Search Content

Displaying results 10301 - 10350 of 87947

Zero

Back during the DonorsChoose fundraiser, I promised a donor that I'd write an article about the math of zero. I haven't done it yet, because zero is actually a suprisingly deep subject, and I haven't really had time to do the research to do it justice. But in light of the comment thread that got started around [this post][fspog] yesterday, I think it's a good time to do it with whatever I've accumulated now. History --------- We'll start with a bit of history. Yes, there's an actual history to zero! In general, most early number systems didn't have any concept of "zero". Numbers, in early…

Curious about Curiosity?

Here's the last few news reports: August 21: NASA's Curiosity Studies Mars Surroundings, Nears Drive NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been investigating the Martian weather around it and the soil beneath it, as its controllers prepare for the car-size vehicle's first drive on Mars. The rover's weather station, provided by Spain, checks air temperature, ground temperature, air pressure, wind and other variables every hour at the landing site in Gale Crater. On a typical Martian day, or "sol," based on measurements so far in the two-week old mission, air temperatures swing from 28 degrees to…

Amateur Atheists?

That, minus the question mark, is the title of a new article by theologian John Haught in the current issue of The Christian Century. The subtitle is “Why the New Atheism isn't Serious.” Sadly, the article does not seem to be available online. After reading that headline, I was expecting Haught to offer a variation on The Courtier's Reply. Actually, Haught has something different in mind. The serious atheists, in his view, are Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre. What makes them serious? In this respect the new atheism is very much like the old secular humanism that was rebuked by the hard-…

How do you teach evolution?

I was just turned on to this recent issue of the McGill Journal of Education which has the theme of teaching evolution. It's a must-read for science educators, with articles by UM's own Randy Moore, Robert Pennock, Branch of the NCSE, and Eugenie Scott, and it's all good. I have to call particular attention the article by Massimo Pigliucci, "The evolution-creation wars: why teaching more science just is not enough", mainly because, as I was reading it, I was finding it a little freaky, like he's been reading my mind, or maybe I've been subconsciously catching Pigliucci's psychic emanations.…

Probing the depths of the biosphere

Rarely do I read papers whose title really sums up exactly what is so cool about the study in a succinct way, free of jargon. I think that "First Investigation of the Microbiology of the Deepest Layer of Ocean Crust" does just that. It isn't trying to be sexy... it just is! Examining the microbial communities in the so-called "deep subsurface biosphere" is a relatively new field. Until recently people didn't think there was much, or really any, life deep in Earth's crust. As with many scientific assumptions made before scientists had the opportunity to actually study a new environment...…

Sample swaps at 23andMe: a cautionary tale

Personal genomics company 23andMe has revealed that a lab mix-up resulted in as many as 96 customers receiving the wrong data. If you have a 23andMe account you can see the formal announcement of the problem here, and I've pasted the full text at the end of this post. It appears that a single 96-well plate of customer DNA was affected by the mix-up. This resulted in incorrect results being sent to customers, with alarming consequences in some cases; one mother posted on the 23andMe community about her distress upon discovering that her son's results were incompatible with the rest of the…

What do we need most during a flu pandemic? Zombie quacks!

One of my dear readers just left the internet equivalent of a flaming bag of turd on my bloggy doorstep: Everybody should read this article by Dr. Russell Blaylock http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/03/What-We-H… These are the facts folks, all information is derived from Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the New England Journal of Medicine. Whenever stamping out the flaming bag of poo, it's wise to remember ones shoes may become sullied. Still, how can I…

On dickishness

Not to reopen raw wounds, but reposting my talk from Netroots Nation reminded me of two other sessions I attended, both on the theme of snark and satire. Unfortunately, video from the one I want to talk about today is not yet online. As you'll recall, sciencebloggers and skeptics were really bored over the summer, and to pass the time they got into a fight over whether it was good or bad to be dickish. Those who said "no," generally argued that there's no particular evidence that such behavior is effective at convincing people to join your cause and the peer reviewed literature found dickish…

