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New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 15 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: A Principal Component Analysis of 39 Scientific Impact Measures: The impact of scientific publications has traditionally been expressed in terms of citation counts. However, scientific activity has moved…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Ecologists Report Quantifiable Measures Of Nature's Services To Humans: The idea of ecosystem services is a promising conservation concept but has been rarely put into practice. In a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, researchers use novel tools to report some of the first quantifiable results that place values on nature's services to humans. 15-year-old Theory About The Nervous System Disproved: A delay in traffic may cause a headache, but a delay in the nervous system can cause much more. University of Missouri researchers have uncovered clues identifying…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 62 articles published this week in PLoS ONE. There are also two Journal Clubs going on right now - here and here. Here are some of my picks for the week - go read, rate, comment and send trackbacks: A Comparison of Wood Density between Classical Cremonese and Modern Violins: Classical violins created by Cremonese masters, such as Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu, have become the benchmark to which the sound of all violins are compared in terms of their abilities of expressiveness and projection. By general consensus, no luthier since that time has been able to…

Holocaust Children, part I (guest post by Mom)

A few weeks ago, my mother took a long trip to Israel to attend a conference of Holocaust Child Survivors. She wrote a diary of her trip and it was, in a slightly edited form (omitting most of the recounts of family gatherings), published in the Serbian newspaper Danas (Today) in its popular weekend column. If you click on the link, you can read the diary in Serbian language. She then translated her travelogue into English and asked me to publish it here, on my blog, for everyone to see. I will do this in a few installments, starting with the first one today and the rest will appear here…

Scott Huler - 'On The Grid' at Quail Ridge Books

As I alerted you before, last night Scott Huler (blog, Twitter, SIT interview) did a reading from his latest book On The Grid (amazon.com) at the Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. The store was packed. The store sold out all the books before Scott was even done talking. The C-Span Book TV crew was there filming so the event will be on TV some day soon. Scott was also, earlier yesterday, on WUNC's The State Of Things (the podcast will soon be online here) and the day before that he was on KERA's Think with Krys Boyd (download MP3 podcast by clicking here). Scott's energy and enthusiasm are…

Urgent: Call Louisiana, their science is getting away!

Barbara Forrest is sending this message out everywhere — they need concerted public action to forestall a dreadful legislative disaster that is looming large in the state of Louisiana. You can help! We in the LA Coalition for Science have reached the point at which the only possible measure we have left is to raise an outcry from around the country that Gov. Jindal has to hear. What is happening in Louisiana has national implications, much to the delight of the Discovery Institute, which is blogging the daylights out of the Louisiana situation. SB 733, the LA Science Education Act, has passed…

Post-conference wrap-up

I just got back from the American Atheists conference, so here's my summary of the weekend. Best talk of the conference: Lawrence Krauss wins hands-down. It was a meaty, informative, and lively lecture that summarized what we know about dark matter and dark energy so that even a non-physicist could follow it. Just that one talk alone made the whole weekend worthwhile. Dawkins gave a good talk, but to be honest, it got a little unfocused in a few places — he tried to include some of the recent events at the last minute, and it lost some of its coherence as a result. Still a good lecture,…

January Pieces Of My Mind #2

Rare religion sighting: we put up two charming Iraqi ladies for the night because of a friend's birthday party, and they turned out to be Mandaeans, Gnostic believers in John the Baptist as Messiah. One of my best old friends calls me, grieving, and tells me his old roomie died this morning of cancer. Age 37, leaving a wife and two small kids. I'm glad I don't have to reconcile shit like this with any idea about a good lord directing things from behind the scenes. The universe isn't trying to please us or mess with us, it's just one big indifferent randomiser. Last night I went to bed early…

World Wide Mind (and Culture)

World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet is a new book by Michael Chorost. I've not thoroughly read it yet but I've looked through it and I've listened to an interview with Chorost. Here's the book description from Amazon to give you an idea what it is about: What if digital communication felt as real as being touched? This question led Michael Chorost to explore profound new ideas triggered by lab research around the world, and the result is the book you now hold. Marvelous and momentous, World Wide Mind takes mind-to-mind communication out of the…

Welcome to the Wikipedia of the alt-right?

