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Music That Makes You Wonder

Chris over at Mixing Memory has encouraged us to pick a list of ten of our favorite songs, so that we could try to see what these songs say about our personalities. I have no idea what exactly the songs I've picked out will say about me, but it was at least fun to look up old videos. Here's my list (in no paticular order) along with the link to music videos on YouTube. More by The Sisters of Mercy Suzanne by Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry Human Fly by The Cramps Goodnight Moon by Shivaree Green Onions by Booker T.…

Bogus numbers for international crime rates

Scott Marshall writes: Comparison of Murder Rate per 100,000 in Capital Cities Amsterdam - 38 I don't think so. Amsterdam has a population of 713,000, so this is 270 murders. If you look here you will discover that in the Netherlands there were only 228 homicides committed in 1990. Needless to say, it is impossible for there to be more homicides in Amsterdam (5% of the population) than in the entire country. The figure you have quoted would seem to be for (attempted + committed) homicides. From here you find 2206 of these in the Netherlands. 90% of these…

This is fraud

As a brittle, childless spinster, I don't have child-rearing experiences of my own to draw on. Yet every day in clinic, I make reassuring eye contact with haggard looking, applesauce-spattered people, and explain to them how to raise their children. I have no data to back me up-only snippets I've overheard from people who actually know what they're doing. This is not evidence-based medicine. This is fraud. As someone who has never had the pleasure of ignoring a breath-holding spell or a tantrum, I feel like a total jackass telling parents to do it. But what's odd is that when I speak as if I…

Lott's appearance on KSFO

In Lott's appearance on KSFO he talked about the Appalachian Law School shooting and described the two armed off-duty police officers who apprehended the shooter as "two students, one with a former law enforcement background". Lott knows full well (as this thread demonstrates) that both of them were current police officers. And they didn't stop the shooting---the shooter had run out of ammunition. Lott also claimed that British gun control in the 20s, 50s and 90s was followed by an increase in crime in each case. I have data for homicide from 1857…

Biofuels: Show Me the Research

From the ESA blog: All of this research is needed. But where is the balance? It is the ecologists who know about primary productivity, about the effects of harvests on biodiversity, and about designing sustainable systems. We know about fluxes of greenhouse gasses. We study the effects of biomass removal on biodiversity. In summary, it is the ecologists who should be the leaders in this debate. The Ecological Society of America and other representatives of the community of ecologists should demand that our science receive proportional attention. Otherwise, we will merely end up…

Industry-Sponsored Polluted Seafood Calculator

As a way of counteracting some of the work by Environmental Working Group, the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, and Oceana to inform consumers about the health risks of consuming too much seafood, a new website was just launched called HowMuchFish.com, which tells you how much mercury-laden tuna, salmon, and shrimp you can 'safely' consume. Although it might not be obvious at first glance, HowMuchFish.com is sponsored by the Center for Consumer Freedom -- "a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility". Check out their…

Friday Rock Blogging: Pele's Hair

This one's in honor of the new activity at the peak of Kilauea. For pictures and updates, see the Hawaii Volcano Observatory homepage. For more geoblogospheric coverage, check out the posts at Magma Cum Laude and the roundup at Geology News. To get Pele's hair, you need to throw around some lava. More precisely, you need your volcano to work like a cotton candy machine: take a bit of liquid rock, and spin it out until it looks like, well, hair. Or cotton candy (seriously, Internet, why do you not contain any magnified images of cotton candy for me to link to here?). Though these images…

Full Lunar Eclipse

I got home tonight just in time to catch the full lunar eclipse. Although my crappy dinosaur of a camera doesn't really do it justice, it was quite stunning here in Oxford. Observers across Europe, Africa, and East Asia had an excellent view of the eclipse tonight, and some viewers in the U.S. might just catch the end as the moon rises and sun sets this evening. As the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon (an event that only happens once every couple of years), the moon is almost completely obscured from the sun's light, except for a few rays refracted through the Earth's…

Missing Moon Tape Update

According to the AP, NASA announced Tuesday that it was beginning an official search for the missing tapes from the Apollo missions. Red-faced because the best pictures of its glory days are missing, NASA said Tuesday it was launching an official search for more than 13,000 original tapes of the historic Apollo moon missions. What's missing are the never-before-broadcast, clear, original videos - not the grainy, converted pictures the world watched on television more than three decades ago. The tapes aren't lost, says the NASA official in charge of the search. But he doesn't know where they…

The Horror, the Horror...

