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Speed! (ScienceBlog version). If this blog gets less than 1000 visitors a day, it's gonna BLOW...

You know the story: we can have Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock costarring and filmed in scenes where they are frantically blogging to make sure they reach a certain number of readers per day. Why? Because a crazy Dennis Hopper has rigged their computers to explode if they get less than 1000 visitors per day! O.K. so that is a little lame for a movie premise, but nevertheless, April is going to be readership drive month for me. With the schedule lightening up just a titch, I'm going to go and - wait for it - contribute to this website at a much more pronounced pace. Because, you know - as…

Hamburgers, Pizza, Pancakes, Doughnuts...Historicized

It is no grand observation to see that food studies, food politics, food culture (and even food landscapes, it would appear) feed a growing body of literature in the academy and at your local big box bookstore. (Who will be the first to call me out on that pun?) Here are some of them, the ones that are mostly singularly named. They are all summarized in a review essay at the Chronicle of Higher Education, from a few months back. Although not explicit in their titles or summaries, the histories of science and technology are implicated in all of these food histories. Hamburger: A Global…

This is the course that EVERY academic wishes they could teach.

(As I gear up for back to school, here's a little gem reprinted from the SCQ) - - - MY NEW GRADUATE COURSE OFFERING By Vince LiCata Title: Introduction to My Research Area Course Instructor: Me T Th 10:30 -12:00, Willams 205 Office Hours: by appointment Course Syllabus: The course will consist of me, talking about my research area, for 15 weeks. Topics to be covered include: 1. My research area. 2. Why my research area is important. 3. Important contributions I have made to my research area. 4. Contributions other researchers have made to my research area, including an objective appraisal of…

My water consumption versus someone in India...

As of 2007, residents of Vancouver, on average used 295 litres of water per day (Per capita water consumption number is 542 litres per day factoring in non-residential water use). (link) After reading the above article, I did a bit of number crunching. The contrast in water consumption, say. between a place like Vancouver and a place like Bhopal, India is pretty striking. In India, there are guidelines that have been put into place that have suggested a minimum of about 150 litres per day is needed to maintain appropriate living/health standards (see here, via the Central Public Health and…

I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean!!! (plus something about bath stickies)

From the Science Creative Quarterly. Two days left to enter, so I'm just moving this post back up. "O.K. so we're waaay behind on sorting out the Bill Hick, Science Prick contest, but figure that the best way to deal with that is to simply host another writing contest. This time, the book on the line is "I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean!" by Kevin Sherry. This book is great by the way, and this appears regardless of the fondness many people have for squids. This time we'll take any kind of submission. Just send some stuff in - because essentially the thing we like the best, is the thing…

Toxins in Our Food: This Month's Alternative Sponsor at The World's Fair

Our alternative sponsor for November (arriving very late in the month) is a Tom Meyer cartoon. (by Tom Meyer, SF Chronicle cartoonist, as reprinted in Ann Vileisis's Kitchen Literacy, p. 213) We offer this, as always, to call attention to favorite Sb sponsor Dow Chemical (though I haven't seen the Dow ads for a while -- then again, I haven't been here for a while). It seems that a crew testing Michigan's Saginaw River recently found dioxin contaminations from Dow in amounts heretofore unheard of ("about 20 times higher than any other find recorded in the archives of the U.S. environmental…

Calling all Vancouverites! Free 100-Mile Diet talk tomorrow.

This is for all you folks in Vancouver who happen to have some time to kill tomorrow (Friday) at lunch. The UBC Terry Project is having James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith give a talk. These are the authors of "The 100-Mile Diet," a bestseller and buzz worthy book that uses a social experiment (can we subsist on only eating things produced within a 100 mile radius?) to look into the world of food politics, economics, and culture. Extra bonus is that James and Alisa also happen to be Vancouverites, so their story has this wonderful local angle to it. The talk, entitled "The 100-Mile Diet…

The Fall of the State Climatologist Who Wasn't

Our local paper reported the sad, sad news that famed anti-global warming enthusiast and industry hack Patrick Michaels "quietly left his position over the summer" as the Virginia state climatologist. (With apologies for formatting -- the Sb folks haven't yet invented the mock font yet, so you can't tell the "sad, sad" was actually composed in that secret mock font.) It isn't clear if the newspaper itself was using the mock font and I just couldn't tell, since of course Michaels was never actually Virginia's "state climatologist" so there was no such position from which to step down. But…

Bill Donohue and I agree on something?