Natural Cancer Treatments That Work: A wretched hive of scum and quackery

Back in the 1990s when I first dipped my toe into the pool that was Usenet, that massive, wild, and untamed frontier where most online discussion occurred before the rise of the web and later the blogosphere, I was truly a naif. I had no idea--no inkling--of the depths of quackery to which people would sink. If Usenet was my bootcamp that opened my eyes to the seemingly endless varieties of quackery and, in particular, the flavor of quackery that represents anti-vaccine lunacy and "biomedical treatments" for autism, then my graduate education in the battle for science-based medicine began in…

A "holistic" doctor throws a hilariously disingenuous tantrum over board recertification

In the early days of 2016, my attention was drawn to a local antivaccine doctor of whom I’d heard before but never really paid much attention to. What caught my eye was a blog exchange between this “holistic” family practitioner and former Scienceblogs blogger, friend, and local internist Peter Lipson over this physician’s blog posts attacking a local Jewish summer camp for children for its new requirement that campers must be up to date on their vaccinations as a requirement for attending. Not surprisingly, Dr. Lipson took the side of science and refuted the antivaccine nonsense that had…

Flu biology: receptors, II

In the first part of this two parter we summarized some biology background to a new paper that appeared online ahead of print in the FASEB Journal, Yuo et al., "Avian influenza receptor expression in H5N1-infected and noninfected human tissues." The paper addresses an important gap in our knowledge. Are there cells in the human body with appropriately matched receptors for avian flu virus and if so, where are they? Sporadic results in the last few years suggested that cells deep in the human lung (so-called type II pneumocytes) and ciliated cells in the upper respiratory tract might have…

Preserving Food to Reduce Waste

The UN FAO reminds us of the sheer scope of world food waste - 1/3 of all the food produced, most of it produce, goes to waste. While we'll never get food waste to zero, this is a scandal in a world worrying about how it will feed itself. This is not news - the statistics have been similar for a while now. But when it penetrates, it does give people a sense of the scope of the wastage problem. That pasta with broccoli rabe molding in your fridge is really a link to a larger world and cultural problem. The Global North and South both waste similar portions of the food they produce, but…

Farm and Garden Design Class and Memorial Day Family Weekend

I am *still* without full access to my email, although new stuff is at least being forwarded to Eric's account. I apologize profusely for the difficulties, but I know that some people who tried to register either got bounces or got through, but are buried in my gmail account without my having access, so I would ask you to please send again! I'm very, very sorry about this! I'm told (for the fourth day running) that the problem will be resolved by my ISP by tomorrow. Hopefully this time it is actually true. Meanwhile, if you haven't registered for the class, and would like to, I will at…

Now I know where my sparrows go to sleep

I've long had a special interest in the sleeping habits of small birds. In fact, as you'll know if you read the article I published here back in September 2008*, I've covered this issue before. In that article, I noted that at least some passerines secrete themselves away in crevices or thick foliage. I first became really interested in this subject after making one of my greatest natural history 'discoveries': a sleeping Blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus that I encountered while it was tucked deep beneath the broken bark of a tree, just the tip of its tail betraying its presence. I didn't have…

Thank them - they made ScienceOnline'09 possible

ScienceOnline'09, the third annual science communication conference (successor to the 2007 and 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conferences), was another unqualified success wifi issues notwithstanding. Around 215 scientists, educators, students, journalists and bloggers gathered for three days of activities, meals, sessions and hallway conversations to explore ways to use online tools to promote the public understanding of, and engagement in, science. Find a comprehensive listing of links to the many blog entries and video clips posted before, during and after the conference to learn…

Books I'd Like to Read

It's been quite a long while since I've done one of these. Here are some recently noticed books that look interesting from either a collection development or a professional development point of view. Fans, Friends And Followers: Building An Audience And A Creative Career In The Digital Age by Scott Kirsner An essential guide for filmmakers, musicians, writers, artists, and other creative types. "Fans, Friends & Followers" explores the strategies for cultivating an online fan base that can support your creative career, enabling you to do the work you want to do and make a living at it.…

Why I Eat Fish on Fridays

To say I'm a lapsed Catholic would be an understatement. I haven't set foot in a church in years, other than for a couple of weddings. I've never cared for parts of the official doctrine, and I think they blew it when they made Giblets Pope. In terms of general attitude toward religion, I'm sort of an apathetic agnostic-- I don't know if there's a God, and I don't much care. And yet, I make at least some effort to not eat meat on Fridays during Lent. I don't do all that well, because I'm a little absent-minded (I usually forget it's Friday until I'm halfway through a cheeseeburger), but I do…

