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"This happens. We live with that."

"This happens. We live with that." These are the words of ironworker Luis Guzman, who was working at the site of a new Manhattan skyscraper Tuesday when his fellow worker, Anthony Espito, 43, fell 40 stories (roughly 400 feet) to the ground. He was killed instantly. It appeared Mr. Espito was in fact wearing a safety harness, but it wasn't attached to anything. Some of you may recall, I wrote a post just a few weeks ago about the shocking number of preventable workplace fatalities resulting from falls (see that post here).  The day after, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there…

Lead on the Brain

A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience last week reports a link between lead exposure and accumulation of Alzheimerâs-type plaque in the brains of primates. The National Institutes of Health-funded study examined the brain tissues of 23-year-old monkeys that had been exposed to lead for the first 400 days of their lives (resulting in blood lead levels of 19â26 µg/dl, but no overt signs of toxicity), and found that they had elevated expression of Alzheimerâs-related genes as well as altered levels, characteristics, and distribution of amyloid plaques, which are one of the hallmarks…

The Bigger Pink Slime Problem for Business

In a matter of weeks, activists have been able to assassinate a popular product through a confluence of events: an official labeled it derogatorily as "pink slime," social media buzz (or anti-buzz), and media attention against the background of Americans' greater concern about processed foods. Could this happen to other products? Does it relate to a broader shift in power from PR firms and industry to the consumer mob? John Bussey has a good article in today's Wall Street Journal featuring some of the wound-licking of the lean finely textured beef industry. Note the tactics: 1) Make it about…

Isn't Maine one of them there Yankee states?

So what are they doing having their own creationist troubles? It just goes to show that this isn't just a problem for southern yokels in Florida and Texas — it's an epidemic all over the country. The specific problem in this case is a ignorant kook who has been made director of School Administrative District 59 and has decided to flout the state standards and expectations for science classes. Look at this fellow's arguments: Matthew Linkletter of Athens says that both are merely theories that represent "personal beliefs and world views," rather than proven science. Linkletter suggested during…

Angels and Demons - Feeding our love of conspiracies

Tomorrow Angels and Demons comes to theaters across the country. One in a long series of movies that profits from the idea that underneath our regular, ordinary world, there are powerful forces controlling the scenes. I understand the appeal of these movies, it's an entertaining concept. A fictional conspiracy engages your intellect, creates a mystery, makes you think about the world and who is in control. But we have to remember when we see these films that these are works of fiction for entertainment. The Illuminati are not real, this sadly ludicrous belief still persists for some…

Everyday, every day

I love language, which I suppose is as good a reason as any for being a writer. I'm also terribly critical---I hate misuse of language, especially my own. I'm not talking about silly grammatical rules that real speech renders moot. I'm talking about the misuse of words that actually changes meaning. Every day I give bad news. I hate it. For me, it's an everyday thing---not routine, exactly, and not rote, but profoundly normal. For patients, it's the furthest thing from normal. Bad news doesn't come every day. No matter how everyday it is to me, my words can deliver the worst news…

Vaccination and morality

Who has the moral high ground in the vaccination wars? My initial response is that I do, "I" meaning the medical and public health fields---those of us who prevent disease, disability, and death. But it's much more complicated. Many anti-vaccine activists are "true believers". They really believe that vaccines do more harm than good. But, without getting all Godwin, being a true believer doesn't insulate one from moral responsibility. Those of us who are professionals have made the evidence available. The science is clear---vaccination is a good thing, and more important, it is better…

Ugly Teeth and consumer protection

Another sign the monkeys are running the zoo is the news that the head of consumer protection doesn't want consumer protection. The top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation that would strengthen the agency that polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools. On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency's…

Making Booze!

