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Links 6/26/10

Happy Sunny Saturday. If you're stuck inside, here are some links. Science: Healthcare providers still aren't washing their hands enough 'Jaw-dropping' levels of heavy metals found in whales Human foetus feels no pain before 24 weeks, study says. Finding in major review of scientific evidence strikes blow to those seeking to reduce upper time limit for abortion In which we stand on the shoulders of midgets Other: Big shoes Catching Up with the Obama Dilemma Don Segretti 4.0, A Teabagger Nation Lessons from the Decline of Cap and Trade Manute Bol deserves more recognition for his work in…

Links 1/1/11

Lots of ones in today's date. No doubt some woomeister is making a ton of money from that. Anyway, here are some links. Science: That's How Science Works Utilities Seek Fresh Talent for Smart Grids There's plenty of time for evolution Turnout low for Rhode Island's school-based flu-vaccination clinics (this should be done nationally) Other: As Reasonable As Hell (must-read) Are conservatives fatter than liberals? Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die Dear NYT: No Means No; Shoving A Dick Into An Unconscious Person Is Rape. Any Questions? Historians find Virginia textbooks about as accurate as…

Links 10/14/10

Lotsa links. Science: Can't we all just get long: evolution of altruism edition The Failed Promise of Genomics Natural selection in our time Toxic algae rapidly kills coral Other: Unanticipating The Great Depression and the Great Recession La vida en los Estados Unidos Why Foreclosure Fraud Is So Dangerous to Property Rights T inspector surprised to learn bus 100 feet away from him seemed about to burst into flames America's dish detergent wars: The fuss over phosphate bans provides an object lesson in the paranoid politics of the Tea Party's anti-liberal backlash Why printing money makes…

What Happened to Gmail?

My gmail account has been completely inaccessible for more than 24 hours now, and I have been able to access it only sporadically during the previous three days. In short, any time I try to access my gmail account, I get a white screen that reads; Bad Request Error 400 Am I the only one this is happening to? Does anyone know what is happening with gmail and how long this will continue into the future? I mean, there are some emails on my account that are very important, such as those from my upcoming conference that I cannot respond to, for example .. *panic* Worse, there is NO WAY to contact…

Wild Stallions

tags: wild stallions, National Geographic, international photography contest, image of the day Wild Stallions Image: Chris Gimmeson, Nature Honorable Mention, 2008 International Photography Contest [larger view]. The photographer writes: These are two wild stallions from the McCullough Peak's herd of wild horses, which is located just outside of Cody, Wyoming. This image was taken in September 2008 with a Canon Rebel XSI and a long telephoto lens. I expected them to fight but they went back to grazing after a minute of posturing. The peaks area is pretty desolate, with little in the way…

Microsoft owns bioinformatics?

I hope not, but they have filed one of those ridiculously broad, sweeping patents that covers a big chunk of basic techniques in the field: The patent, filed by Microsoft researcher Steve Ozer in July 2007 and recently discovered by a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin, claims ownership of several common phylogenetic methods. At its most basic, however, it seems to patent identifying any evolutionary relationship from sequences: "receiving a plurality of sequences across a plurality of species [and] mapping at least a portion of the plurality of sequences to an…

Sonic Boom Meets Sun Dog

tags: Sonic Boom Meets Sun Dog, amazing science, sonic boom, Atlas V, rocket launch, amazing, beautiful, atmosphere, physics, astronomy, streaming video This amateur video is absolutely amazing: recording the precise moment when a rocket goes supersonic, which coincides with the moment it passes through a layer of ice crystals in the atmosphere, creating a rippled effect that is just astonishing to see. Solar Dynamics Observatory Launch, Feb 11, 2010: A sun dog is a prismatic bright spot in the sky caused by sun shining through ice crystals. The Atlas V rocket exceeded the speed of sound in…

Mystery Bird: Ferruginous Hawk, Buteo regalis

tags: Eagle Hawk, Gopher Hawk, Squirrel Hawk, Ferruginous Rough-legged Hawk, Ferruginous Hawk, Buteo regalis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Ferruginous Hawk, also known by a variety of other common names such as Eagle Hawk, Gopher Hawk, Squirrel Hawk or Ferruginous Rough-legged Hawk, Buteo regalis, photographed in Lyman County, South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours] Image: Terry Sohl, 17 January 2010 [larger view]. You are encouraged to purchase photographs from this photographer. I am happy to email his contact information to you. Canon 50D, 400…