Meh; not to spoil the tension but it is, as you've already guessed, just another dull clone of wiki a-la Conservapedia. I found it via Wired via fb; you certainly won't find it via people referring to it2. Other than me; sorry about that. This one is called "Infogalactic" which seems to hint that it is a joke. They have two, no make that three, obvious problems. The first is, who would bother read it. The second, is who would bother write it. If I look at the recent changes on wiki, the last 500 changes cover 6 minutes. On IG, they cover 5 days1. They are also heavily slanted to only a few…

I seem to be on the Twin Cities Creation Science Association mailing list

Just in case anyone sensible in the Minneapolis/St Paul area feels like exposing yourself to the wild and crazy world of Minnesota creationism, here are the events coming up in February. On the 17th, you can attend the creation science fair in the Har Mar Mall, and you can drop in to the Christian bookstore there (with a great selection of creationist claptrap in stock) to listen to a DVD debate. I think "DVD debate" just means they'll be playing some noise from Ken Ham and Hugh Ross, and you can watch. Young Earth Creationists vs. Old Earth Creationists: frickin' loons vs. nutty…

On Fooling People With Numbers

One thing I have learned from more than a decade of teaching mathematics is that it is very easy to bamboozle people with numbers and equations. I do it all the time in my calculus classes, and that is when I am bending over backward to be as clear as I possibly can. Creationists are especially unscrupulous about exploiting this fact about mathematics. At one creationist conference I attended, the speaker went on for close to an hour spouting the sheerest nonsense about information theory and probability. He received a standing ovation for his troubles. Another time, in a small,…

Ongoing witch-hunt against Oklahoma scientists

Though only a handful of ERV readers are from Oklahoma, I know all of you are familiar with the handiwork of Senator Randy Brogdon. He was the fellow who recently tried to get Creationism taught in Oklahoma public schools (FAIL). Dude is a fucking IDiot (and just plain old idiot) who hates science: I am also disgusted with the yearlong one-sided celebration of Darwinism that OU is sponsoring on their campus. Disgusted? Really? Not 'disappointed', or 'dismayed', or 'intrigued, so Im going to check it out', but disgusted? Fantastic. So what happens when you combine: 1. Anti-science 2. New…

Links for 2010-01-12

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Neutrino Telescope Measures Temperature of the Ozone Layer "The IceCube neutrino observatory is a kilometre-scale array of photon detectors buried under the ice at the South Pole. When neutrinos pass through the ice, they occasionally bump into atoms creating particles called muons. These muons then generate light as they pass through the ice which is then picked up by the detector allowing scientists to determine the direction of the incoming neutrino. The trouble is that most of the muons that IceCube sees are not generated by neutrinos at all but by…

Thank you, readers: reflections on Dad's belated eulogy

I am truly humbled by reader response to my Thursday post on the 12th anniversary of my father's death. What began as a simple journaling exercise interspersed with some great photos provided by my sister has become one of my most highly-read and most-commented posts. I don't want to comment too much lest I take away what this post has meant to me and others. But for background, this is something that I had intended to write for the 10th anniversary of Dad's passing. However, I had only been with ScienceBlogs for a few months and wasn't yet in a position to write so frankly and personally…

"God helmet"?...yeah...right...

A Christmas present, maybe? Maybe not. A "neurotheology" researcher called Dr Michael Persinger has developed something called the "God Helmet" lined with magnets to help you in your quest: it sounds like typical bad science fodder, but it's much more interesting than that. Persinger is a proper scientist. The temporal lobes have long been implicated in religious experiences: epileptic seizures in that part of the brain, for example, can produce mystical experiences and visions. Persinger's helmet stimulates these temporal lobes with weak electromagnetic fields through the skull, and in…

Love Darts in the Backyard

Spring is finally slinking into the northeast, and the backyard wildlife here is shaking off the winter torpor. Our oldest daughter, Charlotte, is now old enough to be curious about this biological exuberence. She likes to tell stories about little subterranean families of earthworm mommies and grub daddies, cram grapes in her cheeks in imitation of the chipmunks, and ask again and again about where the birds spend Christmas. This is, of course, hog heaven for a geeky science-writer father like myself, but there is one subject that I hope she doesn't ask me about: how the garden snails have…