This was a good weekend spent making lots of different kinds of booze. A long hot summer led to some really nice chardonnay grapes at the parents' farm. It wasn't a large yield, but the sugar, or brix were really high, hopefully yielding a nice end product. If you want to see how we make white wine, more pics are below the fold. The first step is really easy. Starting early in the morning, before it gets too hot, you go out with clippers and start the harvest, chucking the grapes into containers called "lugs". Then you get anyone willing to be helpful to start cleaning and sanitizing…

Flooding update--and why pandemic preparedness is paying off

Photo of Cedar Rapids, Iowa The university has now canceled all classes through June 22nd, and told all "non-essential" employees to stay home. The town is almost impossible to navigate as bridges across the river have closed one by one. And it's not only in town; interstate 80 and 380 both have closed in places, where they cross over the Iowa and Cedar rivers, making travel in the area near impossible. To make things worse, river levels aren't even predicted to reach their high until Monday (assuming current rain forecasts hold). Luckily, we have some plans in place...more on that…

Why We Need Diacetyl Regulation: Kraft's New Flavor

By Liz Borkowski  As David Michaels reported yesterday, the Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act will come up for a vote in the House some time this week. The legislation will force OSHA to issue a standard that will minimize workersâ exposure to diacetyl, the butter flavoring chemical thatâs been causing severe, irreversible lung disease in workers from food and flavoring plants. Why hasnât OSHA acted to address diacetyl exposure, even though theyâve known about the problem for several years? It seems that these days, top regulatory-agency officials are more interested in a…

Tripoli 6: Free at Last

Crosspost from Effect Measure, by Revere At 3:50 am EDST I received the welcome news, via Declan Butler, that the Tripoli 6 were free and on the tarmac in Sofia, Bulgaria. All are Bulgarian citizens and were released by the Libyan prison authorities as part of an extradition arrangement. Their life sentences were immediately pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov. Our six medical colleague had been accused of deliberately infecting over 400 children in a hospital in Benghazi, Libya and sentenced to death. They have been imprisoned for 8 years, through two trials and numerous appeals…

Kookfight!

Abby has a classic battle of the kooks. In one corner, Leonard Horowitz, a raving looney who begins the debate with an official denunciation of Duesberg, speaking as the mouthpiece of god, arguing that HIV/AIDS is the designed product of evil militarists. In the other corner, the calmer, but still goofy, Peter Duesberg, who claims that the HIV virus cannot possibly cause AIDS. They don't like each other, and Horowitz is particularly shrill. And just to make it even more hilarious, the venue: this is from a recording of some New Age health nut radio program, and the commercials that intrude…

Friday Blog Roundup

When a man with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is told not to board a plane and then does so anyway, you have to expect the public health bloggers to come out in force. Tara C. Smith at Aetiology has been on top of this from the start, first laying out the story, then explaining its implications, and finally letting readers know why indignation is necessary for responding to a case like this. Revere at Effect Measure explores the legal angle of isolation and quarantine, and provides details about air circulation in aircraft cabins; that blog also features a post about XDR-…

Federal Agency to Review Privatized Science

by Liz Borkowski  On Sunday, Marla Cone of the LA Times wrote about a federal health center contracting out the work of assessing potentially dangerous chemicals to a company with chemical-industry ties (see David Michaelsâs post for reasons to be wary of this particular contractor). Her story in todayâs paper shows that shining a light on such shady ties can sometimes have an effect. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group drew issue to this attention on February 28th, when it released the results of an investigation that found the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction…

Do Antioxidants Cause Cancer or Prevent it? The Diet Supplement Industry Manufactures Uncertainty

By David Michaels This is how it always works. A leading medical journal publishes a study saying a commercial product may be dangerous, perhaps even killing people. The trade association representing the manufacturers quickly attacks the study (preferably in the same news cycle), accusing the scientists of incompetence or worse. The latest issue of the Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA) includes a study that links that use of antioxidants (beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E) with increased mortality. The issue was published today. Yesterday, the Council for Responsible…

Money vs. Conscience

by Liz Borkowski If you haven't read Laurie David's op-ed, "Science a la Joe Camel," in yesterday's Washington Post, I recommend clicking over to it. David was a producer of Al Gore's climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," and reports that the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) turned down 50,000 free DVDs of that movie, which the movie company offered for classroom viewing. Why would an organization of science teachers turn down a movie that brings science to a mainstream audience and tackles what's arguably the most important environmental issue of the day? Because,…

Lies and abstinence pledges

Color me shocked: Teens who promise to wait for marriage more likely to deny sexual history Teenagers who take pledges to remain virgins until marriage are likely to deny having taken the pledge if they later become sexually active. Conversely, those who were sexual active before taking the pledge frequency deny their sexual history, according to new study findings. (Continued below) The research paper is published in this month's American Journal of Public Health (which is a special issue devoted to HIV/AIDS); the article is here. The meat from the abstract: Among wave 1 virginity pledgers…

Get a First Life!