Downfall of IDiocy

tags: religion, IDiots, satire, parody, comedy, humor, fucking hilarious, Hitler, DOWNFALL, streaming video The so-called Discovery Institute is a pretentious über-Christian disguise for creationism and an ultra-Conservative social agenda called The Wedge Strategy. So-called Intelligent Design theory is plagiarized from William Paley's long-refuted Blind Watchmaker argument, and is merely creationism in a not-so-cunning disguise. Having neither facts nor logic at their disposal, the polemicists of the so-called Discovery Institute have been forced to resort to lies and subterfuge. One of…

Seurasaari Beach House

tags: beach house, Seurasaari, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day Beach house. Photographed on the shores of Seurasaari (Helsinki, Finland). Image: GrrlScientist, 4 July 2009 [larger view]. (raw image) Have I shown you this house yet? I know I have roughly one dozen photographs of it from various angles, so I am sure it has appeared here at least once, but just in case, here is a close look at this beautiful house. This photograph was difficult to get, and I am not entirely happy with it because the lines in the image are all akimbo: even though they are straight lines, they are not…

TEDTalks: Jim Fallon Explores the Mind of Psychopathic Killers

tags: TEDTalks, medicine, Psychopathic Killers, epigenetics, brain damage, psychology, MAOA gene, serotonin, Jim Fallon, streaming video Psychopathic killers are the basis for some must-watch TV, but what really makes them tick? Neuroscientist Jim Fallon talks about brain scans and genetic analysis that may uncover the rotten wiring in the nature (and nurture) of murderers. In a too-strange-for-fiction twist, he shares a fascinating family history that makes his work chillingly personal [4:42] TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference,…

Bombs, bullets and drinking water

A reminder it's not just bombs and bullets in Lebanon: BEIRUT. July 29 (Interfax) - The World Health Organization (WHO) fears an eminent humanitarian disaster in Lebanon, and the quality of drinking water is among its greatest concerns in the current situation, a WHO official in Beirut told Interfax Saturday. "There is also the threat of epidemics, as there could be people under the ruins," the WHO official said. "All this, as well as the terrible sanitary conditions in the refugee camps, could further provoke outbreaks of various epidemics," he said. The WHO is…

Know more about the world and lessen the suffering of others

A fantastic quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson: The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you. The source of which seems to be…

Around the Web: Love the copy, Why we inflate grades, Insults in academia and more

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Copy The Children They Never Had (regrets about not having kids among mostly female science faculty) Why We Inflate Grades Search: How Libraries Do it Wrong Faculty inertia and change in scholarly publishing Blogs: face the conversation No Offence, But Insults Have Merit in Academia Overexposed? Baby Photos in the Age of Facebook What People Don't Get About Working in a Library Building Canada's Digital Law Library Subtle Things That Hold Women Back Facebook and Branding The importance of language and framing, part eleventy-thousand Fall From Grace…

Ask A ScienceBlogger

This is the debut of a new weekly feature on ScienceBlogs. It's called Ask A ScienceBlogger, and it is Sb's own mini blog carnival -- a chance for the bloggers to weigh in, briefly, about a question of general interest. This week's question is: If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why? Check back to Stochastic on Wednesday for a full, annotated run-down of the bloggers' answers. In the meantime, check a few early responses here, here, and here. Oh, and here. To suggest a question for the next Ask A ScienceBlogger…

At $3 a gallon, the Americans are squealing

...reads the headline of this article from the The Times of London. Pump prices have risen by one third over the past year and in some parts of the US have topped $3 (£1.68) a gallon. Among the ultra-rich of Beverly Hills, the cost of fuel has even slipped over the $4 mark. This is, of course, still far less than the equivalent of about $8 being paid by British motorists, but such comparisons hold little sway in the US where, for many, the unfettered freedom of the individual to drive across wide-open spaces is almost part of the Constitution. By contrast, public transport has, historically…