I know, it's a sign of the coming apocalypse…but Bill Donohue of the Catholic League opposes faith-based federal programs, just like I do! Well, not quite like I do. It turns out he has a different reason than I do. When Sen. Obama was running for president three years ago, he pledged support for faith-based programs provided they were emptied of any faith component: he opposed the right of faith-based programs to maintain their integrity by hiring only people of their faith. … When faith is gutted from faith-based programs--when Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Jews can't hire their own…

Alan Greenspan: It's not my bad

Alan Greenspan argues in the Wall Street Journal that the housing bubble was the direct result of geopolitical changes and their effects on long-term interest rates. Therefore, some correction was inevitable: The root of the current crisis, as I see it, lies back in the aftermath of the Cold War, when the economic ruin of the Soviet Bloc was exposed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Following these world-shaking events, market capitalism quietly, but rapidly, displaced much of the discredited central planning that was so prevalent in the Third World. A large segment of the erstwhile Third…

Why use a poll to determine who gets civil rights?

You know who is really unhappy about NY's gay marriage law? "Religious leaders", of course. Religious leaders slammed the state's new gay marriage law on Saturday, vowing to ban politicians who supported the measure from any Catholic church and parochial school events. The city's top Catholic clergy released strongly worded statements in the hours after the state Senate voted 33-29 to legalize gay unions. Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, of the diocese of Brooklyn, called on all Catholic schools to reject any honor bestowed upon them by Gov. Cuomo, who played a pivotal role in getting the bill…

How to waste time at work? Step 1: Read your friend's blog

What does Jake do when he has nothing to do? (Actually Jake has quite a bit to do, but he is desperately avoiding writing a manual for the use of MATLAB for his labmates, and for this purpose nearly anything short of dental surgery will do.) Choice #1: Read his friend's blogs. Why not? It is not like any of us have more productive things to do than inspect the inane details of our friend's work lives. Usually pretty dry, but every so often you are rewarded with comic gold. For example, this choice comment from Jess Wade, my friend who works at Penguin publishing in the fantasy and scifi…

Caffeinated soap?

For those of you who don't have time to shower and have a cup of coffee (or who have failed miserably to do those things simultaneously), why not consider caffeinated soap: Tired of waking up and having to wait for your morning java to brew? Are you one of those groggy early morning types that just needs that extra kick? Know any programmers who dont regularly bathe and need some special motivation? Introducing Shower Shock, the original and world's first caffeinated soap from ThinkGeek. When you think about it, ShowerShock is the ultimate clean buzz ;) ... Shower Shock is an all vegetable…

Darwin's Reach

Hofstra University solicits submissions for an interdisciplinary conference titled "Darwin’s Reach: A Celebration of Darwin’s Legacy across Academic Disciplines," to be held March 12-14, 2009. Primatologist Frans de Waal, paleontologist Niles Eldredge, and Judge John Jones (who wrote the Dover decision on teaching evolution) will be among the keynote speakers. Darwin’s Reach examines the impact of Darwin and Darwinian evolution on science and society in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin and the sesquicentennial of the publication of Darwin’s On the…

Luskin & BPR3

Readers may have seen the minor brouhaha over at bpr3.org about Casey Luskin (DI-flack extraordinaire) using the BPR3 icon on a post without registering with ResearchBlogging.org. When this was pointed out to Luskin, he then registered with the site, a move that lead to much discussion. Now Dave Munger - the administrator of ResearchBlogging.org - has announced that Luskin’s registration will be denied. I’m not going to take a stance on this, but want to highlight a comment by Andrea Bottaro: [L]et Luskin use the bpr3 logo, but add the general requirement that anyone using it should allow…

From Telemachus to Penelope

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: --INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI. Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely: --Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit! So began a work published today in 1922 in Paris on the fortieth birthday of its author. The work is, of course, Ulysses, and the author, James Joyce. The book ends with a eight-sentence, unpunctuated…

Cornelius Hunter's invisible long list

Cornelius Hunter expectorates: In the life sciences one’s alternatives are to be a Darwinist or to be a Darwinist. Passing grades, letters of recommendation, graduate school admission, doctorate exams, faculty hiring, and tenure promotion all require adherence to the theory of evolution. The lists are long of otherwise qualified candidates who could not take that next career step because they did not conform to the Darwinian paradigm. Long lists? Evidence please! Hunter is not a Darwinist. Was he denied his PhD in biophysics? Meyer, Wells, Behe, Marcus Ross, Kurt Wise? The signatories of the…