Today's WSJ has a profoundly sad article about the real life of some Second Lifers. It's worth a read, especially the end of the article, where you find gems like this: Back in the world of Second Life, Mr. Hoogestraat's avatar and Tenaj have gotten bored at the beach, so they teleport to his office, a second-floor room with a large, tinted window overlooking the stage of the strip club he owns. Tenaj plays with her pug, Jolly Roger, commanding the dog to sit and fetch its toy. Dutch drinks a Corona, Mr. Hoogestraat's beer of choice in real life, and sits at his desk. For a while, Mr.…

Goodbye super-inclusive Iguanodon, hello Mantellisaurus, Owenodon, Dakotadon, Dollodon, Barilium, Kukufeldia, Hypselospinus, Sellacoxa, Proplanicoxa etc. etc.

My three-part series on the 'explosion of Iguanodon' is now complete and up on the Scientific American guest blog: part I is here, part II here, and part III here. Part III wraps things up and looks briefly at the social inertia that has held back our understanding of Iguanodon sensu lato, and also at the fact that some of the new names are unlikely to stand the test of time [the composite image above combines Greg Paul's illustrations of (at right, top to bottom) I. bernissartensis, Dollodon and Mantellisaurus, the skull of Dakotadon (at top left), and David Norman's skeletal reconstruction…

An Unsolved Simple Graph Problem

One of the things that I find fascinating about graph theory is that it's so simple, and yet, it's got so much depth. Even when we're dealing with the simplest form of a graph - undirected graphs with no 1-cycles, there are questions that *seem* like that should be obvious, but which we don't know the answer to. For example, there's something called the *reconstruction theorem*. We strongly suspect that it's really a theorem, but it remains unproven. What it says is a very precise formal version of the idea that a graph is really fully defined by a canonical collection of its subgraphs. To…

Why Choice is Important: The Well-Ordering Theorem

One of the reasons that the axiom of choice is so important, and so necessary, is that there are a lot of important facts from other fields of mathematics that we'd like to define in terms of set theory, but which either require the AC, or are equivalent to the AC. The most well-known of these is called the well-ordering theorem, which is fully equivalent to the axiom of choice. What it says is that every set has a well-ordering. Which doesn't say much until we define what well-ordering means. The reason that it's so important is that the well-ordering theorem means that a form of inductive…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Under the fold.... Marine Debris Will Likely Worsen In The 21st Century: Current measures to prevent and reduce marine debris are inadequate, and the problem will likely worsen, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council. Receptor Activation Protects Retina From Diabetes Destruction: Diabetes can make the beautifully stratified retina look like over-fried bacon. A drug known for it pain-relieving power and believed to stimulate memory appears to prevent this retinal damage that leads to vision loss, researchers say. Global Warming's Ecosystem Double Whammy:…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Arctic Sea Ice At Lowest Recorded Level Ever: Arctic sea ice may well have reached its lowest volumes ever, as summer ice coverage of the Arctic Sea looks set to be close to last year's record lows, with thinner ice overall. How Memories Are Made, And Recalled: What makes a memory? Single cells in the brain, for one thing. For the first time, scientists at UCLA and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have recorded individual brain cells in the act of calling up a memory, thus revealing where in the brain a specific memory is stored and how the brain is able to recreate it. Don't Throw…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Atomic-resolution Views Suggest Function Of Enzyme That Regulates Light-detecting Signals In Eye: An atomic-resolution view of an enzyme found only in the eye has given researchers at the University of Washington (UW) clues about how this enzyme, essential to vision, is activated. The enzyme, phosphodiesterase 6 (PDE6), is central to the way light entering the retina is converted into a cascade of signals to the brain. Green Fluorescent Protein Pioneers Share 2008 Nobel Prize In Chemistry: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2008 jointly to Osamu…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Humans, Oceans Shaped North American Climate Over Past 50 Years, NOAA Report Says: Greenhouse gases play an important role in North American climate, but differences in regional ocean temperatures may hold a key to predicting future U.S. regional climate changes, according to a new NOAA-led scientific assessment. The assessment is one in a series of synthesis and assessment reports coordinated by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. Our Unconscious Brain Makes The Best Decisions Possible: Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that the human brain--once thought to be a…

