively. The release of this…

NIH Grants by Age

The graph is from Are there too many PhDs? at Mendeley Blog In the U.S., we are constantly hearing about how the country is falling behind in science. We need more scientists to fill all of those jobs we want to create. And the cure to that is to fund more PhD programs! Yet, when you ask graduate students and postdoctoral scholars what their individual experiences are, a science career is a very tough road with low pay and few career prospects. It's such a tough path that an entire PhD comic strip was born to alleviate the situation with laughter. Why then, is there such a disconnect? HT:…

Perils of shooting IMAX underwater

One of the best things about hot days in the summertime is you get to sit around watching movies all day. ScienCentral is offering exclusive footage and interviews from the upcoming IMAX 3D production "Under the Sea 3D" featuring cinematography's sweethearts Michelle and Howard Hall talking about what it's like to work in 50 feet of water with a 1200 lb. camera that shoots 3 minutes of film. Howard and Michelle Hall are to me what Jacques Cousteau is to the Natural Patriot. They improved on his tradition, but don't necessarily appear to be having quite as much fun, you know, with the wine…

Live-birth from 375 million years ago

A placoderm fossil called "mother fish" has been recovered from Gogo, an ancient coral reef site off the Kimberley coast of Northwest Australia. The fossil was recovered with embryo and umbilical cord still attached, providing evidence of live birth and sex with penetration in the Middle Paleozoic Era, 200 million years before it was ever thought possible. This remarkable finding shows that egg-laying and live-birth evolved together, rather than sequentially. The tail-first birthing process was probably similar to that of some species of sharks and rays living today, says the study,…

Epsilonproteobacteria Everywhere

"Epsilonproteobacteria, it turns out, are one of the predominant groups of extremophiles in marine systems. In one environmental DNA sample taken from a hydrothermal vent, Epsilonproteobacteria represented nearly 50% of the inferred diversity (Sogin et al., 2006)." Christopher Taylor, the curator of the Catalogue of Organisms (a regular read of mine), has an interesting post on Epsilonproteobacteria. I would just like to add that even the hydrothermal vent chemoautotrophic snail Alviniconcha hessleri contains Epsilonproteobacteria in its gills. Curiously, this has so far only been found in…

The Nematocyst: apex of organelle specialization

Speaking of explosives, the nematocyst, or stinging cell, is one character that binds all cnidarians together. The nematocyst is "high tech cellular weaponry", the unparalleled apex of organelle specialization (Boero et al 2007), and the fastest known biological structure (Tardent, 1995). From ScienceDaily, the discharge kinetics of nematocysts in Hydra to be as short as 700 nanoseconds, creating an acceleration of up to 5,410,000 g. Take that mantis shrimp! A dramatization is above, with narration in French. References: 1. Boero et al. 2007. Cnidarian milestones in metazoan evolution. Int…

Arrogant ignorance

In a post that Billy D. titled Dembski’s pseudo-mathematical posturings, he manages to complain that: The combination of ignorance and arrogance on the part of this individual is staggering. Astoundingly, "this individual" is not meant as a reference to himself. It is a reference to an entirely accurate critique of his work by a professor of religious studies. Yes, William Dembski, M.Div. and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is playing a game of credentials. He is, to be clear, playing a game of credentials with Scott Paeth whose PhD comes from the Princeton Theological…

The evolution of morals

I have a short piece up at Comment is Free at The Guardian, The origins of morality do not matter. Its flavor is a bit different from my typical blog posts because the format enforces more brevity, so I decided to try and leverage some analogies. I conclude: ... Our moral consensus is a river whose course shifts across the plain, constrained by the hills thrust upward by biology. Only history knows where the river will flow next, though evolution can hint at the range of possibilities. On a note related to this piece, I will be posting a review of The Price of Altruism: George Price and the…

FOXNews and an already corrupted poll

By popular demand (50 email requests in the last few hours), here's an absurd Prop8 poll on FoxNews. Go ahead and take a stab at it, but from my perspective, it's already been trashed — with numbers like this, it's already clearly down to battling bots duking it out. Did Judge Make Right Call In Gay Marriage Case? Yes -- Prop. 8 violates the Constitution. 47% (46,786 votes) No -- Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. I don't care what the judge thinks about the Constitution. 46% (46,277 votes) I'm not sure but shouldn't the voters views count for something? 6% (6,321 votes)…

Photo of the Day #167: African Civet

An African civet (Civetticus civetta) that had been rescued and found a home at the Popcorn Park Zoo. I don't know the history of this particular animal, but civets are often "farmed" for civetone, an ingredient used in expensive perfumes that is found in a substance secreted from a gland near their anus (the civets aren't killed; a spoon is used in the process). Civetone can be created synthetically, but some companies still prefer the natural stuff, and strangely enough some wildlife biologists have found perfumes containing civetone to be useful to their research. Jaguars seem especially…

Plans

Ah, spring break... I don't have the ability to go anywhere warm, but I am getting a new desktop computer that will soon allow me to store my mass of technical papers, work on my book a bit more, and play some World of Warcraft from time to time. I've got a few books coming during the next week, too, so even though I still have to work my day job I'm going to try and be as productive as possible on my day(s) off over break. And now, for no other reason than the fact that I think they're cool, here's a video of a leopard seal (dining on a gentoo penguin);

Snow Leopard Yawn

I got a lot of great shots today at the Bronx Zoo (including, believe it or not, a gibbon grooming a tapir), and although I plan on spacing them out over the next few weeks I thought I would put up one right away. This is one of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) twins born at the zoo, now a bit grown up, and she just woke up from a nap she was taking with her sister and her mother on a large rock. It looks like the zoo is trying to breed another pair of these big cats, too, so more likely than not there will be more snow leopard cubs born there in the near future.

