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L'Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science Awards

Applications for the UK awards opened yesterday for the 2010 awards, where four women will be awarded a £15,000 fellowship to help with the scientific research. The awards are now in their 12th Entries can be made online, with an awards ceremony held in June. The L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards were the first international scientific awards dedicated to women and have become an international reference of scientific distinction - with two of the 2008 winners, Professor Ada Yonath and Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, going on to win Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Medicine…

I guess I am prolific

I missed it when it happened, but this post was my 1000th since the move to Seed. My average is 8.2 posts per day. How about you? Fortunately, MovableType has the ability to schedule posts for future publishing. Thus, I usually write a bunch of posts at night (it may take an hour or two to write 5-10 posts) and schedule them to show up during the next day (every 30 or 60 minutes until I run out of posts). The longer, more involved posts are usually written during the weekend but appear during the workday mornings. Thus, there is an appearance that I am constantly online while I am…

I Like This Guy

Disowning Conservative Politics Is Costly for Pastor: Sermons like Mr. Boyd's are hardly typical in today's evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq. Interesting, even for the usually conservatively-slanted results on AOL online polls: What do you think of Rev. Boyd's views on…

A data point for net neutrality

Abandoning Net Neutrality Discourages Improvements In Service: Charging online content providers such as Yahoo! and Google for preferential access to the customers of Internet service providers might not be in the best interest of the millions of Americans, despite claims to the contrary, a new University of Florida study finds. "The conventional wisdom is that Internet service providers would have greater incentive to expand their service capabilities if they were allowed to charge," said Kenneth Cheng, a professor in UF's department of decision and information sciences. Cheng and his co-…

CO2 Receptors in Insects

Identification Of Carbon Dioxide Receptors In Insects May Help Fight Infectious Disease: Mosquitoes don't mind morning breath. They use the carbon dioxide people exhale as a way to identify a potential food source. But when they bite, they can pass on a number of dangerous infectious diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile encephalitis. Now, reporting in today's advance online publication in Nature, Leslie Vosshall's laboratory at Rockefeller University has identified the two molecular receptors in fruit flies that help these insects detect carbon dioxide. The findings could…

Atemporal and ahistorical Google Maps?

Online maps 'wiping out history': Internet mapping is wiping the rich geography and history of Britain off the map, the president of the British Cartographic Society has said. Mary Spence said internet maps such as Google and Multimap were good for driving but left out crucial data people need to understand a landscape. Mrs Spence was speaking at the Institute of British Geographers conference in London. Google said traditional landmarks were still mapped but must be searched for. Ms Spence said landmarks such as churches, ancient woodlands and stately homes were in danger of being forgotten…

ScienceOnline'09 - the WiSE Friday event

As you know, a portion of the Friday program at ScienceOnline09 is organized by Duke WiSE. They have now put up a webpage with additional information. In short, if you have signed up for the conference and checked the "I will attend the Friday evening event" box on the registration form you are fine - no need to do anything else, just show up. But if you are local and want to attend ONLY the WiSE event (and you have not registered for SO'09), you need to register by using this online form. The program? 6:30 pm Registration 7 - 8 pm Networking reception and informational booths with local…

30Threads.com

I got a million and a half invitations to the Big Blogger Bash in Raleigh the other day, but unfortunately I could not make it. At the bash, Ginny Skalski and Wayne Sutton unveiled their brand new project - a website called 30Threads, which will cover all sorts of locally interesting stories and engage the local community. It certainly already has interesting stories and an interesting and novel layout. Looks like the media of the 21st century should look like (especially after all but hyper-local newspapers die out or completely move online). I bookmarked it and will keep an eye - it looks…

Which Movie Star are You Most Like?

According to the Movies.com Which Movie Star Are You Like? quiz, you're .. .. most like George Clooney Everyone loves you, and you're only getting better (and better-looking!) with age. You're a generous, loyal and fun-loving friend, and you also seem to really care about your politics, consistently putting yourself on the line for your beliefs. We wish there were more of you out there. Take this quiz at Movies.com I thought this quiz was trying to match me to the movie star whom I most resemble, instead of whom I'd be most likely to allow to drop potato chips in my bed. Thanks, Dawn…

Favorite Life Science Blogs? Where Are the Women on This List?