Science and the candidates

Noting the increasing "God-talk" by candidates from both parties, Donald Kennedy comments: Given this new focus on religious disclosure, what does this U.S. election have to do with science? Everything. The candidates should be asked hard questions about science policy, including questions about how those positions reflect belief. What is your view about stem cell research, and does it relate to a view of the time at which human life begins? Have you examined the scientific evidence regarding the age of Earth? Can the process of organic evolution lead to the production ofnew species, and how…

Compare and contrast

John Stockwell (among others) has suggested that there needs to be a baseline with which to compare Behe’s productivity as a scientist. Stockwell suggested Sean B. Carroll and, as always, I’m happy to oblige. (FYI, I’ve omitted Carroll’s review articles.) Couple of things are of note here. Firstly, and most obviously, Carroll’s publication record makes (Full professor) Behe look like a piker, especially when you consider that Carroll’s papers appear in journals such as Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Secondly, we see the predicted shift from first-author…

Optimism and the Yangtze River dolphin

ABC (Australia) is reporting that the Yangtze River dolphin or baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) may not be definitely extinct after all (see here and here). Wang Ding - who headed the survey team - is reported as saying: This is only one survey and...you can’t have a sample in a survey, so you cannot say the baiji all is gone by the result of only one survey. For example, there is some side channels or some tributaries [where] we cannot go because of a restriction of navigation rules, and also we don’t survey during the night-time so we may miss some animals in the Yangtze River. ... I’m pretty…

On Monsoons, Meetings, and ID

Above is a picture of a lightning strike east of Camelback Mountain last night. The monsoon season has officially started here in Phoenix, so we’re looking at a few weeks of increased humidity and thunderstorm activity. A good enough reason to skip out of town. Tuesday sees me head off to England for the ISHPSSB bi-annual conference - the premier meeting of historians, philosophers and social scientists interested in biology. Four days of talks and socializing with people such as John Wilkins. Good fun, though I hear there is flooding in the SouthWest of England that might disrupt travel…

We've settled what you are, now we're just haggling over the price

The scientific animation company, XVIVO, has had their work 'appropriated' by creationists before, and I hate to say it, but there is a reason for it. Although their animations of cellular and molecular processes are spectacular and beautiful, they are also annoyingly purposeful: they show tubulin making a beeline across microns of distance to assemble a microtubule, for instance, while kinesins stride determinedly down the cytoskeleton. There isn't the slightest hint of the stochastic nature of the biochemistry, and they are seriously misleading in that sense — which, no doubt, is why…

Ireland! Scotland! England!

I'm beginning to feel like I'm a bit organized for my visit to the Ireland and the UK next week. Here's when and where. 3-5 June: DUBLIN. I'll be attending the World Atheist Convention, and speaking at noon on 4 June. 6 June: GLASGOW. I'll be speaking to the Glasgow Skeptics at 7:00 in the Crystal Palace, 36 Jamaica Street. 7 June: BRIGHTON. I'll fly from Glasgow to Gatwick in the morning, I might be saying hello to Johann Hari in the early afternoon, and then I hitchhike or something to get to the Brighton Skeptics in the Pub by 8:00, to speak at The Caroline of Brunswick, 39 Ditchling Road…

Conservatism and Evolution

As part of the Panda's Thumb series debunking Jonathan Wells' latest dreck (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design), Tim Sandefur, himself a self-avowed conservative libertarian Republican, argues that Wells' work offers "no helpful contribution" to any debate about the compatibility of conservatism and evolution. Tim ends his piece: The bottom line is this: the genuine conservatism of people like Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver really is fundamentally at odds with evolution, not because of anything having to do with the free market or evolution's alleged links…

Minnesota sometimes sucks

It's embarrassing. Not only do we have Michele Bachmann, but the last election swept in a gang of know-nothing Rethuglican scum who've been trying to turn our state into Texas. Now they've invited the notorious evangelical crank Bradlee Dean to give an opening prayer. Dean, for those who don't know of him, is a kind of Vox Day impersonator—he's a raving homophobe with a parasitic ministry that targets public school. He puts on school assemblies that are nominally about fighting drugs and promiscuity, but are actually come-to-Jesus sessions. We see his vans tooling about on the highways now…