The heartbreaking beauty of development

This is a spectacular video of the development of Clypeaster subdepressus, also called a sand dollar or sea biscuit. These are stunningly beautiful creatures (as are we all, of course), and it is so cool to see them changing here. The video starts with a little echinoderm porn — these animals are profligate with their gametes — and then we see early divisions, gastrulation, the formation of the pluteus larva, metamorphosis into Aristotle's lantern (one of the more charming names for a developmental stage), and into an ungainly spiky juvenile. This is why some of us are developmental…

Women's Tears a Turn-Off

Did Israeli singer-songwriter Arik Einstein know something that scientists didn't when he released the song "When You Cry You're Not So Pretty" back in 1969? Prof. Noam Sobel and his team of the Weizmann Institute of Science have now shown that merely sniffing a woman's tears - even when the crying woman is not present - reduces sexual arousal in men. This study raises many interesting questions. What is the chemical involved? Do different kinds of emotional situations send different tear-encoded signals? Are women's tears different from, say, men's tears? Children's tears? This study…

The National Academy of Sciences Recognizes the Festival at the 149th Annual Meeting!

The USA Science and Engineering Festival is a part of the National Academy of Sciences 149th Annual Meeting! The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the public good. The NAS 149th Annual Meeting will feature the Festival on Saturday, April 28th from 10am-4pm. In this special activity for guests and family members of new members, registered guests may attend the opening of the USA Science and Engineering Festival…

Looking Inside the Brain

Photo Credit: Herederos de Santiago Ramón y Cajal Recently, ScienceBlogger Mo Costandi of Neurophilosophy penned a photo essay for MIT's Technology Review magazine, taking readers on a visual tour of the history of brain imaging, from the first Purkinje cells viewed through a light microscope to fluorescently tagged neurons in "Brainbow" mice showing the connections between the different cells. The collection is an illuminating look at how far neuroscience has come in the last 100 years, and how new technologies have enabled us to better understand the intricate architecture of our brains…

What Would You Like to See In a Membership Program?

As you may have heard from one of our bloggers, ScienceBlogs will soon be introducing an optional user membership program. We hope that this will help you, as readers, connect with one another, keep track of the posts and discussions you are interested in, and control how you interact with the site. To that end, we'd love to hear what you think would most improve your site experience—what would be useful, interesting, or just plain fun? You can help us decide which features to introduce in both stages of our two-part development by responding to the poll below. Bump items up or down to rank…

The Buzz: Obesity, Evolution and Delayed Gratification

With the levels of obese individuals continuing to rise worldwide, new research hopes to illuminate some interesting associations related to this epidemic. On Gene Expression, Razib discusses an abstract that explores the idea that obesity might be related to the acquired genetic ability to process lactase late into life, which is common in European populations but uncommon in other parts of the world. On The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer gives us some insight on delayed gratification and the implications when it comes to certain foods. Also from Kevin Beck, a bit on Atkins mythology. Dig in…

The Buzz: Stimulating Science

Researchers in Canada are contemplating a recent report that suggests it is more expensive to review and reject applications for small baseline grants than to simply provide the grant without conducting a review. According to this study, if the review process was eliminated, the Canadian government could save money while funding the projects of every qualified applicant of baseline grants. Bora from A Blog Around the Clock speculates that foregoing review could promote "truly innovative science," and discusses the feasibility of implementing such a plan in the U.S. Related ScienceBlogs Posts…

Watch Chris Mooney On the Colbert Report -- Monday!

Monday, January 26, ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney will be a guest on The Colbert Report, hosted by the one and only Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central. Mooney and Colbert will discuss Bush's "war on science" and how the Obama administration can change the scientific climate in America. Mooney is a contributor to The Intersection where he blogs with Sheril Kirshenbaum. Together, the two have co-authored a book titled "Unscientific America: How Science Illiteracy Threatens Our Future." The book hasn't been released yet, but you just can't get enough of Chris Mooney, you can pre-order the book…

Revolutionary Minds at Seedmagazine.com

The latest issue of Seed features nine visionary thinkers whose work straddles the line between science and design. One is a "material ecologist" whose architectural designs, like a wax building skin that responds to wind and temperature, mimic natural materials. Another pair of graphic designers analyze massive amounts of data from seemingly mundane sources to create images that reveal unseen trends in addition to being visually striking. In the video below, the two designers—Joris Maltha and Daniel Gross—talk about their unique approach and why they are drawn to particular systems: Videos…

Reader Poll: e or π?