ID and Fine Art ... well, it's all relative I suppose

One of the twenty-year goals of the Discovery Institute's Wedge was to see the influence of "design theory" in the fine arts. I've often wondered what that could possible mean. And now, thanks to Access Research Network's "ID Arts Initiative" I now know. In today's ARN Announce (it's not online yet), Dennis Wagner presents his vision of "the Right-Brain approach to intelligent design": Our worldview impacts all areas of life including the arts. The arts also reflect philosophical and cultural trends in human societies. If intelligent design philosophical and scientific concepts are valid, we…

First Experiment to Attempt Prevention of Homosexuality in Womb? Really?

A press release landed in my inbox today with this headline, which raised my eyebrows (as it was obviously intended to do): "First Experiment to Attempt Prevention of Homosexuality in Womb."  It starts with this quote from Alice Dreger, a Northwestern University bioethicist: "This is the first we know in the history of medicine that clinicians are actively trying to prevent homosexuality." The release was announcing the publication of a piece at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum titled, "Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb? -- it was written by the same authors that…

Am I a Liberal?

This is a repost of something I wrote on my old blog back in April. With the general election rapidly approaching, it seems like a good one to put back out there. The election season is starting to heat up. Scandals rock DC on what seems like a daily basis. The public is split, at least according to the polls, on many major issues. We are heading toward a political (and probably historical) crossroad. Now is the time for people to stand up for what they believe, and to help move the country in the right direction. But where do I stand? Sometimes I have a hard time figuring that out. I think…

Q: If a mountaintop is intentionally blown up and only the surrounding ecosystems hear it, does it make a sound?

A: Probably. * * * DN: So Ben, what's up with those mountain tops? BRC: They're fewer than there used to be, that's what I know. DN: Less places to ski and stuff? BRC: But many more places to golf, apparently. DN: Ben, is that for real? Mountain top removal for coal, for golf, for kicks, apparently? When I first asked, I was actually referring to a scene in the new Superman movie, but this I'm guessing is non-fiction. Why on earth are they doing this? It seems like an awful lot of effort. BRC: It is, my Canadian co-blogger, for real. But it's less work than hiring a bunch of West…

More Hurricane Publications; Off to Conference

Tomorrow I am off to New York for this meeting on hurricanes and climate, sponsored by Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society. I'm very appreciative that Columbia-IRI has allowed me to attend the event, which will feature presentations from Kerry Emanuel, Chris Landsea, Roger Pielke, Jr., Thomas Knutson, and numerous others. I will be back late Wednesday; blogging will probably be impaired during the trip. So let me leave you with something substantive before I go: It turns out that another presenter at the Columbia meeting will be Johnny C.L. Chan, an…

Communicating Science To Congress â The Office of Technology Assessment Got It Right (Sort Of)

by Philip H. DISCLAIMER - The opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author alone. They do NOT represent the official opinion, policy, or action of any governmental agency the author may work for or have ever worked for at the county, state or federal level. If you do not like the content or opinions, contact the author, not your Congressmen. In my last post for the Intersection, I mentioned the Office of Technology Assessment and its place in the history of communicating science to Congress. I also asked the questions as to whether, in the increasingly complex Information…

Casual Fridays: Generation gap for "sour grapes"

Last week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by an event in Greta's classroom. She had assumed that most of her students would be familiar with the story of the Fox and the Grapes, which goes as follows: ONE hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. "Just the things to quench my thirst," quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again…

Violent video games and desensitization

Although not all games are equal, there's plenty of evidence that playing some violent video games can cause aggressive real-world behavior. Sites like addictinggames.com offer popular games whose sole point is to play the role of a hit-man or even to torture animals. Over 85 percent of video games include violence. When these statistics are combined with the results of studies showing that aggressive attitudes and even actions can be increased after playing violent games for as little as 20 minutes, it's possible that we have a major problem on our hands. Another potential problem of video…

Ireland stands up to the Catholic Church

Last week, the Cloyne report was released. This document describes patterns of child abuse and in particular the willful intransigence of the Catholic church in correcting the problems in Ireland, and it's pretty damned damning. One significant detail: the Church's defense in recent months consists of claiming priestly pedophilia was a thing of the past, a product of the laxity and corruption of the general social atmosphere in the 60s and 70s, pushing the blame onto that awful liberal culture, not the church. Unfortunately, the Cloyne report assesses policies in the late 1990s, so we're…

Dennis Markuze/David Mabus must have uttered a straw ...