The Scientist has just published an online version of an upcoming print story on their site. This story asks the question, What are your three favorite life science blogs? I noticed that they asked seven men this question (not one woman, hello??!) and predictably, nearly all of the top blogs that they listed were written by .. men! Quite frankly, I am offended. Are women life science blog writers really second-class citizens, undeserving of recognition and top honors? If you think that women have something of value to say about the life sciences, get on over there and be sure to let the…

My Blogging Style

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog. Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights. A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time. You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is! What's Your Blogging Personality? Well, this is true, but .. I am surprised: this quiz only relied on four questions, each with only two possible answers, to determine that! How many possible "blog types" were there? In this…

DENSA Test

While we are on the topic of intelligence, or lack thereof, I thought you might enjoy this test (I certainly did). The DENSA test is a response to MENSA, I suspect. Unfortunately, this test doesn't give you a cute graphic to add to your blog, but it is a rather fun test, so I stole the site logo and posted the link to the DENSA test anyway. What was your score? My score was 11 out of 12 - I am above normal! (Question 1 gets them every time!!) .. and indeed, it was question 1 that got me, even though I knew it was a trick, even though I knew the answer was "yes", mysterious forces caused my…

Around the Web: Distraction in the classroom, Reading Instrumentally, Outsourcing higher ed and more!

The False Security of Technology? What Might We Be Missing? Reading Instrumentally Why blogging still matters Outsourcing Plus (Partnering to provide more online ed choices) Long Road to Open Access The Down-side of Technology? On Class Time Wikimedia: Power, Leadership, and Movement Roles Gaming as Teaching Tool Blogs in higher education - some ideas about their benefits and downsides Portrait of the Scholar as Blogger 7 Essential Skills You Didn't Learn in College Principles for Open Bibliographic Data The Web Parenthesis: Is the "open Web" closing? Rebuilding an Academic Law Library Part…

Around the Web

Has the Future of the Internet come about? A virtual counter-revolution: The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it How a watch works (via) On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography (via) Institutional repositories and digital preservation The decline of studying: How university students are spending less time hitting the books while earning better grades than ever Science publishing: the humorous side Obsolescence in the CS literature and Confronting the Myth of Rapid Obsolescence in Computing…

I got an Essay Published on SEED!

Good news: yesterday, I wrote an essay about Arthur C. Clarke for SEED magazine and it was published on their on-line site today. I am so pleased that something I wrote was finally recognized as being worthy of publication "for reals", although, now that I read it today, there are a dozen things that I'd like to fix and change (this is why blog writing is superior to other forms of writing: we are allowed to edit our pieces until they satisfy us). On the other hand, I wrote that piece in only a few hours -- devoting two hours to an essay that I threw away after I'd finished it, and another…

What's Your Holiday Personality?

tags: holiday personality, online quiz This quiz is an example of being told what you want to hear. I mean, who wants to be told they are a holiday grinch? Well, after playing with it for awhile, I don't think that's one of the answers, but do let me know iof any of you get to be a grinch. My results are below the fold; Your Holiday Personality is Caring You like to reach out to people all year long, but you're especially giving during the holidays. Make those you love homemade presents (like cookies or scarves). Call someone who might be feeling a little down. Give to your favorite…

LiveScribing #scio12 ... SciScribing = Art ~ Science ~ Culture ~ Pen ~ Ink

Live Scribing is like live blogging or note taking but it is done in the form of drawing. To get an idea of what this is all about, check out this blog. Science Online 2012 was "Live Scribed" which meant that for most (all?) sessions, someone was making a drawing which built a stylized visually rich picture of the concepts being developed in the room. The results are here. Maggie Pingolt took those pictures, but I think someone else also photographed the boards. Next step: Developing the metadata, presentation, archive and access for this project; Also, I want to see parallel…