...of not having internet access! So, it turns out that the internet is pretty fundamental to this whole blogging endeavor. Who would have thought? I don't have internet access in my "new" house yet, and I probably won't have any for another couple of weeks, so please bear with me. I'm finding time to squeeze in some posts now and then when I'm in the lab, but the current situation is slowing me down a bit. In addition, I have my transfer viva this Thursday. A transfer viva is where, at the end of my first year, a couple of assessors from my department will determine whether I'm cut out…

2011 Foreshocks, Aftershocks in Japan: Lessons for the Future?

Magnitude of earthquakes (M5-6=small yellow circles, M6-7 orange circles, M7+ large red circles) off the coast of Honshu, 9-14 March. Geologist Chris Rowan's Scientific American article, "Japan earthquake: The explainer" clarifies some very important points about Japan's earthquakes {highly recommended reading.} Can we learn from this? Take a look at these data of foreshocks and aftershocks. It tells an extraordinary story: on March 9, there was an earthquake of magnitude greater than 7.0, followed by dozens of weaker events (magnitude 5 to 6) over the next 48 hours, just before the major…

"Little Monsters" Science: Lady Gaga's Perfume

Lady Gaga's new perfume - could it be an intersection of art, fashion, marketing, desire, pheromones, molecular biology? Perhaps. From The New York Times interview posted today, "Lady Gaga at Paris Fashion Week": Lady Gaga: It's a smell of many different things, I don't want to give too much away. But I do want to say that I took a sample of my own blood and extracted the molecular structure and the scent of that, and injected it into the perfume so it would smell like and feel like me. Fascinating - how does one "extract molecular structure" of blood and "inject" into the perfume? I am…

Haynes Manual: Lunar Rover Edition

I quite like these spurious yet serious Haynes manuals! From the press blurb: British science writer and broadcaster Professor Chris Riley has written a book on the story of the Apollo Lunar Rover to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the vehicle’s final drive on the Moon, in December 1972. Commissioned even before the first human beings had walked on the Moon, and intended to carry future explorers further and faster, through the mountainous lunar highlands, the ‘LRVs’, as they were called, symbolized NASA’s commitment to human space exploration, and a future of people living and working…

Thoughtful Animal Blog Schwag (for charity)!!!!!

The schwag shop has opened! Imagine how awesome your desk would look with a Thoughtful Animal mug on it. Need a bag to lug your books around in? Why not use a Thoughtful Animal tote bag? Right now I've got some coffee/tea mugs, travel mugs, beer mugs, and water bottles available, as well as a few bags, and some coasters. What else do you want? Clothing? Fridge magnets? Aprons? Can coolers? Let me know and I'll add them to the shop. All profits I make from the schwag shop will go to an animal conservation foundation or charity to be determined. Once there is enough to send, I'll run a poll on…

Comparative Genomics without Evolution

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI, sorry no clever acronym) has announced the next primate genome to be sequenced: the white cheeked gibbon (pictured right). This genome is of particular interest due to the large amount of segmental duplications, which are of both medical and evolutionary interest. Here is Francis Collins, the NHGRI Director, pimping the project: "The gibbon genome sequence will provide researchers with crucial information when comparing it to the human genome sequence and other primate genomes, shedding light on molecular mechanisms implicated in human…

Monday Photoblogging: Before and After

This weekend saw a trip to the boardwalk and beach in Santa Monica. There are often sailboats out on weekends, and I was hoping to get some good shots with my new telephoto zoom lens. Unfortunately, it was very, very hazy. The light was bad, everything was very washed out, and it was hard to get any real color. Luckily, I've gotten better and better (and had some good advice from friends) on doing some digital post-processing. The key, it seems, is to play to the strengths of the photo. Too hazy? Perfect for black and white. Here is the before shot, as it was taken. And here is the after…