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The season of comic book movies is off to a very poor start. I went off to see Wolverine with low expectations — I read Ebert's review ahead of time — but even so, it failed to rise even to the basement of my presumption. The problem was that comic book movies should be fun, and they should explore the unique and peculiar character at the center. Think about Spiderman, with the kid discovering his superpowers and bouncing off of walls trying them out, or Iron Man and its playboy tycoon finding out that he has a conscience. You set aside the silliness of the premise to enjoy the thrill of the…

Carrboro Creative Coworking is a Go!

Carrboro Creative Coworking, a brilliant local project spearheaded by Brian Russell, is now a reality. The lease has been signed! Carrboro Creative Coworking now has a lease for office space at 205 Lloyd Street, Suite 101 in downtown Carrboro! It's 3,049 square feet and has nine small offices, two conference rooms, a kitchen, and public work space. The TARGET opening date for CCC is Wednesday, October 1, 2008. Stay tuned for exact dates and grand opening party info. :) To launch this business I need your help now. Its essential that I pre-sell as many services as I can. This will fulfill a…

New and Exciting in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine

A Roadmap for Migrating Neurons: Politicians, pundits, and even your best friends occasionally do things that make you wonder how their brains are wired. The next time you have that thought, consider consulting a developmental neuroscientist: they work every day to understand the processes that wire up everyone'sbrains. It's a mind-boggling job, because as an embryo develops, the connections within its brain ramify, becoming ever more complex. For example, consider the neural connections in the mammalian cerebellum. This distinctive structure is responsible for coordinating sensory and motor…

Texas BOE roundup

How did Texas screw up public education? It's complicated. The rational members of the board managed to exclude the 'strengths and weaknesses' language, which would have invited an immediate assault by the ignorant on a well-established scientific principle, but at the same time the ignorant members of the school board managed to hammer in several amendments: analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations in all fields of science by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those…

Weird-eyed fish

This is a photograph of Macropinna microstoma, also called barreleyes. It has a very peculiar optical arrangement. When you first look at this photo, you may think the two small ovals above and behind its mouth are the eyes, and that it looks rather sad…wrong. Those are its nostrils. The eyes are actually the two strange fluorescent green objects that look like they are imbedded in its transparent, dome-like head. (Click for larger image)Video frame-grab of Macropinna microstoma at a depth of 744 m, showing the intact, transparent shield that covers the top of the head. The green spheres are…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Lizard Moms Dress Their Children For Success: Mothers know best when it comes to dressing their children, at least among side-blotched lizards, a common species in the western United States. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have found that female side-blotched lizards are able to induce different color patterns in their offspring in response to social cues, "dressing" their progeny in patterns they will wear for the rest of their lives. The mother's influence gives her progeny the patterns most likely to ensure success under the conditions they will encounter as…

