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This is the way science should always work:

Reed Cartwright just forwarded me (and a few others) an email that was just sent out to an evolutionary biology mailing list. I'm going to quote it in full below. Don't worry if you don't understand the technical terms in there - you don't need to know what Bayesian methods are, or how they're used in phylogenetics, or even what phylogenetics is to understand why this email is important, and why all concerned should be proud of themselves. Dear Colleagues, This to inform you that we must retract Hall, B.G. and S. Salipante. 2007. Measures of clade confidence do not correlate with…

Political Interference in Endangered Species Act Designations

It's no secret that the current administration is not a big fan of the Endangered Species Act. Since Bush took office, only 56 species have been added to the list (for comparison, during both the Clinton and G.H.W. Bush administrations, an average of about 60 species were added every year). If cases where the listing was the result of a lawsuit settlement are excluded, that number goes down quite a bit - I know for a fact that the recent listing of 12 species of Hawaiian flies was forced as the result of a lawsuit. In today's Washington Post, we find out about one of the reasons for the drop…

Status report

Well, I got another paper revised and out the door a couple of hours ago (it started life as a series of blog posts on microbial species here), so I am feeling almost lightheaded. But I have one other paper to revise and a grant application to write, and a conference on evidence based medicine to go to, all in the next fortnight, so all in all, I'm not exactly spare with time right now. So serious blogging (= defending agnosticism against the atheist hordes) will be a bit light for a while now. I was thinking of doing one on clades, to introduce folk to phylogenetics. Eventually. The grant…

What if you saw something that rocked your world ... and you didn't notice?

If you're a regular reader of Cognitive Daily, you're relatively accustomed to seeing surprising things. Indeed, it's gotten to the point where you might even expect it. You've seen optical illusions and videos that baffle the imagination. Yet most participants in psychology research studies aren't aware of the many ways the mind can be "tricked." One of the most dramatic tricks, which we've discussed several times, is the phenomenon of Change Blindness. An object can change right before your eyes, and you're likely not to notice. When you're made aware of the change, you find it hard to…

They're all still arguing against me!

Ever since I ferociously asserted that god was not only dead, but never existed and never will exist, and that no amount of hand-waving speculation will convince me otherwise, those thuggish provisionalists have been gunning for me. Jerry Coyne tried, and now Greta Christina pounds on me, trying to convince me I'm wrong. They're not succeeding. I'm merely being honest here. I read Greta Christina's list of events that would convince her, and I have to say that none of them would sway me. They'd convince me that there are unexplainable phenomena and beings greater than myself, but I already…

Framing framing wrong?

John Hawks links to Greg Laden's blog in which he points out that Nisbet and Mooney misused the notion of framing. It seems (I am not that familiar with it, except via secondhand stuff about Lakoff's views, which Laden notes is derivative of the work of Goffman) that framing doesn't mean what they think it means, as Inigo Montoya might have said if they were Sicilian. Or does it? Words do not always mean the same thing as their theoretical contexts imply or define. Take "paradigm". Kuhn used it in a context (later deconstructed by Margaret Masterman into 21 distinct senses, some subtly…

SCQ Journal Club: Part I

Uncertain Principles (link) PHYSICS ENVY AMONG BIOLOGISTS: FACT OR FICTION? Physicists often state their belief that all biologists would rather be physicists, but became biologists only because they were not very good at math. As evidence for this, they point to such findings as the fact that the vast majority of published studies in virology, cell biology, endocrinology, and even microbiology, use few if any partial differential equations or elements of number theory, and only one paper written by a biologist in the past 25 years (in the field of neurophysiology) has ever used tensor…

Thank Your Senators; Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Passed in Senate

On September 30 the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act -- an act intended to criminalize the intimidation of scientists involved in animal research -- passed the Senate by unanimous consent. I wrote in support of this bill earlier this month. This is from a press release from the AAAS related to the issue: In the wee hours of the morning before officially recessing for the fall campaign trail, the Senate passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (S. 3880) under a unanimous consent agreement. The bill, introduced by Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), addresses the…