Editor's Selections: Shoes, Gay Caveman, Schizophrenia, and Neurocitation

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week: To start things off, Krystal D'Costa of Anthropology in Practice discusses the science of women's shoes. Was the "Gay Caveman" really gay? Or even a caveman? Eric M. Johnson takes his blog tour to David Dobbs's Neuron Culture blog: The Allure of the Gay Caveman. It is often suggested that differences in neural connectivity or wiring may underlie some psychopathologies. Here's some evidence from Neuroskeptic that this may indeed be the case, at least for schizophrenia. Maybe. What are the ten most cited papers in Neuroscience?…

Doc Bushwell Joins the Anti-omics Brigade

Dr. Joan Bushwell (not her real name) has hurled some poo at the -omicists. You know, those people who attach -omics to everything and act like they've come up with a brand new research discipline. I imagine them making the "guitar player changing chords" face (go to 1:09 in this video) when they coin a new "ome". As one last hurrah for omeomics, Doc Bushwell coined the meme-ome. That would be a collection of all the memes floating around the blogosphere. Or is it all memes everywhere? Who knows? But it is the perfect congruence of two terms that have worn out there welcome. And systems…

There are better fates than this

What if Stan Lee worked for Chick Publications? You'd get apocalyptic tracts with giant planet-eating space men. (via Pen-Elayne) This is all you're getting from me for a while. I just finished a 9 hour long meeting (freaking uncivilized, if you ask me), and next I have to go attend some god-awful Christian propaganda — my daughter is the stage manager for the high school production of "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat", so I have to go — and I suspect my day is going to continue its trend of ongoing frustration and exasperation. It is in my best interests to avoid further posting to…

More on Euro-Creo Themepark

The AH Trust intends to spend seven million dollars to build a theme park and studio to "promote the account of the creation recorded in the biblical book of Genesis and to combat what it sees as the malign influence on society of Darwin's theory of evolution" and to produce Christians films and TV shows. "Evolution has falsely become the foundation of our society," the report said. "We need the studio to advocate Genesis across this land in order to remove this falsehood which presently is destroying the church foundation." In a short statement released on Tuesday, the charity said it had…

"Obama's Declaration Of Swine Flu Emergency Prompts Pro-Swine-Flu Republican Response"

WASHINGTON--Claiming that the president was preying on the public's fear of contracting a fatal disease last week when he declared the H1N1 virus a national emergency, Republican leaders announced Wednesday that they were officially endorsing the swine flu. "Thousands of Americans--hardworking ordinary Americans like you and me--already have H1N1," Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said during a press conference. "Now Obama wants to take that away from us. Ask yourself: Do you want the federal government making these kinds of health care decisions for you and your family…

32 new planets discovered!

32 previously unknown exoplanets have been discovered with a high-precision instrument hooked up to a Chilean telescope... The existence of the so-called exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- was announced at the European Southern Observatory/Center for Astrophysics, University of Porto conference in Porto, Portugal, according to a statement issued by the observatory. The announcement was made by a consortium of international researchers, headed by the Geneva Observatory, who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. The device can detect slight wobbles…

Fight back against health insurance lies

What does UnitedHealthcare CEO Stephen Hemsley have to lose if Congress passes real healthcare reform this year? Well, for starters, his nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in unexercised stock options might lose a few pennies on the dollar. What does Isabella, a four year-old girl in Winsconsin who is physically incapable of eating and has had to be tube fed her entire life, have to gain from healthcare reform? The treatment she needs to live a normal life. Brave New Films is launching a major new campaign to reveal the truth about the health insurance industry, and we need your help…

I'm back

Well, I got back last night, but then I was asleep until now. So, as I have my morning cup of coffee I'm going through a couple/few hundred emails. Sorry some comments were trapped in moderation, but I've released all the real ones. Later, I'll tell you all about the conference. I had long interesting talks with Sheril, Chris, PZ, Rebecca, which you should have expected, but also I have some interesting stuff from Chicago's Rabiah Mayas, some reactions to Abel Pharmboy and Damond Nollan's section, and others. A lot of what I learned at this conference is very useful to me but not…

I almost feel sorry for them

Hey, I'm the wild-eyed creationist smasher in this family. So why are all the lame creationists doing their stupid act in my daughter's blog? She's actually getting comments like this, intended to refute evolution: why is it that nothing today is evolving and why is it (if we did come from apes)that they haven't all turned into humans? Dogs are not evolving. different kinds of dogs yes but not dogs becoming cats It's pathetic and creepy how they think they can get their arguments past the 16 year old girl instead of the curmudgeonly old college professor—and she and her friends are still…