Muller is still rubbish

When BEST first came out I said it was boring, because it just said what everyone knew already "Summary: the global temperature record is just what we thought it was". There was some soap opera thrown in for fun, but that didn't affect the science. But now (New Global Temperature Data Reanalysis Confirms Warming, Blames CO2, Ronald Bailey at reason.com, h/t JB at RR) it seems that Muller is announcing his "new" findings via op-ed in the NYT [Important note: reason.com isn't exactly a brilliant source, but I can't see a good reason why they'd make this up. Update: the real thing is now…

14 Years Before the Class(room)

This past academic year was my 14th as a professor at Union, and my last as department chair. I'm on sabbatical for the 2015-16 academic year, doing my very best to avoid setting foot in an academic building, so it will be September 2016 before I'm teaching a class again. This seems like a good opportunity to reflect a bit on my experiences to this point, which in turn is a good excuse for a blog post. So, here are some things I've found out over the last 14 years of being a college professor: -- Teaching is really hard. My first year, when colleagues from other schools asked how I was…

Ask Ethan #4: Weird Astronomy Maps

"I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it." -Steven Wright So just because the Ask Ethan series is becoming way more popular than I can handle -- I've got more than 200 questions that I'm sitting on by now -- doesn't mean you should stop sending your questions! There are some really good ones, and today's comes from Robert Plotner, who asks: When maps of the CMB are depicted, they are shown as a flattened ovoid. How does this correlate to our view of the sky which is a sphere? For example, a global map of the Earth is either distorted to show it in two dimensions…

March Pieces Of My Mind #1

Oh fuck. I just installed the operating system update/trojan that makes this particular Samsung smartphone model slow. I wonder how classical liberalism views labour unions. On the one hand, the right to form one is clearly a civil liberty. On the other hand, it can be seen as what Smith called a "conspiracy of businessmen", or in modern parliance, a price cartel. Jrette approvingly recommends me to check out pics of curvaceous model Denise Bidot. I have to tell her that though Bidot is indeed beautiful, I'm not quite comfortable looking at pics of her in Jrette's company. Movie: Pride.…

The Pseudonymity Laboratory: Up from the Comments

Wow. Thank you, dear Terra Sig readers, for your thoughtful responses to our first query about the concept of blogger pseudonymity. For background, I have threatened to reveal myself (in text, not photographically) and wished to use this opportunity to provide grist for a session led by me, PalMD, and several women bloggers on the sci/med blogging under a pseudonym at ScienceOnline'09 on 17 Jan 2009 at Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. Just as many people might be frightened by me uncloaking in meatspace, readers have responded that…

The new palmistry

I am a gorgeous hunk of virile manhood. How do I know? I looked at my fingers. Research has shown that men whose ring finger on their right hand is longer than their index finger are regarded as better looking by women, possibly because their faces are more symmetrical. There is no link, however, between this finger length and how alluring women find a man's voice or his body odour, the study found. Guys, you may be looking at my picture on the sidebar and thinking there must be something wrong here…but no, I assure you, my right ring finger is distinctly longer than my right index finger…

Optogenetics controls brain signalling and sheds light on Parkinson's therapy

Optogenetics is a newly developed technique based on a group of light-sensitive proteins called channelrhodopsins, which were isolated recently from various species of micro-organism. Although relatively new, this technique has already proven to be extremely powerful, because channelrhodopsins can be targeted to specific cells, so that their activity can be controlled by light, on a millisecond-by-millisecond timescale. A group of researchers from Stanford University now report a new addition to the optogenetic toolkit, and demonstrate that it can be used to precisely control biochemical…

Hemisphericity of Inhibition May Change With Age

"Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's?" - Alan Turing (Computing Machinery, p456) One of the defining features of childhood cognition is "behaving without thinking." Not surprisingly, developmental cognitive psychology has latched onto the idea of impulse control - and other processes putatively requiring inhibition - as a central explanatory construct, playing a role in attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and everything in between (including developmental trends in normal…