In vitro Meat

The next steak you eat could be grown in the lab: Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner. Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They…

Book review: Freaks of Nature

"Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution" (Mark S. Blumberg) This book came to me well recommended, and as far as the content goes, I am very impressed. The writing style, however, and the intended audience, are at odds with each other. Blumberg is a developmental biologist who has a real grasp of the topic, is enthusiastic about it, and has a clear target in his sights. That target is sometimes misleadingly called "The Modern Synthesis", although a better term might be something like "gene centrism"; the view often expressed in words like "genes are the…

On being offended and disrespected

Few things make me very angry: injustices perpetrated by the powerful against the weak, good science fiction series being canned by network executives, and people who think they can say whatever they like without regard for their audience. I find it disgusting that some people think it's okay to be aggressive, rude and swear blindly in front of children, for instance, which matches two of my aversions. So when a communal forum that I spend a lot of time in, and which includes many of my friends, turns into that sort of street scene, I want to leave it. Am I being an old fogey? It's not…

Fun with point-light displays -- and what that says about the visual system

Point-light displays are an amazing demonstration of how the visual system creates order out of what initially seems to be a random pattern. Take a look at this short movie (QuickTime required). Just looking at the first frame, it might be difficult to tell what's being displayed, but after watching for just a second, it all becomes quite clear: Just these 13 dots, when placed in motion, instantly convey a very clear picture. We can even determine the gender of the person walking or recognize friends, just from displays like this. But now take a look at this movie: It might take a bit…

Blurry vision and aging: How older eyes cope

Take a look at this slideshow (QuickTime required). You'll first see a photo in perfect focus. Then 12 more pictures will flash by, each of them blurred using Photoshop. Finally, the original photo will appear again. Is it the same as before, or slightly blurrier or sharper? I'll give the answer after a few readers have had a chance to make a guess in the comments. Most people with normal vision will gradually adapt to blurry photos (though it might take a little longer than I've allowed in this movie). Then when they see a photo that's in focus, it seems too sharp -- as if it's been…

More on meta-analysis: Schwitzgebel strikes back

A month ago, Eric Schwitzgebel wrote a post critical of meta-analysis, suggesting that studies finding null results don't tend to get published, thus skewing meta-analysis results. I objected to some of his reasoning, my most important point being that the largest studies are going to get published, so most of the data collected actually does appear in the literature. Now Schwitzgebel's got a new post about meta-analysis, again taking a critical stance. First, he discusses experimenter bias: An experimenter who expects an effect of a certain sort is more likely to find such an effect than…

Misleading "lie detector" science from ABC News

A report on ABC news suggests that using fMRI brain imaging to detect lies is as simple as comparing two "pictures" of brain activity: How do you tell which is the truthteller? It's easy, the article claims: Who needs Pinocchio's nose to find a lie? The FMRI scan on the right detects a brain processing a false statement; the less colorful brain on the left corresponds to someone in the middle of a truthful statement. According to the article, When someone lies, the brain first stops itself from telling the truth, then generates the deception. When the brain is working hard at lying, more…

The mental and health effects of extreme distance running

Tomorrow I'll be running my first-ever (and possibly my last) half-marathon. I've been an amateur runner since high school, but the longest race I'd run in previously was a 10K race, less than half this distance, nearly 20 years ago. I haven't run competitively since college, but I have consistently run around three miles a day for nearly that entire span. It was just this summer that I decided to go for the half-marathon, and I've upped my training regimen to include runs as long as 12 miles. But tomorrow's 13.1 mile race will be the longest I've ever run. What can I look forward to? How…

A guarded defense of Malcolm Gladwell

Jonah Lehrer now has two posts slamming Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. The second post, currently ScienceBlogs' most emailed story, offers the ultimate slam, proclaiming that Gladwell is the "new Freud," a mere "prose stylist" who "wasn't particularly interested in the neurological foundations of his theories." As I've said before, I agree with much of what Jonah is saying, especially when it comes to Gladwell's over-reliance on anecdote and over-generalizations about experimental results. And I'm certainly impressed, as Jonah is, with Gladwell's insightful analysis of current events and politics…