On Friday, 3/14, math enthusiasts worldwide celebrated π Day, in honor of the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter (approximately 3.14). Back in August, Chad asked his readers which irrational number they preferred, π or e—the base for the exponential function (approximately 2.72). He went with e, because "you just have to love a function that is its own derivative." For this week's Sb Reader Poll, we want to know if you agree with Chad: Click Here for PollOnline Surveys | Web Poll | Email MarketingView MicroPoll Want to know the results? We'll publish them exclusively in…

New to ScienceBlogs: Neurophilosophy

On July 1, ScienceBlogs welcomed a new addition: Neurophilosophy, by Moheb Costandi. Science writer, Englishman, and former student of developmental neurobiology (and future student of neuroscience) Costandi covers all matters brain-related, with special attention to good stories from history. Recent posts at Neurophilosophy discuss Dostoevsky's epilepsy and the extraordinary case of Phineas Gage, whose nearly-fatal 1848 injury by a piece of railroad equipment turned him into a neurological curiosity as fascinating as those brought to the page by Oliver Sacks. Head over and say hello. Don't…

Bueno, No Sano.

I enjoy the occasional chain-store burrito. I consider(ed) them a healthy alternative to traditional fast food. Then I entered my personal burrito preferences into this Chipotle nutrition calculator: Chipotle Nutrition Facts Serving Size: 1 Burrito Amount Per Serving Calories 840 Calories from Fat 229 % DV* Total Fat 26g Saturated Fat 9g Cholesterol 30mg…

Exoplanet Extravaganza

In February, exoplanet hunters announced the discovery of seven rocky planets orbiting a star called TRAPPIST-1 only forty light-years away. Compared to our sun, TRAPPIST-1 is tiny, and all its planets orbit closer than Mercury orbits Sol. But three of them are still in the Goldilocks zone that could be "just right" for life, and all seven planets could theoretically hold liquid water. While Ethan Siegel introduces the neighboring star system with spectacular illustrations from NASA and ESO, Greg Laden notes that the practice of saying these images are artistic interpretations "has largely…

I don't believe you, Bill

Bill Donohue is at it again. He has pestered YouTube into putting age requirements on viewing videos of host desecration, and now he's claiming that "we do not object to making fun of Catholics, or for that matter Catholic beliefs and practices, just so long as they are made in good taste". ORLY? One name puts the lie to Donohue: Webster Cook. Cook wasn't making fun of Catholics, he wasn't doing anything in particular, and he certainly wasn't doing anything I consider tasteless…yet Donohue tried to get him expelled from his university over that. And now he thinks he gets to dictate what is…

Notes from a parallel universe, Jakarta branch

From yesterday's Jakarta Post: No extraordinary measures against bird flu this year JAKARTA (JP): Coordinating Minister for Social Welfare Aburizal Bakrie said Wednesday the government would not take any extraordinary measures against bird flu this year. Aburizal said the current measures were sufficient to contain the spreading of bird flu in the country. "We have been applauded by international agencies for our measures to handle the bird flu in the country," he said in a press conference. A-14-year-old boy died in a hospital in Jakarta on Wednesday after being confirmed to be infected with…

AIDS at 25

Seed ScienceBlogs are liveblogging the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto from August 13th-18th. Two special correspondents on the ground, and our own Tara Smith of Aetiology will post daily commentary on a blog specially dsigned for this occasion - AIDS at 25. Quite fittingly, the AskTheScienceBlogger question of the week is also about AIDS, and I am sure that a number of my SciBlings will write about the topic in addition to just answering the question, so you will have plenty of opportunity to be informed and educated about AIDS over the next several days. And, if you have not…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: more religion and child abuse

Richard Dawkins has taken a lot of abuse himself for having the temerity to suggest that some kinds of religious upbringings can be considered abusive even if no physical harm is involved. We know that Catholic children suffered abuse at the hands of priests and nuns, and that some fundamentalist Christians have also engaged in extremely abusive practices. We don't usually think of Jews as routinely engaging in this, but there is something non-sectarian about the fundamentalist mindset. You could do a 'global search and replace' and this sad tale of escape from orthodox Judaism could be…