Technology Tools

Participate in Sourceforge.net's 2008 Community Choice Awards. Sourceforge, along with Freshmeat, is a central repository for OpenSource community driven software projects. When installing software on your Linux box, you are better off using the built in software for installation and not downloading stuff from Sourceforge or Freshmeat, until you know what you are doing. But these are great sites to browse and/or search for software you need. Or want. Here's a few other software related tidbits: Need a twitter client for your Linux box? Try gTwitter or Twitux. Open Office templates.…

Friday Cephalopod bonus images!

You may have noticed that it was Halloween earlier this week, and I've got a few pictures of the cutest little squid dressed up as humans and cadging candy from people. Cephalopods are so clever! Who could resist hugging a cephalopod as cute as that? And then when you're in close, the arms wrap around you, the beak opens, and… Look at that: octopus vs. shark. We know who wins that one. There's a whole photo series of this omnivorous beastie at the link. And they say my Friday cephalopod series can't compete with Cute Overload... This octopus has everyone fooled—they think he's a high school…

All hail the Jesus Cat!

Sadly, I haven't seen any good pareidolia stories lately, you know, stories in which someone, usually Jesus, Mary, or the Pope (or sometimes Elvis, who, let's face it, is basically the same thing as Jesus, Mary, or the Pope), shows up as a seeming image on some sort of object or other. It can be a piece of sheet metal, a tree, under an expressway underpass, and even on a dog on his--well, best not to say. Cats, of course, felt left out in this pareidolia arms race. Consequently, one cat decided it was time to take action, as CNN reports. That's right! It's the Jesus Cat (not to be confused…

Why woo is thriving in academic medical centers

I've lamented the infiltration of woo into academic medicine. I've even gone so far as to try to keep a list of all the academic medical centers in North America that have "integrative medicine" programs that credulously teach and promote non-evidence-based medicine as though it were evidence-based with my Academic Woo Aggregator. I've speculated that the reason academic medical centers are susceptible to the blandishments of woo-meisters is because patients want it and are willing to pay for it. Given that insurance companies won't pay for this stuff, it's cash on the barrelhead direct from…

We're #8! We're #8! Or are we #3? Or #466?

I really have no idea how valid this is (I suspect not very), but every blogger likes a bit of ego stroking from time to time, and I'm no different. So, take this with an enormous grain of salt, but somehow on a new system of blog ranking on Wikio, Respectful Insolence is ranked #8 among science blogs and #466 among general blogs. What this means, I have no idea, particularly given that the blog doesn't show up at all in the Health section. I suppose I can console myself that I'm ranked #3 on the Medicine Blog Directory. Again, I have no idea what this means; so take it with a huge grain of…

Satisfactory sex takes 3-13 minutes...so what?

Researchers at Penn State have concluded that satisfactory sexual intercourse for couples lasts from three to 13 minutes, contrary to popular fantasy about the need for hours of sexual activity. They arrived at these conclusions by conducting a survey of U.S. and Canadian sex therapists and published their findings in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine. In this blog entry, Val Willingham, Medical Producer at CNN, echoes my feelings about this type of research: "I realize sex studies will continue," he says. "But wouldn't it be nice if the money they put into this kind of…

Introducing... Curatr!

Not good at organizing your thoughts, much less your research notes? Think publishing your data should be as easy as falling off the couch? Yes, well, me too. So I've built a new site to do it all for you, and I'm calling it Curatr. Built on all the shiniest and most proprietary technologies, from HyperCard to Flash Automatically builds the most appropriate storage and interaction models based on computerized analysis of provided data. No documentation needed! Auto-organizing. Never touch metadata again! Can be managed by a single graduate student in two hours a week without any prior…

"Rat Attack" airs on NOVA tonight!!