Photo of the Day #130: African Wild Dog

When I think of large, African carnivores, the big cats and spotted hyena come most immediately to mind. Indeed, most of the documentaries I watched growing up focused on the warfare between lion prides and hyena clans, and I had no idea that the African Wild Dog (Lycaon pictus) existed until a few years ago. These dogs differ from other canid genera in a number of ways, most prominently the lack of a dewclaw and a set of massive molars. While they do not consume as much bone as spotted hyena, wild dogs are quite capable of cracking bones, and they make good use of their stout distal…

Forbidden fruit?

I haven't had the chance to fully read it over yet, but there's a new paper in PLoS about chimpanzees sharing foods raided from local farmers, the behavior potentially showing some parallels with meat-sharing behaviors seen in other populations of chimpanzees. I'll soon write something a little more detailed, but I will say that I think the paper is a little out of order (materials and methods should come before the results and discussion/conclusion). Likewise, be sure to look at some of the criticisms and caveats introduced by other primate researchers in the comments section, especially…

Photo of the Day #100: Grevy's Zebra

The endangered Grevy's zebra (Equus grevyi) is the largest species of zebra, and while it hasn't undergone the same level of taxonomic reshuffling that its relative the plains zebra Equus quagga) has, it still has been difficult to place at times. According to the IUCN page for Grevy's zebra, this horse is largely suffering from competition with people, overgrazing by livestock being one of the primary reasons this species is in decline. As far as is currently known Grevy'z zebra do not appear to be increasing in number and populations will likely continue to shrink. The individual pictured…

Photo of the Day #83: Tyrannosaurus rex

As much as I love the mount of Barnum Brown's famous Tyrannosaurus skeleton at the AMNH, one of my absolute favorite reconstructions is the one pictured above from the Maryland Science Museum in Baltimore. While many Tyrannosaurus mounts have their heads high up in the air, perhaps even with jaws agape looking down at visitors, this skeleton's skull is close to the ground and allows for an excellent look at the marvelous osteology of the great head of this dinosaur (as well as giving me the impression that the skeleton is just as curious about me as I am about it, were it alive that is).

Green conventions

On October 30, 2007, the GOP Convention site was overjoyed at a Washington Times article touting the convention's green efforts: Tree-huggin' GOP "Republicans are committed to making next year's nominating convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul the 'greenest' in party history. From transportation to venue selection to staff workspace - convention planners are working to implement the best environmental practices," Maria Cino noted yesterday. Today, Ned Ryun, son of former Congressman Jim Ryun, calls such efforts at the Democratic convention "absurd," evidence that the party is "beholden to the…

Security theater

Chad points out how the war on water has led airport security astray: In one test, TSA inspectors hid the components of a fake bomb in carry-on luggage that also contained a bottle of water. Passengers are prohibited from carrying containers holding more than three ounces of liquids, gels or aerosols through airport checkpoints. The screeners at Albany International confiscated the water bottle but missed the bomb. Of course, the screeners missed weapons that weren't accompanied by deadly, deadly water, so maybe it wouldn't matter. On the other hand, the imminent paper jihad is sure to keep…

Over 21 dead in Virginia Tech shooting

Gunman killed after deadly Virginia Tech rampage: A lone gunman is dead after police said he killed at least 21 people Monday during shootings in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech -- the deadliest school attack in U.S. history. Government officials told The Associated Press that the death toll had grown to 31, including the gunman. CNN is working to confirm the report. It was not clear if the gunman was killed by police or if he took his own life. If it's the latter, all I can say is that he should have gone in the opposite order. All of the Thoughts from Kansas are with the Virginia…

John Donne and Genetics

John Donne, in this stanza from The Ecstasy, seems to anticipate the double helix: Our hands were firmly cemented By a fast balm which thence did spring Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes upon one double string; So to intergraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation. Obviously, this says more about the perfect metaphor of the double helix than Donne's intuitive knowledge of genetics. DNA really is the ideal molecule for the text of life: it's so stylish, elegant and, as Donne points out, poetic. Thanks Sara!

Back from the field

I'm officially out of the mountains in the Mineral King area - the field work went great, we collected some fabulous Triassic-Jurassic rhyolites from a pendant in the Sierra Nevada Batholith (and also enjoyed blueberry-sized hail and an unfortunate hike through a thorny thicket). I'll have more to say later, but now I'll be diving headlong into working on papers during my few days here in Davis ... but I'll try to catch up on all your comments left while I was away! The Mineral King region of the Sierra Nevada in California. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image by Erik Klemetti…

Quick note about emails

I just wanted to leave a quick note - I've been getting quite a bit of email, as you might imagine, so I've gotten a little behind in responding. So, please don't take it personally if you haven't heard back from me. I'll try to get through the backlog, but with the increased volume combined with the end of the semester here, it might take a bit. On a related note, I might try to figure out how I can embed a chat into the blog periodically for live chats about volcanoes ... we'll see if I can figure out how to do that. That being said, keep the emails and questions coming!