Bloggers are just 19th-century newspaper editors with laptops, LOLcats, and the occasional man-bat

I perversely love attending conferences where traditional journalists complain that bloggers are evil. :) Yesterday I heard that line again (in jest, relax) at a great discussion about changing media practices and the legal implications of various forms of content reuse, sponsored by the Online Media Legal Network. But the focus was a little bit different: are "new media" practices really that new? Historians know that almost two centuries ago, rival newspapers reprinted one another's content freely - often with snarky commentary, and nary a licensing fee or permission. Fact-checking fell by…

Do Antidepressants Increase Suicide Risk?

This is kind of an old story, I know.  Still, every once in a while it is good to revisit these things.  When the topic first came up in 2004, it was the subject of much newspaper space and blog commentary.  But now, it has pretty much faded from the national consciousness.  Has anything more come of it? In a recent editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Gregory E. Simon, M.D., M.P.H., reviews the largest and most informative studies on the subject: href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/11/1861"> href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/…

This Week In The Global Climate Scene

A whole sack full of news on climate this week. Yesterday, I enjoyed an excellent talk delivered by Joaquim Goes from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. He provided rather convincing data that the Arabian Sea is undergoing an oceanographic shift. Eurasian warming is triggering a decline in snow across the Himalayan-Tibetan plateau region. This in turn results in atypically strong southwest monsoon (SWM) winds and enhanced wind-driven upwelling off the coasts of Somalia, Oman, and Yemen. The effect is a drastically increased phytoplankton bloom in the western and central regions of the…

If the science pipeline breaks, the rest of us get hurt, too.

A bunch of other bloggers are discussing the recent statement A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk (PDF). I thought I'd say something about the complexities of the situation, and about why non-scientists (whose tax dollars support scientific research funded by the NIH and other government agencies) should care. The general idea behind funding scientific research with public monies is that such research is expected to produce knowledge that will benefit society. There are problems that non-scientists cannot solve on their own, so we pony up the…

Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 8).

After considering the many different roadblocks that seems to appear when people try to discuss research with animals (as we did in parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of this series), it might be tempting to throw up your hands and say, "Well, I guess there's no point in doing that, then!" Resist this temptation! As we noted in part 7, there are good reasons that we (by which I mean scientists and the public) ought to be engaging in dialogue about issues like research with animals. Avoiding dialogue altogether would mean cutting off the flow of information about what actually happens in animal…

Should pro-vaccine advocates try to get on The Oprah Winfrey Show?

Oprah Winfrey supports quackery. That has been richly demonstrated over the last few years, particularly with her gauzy, praise-filled segments featuring such pro-woo luminaries as Jenny McCarthy, her frequently having physicians boosters of "alternative medicine" like Mehmet Oz and Christiane Northrup on her show, and her tight embrace of New Age "spirituality." Alarmed at the antivaccination nonsense being pushed on Oprah's show, Every Child By Two has been circulating an e-mail: Please Take The Time To Contact The Oprah Winfrey Show It has been quite some time since Every Child By Two (…

Blogging in Academia: What Can It Do For You?

[Below is a longer, less edited version of an article I wrote for my department newsletter this month.] Is science blogging something that belongs to Science or to Journalism? Clearly more and more scientists are communicating online. In a time when mainstream media are obliterating their science departments, science blogging is growing, and the few science journalists left are increasingly turning to science blogs for story ideas. And so is the general public. A recent press release from ScienceBlogs indicated that the network, the top social media network in the science category, had…

VESTIGIAL: Learn what it means!