Misrepresenting Carl Wunsch, Part II

As I noted previously on this blog, while in Vancouver I did a radio show on global warming in which one of many "skeptic" callers used the example of noted MIT oceanographer Carl Wunsch, and an alleged quotation from him, to cast doubt on the latest science. Having come across Wunsch's name several times in the context of working on Storm World, I was immediately suspicious that the caller was misrepresenting Wunsch, and in fact, eventually called him out on it. Now I see (via the DeSmogBlog) that there's an addendum to all this. According to the Guardian, Wunsch is ....considering legal…

Strong Hurricanes, Weak Categories

As Cyclone Favio makes landfall in an already flooded Mozambique--striking the provinces of Inhambane and Sofala as a Category 3--I am prompted to reflect a bit on what the South Indian cyclone season of 2006-2007 has shown us so far. There have now been three storms that we can classify as Category 4s according to traditional Saffir-Simpson categorization: Bondo, Dora, and Favio. Being a Category 4 in this particular basin means that at some point, based upon estimates from satellite images, these storms were determined to have maximum sustained winds of 115 knots or higher for at least one…

Lindzen on Hurricanes and GW

Famed global warming "skeptic" Richard Lindzen has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today about global warming--which includes some debunking of the proposed hurricane/GW link. He writes: If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s…

Reply from Mark Siegel

A while back I did a post about Mark Siegel, the author of the book Bird Flu, which received a number of comments. Among those, Tara took Siegel to task for appearing to suggest, in the Washington Post, that there's no need to prepare emergency supplies of food and water in anticipation of an outbreak. Recently I heard from Siegel, who wrote in to clarify his position and invited me to post his email. Here's what he had to say: Dear Chris, thanks for mentioning my new book on your blog in what i thought was a very respectful way. FYI - i am actually in favor of emergency supplies of food and…

A hyena's LOL contains important information about itself

Spotted hyenas giggling over an antelope spine. Courtesy BMC Ecology. For spotted hyenas, a laugh can speak volumes about an individual. Despite being portrayed as stupid scavengers who rely on the leftovers of lion prides, hyenas are highly intelligent and social predators. They communicate with each other through an array of whoops, yowls, grunts, screams, and giggles, and by using these calls an individual can call in help to run lions off a carcass or signal that it's time to beat a hasty retreat if the odds don't look as favorable. Yet there is more to a hyena call than just its…

What Barbie does for a little girl's body image

The average 3- to 10-year-old girl in the U.S. owns eight Barbies. Only one percent of this group owns no Barbies. And every girl seems to go through similar stages with her Barbies -- first, adoration, next, ambivalence, and finally, rejection. By the time they're in middle school, most girls have either thrown out their Barbies or cut off their hair and amputated multiple limbs. These aren't just casual observations -- a 2004 study observed that while young girls identify with Barbie, 10- to 14-year-olds have distanced themselves from Barbie. But what of the recent media hype suggesting…

Is memory better for shocking events?

September 11. The Challenger disaster. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. If we were over the age of 10 when these events occurred, we all remember them vividly: where we were when we heard the news, the weather that day, how we felt. It's as if these memories were imprinted on our minds with a flashbulb. Or is it? In 1977, Roger Brown and James Kulik published a paper in Cognition entitled "Flashbulb Memories," describing their research on individuals' memories of the Kennedy assassination. Participants reported having especially clear memories of the day it occurred, recalling…

Fervor can replace competence in our military's officer corps, I guess

This is revoltingly narrow-minded and stupid behavior by our military. We've got a Christian kook, a Major General James Chambers, who has mistaken morale and discipline for indoctrination in the Christian faith. He's running a program called the Spiritual Fitness (whatever the hell that means) Concert Series at army posts in Virginia. This program brought in a Christian rock group to perform, which is annoying enough, but then attendance was optional in name only. At least one company was marched to the doors of the event, and then told they had a choice: attend or be disciplined. Those of…

Does seeing objects in a scene help us remember them? (Part 2)

Yesterday's post showed that our memory for objects depends on the background information available when we first see the object: If you see a toy in a room, you remember it better later if you see it again in the room. Being in the same position in a blank picture of the room doesn't help. So what about the scene is helping us remember the object? It could be things in the immediate area of the object: are we remembering the precise object/background relationship? In our example, maybe we're remembering exactly how the propeller and the gear interact with the background: In 2003,…

Who was Charles Darwin?