Hurricanes and high containment labs don't mix

Well, we're back at the old homestead but today it took us 12 grueling hours in the car. We had hoped to get back earlier (it's almost midnight now) and have the time and energy to djinn up a new post, but it isn't to be. But it's hurricane season again and Danny Boy just sailed north parallel to the Atlantic coast. No doubt he will be followed by a number of others. Maybe one will get another shot at the high containment lab in Galveston. From a year ago: Just before: Why would any sane person put a Level 4 biodefense lab in Galveston?; . . . and a month later, after Galveston took the…

Fear us

At last, biologists get some respect from xkcd…and it features cephalopods. Seriously, no other branch of science has anything as wicked cool as the diversity of life to play with. By the way, the artist reveals his physics bias when he has the cuttlefish crudely zapping their targets with boring old electricity. A much more subtle and powerful strategy would be to use them as vectors for a modified strain of Vibrio that would infect the brains of their victims, causing them to both glow in the dark and have an irresistible desire to close out their bank accounts and mail the contents to me……

Journeying to a distant land

I'm a pilgrim today, traveling far to the east to the mysterious land of Wis-con-sin, where I shall spend some time in adoration of the son. My middle child, the cute and monkey-like Connlann, is graduating from the University of Wisconsin Madison tomorrow, with a degree in English. Hooray for the hard work and success of our boy! Hooray for rituals of completion! Hooray for the end of chunky great tuition payments! So, anyway, I shall be spending most of my time today driving, and most of tomorrow driving, and a good spell of tomorrow sitting in uncomfortable seats watching a ceremonial…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: the Miracle in the drywall

Mirabile dictu. This is not the place you usually read about miracles, but I have to say this one is pretty convincing. To me, anyway. These two guys were working on drywall down in Florida and suddenly this image appeared to them. They've been doing this for 30 years and never seen anything like it, and frankly neither have I (of course I've never worked on drywall). The fact that they misidentified it as Jesus notwithstanding, it is quite obvious it is the face of Charles Darwin: Here's the clip from the Florida TV station (where else?) so you can see for yourself: WKRG.com Video There…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Prime Movers

I ran across this on a linguistics blog. Their interest was in the origin of the phrases, "Blackjack. No tagbacks" in the last panel. The consensus was it refers to school yard games where you can't turn around and just tag the tagger in a game of tag. It makes sense in this context. And it's the only thing in the three panels that does make sense. Because if you think through what's being said here, it is the "first mover" argument, so beloved of creationists, flipped on its head and applied to an anthropocentric and anthropomorphic God: I put it to you: if there were no people, then where…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: George Carlin, gone but not forgotten

This week we lost George Carlin. I only saw him once in person, sometime in the early seventies or maybe late sixties. He was already wildly popular and Mrs. R. and I weren't too flush with disposable income so we wound up sitting in the stratosphere of a gigantic theater, stuffed to the gills with Carlin fans. He was a tiny figure on stage from our altitude, but up close and personal with his hilarious routine. While electronic traces of that hilarious presence remain on YouTube and recordings of one kind or another (I still have "Class Clown" on vinyl), George Carlin the person is gone.…

That's one mighty fast horse!

Street Sense won the Derby in style. He hung back in 19th place (out of 20 horses) for most of the race. About 3/4 miles before the end, jockey Borel switched to a new gear and stepped on the gas. He passed all but the last two horses by riding on the rail - all the other horses (and it was horses, not jockeys) just moved away from him as he passed them one by one. That was so fast, all the other horses looked like Clydesdales in comparison. Not wanting to gamble any more, Borel decided to pass the last two on the outside and won so easily he started celebrating a hundred yards before…

Vilsack out of the race

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack To Drop 2008 Bid: Democrat Tom Vilsack is abandoning his bid for the presidency after struggling against better-known, better-financed rivals, a senior campaign official told The Associated Press on Friday. Vilsack left office in January and traveled through states holding early tests of strength. He had faced a tough challenge from rivals such as New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards, who have had more success raising money and attracting attention - even in Vilsack's home state of Iowa. Vilsack was scheduled to make a…

Frameshop Prediction

Jeffrey Feldman write in Frameshop: Dem Who Reframes "War on Terror," Wins in '08: The Democratic candidate who wins the 2008 nomination for President will not be the candidate who simply puts forward the best policy proposal on Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or any other individual military issue. The candidate who wins will be the candidate who reframes the entire debate on national security in progressive terms--the candidate who steps up and liberates the country from the destructive logic of the propaganda frame that President Bush calls "The War on Terror." Read the whole thing. Also…

Veterinary Medicine Blogs?