Dennis Markuze aka David Mabus on a Television News Story ... the story is inaccurate in a number of minor ways that obscures an interesting truth, but it is a moment in time worth savoring: The story is inaccurate in the following ways: There has not been a "recent escalation" of threats. The threats come in cycles. He's on an average up-swing. It is true that there are a few new people are on his list, and they are making a stink about it. That, however, has happened before. Why did this cycle of threats cause the police to actually do something? See below for a guess. It is also not…

What comes after a big flood?

The tsunami and Katrina both left behind pools of stagnant water in which things have swarmed and multiplied and emerged to infect humanity. I'm referring, of cause, to clueless articles extolling the virtues of DDT. The latest is by Henry Miller in the National Review Online. The six-year old U.S. outbreak of West Nile virus is a significant threat to public health and shows no signs of abating. ... As of September 6, Louisiana ranked fourth in the nation in human West Nile virus infections; but with most of New Orleans still under water and a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, there…

Fentanyl as An Agent of Bioterrorism

At the beginning of my adventures in blogging (circa 2006) I wrote a short piece for the news site "Mixeye" about the drug fentanyl, and was reminded of it after having a discussion about the drug with some friends. Fentanyl is an extremely potent painkiller, which has unsurprisingly led to its widespread abuse (especially in my neck of the woods, towards Detroit). However, after re-reading my write-up, I was reminded of why I thought this drug was particularly interesting: it has been used in some high-profile bioterrorism strikes and was, for a while, pursued as a chemical weapon by…

American Journal of Bioethics special issue on personal genomics

A reader has pointed me to the latest issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, which is devoted to social networking and personal genomics. I'm still working my way through the many interesting articles, but for now I wanted to cover some useful points in the editorial (entitled "A Pragmatic Consideration of Ethical Issues Relating to Personal Genomics"), which was written by a series of big names from personal genomics company 23andMe, including both co-founders. The article is designed to address some of the more popular misconceptions surrounding personal genomics; here's a quick run-…

"Designer baby" doctor no longer offering embryo screening for cosmetic traits

Last month I mentioned a US fertility clinic that was offering couples undergoing IVF the opportunity to screen their embryos for sex, and for genes associated with "cosmetic" traits such as eye and hair colour. I used this as an opportunity to note that the genetic complexity of many traits (e.g. height, also discussed yesterday) would make it highly unlikely that embryo screening would be effective for these, although for hair and eye colour such screening is certainly feasible. The media coverage of this fertility clinic - run by reproductive endocrinologist Jeff Steinberg (pictured) -…

Find Out Where They Stand on the Issues that Really Matter

As the 2008 elections swing into full gear, Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) today launched a new resource--the Science, Health And Related Policies (SHARP) Network--which allows you to track how various elected officials and candidates stack up on a variety of science and health policy issues. SEA was formed a couple of months before the 2006 election in order to support science-friendly candidates, advocate for the proper use of science in formulating government policy, and to oppose political interference in science. SEA made quite a splash then, but its newest endeavor looks…

Generic Lipitor, The Same and Not The Same

Photo source. With the news of availability of generic Lipitor, a cholesterol lowering drug, sales of the prescription brand have plummeted, as expected. Is generic Lipitor really the same as prescription Lipitor? Consider this: "Generic drugs are identical to brand name drugs." True or False? We know that generic drugs cost less than their brand name equivalents, offering a savings of 50% or more. But are they "identical"? Behind every pill is a story. US patents grant the inventor a 20 year property right; only the inventor can manufacture and sell the medicine. When the patent…