Some days I just want to scream. For years I believed what the textbooks and teachers told me about the history of science, taking in their arguments from authority, but when I started to look into the same events myself I found they were much more complex than I had previously known. I cherish the new knowledge I have gained, but it comes with a price. When someone spews out a bit of textbook cardboard, I cringe as if fingernails were being drawn across a chalkboard. Today's tidbit was that Charles Darwin could never account for apparently maladaptive characteristics displayed by animals, i.…

Evolution of Paper Ungulates

The term evolution, presented without any modifiers, generally is held to refer to genetic change within a population. Of course, behaviors can change over time, too.  This includes behaviors that are quite specific and complex.   Ungulates are mammals with hooves.  The classification comprises several orders.  Thus, the term refers to a superorder.  However, the classification scheme has gotten more complex than it was back when I first studied it.  There used to be two orders, rel="tag">Artiodactyla and rel="tag" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perissodactyla">Perissodactyla.…

Sciencewoman's turn to share...

Thank you all so much for introducing yourselves and telling us why you read this blog. Its been incredibly reassuring (at a time when I'm feeling a bit insecure about my research output) to know that I have been doing *something* good with my time. In return for your sharing, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about what I do in the real world. I'm a geoscientist and I work at the intersection of three subfields. That's part of why I've gotten a kick out of calling myself an -ologist, because the unnamed prefix could change day-by-day depending on my mood. Working at an intersection…

Decoding the Halle Berry cell

About 2 years ago, researchers reported the discovery of the so-called "Halle Berry cell" in the human brain. This, and similar cells which respond selectively to other well-known celebrities, famous landmarks or categories of objects are located on the medial surface of the temporal lobe. The same group of researchers now report that they can decode the activity of these cells to predict what people are seeing. The ability to decode this neural activity will prove to be very useful in the development of brain-computer interfaces for amputees and paralyzed patients. The cells in question were…

There must be a gene for cussedness

I have a daughter. She's all smart and growed up, and she has moved away to the distant land of Wisconsin, where she has a real, full-time job and a car and an apartment and a cat and ferrets and a boyfriend, and she thinks for herself (like I told her to!) and she has opinions I mostly agree with — she's a freethinker and rationalist — and some I disagree with — she's not a fan of the atheist movement and she's had a bit more philosophy in her brain than I think is entirely good for her. She's appeared a few times in the comments here, with much clashiness, and she has her own blog, where…

The roots of brain imaging, circa 1470

De prospectiva pingendi, Book 3, figure lxiv Piero della Francesca (c 1412-92) This month's Lancet has an interesting article by G.D. Schott, linking Piero della Francesca's pioneering orthographic projections to technologies like fMRI: In the neurosciences today, images of the brain and its constituent structures are typically presented in the triadic orthogonal format, comprising coronal, sagittal, and axial projections. Less commonly, rotated or tilted projections are used. But our forebears are easily forgotten, and here I suggest that the contemporary way in which brain images are…

The Camera of the Mind

Third Eye Wayne Martin Belger This is one of the most strangely compelling artworks I've encountered recently: a pinhole camera made from a 150-year-old skull. Wayne Martin Belger's Third Eye is a human skull with a tiny hole drilled in the traditional location of the mystical "third eye." The pinhole allows light to enter the cranium and expose photographic film. The cranium is opened and the film accessed through an elaborate, gothic set of findings crafted from jewelled aluminum, titanium, brass and silver. The effect is steampunky, but also reminiscent of the decorative metalwork used…