Friday Poem

  Lizards And Snakes On the summer road that ran by our front porchLizards and snakes came out to sun.It was hot as a stove out there, enough to scorchA buzzard's foot. Still, it was funTo lie in the dust and spy on them. Near but remote,They snoozed in the carriage ruts, a smileIn the set of the jaw, a fierce pulse in the throatWorking away like Jack Doyle's after he'd run the mile. Aunt Martha had an unfair prejudiceAgainst them (as well as being coldToward bats.) She was pretty inflexible in this,Being a spinster and all, and old.So we used to slip them into her knitting box.In the…

For my own Aisling

See the moon is once more risingAbove our our land of black and greenHear the rebels voice is calling"I shall not die, though you bury me!"Hear the Aunt in bed a-dying"Where is my Johnny?"Faded pictures in the hallwayWhich one of these brown ghosts is he? Fare thee well my black haired diamondFare the well my own AislingThoughts of and dreams of you will haunt me'Till I come back home again And the wind it blowsTo the North and SouthAnd blows to the East and WestI'll be just like that wind my loveFor I will have no rest'Til I return to thee Bless the wind that shakes the barleyCurse the…

This makes me happy

Long-time readers may remember that over the summer my SciBlings and I raised funds for K-12 science projects using DonorsChoose.org. With the start of the school year, we're hearing back from the teachers. Below are two notes I recently received: Dear Dr. Lynch, I cannot thank you enough for funding this project for my students! I told them that our new aquarium is on its way, and they can scarcely contain their excitement. Your generosity will enhance their learning and growth throughout the entire year. Thank you for giving my children this opportunity. Joyfully, Cheryl Bommarito Klein (…

UM Researchers Fighting Tumors With....Bubbles?

University of Michigan researchers are using gas bubbles to block the flow of oxygen to tumors, like a cork in a bottle. They can also be used to deliver drugs to tumors. The theory behind this is to create a artificial embolism, or blockade of a blood vessel, referred to as embolotherapy. When this occurs naturally, it usually is the result of coronary disease (cholesterol deposits or blood clots which become dislodged) which can lead to a stroke or aneurysm. By creating an artificial gas-bubble embolism, a doctor is able to carefully control the path of the bubble from the outside with high…

It's a dog's life

That last post was just too saccharine, so I have to bring you down. Balance! Balance in all things! So here's your official downer for the day: a story about greyhound racing. One thing about greyhounds: They aren't likely to die of old age. When dogs turn 4 or 5 and are finished racing, she claims, "it's more cost-efficient for trainers and owners to kill a dog than to house and feed it." Pro-racing folks balk at that claim, saying that today, most greyhounds are humanely retired, not killed. But in 2002, Alabama investigators found the bodies of thousands of dead greyhounds on the…

Scientists Find/Kill Oldest Living Creature on Record: 400 Year-Old Clam

Researchers from the University of Bangor recently discovered the oldest known animal on record, a 405 year-old clam, while dredging at the bottom of the North Atlantic above Iceland. Then they killed it. When I was your age, we used to have to walk to school, up hill both ways, and the ocean temperature was 6 degrees colder, and Bangor was run by Abnaki Indians, not snooty, tweed coated liberals. The animal --an ocean quahog nicknamed Ming because that's which dynasty was ruling China when the old feller was born--was precisely 31 years older than the previous record holder, another ocean…

63% of Election Coverage Focuses on Strategy Frame

As I have detailed in past studies and as we write in the cover article at The Scientist, the dominant frame that appears when science turns political is the "strategy" frame. This is a journalist driven package that ignores the substance of the scientific issue or debate and instead employs an election-like emphasis on personalities, tactics, and who's ahead in winning the policy battle. Often this package becomes prominent when coverage shifts from the science beat to the political beat. It is under these conditions that "false balance" is most likely to appear in coverage of science. The…

Understanding the Impact of Michael Moore's SICKO

"I think one movie can make a difference; I do believe that," says director Michael Moore. Indeed, speculation over the impact of his new documentary SICKO was the subject of a news feature in the Sunday New York Times: Whether embracing Mr. Moore's remedy or disdaining it, elected officials and policy experts agreed last week that the film was likely to have broad political impact, perhaps along the lines of "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's jeremiad on global warming. It will, they predicted, crystallize the frustration that is a pre-existing condition for so many health care consumers.…

Living on Thin Ice: How Polar Bears Were Used to Dramatize the IPCC Report's Release

The Guardian has the details on the PR tactic of polar bear photos to (over)dramatize the impacts of global warming, tracing the idea to a 1993 Coca-Cola campaign. Here's a little bit about the strategic use of "cuddly anthropomorphism on the tundra": One photograph in particular has captured the imagination. In a neat piece of marketing, the Canadian Ice Service made available a stunning image to coincide with the IPCC report. Two bears, probably a mother and her cub, are pictured on a spectacular ice block off northern Alaska that might have been modelled by Henry Moore. They appear to be…