Once again I find myself looking forward to a special program by NOVA National Geographic called "Rat Attack". The program airs tonight so be sure to check your local PBS listings for times. Here is a description of the special: "Once every 48 years, bamboo forests in parts of northeast India go into exuberant flower. Then, like clockwork, the flowering is invariably followed by a plague of black rats that appear to spring from nowhere to spread destruction and famine in their wake. For the first time on film, NOVA and National Geographic capture this rat population explosion in vivid…

White Nose Syndrome - Revisited

Image: US Geological Survey You may recall a recent post on white nose syndrome in bats. Check out this YouTube video for an overview of this devastating syndrome. Here is an update on the progress of researchers studying the fungus: It turns out that the fungus is lethal to bats in America but harmless to those in Europe. It is suspected that clues to this difference lie within the genome of the fungus. The genome for each strain has now been sequenced by Jeffrey Foster from Northern Arizona University and colleagues. They found that the two strains are almost identical with a few…

Multi-media Finches

Young male finches are able to copy their father's songs and will adopt the songs of foster parents from other species. However, they resist learning tape-recorded songs. Researcher Patrice Adret at the University of Chicago wanted to know if they would be able to learn recorded bird songs if they were allowed to control the tape player. Birds that were in control of the "music" were found to learn the songs better than birds kept in adjacent cages that just listened to the songs being played. She also found that zebra finches sang well when viewing images of other birds, especially when…

David Shatto Says...

"Citizen science" should be a part of science's "rightful place" in society: http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/guest-column-a-new-kind-of-b… "There is another way to extend our scientific reach, and I believe it can also restore some of what is lost in the process of centralization. It has been called Citizen Science, and it involves the enlistment of large numbers of relatively untrained individuals in the collection of scientific data. "Perhaps the new administration, which has already proven itself so skilled in using the Internet to coordinate broad networks of volunteers, ought…

How to be a Lott apologist: don't bother looking at the evidence

Kevin Connors admits that he has been "quite remiss in following the efforts to debunk Prof. Lott's work", but unfamiliarity with the case isn't going to stop him from having an opinion on the matter. Connors takes issue with Brian Linse's description of Lott's work as fraudulent: simply because a theory is flawed, that constitutes no grounds for labeling it fraudulent. If Connors had been following the case against Lott he would know that it isn't just that his work is flawed (that was shown long ago) but that it is dishonest. After correcting his coding…

Educated Guesses

It's going to be a few days before the next "Big Question" post. In the meantime, I thought I'd let the scientific luminaries speak for themselves: The New Scientist has asked top scientists from a variety of fields to "forecast the future." I was particularly struck by Oliver Sacks' and Antonio Damasio's predictions. And those who found the "Quantum Physics for Artists" entry intriguing will want to check out Nobel Prize winning Theoretical Physicist Gerard 't Hooft's submission. Hooft believes that physicists will construct "a theory that not only unites quantum mechanics and gravity, but…

References to Holocaust denial in record reviews?

Speaking of Holocaust denial, opening sentence of a review of a new CD by Be Your Own Pet: Aside from the deaf or those in a level of denial up there with David Irving's idiot pronouncements on the Holocaust, everyone's aware that we live in great times for music. Heh. I'm not sure this sort of reference in the popular media is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it suggests a widespead knowledge that David Irving is a Holocaust denier, otherwise most readers wouldn't understand the reviewer's reference to David Irving. On the other hand, it implies that David Irving is far more well known…

Tangled Bank

A new Tangled Bank is up at fellow ScienceBlogger grrlscientist's Living the Scientific Life. Time to catch up on the world of science as reported in the blogosphere over the last two weeks. While you're perusing the science, you might also want to wander over to Evolgen and join him and the Genetics Society of America to protest the retreat from support of biomedical research that the President's proposed budget for FY 2007 represents. As I pointed out not long ago, the total NIH budget is flat, without even an adjustment for inflation, and the budget of the National Cancer Institute has…

Hate Mail, Volume 1

After Fumento promised me: Now I am going to do the worst possible thing you can do to somebody who measures his life by "hits." I'm not going to write to you again, what do I find in my inbox from Michael Fumento? Goodness! Even on the Web you're a pitiful pissant! I just went to www.alexa.com and ranked your site. Not even in the top million! I don't even have a blog and I'm under 300,000. You have GOT to start training some monkeys to click on your site all day long. That or simply reconcile yourself to reality and save yourself some IP fees by simply writing in a paper…

Infant mortality and the Lancet study

One of the arguments made against the Lancet study was that the study had greatly underestimated the pre-war mortality rate, because the study found that it was about 29 per 1000 live births, while UNICEF estimated that it was 108. Now the 108 dates from 1999, but sceptics doubted that it could have declined dramatically by 2002. However, other studies (see table below) show that the incidence of acute malnutrition declined dramatically between the late 90s and 2002, so it seems likely that infant mortality would have done so as well…

So the media aren't all bad...

