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UK Launches Public Consultation Project on Future of Science; "Listening Tour" an Effective Complement to Survey Research and Media Analysis

The BBC in collaboration with the British think tank Demos has launched a "national series of conversations about new technologies, the future and society." Brits are encouraged to participate in informal small group discussions organized independently, facilitated public events at science centres and other community spaces, or can be selected to participate in a formal "deliberative" panel that brings experts and citizens together to discuss issues of interest. The project features an online discussion pack aimed at informing participants. The Science Horizons web site also includes a…

Brain Training & Online Degrees for only $29.95!

We here at Of Two Minds would like to announce a brand new training program that will help you improve your memory through the method of Long Term Depression. Because we use this fancy brain term you can be assured that the training is working. Step One: Open list of words to study. Step Two: Have friend stab you in only one eye (you need the other to study the list!) Step Three: Better memory for everything! In fact, recent research supports this wonderful new method of brain training! Check it out: Scientists have long known that the nervous system receptor known as TRPV1 can affect…

Highs and lows of Labor Department websites

This week the differences between OSHA’s and MSHA’s websites were oh so obvious. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released a new on-line tool to allow users to compare a mining operation’s violations of selected safety standards to the national average. For years, mine-specific violations, penalties, injury reports, exposure sampling results, and other data have been available on MSHA’s website, but this new tool offers something different.  It focuses on a subset of safety violations which most frequently cause or contribute to fatalities and serious injuries. While MSHA…

Another bird flu Google Earth mashup

Last week we talked about "mash-ups," the combination of online resources from disparate sources, and pointed out that Google Maps and Google Earth were favorite substrates for this. Declan Butler, senior correspondent at Nature, is the first we know of to construct a Google Earth mashup for bird flu. Now there is a very sophisticated version from scientists at the University of Colorado and Ohio State University: The research team has tracked the spread avian flu around the globe over time by specific host groups of birds, mammals and insects. (Credit: CU-Boulder, Ohio State University) A…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Light-treatment Device To Improve Sleep Quality In The Elderly: Sleep disturbances increase as we age. Some studies report more than half of seniors 65 years of age or older suffer from chronic sleep disturbances. Researchers have long believed that the sleep disturbances common among the elderly often result from a disruption of the body's circadian rhythms -- biological cycles that repeat approximately every 24 hours. High Arctic Mammals Wintered In Darkness 53 Million Years Ago: Ancestors of tapirs and ancient cousins of rhinos living above the Arctic Circle 53 million years ago endured…

Dating is Healthy

I've been trying hard to resist commenting on the spectacular meltdown of Mark Foley over inappropriate contacts with a Congressional page. The Editors pretty well have the schadenfreude angle covered (including a link to the deeply creepy IM transcripts), so I don't have much to add there. Much has been made of the fact that Foley was on the committee drafting legislation to protect kids from creepy guys on the Internet. "Set a thief to catch a thief," I suppose. The absolute best comment on the matter that I've seen, though, comes from this post at the Corpuscle: I think it's great that…

Profile of Arrested Oslo Terrorist

Hours after the terrible deaths in Oslo, police arrested a 32 year old man, Anders Behring Breivik, suspected for the crimes, described as "Nationalist, Anti-Islamic, Anti-Multiculturalism, liked and plays World of Warcraft." Below is a news release, translated from Norwegian using Google Translate: (selected excerpts) (AP) Anders Behring Breivik (32) who has been arrested for the bomb in the city center, and mass killing, has lived in Oslo's West End in his life, before he announced relocation of Hedmark for a month. VG has received confirmation from several independent sources that it…

A generous offer from the NSTA

Some of my fellow bloggers and I have been following the fall out from an Op Ed piece in the Washington Post on the NSTA's refusal to mail 50,000 copies of the "An Inconvient Truth" DVD to it's members. You can read earlier posts: here, here, and here. Today, the NSTA confirmed that they never said David couldn't provide the film free to NSTA members, it's just that they don't mail out third party materials to members without their consent or request. From the NSTA pressroom: On November 29, 2006, NSTA's Board of Directors held a telephone conference to review Ms. David's request. In an…

The Greening of the Closet?

The New York Times reports on a Cambridge University study which argues that the manufacture and purchase of new clothing -- particularly given today's rapid-cycling fashion trends, and the throwaway clothes culture they've enabled -- drives significant carbon emissions. Consumers' penchant for new clothes, in other words, is becoming an environmental threat. Hand-me-down clothing, the article notes, has become less of a wardrobe staple now that dirt-cheap, on-trend garments are widely available through retailers like Target and Old Navy. "Fast clothes" are the order of the day. The Times…

Looking for a present for a budding entomologist?