20 Years On The Web

I got access to email through the SöderKOM BBS in 1994. In early 1995 I got a dial-up connection to the Internet via Algonet, an ISP started by my childhood buddy Ragnar. And in June of that year I put up a web site. It was a hand-coded static HTML page. A clearly recognisable version of it is still on-line after 20 years! But I haven't updated it since 2009. My site was one of the first to mention archaeology in Swedish, so for many years it had an absurdly high search-engine rank despite its rather modest contents, beating out the National Heritage Board and most of the country's…

Anthro Blog Carnival

The thirty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Hominin Dental Anthropology. Archaeology and anthropology in honour of Maximiliano Gómez. He was the leader of the Maoist Movimiento Popular Dominicano (MPD), a militant organization opposed to the JoaquÃn Balaguer government and to U.S. presence in the Dominican Republic. Commended by some, repudiated by others, the controversial figure of Maximiliano Gomez is part of the political heritage of the Dominican Republic. The next open hosting slot is on 18 June. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer…

Chris at Highly Allochthonous Gets It

Yay, for once somebody at Sb except me is writing about European archaeology! SciBling Chris at Highly Allochthonous offers a long thoughtful writeup of a recent geology paper on the post-glacial flooding of the Black Sea basin and its possible effect on neolithisation. With a beautiful colour map of the European neolithisation wave! Note that all the radiocarbon dates in Chris's entry are uncalibrated ones. 8300 BP is the raw radiocarbon date for the flood event, but that isn't equivalent to 6300 BC, it's more like 7400 cal BC. (The Maglemose era, for you Scandies.) Free on-line radiocarbon…

Welcome to Bittercon

There's a popular science fiction convention going on this weekend in Madiscon, WI. Of course, not everyone can make it to these things, so some people in LiveJournal Land have put together BitterCon, and online event for those unable to attend WisCon. Kate's jumped right in, providing space for a bunch of panels in the form of comment threads: The Napoleonic Wars in SF/F Risky Narrative Strategies Levels and Limits of Metafictionality Thieves Guilds and Other Criminal Societies Wish Fulfillment (She's got a convenient BitterCon tag as well, in case she adds more stuff later...) So, if you…

Not Just Outside the Box, but Orthogonal to It

One of the many after-hours events contributing to my exhaustion this week was the annual Sigma Xi award and initiation banquet, at which some fifty students were recognized for their undergraduate research accomplishments. The banquet also featured a very nice presentation on visualizing a four-dimensional cube by Prof. Davide Cervone of the Math department here. He went through a bunch of different ways to picture a four-dimensional object through analogies to lower-dimensional objects. It was as close as I've ever come to feeling like I understood how to think about higher dimensional…

Not-So-Casual Wednesday

Via a pseudonymous LiveJournal, an online study that combines the fun of clicking radio buttons with the thrill of doing SCIENCE! * The study URL is: http://www.homeport.org/~kcat/study3/ * It takes about 15 minutes. You listen to 8 short clips and answer questions about how the people sound. It is easily as fun as a quiz. * For participating, instead of finding out what muppet tarot card you are, you can choose between being entered into a drawing with a 1 in 10 chance at a $30 iTunes gift certificate, or having $5 donated to Doctors without Borders. Go help advance the sum of human…

Physics Blogging in the Media

The January issue of Physics World magazine has just hit the electronic newstands, and they're doing a special issue on physics on the web. Among the free on-line offerings, they have a discussion of blogs and Wikipedia with various comments pro and con, and an essay about physics blogging by Sean Carroll. Oh, yeah, and they also profile some blogger guy... (By a weird coincidence, I already had posts scheduled for today that cover most of the range of stuff I post here, so new visitors will get the full Uncertain Principles experience, as it were...) (Also, the specific post quoted in the…

A New Review of Taking Sudoku Seriously

Writing in the online statistics magazine Significance, Angie Wade, of University College London, has posted a review of Taking Sudoku Seriously. That's the book about the mathematics of Sudoku puzzles that I cowrote with my JMU colleague Laura Taalman, published by Oxford University Press, for those not in the know. Anyway, did Wade like the book? In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and do not have any criticisms to make. The authors have produced a lovely addition to any budding or practiced mathematician’s bookcase. Well-presented and readable for both the novice and the maths…