Univ. of Edinburgh Launches $115 Million Dollar Stem Cell Research Center; Ian Wilmut to Direct; In the US, Red State Universities and Economies Likely to Fall Behind in Global Competition

The same week Harvard unveiled its plans for a 250 acre Life Sciences campus, Scotland's University of Edinburgh announced a $115 million dollar Stem Cell Research Institute to be directed by Ian Wilmut. At universities across Europe, Asia, the US, and Canada, there's a race to be at the forefront of life sciences research. Indeed, in the recent Chronicle of Higher Ed rankings of US universities, those schools with advanced medical and life sciences research dominated the top twenty. At public universities like UCSF, Berkeley, the other UC flagships, and the University of Wisconsin, their…

CROWDING OUT SCIENCE: "Perfect Storm" of Foreign Policy Crises Likely to Push Climate Change, Stem Cell Research, and Other Science/Enviro Topics Down Media-Policy-Public Agenda

The media, policy, and public agenda can be said to have a "limited carrying capacity." Since neither news organizations,members of Congress, nor the public can devote equal amounts of resources and attention to all issues, the rise in attention to one issue on the news agenda, is likely to bump down in prominence another issue across other agendas. AND so, over the past few weeks, as Madeline Albright dubs it , we have reached a "perfect storm" of foreign policy crises. Consider the many flash points across the globe, events that, as TIME magazine frames it this week, have led the Bush…

Snakes, Universes, and the Rest

The Loom gathered a bit of dust over the past couple weeks as I grappled with another round of deadlines for work that actually pays the mortgage. Life should now get relaxed enough for more blogging, I hope--starting this evening. And as the articles I've been working on come out in the next few weeks, I'll point you to the links--starting with my recent (brief but free) take on the new fossil of snakes with legs for the New York Times. And speaking of evolutionary transitions, I'm also happy to bring news of a cool new project, called Kosmos: You Are Here. It's an e-book on the history of…

55,000 Science Teachers: "Stunned and Disappointed" by the President

A statement from the National Science Teachers' Association on Bush's remarks about Intelligent Design: NSTA Disappointed About Intelligent Design Comments Made by President Bush 2005-08-03 - NSTA The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the world's largest organization of science educators, is stunned and disappointed that President Bush is endorsing the teaching of intelligent design - effectively opening the door for nonscientific ideas to be taught in the nation's K-12 science classrooms. "We stand with the nation's leading scientific organizations and scientists, including Dr.…

Geckos that don't sell insurance

About twenty-five years ago, I read Gerald Durrell's book My Family and Other Animals (1957), an account of his early life in Corfu. One part made a distinct impression on me - his account of watching geckos on the walls of his house. To me, as a teenager in Ireland, this was the height of the exotic, after all Ireland has only one type of native reptile, the Common Lizard, Lacerta vivipara, and I had only seen one on a single occasion (slow worms, Anguis fragilis, are a recent localized introduction). To the twelve-year old me (in wet, cloudy, overcast Ireland), Durrell's experience of sun…

Placental mammal relationships clarified

A just-published paper in PLoS Biology has thrown some light on the relationship between placental mammals. The authors used retroposed elements, and by scanning more than 160,000 chromosomal loci and selecting from only phylogenetically informative retroposons, they recovered 28 clear, independent monophyly markers that they feel conclusively verify the earliest divergences in placental mammalian evolution. Below the fold, I provide a copy of their derived phylogeny, but a few things are worth noting: Eutheria are divided into Xenarthra, Afrotheria & Boreotheria, with the Xenarthra -…

Paedocypris, we hardly knew ye

This is Paedocrypsis, a cyprinid fish that is less than one centimeter in length. PZ has blogged on it here in the past. Unfortunately, as PZ now notes, it looks like the species has gone extinct only weeks afier being formally described. What little we know about the species is contained in Kotellat et al. (in press) "Paedocypris, a new genus of Southeast Asian cyprinid fish with a remarkable sexual dimorphism, comprises the world's smallest vertebrate" Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3419. The abstract reads: Paedocypris is a new genus…