Jeweled blisters, gold needles: jewelry as disease

Blooms, Efflorescence, and Other Dermatological Embellishments: Cystic Acne, Back Lauren Kalman, 2009 Metalsmith and mixed-media artist Lauren Kalman explores the nexus of body, adornment, and disease in her remarkable series "Blooms, Efflorescence, and Other Dermatological Embellishments". Yes, those faux-diseases are actually piercing the skin - but only temporarily: they're gold acupuncture wires modified into jewelry by the artist. The temporary/permanent nature of the piercings echoes the temporary visibility of the diseases she depicts, like syphilis and herpes, which eventually clear…

Outsourcing "Art"

Back in October, there was an interesting article by Peter Hessler in the New Yorker about Chinese painters who make a living painting western scenes (Venice is popular) that they neither recognize nor are particularly interested in. Unfortunately the article is subscription-only, but if you have access it's worth a read. If not, you can check out a brief audio slideshow here. The article raises some discomfiting questions about how America is perceived by the outside world, and how concepts we view as central to our culture are utterly meaningless when seen from outside. First, our small-…

Tell Bill Gates Where to Put His Money

No, I'm not being rude, I promise! The Gates Foundation is matching DonorsChoose donations to high-need schools. They'll fund 50% of any classroom project request that prepares students in rural and high-poverty schools for college, up to $4.1 million. Just jump in and pick from a list of projects eligible for matching funds here. Here's a project that caught my eye: One of my former students had done water rockets at his school in another state. He introduced this to me and I have been hooked on it ever since then. Normally, I have teaching funds from our state. This year my funds have been…

Americans having sex (before marriage)

Americans are not waiting until marriage to have sex: More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past. "This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades." Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and…

Adults Only Poem of the Week: Walt Whitman's A Woman Waits for Me

This poem is not for children. This is an adult poem for adults -- and possibly mature, sophisticated teenagers. (In some ways it makes me wish my parents did not read this site, but I will get over that.) As a consequence of its sordid nature, it is completely below the fold. It is also very, very good and exemplary of Walt Whitman's style. A Woman Waits for Me by Walt Whitman A woman waits for me -- she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking. Sex contains all, Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs,…

Not your mother's PMS: Laurel Roth's menstrual doilies of rage

PMS Quilt, 2008 hand embroidered and crocheted pantyliners Laurel Roth Yes, that is just what it says it is: a collection of pantyliners embroidered with profanity. One thing is clear about artist Laurel Roth: she is not afraid to make viewers uncomfortable. Her series "Hope Chest" is constructed of hygenic accessories embroidered with "off-kilter reflections on biology, fertility, and the ever-changing roles of women" - like the f-word. Embellished with beads, rose thorns, and crochet, the embroideries are twee, kitschy decor - or they would be, if not for their bluntly worded messages.…

You In China Now

Arrived in China last night (although night is subjective when you have a 12 hour time differential), and after a bit of a drive to Suzhou we had dinner at a fantastic little Malaysian place which served something called 'Roti'. Roti is apparently phyllo dough with stuff inside and then fried. The "stuff" usually consists of bananas or chicken and is damn delcious! I'm a bit exhausted and about to go out shopping but just wanted to post a funny anecdote and some pictures of my parent's house (which has been converted into a museum in my absence!) The story is a run-in with police that my dad…

Called Strikes and Race: Et tu, Baseball?

A few months ago, I posted about a study showing implicit racial bias in NBA referees' calls. Now it's baseball's turn, because yesterday reports of study by Parsons et al.1 that shows analogous results for home plate umpires began popping up all over the media. The study is pretty straightforward, though the data analysis must have taken forever. I'll let Parson's et al. tell you what they did: There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball, with each team playing 162 games in each annual season. During a typical game each team's pitchers throw on average roughly 150 pitches, so that…

What Sustainability Means

Sustainability is a modern-day buzzword.  It is used so much that it is at risk of suffering from a dilution of meaning.  But is still is an important concept. In August 2004, President Bush href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040809-9.html">boasted that home ownership in the USA was at an all-time high (69.2 percent).  It was important for him to point this out, just before the election.  The reason is that he was advocating trickle-down economics.  He needed to show that concentrating wealth in the hands of a few could lead to improved standards of living for…

Health Care Policy Idiocy

I haven't been posting much.  I have been trying to figure out why.  Probably it is because all I want to say is that Bush is an idiot, and I guess I have said that already.  More than once.   But this latest gig is a particularly egregious case.  I would like to comment upon the situation, because it illustrates something about health care policy that is not obvious. The budget proposal put forth by the Administration calls for href="http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/04/nussle-health-care/">$200 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years.   Granted, this is…

Statins Prevent Lung Damage?