Uncertain Dots 19

In which our hangout turns nineteen; we may need to look into a special guest for the 20th, or something. Or maybe save guest stars for the one after that, when it can drink. Anyway, Rhett and I chat about grading, lab reports, why Excel sucks, and an online experiment that we really ought to do if we only had the time. Some links: -- Why Does Excel Suck So Much?, and "Line Plot" is Never the Right Choice. Perennial favorites on the blog. -- How Do I Kill the Squirrels Who Are Eating My Car?, another constant source of a small amount of traffic. -- Rhett's elevator video post. -- My soccer…

Self-promotion

And now, a little self-promotion. I have a piece up on Seed's online magazine, "The Anthropogenic Trap," in which I examine the warnings of some scientists who say we're taking the whole guilt thing too far. Here's the opening. This year may be remembered as the year the weight of climate change finally began to sink in. It only took climate scientists two decades of banging their heads against the wall to accomplish it. While most observers call that cause for celebration, a few researchers are worried the climatologists have been too successful. They point to an increasing tendency to blame…

Celebrate Acupuncture Awareness Week with a poll

Apparently, someone decided 27 February-4 March is Acupuncture Awareness Week. I'm happy to help out. You should be aware that acupuncture is total bollocks. There. Is that enough? No, it is not. We must also crash a stupid online poll. Devastate it, please. It's on a site run by dishonest quacks, so I think we have the potential to smash their poll so thoroughly that either they a) shut it down in embarrassment, or b) start faking the numbers. Do you think acupuncture should be made more widely available on the NHS? Yes 79.3% No 20.7% Somebody tell me why they have a gigantic picture of a…

Darwin's "Historical Sketch"

The prefatory "Historical Sketch" to Darwin's Origin of Species has traditionally been taken as a later addition that sought to deflect claims by individuals such as mathematician Baden Powell that Darwin plagiarized his ideas. Now, a study by Curtis Johnson of Lewis and Clark College argues that Darwin's personal correspondence shows that the sketch was actually written prior to the first printing of the book and had actually been begun as early as 1856. As Johnson notes, "Darwin was not reacting to hostile criticism" but why he eventually omitted the preface is a mystery. Johnson's paper is…

The Aging Brain Meets The Future of Social Networking

A while back I mentioned I've gotten a Facebook page and a Myspace page. They've been fun to toy around with, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're a harbinger of how we will all trawl for online information in the future. But to those who are asking to be friends at Myspace, leaving messages for me, or just wondeirng why the page is just so lame, I'm sorry to report that I haven't been able to log in for a few days. If my kids were just a couple years older, I'm sure I'd have all the tech support I needed to deal with this. But for now, or at least until the MySpace minions come to my aid,…

Psi. A debate.

When everyone thought extrasensory perception had disappeared into the same embarrassing past as phrenology it came back with a vengeance. In a recent article by Daryl Bem titled Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect evidence was presented that some have found very hard to ignore. Others have completely trashed the experimental methods and statistics (obviously... it IS science after all). There are a number of available pdf's of both the article and the commentary floating around the internet if you do a google search.…

Comcast stinks

One of several reasons that my posting frequency has been low lately is that my internet connection has been miserable. As in dial-up speed miserable. As in so slow that the online tools that measure connection speed have been showing me that I'm getting download speeds that I haven't had to experience since I upgraded to a 28.8k modem back in the mid-90s. So I call Comcast. Yes, their tools also show a big connection speed problem. No, there's probably not anything I can do on my end to fix it. Yes, they can set up a service call to have the problem fixed. They'll be able to squeeze me in…

Introducing Chris Mooney TV

So: Searchles has created an awesome new widget that I'm sure is going to catch on like wildfire. It has allowed me to create a web "channel" where all of my various YouTube and Google videos can be shown on one screen. When new videos come online, I can also change the order in which they appear on my channel, so the freshest one is always playing first. So: Feel free to press play to watch, and the forward and back arrows to change videos. Meanwhile, the "Menu" button lets you see what you're choosing. Isn't this cool? P.S.: Note that apparently the window above will not look right…

'The Beauty and Sexiness of Science and Technology'