Science Blogging Conference - Lab Tours on Friday

There are 56 days until the Science Blogging Conference. Before I return to highlighting some of the people who will be there, let me finish with this Thanksgiving series of posts about the Friday pre-conference events - leaving the best for last, perhaps. If you look at the Program, you will see that Friday afternoon (after the Blogging101 session and before the Friday dinner) is reserved for Lab Tours. As all the Lab Tours are occurring simultaneously, you have to choose only one - and what choices! Duke Immersive Virtual Environment is a totally cool thing - you walk inside a big cube…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Fighting Australian Crayfish Do Not Forget The Face Of Foes: The fighting Australian yabby, a type of crayfish, smaller than a lobster but similar in appearance, does not forget the face of its foes says new research from University of Melbourne zoologists. The two year study involving over 100 pairs of yabbies revealed that the species Cherax destructor is capable of facial recognition of individuals, particularly its opponents. Why Juniper Trees Can Live On Less Water: An ability to avoid the plant equivalent of vapor lock and a favorable evolutionary history may explain the unusual drought…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Sleepless For Science: Flies Show Link Between Sleep And Immune System: Go a few nights without enough sleep and you're more likely to get sick, but scientists have no real explanation for how sleep is related to the immune system. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine are finding that fruit flies can point to the answers. Professor Creates 'Reverse Alarm Clock' That Keeps Young Children Sleeping: John Zimmerman, an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design and Human-Computer Interaction Institute, has developed an unconventional alarm clock…

Felice Frankel wins The Lennart Nilsson Award for science photography

Nobel Prizes are not the only awards given in Stockholm these day. Karolinska Institute also gives an annual Lennart Nilsson Award for photography. This year's prize has just been announced and I am happy to report that the recepient is a friend of mine (and Scifoo camper), Felice Frankel for her amazing science photography. From the Press Release: Felice Frankel, a scientific imagist and researcher at Harvard University's Initiative in Innovative Computing, has been named the recipient of the 2007 Lennart Nilsson Award. Frankel was sited for creating images that are exquisite works of art…

After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals

Did you know that North America had its own species of zebra? Or that there was a wolf-like carnivorous mammal -- with hooves? And there once was a horned rodent whose corkscrew-shaped burrows are still visible today? If this sort of thing interests you then you will enjoy Donald Prothero's book, After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2006). With the exception of birds, dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago when a giant bolide crashed into the earth just off the Yucatan peninsula. This extinction left thousands of niches open for other…

Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis

Normally I do not review books that have been out for longer than a year or so, but while I was in the hospital, I decided to celebrate Columbus Day by reading a book that was sent to me by my blog pal, Tara. This book, Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis by Deborah Hayden (New York: Basic Books, 2004, 2005), turned out to be an interesting biography of a bacterial infection that has baffled doctors for hundreds of years. In the first part of the book, the author observes that there are two main problems associated with an case history of syphilis: first, syphilis is "the…

Gulf War Syndrome: Fact or Fiction?

Fifteen years after most scientists have discounted the validity of "Gulf War Syndrome", which was first observed after the Iraq-US war I that ended in 1991, Epidemiologist Robert W. Haley has been trying to prove that thousands of troops were poisoned by a combination of nerve gas, pesticides, insect repellents and a nerve-gas antidote. But the scientific concensus is that this syndrome is a myth. "After hundreds of millions of dollars and a decade or better of research, we really haven't made any significant findings," said John R. Feussner, who was VA's chief research officer from 1996…

"Great Dying" Tied to Global Warming

tags: global warming, Permian-Triassic boundary, mass extinction, weather Computer simulation of the Earth's annual average surface temperatures in degrees Celsius 251 million years ago, at the Permo-Triassic (PT) boundary. Approximately 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct at the PT boundary, creating niches that the dinosaurs then occupied as the dominant animal group during the next geological age. Image: National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. A computer simulation of the Earth's climate 250 million years ago…

Imagine a World Without the Song of a Western Meadowlark

For those of you who have been in grad school, or who know someone in grad school, you are acutely aware of the extreme financial burden this represents. In fact, unlike professional students, grad students often live in relative poverty for the next ten years after they are awarded their degrees because they are struggling to pay off their debts on a postdoc's salary. Additionally, because postdocs and young professors lack job security until they are awarded tenure, these adult scientists have to resort to a variety of financial coping mechanisms often through their mid-30s and even their…