Since I was just mean to the British press, here's a compensatory accolade: here's a nice, sharp editorial from James Randerson. ID was itself designed as a Trojan horse for creationism, with its origins in the Discovery Institute, a thinktank in Seattle whose stated aim is "to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God". Even a conservative judge in Dover, Pennsylvania, saw through the sham last year when he heard a case brought by parents who objected to ID being taught in their school. "Intelligent design is a…

Kitty Wigs

We just became aware of this. Sadly, now you are too. Selected bits from the KittyWigs.com FAQ: Question: Is this for real?Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Kitty Wigs are a fun prop to be used to enhance playtime with your feline friends. They're especially fun for photo sessions. Question: Isn't this cruelty to animals? Actually, no. We see it as a way for you to spend more quality time with your pet. It's an opportunity for you to show your cat something new... Let's hope they learn to go for the jugular. pink passion and bashful blonde. the latter does not look amused. electric blue…

Map that Campus L

This week we have a special edition of Map that Campus. A few weeks ago I I wrote about my new voyage on the HMS Palazzo Lab. Well the resident of this campus had some advice on this topic: In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humoured patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence. In short, he ought to partake of the characteristic qualities of most sailors. Travelling ought also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will discover, how many truly kind-hearted people there are, with whom…

Patron Saint Against Pirate Attacks

I unbeknown to me, St. Brendan apparently does not cover pirate attacks. No that protection is afforded by St. Albinus of Angers Albinus had a big heart (as saints tend to have) and couldn't resist a call of distress. He used church money to free hostages from pirates. Obviously, pirate attacks aren't very common today, but in the 10th century, St. Albinus came in handy for the people of the walled town of Guerande. They had gotten word that pirates were on their way to attack the village and immediately started to pray to St. Albinus. The attackers were mysteriously deterred and the town…

Boy Band Meets Automated Pippetting

Being a deep-sea biologist is not all riding around in a wetsuit in a zodiac chasing down giant squid at 30 knots. Sometimes I have to pipette giant squid samples for DNA analysis. All that pipetting can give me a vicious thumb cramp. Wouldn't it be nice if someone could do it for me! Better yet a robot with lasers! Even better a robot with lasers that sings and is from the future! Who am I kidding? I will settle for a desktop automated machine with maybe a 90's boy band soundtrack. Luckily Eppendorf provides such a service (hat tip to CK) Pipetting all those well-plates, baby,…

Stitchin' Fish is knittin' coral

Bubblegum coral (Paragorgia arborea) never looked so... cuddly. It's amazing. Who would believe someone could knit a sea fan and do it so well? Ecology Action Center in Halifax brings a unique perspective to the deep coral movement. They go straight to the fishermen for the information that counts, rather than waiting for science to answer important questions about deep-coral distribution and collateral impacts to coral from destructive fishing gear. That, and they're knitting the benthos back together one species at a time. While scientists have only recently begun to learn about cold-…

Earthcast 2008

As part of Earth Day festivities next week, I will be a guest with Karen of the Beagle Project and Rick of Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice and Sunsets on Jason's Cephalopodcast. This will part of a 24-hour webcastathon for Earth Day. Jason's theme for his segment is "The Other 71%" in reference to the amount Earth's surface covered by oceans. There will also be opportunities to participate in the dialog through chat rooms while the webcast is live streaming, so I encourage everyone to tune in at 10pm GMT (6pm Eastern US time) and join the conversation! There will be more details on how to…

A Valentine's from Congress

Yesterday, February 14, the House passed HR 1834, the National Ocean Exploration Program Act (amended), by a vote of 352-49. The bill would authorize the National Ocean Exploration Program and the National Undersea Research Program, two extramural research programs within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The amended bill differs very little from the bill that was reported out of the House Science and Technology and the House Natural Resources committees a few months ago. The bill would charge the NOAA Administrator with developing, in coordination with NSF, a…