IBM Tongue Bytes

Source. A strange email arrived in my Inbox recently asking me for a picture of my tongue, assuring me "lifetime benefits." First I wondered how this email escaped my Spam filter. But then I wanted to explore. Here's the email {you likely will have received it too}: Dear distinguished guest, How are you recently? Is everything ok? I am Sasha from Traditional Chinese Medicine center (short for TCM), the assistant of Dr.Huang, it's my honor to contact you via this email. I hope our TCM center have left nice memories for you. It's our responsibility to give our remote concern to you since…

Update on the arson at the Holocaust History Project

Last week, I reported about arson at the offices of The Holocaust History Project (THHP), posted one update, and was gratified to see how many bloggers responded to my call to link to THHP as a big "screw you!" to whoever did this. An article about the arson at the Holocaust History Project has appeared in the San Antonio Express News, including an interview with Sara Salzman, who acted as spokesperson for THHP because Harry Mazal was out of town. It appears that the police and fire department do not believe that this was a hate crime for reasons that I have to question: But the fire, set in…

Connectivity and Status Anxiety

Virginia Heffernan, writing in the Times magazine, takes Bruce Sterling's SXSW talk about connectivity and poverty mainstream: Bruce Sterling, the cyberpunk writer, proposed at the South by Southwest tech conference in Austin that the clearest symbol of poverty is dependence on "connections" like the Internet, Skype and texting. "Poor folk love their cellphones!" he said. In his speech, Sterling seemed to affect Nietzschean disdain for regular people. If the goal was to provoke, it worked. To a crowd that typically prefers onward-and-upward news about technology, Sterling's was a sadistically…

Emailing your professor: some suggestions

Chad says all the online academics are obligated to respond, somehow, to this New York Times piece on emails from students to professors. So, I shall. But, rather than digging into the details of the article itself, or worrying about the sample size upon which it is based, or the assertions by at least one of the professors interviewed that she was misrepresented, I'll just share some advice. This is based entirely on my email likes and dislikes, so take it with a grain of sodium chloride. Before emailing an urgent question to your professor, spend a moment or two making sure you are not…

Just what I need: Cellular Feng Shui!

Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to expect. This is one of those times. (Yes, it's grant season.) So enjoy this bit of Classic Insolence from 2008 and be assured that I'll be back tomorrow. Remember, if you've been reading less than four or five years, it's almost certainly new to you, and, even if you have been reading that long or longer, it's fun to see how posts like this have aged. Balance. It's what the woo-meisters who believe in "Feng Shui" tell us that it will bring to those…

Why Get A Pi? (Raspberry Pi)

There is really no better time to get a Raspberry Pi. The new Raspberry Pi 3 has features that make it much more useful and fun, including more speed, built in bluetooth, and built in wifi. The Raspberry Pi is a small computer that, out of the box, lacks storage drive or device, a monitor, a screen, or a mouse, but is otherwise a fully functional computer that can run a normal operating system. It costs very little, so if you happen to have a TV or monitor that can use a component or HDMI hookup, a keyboard, a mouse, and an appropriate microSD card, then you have a computer for $39.99. If…

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has declared a crank-off!

Has it really been two years? Amazingly, it has indeed. On June 16, 2005, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. deposited the biggest, steamingest, drippiest (not to mention stinkiest) turd I had as yet seen in my then young blogging career, specifically an article published simultaneously by both Salon.com and Rolling Stone entitled Deadly Immunity. Along with David Kirby's Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Mystery, which had been published a couple of months earlier, RFK, Jr. arguably did more than almost anyone else besides the aforementioned David Kirby to…

Why does New Zealand have so many earthquakes and volcanoes?

A 6.3 earthquake has just struck the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, killing dozens and leaving dozens more buried in rubble with rescue workers trying to dig them out. On the TV this morning, the mayor of Christchurch told his story: Having just left a series of meetings, he was sitting on a balcony outside the city offices in a tall building with his executive assistant planning their next activities when the quake struck. They tried to re-enter the building but were repeatedly thrown back away from the entrance way. When the powerful earthquake stopped, he picked himself up off the…