Go visit AAAS for their news release on my recent panel at the 33rd Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy. New Media Pioneers Convey the 'Cool' of Science [27 May 2008] Speaking at the 2008 AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy in Washington, D.C., the speakers showed off online islands with virtual telescopes, blogs that network millions of science aficionados around the world, and media empires that include dozens of blogs and glossy publications that reveal the beauty and sexiness of science and technology. My entire talk is now now available here and you can also…

Thursday morning miscellany

I'm a little bit late on this one but I wanted to say "Welcome!" to the latest member of the Sb collective All of My Faults Are Stress Related. It's good to have another geo-blog around the place. The first edition of ART Evolved has been posted. The inaugural edition features a slew of wonderful ceratopsian images, and I can hardly wait until the next edition (featuring synapsids). During the Saturday night dinner at Science Online '09 I had the chance to chat with Karen James and Glendon Mellow and together we came up with an idea to raise some support for the Beagle Project. (…

Catch Me on the Radio This Morning

My apologies about the lack of blogging--I've been running around New Orleans, and it's been hard to get online. I hope to post more soon, but in the meantime, a brief announcement: I'll be appearing on EarthBeat Radio later this morning--10:20 ET--and you can listen to the webcast at the WPFW site. The show host is Mike Tidwell, author of Bayou Farewell, and I'll be appearing with Joe Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served in the Clinton Department of Energy. His blog, Climate Progress, is here. Anyhow, I hope you'll listen in. I am sure the recent Supreme Court…

Babies in brain scanners

(Image credit: Karolinska University Hospital) A study led by neuroscientist Peter Fransson of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden shows that there is spontaneous activity in at least 5 resting-state networks in the brains of sleeping babies. Fransson and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 12 sleeping babies, for 10 minutes each. They found that there was activity in parts of the brain associated with the processing of visual, motor and auditory information. This type of activity had previously been observed in sleeping adults, but until now…

I should have picked a catchier title for my blog

because then maybe it would have been mentioned in the New York Times: Seed Media, which produces science publications in print and online, is seeking to broaden its audience - and its appeal to advertisers - by introducing on Monday a network of blogs, or Web journals, devoted to science and science-related subjects. The network is to be made available on a Web site, scienceblogs.com, that is now operating in beta, or test, mode. The Web site will initially bring together 15 blogs bearing names like Adventures in Ethics and Science, Cognitive Daily, Living the Scientific Life and Stranger…

Bio:Fiction

Two videos that Patrick Boyle and I made were selected for the Bio:Fiction Film Festival! One of the prizes is an online audience award, and you can watch and rate all of the films! It's such an honor to be part of this festival and to be showing our work next to that of so many amazing artists, scientists, and filmmakers, and we would be super thrilled if you voted for us! Here are our videos! First, the world premiere of Compound 74, a fictional documentary about a possible future of synthetic drug design through synthetic biology: And second, the commercial we made for Ginkgo BioWorks--…

The Scientific Activist Is on Twitter

Although people who know me can attest that I made countless assurances that I would never do such a thing, I have once again succumbed to the relentless force of progress, and I'm now on Twitter. Check me out. I'm actually finding it quite useful, and I'm currently using my feed to provide updates on new blog posts, to pass along interesting links I won't get around to blogging, to give other random thoughts, and to interact with my online network in general. I've put a widget on the sidebar of my blog, but if you're interested you can also follow my Twitter feed to stay up to date on all…

Great White Sharks Off of LA Coast!

Figure 1: Great White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias. I saw this clip on the news last night, but when I went to look for the video online, it hadn't been uploaded yet. How awesome to find it this morning, already blogged by my friends at LAist! This video was caught at Will Rogers State Beach in Malibu. Great whites are known to frequent these waters during the summer, so this isn't much of a surprise, but how cool to see the video of them breaching like that!!? At least one of the sharks caught on video has been confirmed by experts at the local non-profit Shark Research Committee to be a…

Suppression of tumor growth by the BRCA1-associated protein-1"