Creationists up to no good in Chesterfield County, VA

It looks like somebody either never heard of Dover, or refused to learn from their lesson. It seems the local ID supporters of Chesterfield County aren't happy: So far, the official actions of the CCSB have been limited to issuing a rather vague and confusing statement. ID proponents had hoped to influence the selection of science textbooks, but they started their campaign too late, and the CCSB approved the selection of standard biology texts. But there is still much concern about the situation in Chesterfield. ID supporters, backed by a local conservative group called the Family…

One Year Anniversary, and a Funding Vindication

Today is the One Year Anniversary of my Ph.D. The last couple weeks I've had what I thought might be Frodo-like anxiety aftereffects, and was briefly concerned that I might also have been pierced by a Morgul blade, bitten by a giant spider, and have Phantom Limb from where my finger was bitten off by an ugly CGI character. But I realized no, that wasn't the case (whew), any anxiety I've experienced (and my concomitant hiatus) is due to 1. my postdoctoral NRSA proposal 2. my hard drive crashing and the big number 3...... ... Evil Monkey is back in the monkey business!!! I submitted an…

US draws with Italy

Wow, that was a nail biting miracle. The US held off a penalty card massacre and a tough Italian team to draw 1-1 with only 9 players on the field. The drawback? Read on.... ...we haven't scored a single goal yet in this Cup. That's right, our only "goal" actually came off one of the Italian defenders. Our first real goal came late in the second half off a beautiful shot by Beasley, but it was taken back due to an offsides call. Talk about frusturating!!! I'm extremely upset because the Americans played a tough-as-nails game, especially in the second half, and I have little doubt they…

Blogging on the Brain: 5/25

Highlights from recent brain blogging: First, a new edition of Encephalon. Physicalism and Panpsychism - a book review by Jerry Fodor. Looks like a pretty nice book... And here, Fodor explains mental representation to his aunt. Silicon smackdown - an article in the June Scientific American talks about new algorithms for playing the ancient board game Go, one of the last quantitative arenas where humans are clearly superior to machines. Subscription only, sorry guys. Whistle, Bark and Groan - with a dolphin accent? Thinking Meat comments on a NYT article on the social construction of reality…

The Darwin Reclamation Project

(To watch this as a music video click on the volume icon in the top left.) Here you are, all your bright, shining faces with a brand new copy of On the Origin of Species. It's extremely generous of Ray Comfort and Living Waters Publications to distribute so many free copies of a book with no political agenda whatsoever. I noticed that some of you found an odd additional chapter to the book that never appeared in the original edition. But many of you reclaimed Darwin's intent by removing these unfortunate pages and now have an excellent copy for yourselves or to donate to a worthy…

Man's best...empathizer?

If you own a dog you may agree that it seems as if they understand our feelings. While some may call this anthropomorphizing, you know ascribing human emotions to animals, new research may vindicate the feelings of many pet owners. A study recently published in Royal Society Open Science provides evidence to suggest that dogs can mimic the emotional state of their owners as well as their canine friends, a process similar to empathy called emotional cognition. The research team recorded the behavior of animals at a dog park in Palermo, Italy and noticed that the animals copied the expressions…

2013 Nobel Prize Winners in Physiology or Medicine

Image from Reuters and The NY Times Congratulations to Drs. Randy W. Schekman, Thomas C. Südhof and James E. Rothman (above left to right) for earning the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research in "discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells." Cells often make products like hormones and neurotransmitters that need to exit the cell in order to simulate or inhibit other cells. The reason these three scientists were selected for the award is that their research discovered how cells regulate the export of vesicles containing…

Discovered: New species of frog found in NY!

Image Source: UA News, Brian Curry, Rutgers. It is easy to get lost in a crowd, especially in an area as densely packed as New York. Scientists from UCLA, Rutgers University, UC Davis and The University of Alabama have discovered a new species of frog in just that region! The frogs were found in the ponds and marshes of Staten Island, mainland New York and New Jersey although there is evidence that they were recently common on Long Island as well. Jeremy Feinberg is the ecologist responsible for discovering what he thought were leopard frogs with a very strange call. Despite looking an…

When is text in a PDF not text?

I see this confusion so often it seems worth addressing. If you scan a page of text, what you have is a picture. A computer sees it not as letters, numbers, and punctuation—but as pixels, bits of light and shade and color, just like the pixels in your favorite family photo on Flickr. You can't search for, extract, highlight, or cut-and-paste such "text." It doesn't matter whether you embed the picture in a PDF; you still can't search it. Ceci n'est pas une texte! Compare this to creating a PDF from a word-processing or page-layout document. The computer already thinks of the text in these…