The Decline of a Grand Old Institution

tags: Smithsonian Institution, National Zoo, museum, funding crisis What's wrong with this picture: America is spending billions and billions of dollars to bomb the snot out of Iraq, but we can't even spare a fraction of that cost to fix our premier museum and zoo?? According to a news story that appeared in today's Washington Post, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Zoo are rapidly deteriorating due to a lack of funds to repair and update the facilities and to hire enough security guards to protect this nation's historic treasures. Deteriorating Smithsonian facilities have…

Strobel. <gag>

Uncritical journalists piss me off. Uncritical religious people piss me off, too, but it's their natural state at least. When the two converge, as they typically do on the religion pages, I turn purple and start shredding newsprint (which is why I usually avoid reading the religion pages). Today, the Star Tribune has an interview with Lee Strobel. Q You mentioned Darwinism. Do you question the theory of evolution? A Evolution is defined as a random, undirected process. But even scientists say the universe had to begin somewhere. Then you look at genetics, cosmology, physics and other fields…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 22 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Sensitivity of the Goldfish Motion Detection System Revealed by Incoherent Random Dot Stimuli: Comparison of Behavioural and Neuronal Data: Global motion detection is one of the most important abilities in…

Najash rionegrina, a snake with legs

It's a busy time for transitional fossil news—first they find a fishapod, and now we've got a Cretaceous snake with legs and a pelvis. One's in the process of gaining legs, the other is in the early stages of losing them. Najash rionegrina was discovered in a terrestrial fossil deposit in Argentina, which is important in the ongoing debate about whether snakes evolved from marine or terrestrial ancestors. The specimen isn't entirely complete (but enough material is present to unambiguously identify it as a snake), consisting of a partial skull and a section of trunk. It has a sacrum! It has a…

How do you despin a black hole?

From Andrew Hamilton's black hole image collection There are, for most practical purposed, two qualitatively distinct types of black holes: Schwarzschild - which are spherical and not spinning and Kerr - axisymmetric and spinning So... I know how to spin up a non-spinning black hole, you drop matter in with some finite angular momentum. I also know how to extract angular momentum from a black hole, eg through the Penrose process What I do not know is how, or if, you can go exactly back to a non-spinning black hole. Why is this? (J. Pedersen pointed this issue out to me and figured out many…

End Daylight Savings Time?

Former Scienceblogger Boris Zivkovic, now at Scientific American, has an excellent post arguing that we should eliminate daylight savings time.  Given that DST was invented to save energy, it may seem strange that I agree with him, but I do - mostly because there's no evidence that it does, and the physiological effects don't merit the change: Whether or not DST saves energy is the least of the reasons why it’s a bad idea. Much more important are the health effects of sudden, hour-long shifts on our bodies and minds. Chronobiologists who study circadian rhythms know that for several days…

top that: quark soup, time travel and the end of the internet

From Gordon via Chad Fermilab is claiming single top quark decay to b quark + W ie the accelerator produced a t-quark as part of some quark/anti-quark ensemble, without simultaneously producing an anti-t-quark. So what does this all mean... well, there are three generations of quarks - the up and down, from which all normal baryonic matter is made (ie protons and neutrons); strange and charming; and bottom and top (aka beauty and truth) - with top being the heaviest. The three generations, or "flavours", essentially duplicate each other in key properties, except the successive quark pairs…

interdisciplinary heterodoxy

I love going to meetings where I can learn totally new stuff. One of the joys of astrobiology is that I can wander into a session on some research way outside my specialty and learn something new and interesting. It is like being a student again. I also like disciplinary workshops, and big in-field meetings, don't get me wrong. In an ideal world my conference trips would be roughly 1/3 workshops on something I am personally actively working on, preferably small workshops; another 1/3 would be to big meetings in astrophysics, giving overview and context, getting caught up on news and what is…

Philosophy and Modern Physics - Request for Comment

What is your take on the philosophical, or theological, tone in some recent popular treatments of modern physics? Mark Vernon is a journalist and author of After Atheism and other books. Mark is looking for feedback from readers of popular books on modern physics or cosmology which touch on the philosophical issues, including theological implications, of some aspects of modern physics. To whit: "Mark Vernon would love to hear from any fans of popular science books written by physicists. Particularly the books of those who draw philosophical, even theological, implications in their writing…