For quite a while I was aware of two blogs written by vet techs, and recently I discovered a couple of more written by veterinarians or vet students: All But One Species Vet Techs Pet Connection Diary of a Depressive Veterinarian The Happy Healthy Horse Dogged Blog Discovering Michelle Ambitiously Inquisitive Not all of them write about animal health all the time, but, hey, if you go to a Xena Convention and get to interview Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor, of course you blog about it and post pictures of them and get, like, a million hits from Google the next day. You can always go back to…

Support the Honolulu Marathon in Iraq

Yes, you read that right. Our soldiers in Iraq will run the marathon at the same time as the Honolulu race and will be considered to be contestants in the Honolulu marathon. But the whole thing is not just for fun - there is something much more inportant going on here and something you can help with. All the proceeds from the donations for the race go, through TAPS, to the families of the soldiers we lost in Iraq and other military conflicts. So, if you can, please donate for a good cause. Mike has the background and can answer any questions you may have about the details. My SciBlings…

Afghanistan: spoiled lives

I usually choose music clips featuring the performer and the song. I prefer live performances. I don't like videos with graphic or powerful images because they often distract from the music and I am powerfully affected by the music itself. But this is an exception in two ways. First, this is contemporary music, a 2009 Dash Berlin remix video of the still extant 1980s alternative band, Depeche Mode; and this time it is the powerful video that takes center stage, not the music. Long after there is peace on the battlefield the war will go on in the lives of its victims, on both sides. This hit…

Making Raised Beds on a Farm Scale

I don't live on a mountainside, but my town isn't called one of the "Hilltowns" for nothing, and Sepp Holzer's permaculture designs, set in a cold, steep place with stripped soil (my soil was literally stripped when the farm was a sod farm in the 1980s) comes closer to what my farm requires than almost anything else. I'm particularly taken by his methods of making large scale raised beds from brush. He has a recent book on his techniques, and it is extremely valuable, even for a woman who doesn't have his same passion for earth moving equipment ;-). Neat stuff - a way of making land that…

AAS221 Sciency Bits

Gemini AO LASER As we come to the end of the 221st annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, it is time to reflect upon the diverse science presented at the meeting. And what a lot of science it was. Fortunately, there were also a lot of people to make sense of it and press releases picked out for us to highlight that thought to be most likely to be of public interest. Which is a good thing, partly because I was kept overly busy talking to prospie grads and assorted post-graduate job candidates. I think I even got a chance to chat with some old friends, just to catch up. Emily…

Hot and Cold

Space based infrared observations find double planetesimal belts around Vega. Vega Su et al. (ApJ in press) got Spitzer and Herschel observations of Vega, and find emission consistent with an inner warm asteroid belt and an outer cool planetesimal belt, with a gap between. Vega This is similar to what we see in the Solar System but on a bigger scale around a younger, hotter, more massive star. The inference is that the gap between the two belts is kept clear of tepid dust by multiple planets orbiting in the region. Schematic of Vega system inferred from observations This is a very cool…

Quit stealing our mythology!

Those bastards — the Anglicans are trying to appropriate Dr Who. A conference of Church of England vicars watched a handful of episodes from the sci-fi series to study its religious parallels, particularly its themes of evil, resurrection and redemption. Similarities between the Doctor and Christ, as well as whether the evil Daleks are capable of changing, were also examined. "There are countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who, which we can use to get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to explain,'' The Sunday Telegraph in Britain quoted Andrew Wooding, a spokesman…

Introducing Target Population

Thereâs a new voice in the public health blogosphere: Target Population, a blog by students from the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. The students are enrolled in Blogging Skills for Public Health, a class Celeste and I are teaching this semester. Although the blog is new, it already boasts several thought-provoking posts on a wide range of topics, including Zimbabweâs cholera epidemic, a new anti-smoking campaign, the U.S. vaccine plan, restaurant inspections, and hospital preparedness. We encourage you to check out Target Population, and add it to…