Nature News reports on a preliminary study href="http://www.chestnet.org/about/press/chest2006/briefing.php">presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians.  The study indicates that the cholesterol-lowering drugs in the statin family may protect against lung damage caused by cigarette smoking. The study, presented by Walid G. Younis, MD, consisted of data analysis of results from a survey done on 485 smokers and ex-smokers.  They found that those who took statins had much less lung damage. They compared medical tests of the patients' lung health with those…

Folate Supplementation: Americans Still Don't Get Enough

N-[4(2-Amino-4-hydroxy-pteridin-6-ylmethylamino)-benzoyl]-L(+)-glutamic acid is the name of a vitamin.  Since the full name is a bit awkward, it is more commonly known as folic acid, or href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folate">folate.  The common name is derived from the Latin word for leaf (follium).   It is a B-vitamin, necessary for metabolic steps involving the transfer of single carbon atoms.  It is needed in the replication of DNA, which obviously is rather important.  The need is greatest when there is a lot of cell division. In the 1980's it became apparent that relative…

The Age of Scarcity?

Or is it the age of Malthus? To think that our natural resources can last forever is one of our society's greatest myths. As the world population rises and the standard of living in the developing world increases, the capability to cloth, feed and provide energy through non-renewable resources will inevitably diminish. A couple of weeks ago the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) issued a very frightening report entitled The Age of Scarcity. What does the report say? Lets look at oil. Here are the major points: - World oil production peeked about 2 1/2 years ago. The rate of new oil…

Will Iron Fertilization Work?

In the words of Rick at MBSL&S So let's just say you have a couple hundred thousand metric tons of iron filings laying around the house. While in the tub one day, you conceive of a terrific idea of dumping all that iron into the ocean, thus seeding phytoplankton growth (iron is a limiting nutrient for phytoplankton) and sequestering atmospheric carbon for centuries deep underwater. Voila! Hello carbon sink... goodbye global warming. And even better, you can sell shares of your iron filing dumping as carbon offsets to individuals and business who are looking to feel more carbon neutral. It…

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme.

Taking a very brief break in the dungeon of grading to partake of this meme, with which I have been hoping to be tagged for months. (Indeed, I wasn't really officially tagged -- Julie was, but she's busy writing papers and stuff, so I'm helping her out by pinch-hitting for her on the meme.) No mere time-waster, this meme was started by PZ Myers at Pharyngula as a means of demonstrating evolution in cyberspace. The rules: There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify…

Why wouldn't this be a good way to do peer review?

When my "Ethics in Science" class was discussing scientific communication (especially via peer reviewed journals), we talked about what peer review tries to accomplish -- subjecting a report of a scientific finding to the critical scrutiny of other trained scientists, who evaluate the quality of the scientific arguments presented in the manuscript, and how well they fit with the existing knowledge or arguments in the relevant scientific field. We also talked about the challenges of getting peer review to function ideally and the limits of what peer review can accomplish (something I also…

Chemistry is game on! (MORTAR AND PESTLE bracket opens)

PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS It's time for a quick run down of the teams from the Chemistry Conference who made it to the tournament this Spring -- some who we fully expected to see here, and a few surprises. But it's also time for you, the fans, to make some noise in support of your favorite teams! If we follow your observations on these competitors down to the quantum level, they're bound to effect the outcome (albeit in a probabilistic way). Here are the first round match ups: Acid vs. Base: It's not a surprise to find these teams here, as they're standbys in the Chemistry…