NY bans trans fat -or- Trans fats and Yo Mama

Yesterday, the NY Board of Health voted to ban trans fats -- after a phase-out period -- in restaurants in the city: New York City's board of health on Tuesday voted to phase out most artificial transfats from restaurants, forcing doughnut shops and fast-food stands to remove artery-clogging oils from their cooking. The law will require McDonald's and other fast-food chains that have not already eliminated transfats to do so by July 2007. They will be given a six-month grace period before facing fines. Makers of doughnuts and other baked goods will be given until July 2008 to phase out…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The shifting sands of anti-entropic woo

Everybody (well, mostly everybody) learns in science and physics class the Three Laws of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, meaning that the increase in the internal energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the amount of heat energy added to the system minus the work done by the system on the surroundings. The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant. These three laws pretty much describe the…

How engaged should scientists be in policy?

I really hate this. I really hate having to take a friend to task, but he leaves me little choice. You see, I actually like Chris Mooney. Back in the day, I even even hoisted a pint with him at the Toledo Lounge in D.C., round about the time of the commencement of the whole "framing" kerfuffle that has periodically flared up to engulf ScienceBlogs and the rest of the science blogosphere. We had great fun making fun of everyone's favorite creationist neurosurgeon, particularly his claim that the "design inference" has been "of great value" to medicine and has been a great boon to medical…

The Canadian War on Science: The #Altmetrics impact of a science policy blog post

On May 20th, 2013 I published my most popular post ever. It was The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment. In it, I chronicled at some considerable length the various anti-science measures by the current Canadian Conservative government. The chronological aspect was particularly interesting as you could see the ramping up since the 2011 election where the Conservatives won a majority government after two consecutive minority Conservative governments. The post is my most popular by an of magnitude, with around 10 times more page views that the…

New data on how much infection in the first wave of the pandemic

It was some time after the pandemics of 1957 and 1968 that we were able to judge their severity and it will likely be some time after this one has finally burned itself out, most likely to become "just another" seasonal flu, that we will be able to gauge the 2009 swine flu pandemic. A lot of data is being generated but it will take time to harvest it and send it to the scientific market for consumption. A report in today's Lancet reminds us that we aren't seeing all there is to see, even with unprecedentedly rapid means of communication and better surveillance than ever in the history of our…

Public health and hydrofracking

Over the past half-decade, the US has seen a sharp increase in high-volume hydraulic fracturing -- also called hydrofracking, or simply "fracking" -- to extract natural gas from underground shale formations. States' responses to fracking applications have varied, and in general public health concerns seem to have gotten far too little consideration. The latest issue of the environmental and occupational health policy journal New Solutions is devoted to the issue of high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF), and PDFs of all the articles are available for free online. It's a great resource for…

Upstream/Downstream: Why The NY Times Should Understand the Nature of Inconvenient Truths

My quick summary reaction to Bill Broad's provocative NY Times article surveying a few scientists and social scientists' opinions on Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth: 1) Just like in politics generally, science-related blogs can strongly shape the news agenda and framing of an issue, and Broad's article is a leading example. Roger Pielke and Kevin Vranes at UColorado's Prometheus site have been doing a great job in adding their expertise and views to the climate change discussion over the past few years. In the process, they have emerged as a valuable source for journalists trying to make…

De Novo Formation of Oocytes

I had read a couple of reviews about all the recent ruckus in this field. I was going to write something ... but I only have so many hours in a day. Now the newest paper has now surfaced. Pure Pedantry has the details. And so I guess I'll end up writing about it anyway. So how did this all start? Because I'm lazy (and frankly have a ton of work to do) here is what I posted on Pure Pedantry: ...the big papers came out a couple of months ago. In the first paper a bone marrow from a GFP expressing mouse was transplanted into a native mouse. The native mouse developed GFP expressing oocytes (…

Should Personal Genetic Information Be Free?

The editors of the journal Nature write: (Nature 451, 745-746 (14 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/451745b; Published online 13 February 2008) Genetics benefits at risk A rogue senator needs to be bypassed. Technology development guru George Church -- aka the information exhibitionist -- is playing a salutary social role with his Personal Genome Project. Church is in the process of gathering phenotypic data and sequencing portions of the genomes of ten volunteers, including himself.... He intends to study how the genes of these people -- all but one of whom have revealed their identities --…