Vestigial organs are relics, reduced in function or even completely losing a function. Finding a novel function, or an expanded secondary function, does not make such organs non-vestigial. The appendix in humans, for instance, is a vestigial organ, despite all the insistence by creationists and less-informed scientists that finding expanded local elements of the immune system means it isn't. An organ is vestigial if it is reduced in size or utility compared to homologous organs in other animals, and another piece of evidence is if it exhibits a wide range of variation that suggests that those…

Should just anyone be allowed to piss on Henry Gee's rug? (#scio10)

This is the question that was raised in the wake of a Science Online 2010 session on civility. I did not attend the session so I am only addressing the issues that were subsequently discussed on blog posts written in the aftermath of a now infamous conversation that appears to have been (by their own admission, I believe) between Henry Gee of Nature and Nature Blogs Network and Zuska the Magnificent of Scienceblogs Dot Com. Much of that discussion is now happening on the Nature Network on a blog post celebrating 5 X 104 comments on that network. (As an aside, I really think it is shameful…

A bit of fallout

Late Thursday night, I posted a full-out rant about what I considered to be an incredibly unfair and stupid generalization of the bad behavior of a single surgeon to an overblown and hysterical indictment of medical students, doctors, and surgeons by a fellow ScienceBlogger, posted on his own blog and on Feministe. Fellow ScienceBloggers Mark Hoofnagle and PalMD posted similar criticism, all of which, in my humble opinion (or IMHO, in Internet-speak) were justified. One thing I didn't mention was that I debated for a while whether or not to post my criticism, because the reputation and…

Wait for it...Wait for it...It's Teh Gay Gene!

So does anyone want to lay odds on how long it will be before "discovery of the gay gene" gets spread like a crazed rhinovirus through the popular media? A recent press release announces the discovery that male fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) with mutations in the GB (genderblind) allele not only mate with female flies but also were attracted to - and try to mate with - male flies. The mutation apparently alters perception of chemosensory cues. Two of the major chemical attractants in the world of fruit fly sex are 7-tricosene and cis-vaccenyl acetate: the flies taste the former…

Fishing Closures and Seafood Sniffing: Addressing Gulf Seafood Safety

By Elizabeth Grossman In mid-June most of the seafood shacks along the bayou roads between New Orleans and Grand Isle were closed. A seafood market that I stopped by on the western edge of New Orleans was virtually devoid of customers despite bins brimming with bright blue crab and tawny shrimp. Business was so slim that two women who should have been tending to customers were playing Yahtzee. "We've never done this on a workday before," they told me. Another woman unloading sacks of shrimp frowned at my notepad and said, "I blame the media. We've got plenty of shrimp and it's safe." She…

Five things I learned (second hand) from the recent screening of Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part 2

Film producer Eric Merola seems to think that there is a conspiracy of skeptics (whom he calls The Skeptics) hell bent on harassing his hero, Brave Maverick Doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. According to his latest film Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as Burzynski II, to distinguish it from Merola's first Burzynski movie, to which I will refer as Burzynski I), there is a shadowy cabal of Skeptics out there just waiting to swoop down on any Burzynski supporter who has the temerity to Tweet support for him, any cancer patient being treated by Burzynski who…

Welcome to Information Culture, the latest blog at Scientific Amerincan

I'd like to extend a huge science librarian blogosphere welcome to Information Culture, the newest blog over at Scientific American Blogs! This past Sunday evening I got a cryptic DM from a certain Bora Zivkovic letting me know that I should watch the SciAm blog site first thing Monday morning. I was busy that morning but as soon as I got our of my meeting I rushed to Twitter and the Internet and lo! and behold! Information Culture: Thoughts and analysis related to science information, data, publication and culture. I'm always happy to see librarians invading faculty and researcher blogs…

Shocker! Newt Gingrich Doesn't Understand Oil

Sadly, he's not alone, which is why this is worth debunking. Gingrich's sense that oil fields can be brought rapidly online, and his "we beat the Nazis and went to the moon so we can do this" statements reflect the general cultural misunderstandings about how oil is extracted that are endemic in our culture. While his claim that we could "open up enough oil fields in the next year that the price of oil worldwide would collapse. Now, that's what we would do if we were a serious country." is a bit of idiocy, it probably isn't atypical idiocy in a country that knows nothing about the basic…

Leaked German Military Report on Peak Oil

Der Spiegel reports that it has obtained a German military think tank's analysis of peak oil's implicatons - and that the implications of the report are that the German government sees a peak oil scenario as potentially serious and likely enough to require attention: The issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term "peak oil" at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes further. The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation…