I am happy to report that my research paper on a protein implicated in breast and lung cancer, called BAP1 (BRCA1-associated protein-1), was recently accepted for publication in the journal 'Cancer Research'. As you know, my research studies are in the field of cancer biochemistry and for the past few years I have been working on the BAP1 protein-a deubiquitinating enzyme. The paper is entitled "BAP1 is a tumor suppressor that requires deubiquitinating activity and nuclear localization". This paper is particularly special to me because it is my first peer-reviewed scientific publication (…

Hockey Fights Cancer

This weekend I attended the NHL All-Star game in Atlanta and was impressed to learn about the Hockey Fights Cancer program. Hockey Fights Cancer is a joint initiative founded in December 1998 by the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association to raise money and awareness for hockey's most important fight. According to the Hockey Fights Cancer website, the organization has raised over $6 million to support cancer research through fund-raising initiatives such as the annual Hockey Fights Cancer On-Line Charity Auction. If you want to help in the fight…

The Future of Science is Art

My recent article in Seed is now online. Here is the nut graf: The current constraints of science make it clear that the breach between our two cultures is not merely an academic problem that stifles conversation at cocktail parties. Rather, it is a practical problem, and it holds back science's theories. If we want answers to our most essential questions, then we will need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress. The article was really an extension of the argument I…

Dubious benefits versus profits in chemotherapy

At the monthly faculty meeting of our cancer center the other day, we had just finished listening to an invited talk by an ethicist about medical technology and the ethics of end-of-life care, when one of my colleagues happened to mention an article in the New York Times about how a perverse incentive system encourages oncologists to use chemotherapy even in patients for whom it may not benefit or may only provide marginal benefit. It's rare for something in the news to mesh so closely with the topic at hand; so I couldn't resist looking up the article, which appeared Tuesday morning, and was…

The Whole Foods Wars

It's the latest bourgeois battle: a bunch of angry supermarket shoppers, led by Michael Pollan, are criticizing Whole Foods for not living up to their organic values. While the stores are filled with billboards extolling the virtues of small farms and local produce, Whole Foods gets most of its provisions from big agribusiness, albeit with an organic label. From the Times: While many shoppers find the new stores exhilarating places to shop, the company also faces critics who feel it has strayed from its original vision. In angry postings on blogs, they charge that the store is not living up…

EE Times Group Announces Recipients of 'Student Reporter' Grants to Attend and Report on the USA Science & Engineering Festival

Great info on EE Times Group, one of our Sponsors', Grants for Student Reporters. These students will come to the Festival. Read more here. Washington, DC-area Middle School Students to Serve as Technology Journalists for EE Times' Innovation Generation Website at the Festival Download image SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- EE Times Group, a UBM company and the daily source of essential business and technical information for the electronics industry's decision makers, today announced the two middle schools who are the recipients of its "Student Reporter" Transportation Grants to attend…

Louisiana's Governor Signs Anti Evolution Bill

Cletus From the National Center for Science Education: Over the protests of leading scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, Louisiana's governor Bobby Jindal signed Senate Bill 733 into law, twenty-seven years after the state passed its Balanced Treatment for Evolution-Science and Creation-Science Act, a law overturned by the Supreme Court in 1987. News of Jindal's approval of the bill was buried in a press release issued on June 25, 2008, in which Jindal listed seventy-five bills he…

Breast cancer information on the Internet

It figures again. I go a few days without Internet access again, and not only does Generation Rescue take out a full page antivaccination ad full of stupidity in USA Today, which I couldn't resist opening both barrels on earlier, but a study's lead senior author is someone I know (albeit not well) about three topics I'm very interested in: breast cancer, health information on the Internet, and so-called "complementary and alternative" medicine. Not surprisingly, in my absence blog stalwarts Abel Pharmboy and Steve Novella already beat me to it in fine form. You might ask if that would in any…

Birds in the News 106

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Black-necked weaver, Ploceus nigricollis. Image: Basia Kruszewska, author of India Ink. [Wallpaper size] Birds in Research A native Hawaiian bird has surprised researchers with its ability to survive malaria, apparently thanks to a number of resistant populations that have spread throughout the Hawaiian forest. The discovery hints that genes for natural resistance to the avian disease may lurk inside the genomes of many of Hawaii's endangered birds. Two years ago, researchers reported that one species, the amakihi,…