Journal of Science Communication 8.3

The new issue of the open access Journal of Science Communication is out. From the Table of Contents: Filling the gap between theory and practice: Jcom's adventure was launched nearly eight years ago, when a group of lecturers and former students of the Master's degree in Science Communication at SISSA of Trieste, decided to have training joined by the commitment to research on science communication issues. Mapping gender differences in understanding about HIV/AIDS: The present article investigates public understanding of HIV/AIDS related issues that touch the thought structure of common…

Women, Science and Writing

tags: researchblogging.org, Female Scientists, science publishing, science blogging, gender bias, sexism, feminism A microbiologist at work. Image: East Bay AWIS. In the wake of the Science Blogging Conference in North Carolina, which I was unable to attend due to financial reasons, The Scientist's blog published a piece today that asks "Do Women Blog About Science?" This article was written partially in response to the kerfuffle that was triggered last year after The Scientist asked what were their readers' favorite life science blogs. Several women, including me, noticed that they only…

I am all powerful (part 2)

Actually it turns out that this is part 3! But I'm not going to revise the title now. Part 1 and Part 2 refer, as does some digging. [Update: this made the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-28/In the news]] ] So, Lawrence "beany" Solomon does me the honour of a full-out assault. I'm a bit puzzled as to why, perhaps more study will reveal this. It looks like he is trying to get some kind of linkage between the [[Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident]] and my on-wiki activities. But although Solomon states directly The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment…

Desperately Seeking Scientism

Upon surveying the American landscape these days, it's hard to believe that an over-reliance on science is something we need to worry about. That hasn't stopped some in the humanities from manufacturing the entirely fictitious threat of “scientism.” It's a hard term to pin down, since it is seldom defined the same way twice, but mostly it just means that someone is whining about the lack of respect accorded to his discipline. Theologians and philosophers seem especially keen on leveling the charge. It certainly happens occasionally that someone writing in the name of science intrudes into…

Woodward Profile in St. Petersburg Times

A while back I wrote an opinion piece (PDF Format) for BioScience magazine entitled “Leaders and Followers in the Intelligent Design Movement.” The intent of the essay was to draw a distinction between the rampant dishonesty among the leaders of the ID movement, with their blatantly out of context quotations and cartoon versions of modern science, with the somewhat better behavior I have sometimes encountered from the rank and file ID folks listening to the leaders The existence of Tom Woodward has shown me that there is at least one further category of ID person. He is certainly not a…

Scientists Enter the Blogosphere!

Via Larry Moran I came across this article, from the journal Cell, about the growth of the science blogosphere: There are close to 50 million weblogs or blogs for short. Blogs provide an online discussion forum for issues of current interest and are updated regularly with new short articles on which readers can comment. The Pew Internet and American Life Project (http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202…), an initiative of the Pew Research Center, reports that 8% of Internet users in the United States, or 12 million American adults, keep a blog and 39% read one…

In which SciWo risks coming off as callous...

It has recently been brought to my attention that a subset of my department's graduate student population is unhappy with our course scheduling. Some of our part-time graduate students feel that we are not doing a sufficient job of offering evening courses to meet the needs of people who work full-time during the day and complete their graduate degree one course at a time. I imagine the disgruntlement has been brewing for a while, but I suspect things are likely to come to a head soon, so I thought it might be worthwhile to spend some time laying my thoughts out here before it comes up in…

Time Magazine's "Reported Analysis" of Global Warming

Following the AAAS meetings in February, I had this to say about the future of science and environmental journalism: The future will be online, in film, and/or multi-media, merging reporting with synthesis, analysis, personal narrative, and opinion. The goals will be to inform but also to persuade and to mobilize...However, the new forms, modes, style, and sponsors for science coverage will mean that journalists will have to rethink their standard orientations and definitions of objectivity and balance. The future is already here, it's time to talk about what it all means. This week's Time…

Working Memory "Arrays" in Parietal Cortex?

Working memory - the ability to hold information "in mind" in the face of environmental interference - has traditionally been associated with the prefrontal cortices (PFC), based primarily on data from monkeys. High resolution functional imaging (such as fMRI) have revealed that PFC is just one part of a larger working memory network, notably including the parietal cortex, which has long been the focus of research in the visual domain, and is primarily thought to carry out spatial computations. What role might such spatial computations have in working memory? Wendelken, Bunge & Carter…