I mean, er, an entomologist with a keen interest in insect sex? If so, you can buy this cool poster (pdf). More info on the poster is here. Shopping info is here.

Ready for another Molly?

The Molly Award for the month of November goes to Emmet Caulfield. Buy him a beer, someone. Now we have to pick one for December — leave your nomination in the comments!

Aftermath: Will the "alternative health movement" learn anything from Jess Ainscough's death?

It's been a rather...interesting...weekend. Friday, I noted the death of Jess Ainscough, a.k.a. "The Wellness Warrior," a young Australian woman who was unfortunate enough to develop epithelioid sarcoma, a rare cancer, at the age of 22. I've been blogging about her because after her doctors tried isolated limb perfusion with chemotherapy in an attempt to avoid an amputation of her left arm at the shoulder, her tumor recurred, after which she chose not to undergo amputation and instead to embrace the quackery known as Gerson therapy, which she did for over two years. By the time she finished…

Around the Web: The tablet wars, Discoverability, Teaching online and more

The Tablet Wars Are On, With Big Stakes for Publishers 5 Reasons Why Your Online Presence Will Replace Your Resume in 10 years How will undergraduates navigate a post peer-review scholarly landscape? Social Network Mapping Fun with NodeXL and Science Online 2011 Authors, Readers and Discoverability in the new age of publishing Tell us something we don't know: Gladwell on the U.S. News college rankings (non-academics as public intellectuals) The digital pioneers: New forms of scholarship are transforming areas of the humanities Do Record Stores Point the Way of the Future for Bookstores? The…

The Problem of Choice: Few Americans Seek Public Affairs News Online

By way of the Internet, Americans today have more public affairs and science-related information available to them than at any time in history. Yet the availability of information does not mean people will use it. Given the many competing alternatives across entertainment, celebrity culture, and other diversionary content, only those Internet users with a very strong preference for public affairs will use the medium for "hard" news on a regular base. This general pattern of Internet consumption is once again reflected in the just released "Pew State of the News" survey. In the section…

"This Union, Is There Gonna Be Meetings?"

I'm deep in editing mode at the moment, and faintly depressed at the number of words I have managed to remove by changes like turning "was [verb]ing " to "[verb]ed." It's a tedious and labor-intensive process that is weirdly exhausting-- all I'm doing is sitting in a cafe somewhere reading text with a red pen in hand, and yet I'm completely drained at the end of the day. And, of course, this process is interrupted periodically by the need to go to meetings. One of the great frustrations of my job is the number of meetings in academia. It's gotten slightly better in the last couple of years,…

I cannot take you seriously if you own this

I wonder if all the people who send me nasty emails are using this keyboard? Comic sans on the keys, and it's yellow. I'm really curious about who would buy such a thing.

I Want a T-shirt

I don't really know why, but for some reason this Flickr page makes me want to buy an "I [Brain] Cognitive Science" T-shirt. Brainy women are hot. Hat-tip: Mind Hacks.

An Open Letter to Texas Regarding the Forced Resignation of Chris Comer

Dear Texas, Let me first of all say that despite our differences, I still consider you my home, even if I only get to visit a couple of times a year these days. Friends, family, football: you have it all for me. And, as I watched it get dark here in Oxford around 4 pm this afternoon, I have to admit that I really miss that warm Texas sun. But, Texas, I have to tell you--pal to pal--that your recent actions have been so stereotypical. I mean, yeah, we get it. You're conservative. Really conservative. And, you like Jesus. A lot. Tell me something new. But now I hear that you forced…

Cohen's Clip List

Here is a selection of my writings on-line, many but not all of which are about science, technology, and nature - Ben B.R. Cohen's Days at the Museum, a short series of dispatches from the Smithsonian. B.R. Cohen's Annals of Science, a series of short stories about science and history and sometimes strange people. "I Dream in Malcolm Gladwell", over at The Morning News (January 2009) "An Anti-Environmentalist Writes His Next Column While Eating Take-out and Driving His Hummer", at McSweeney's (September 2008) "Bisphenol-A: The One Act Play", at Dave's Science Creative Quarterly (May 2008) "…

Rating your doctor online - is this a good idea?

I have just finished taking my last major exam of medical school - Step 2 of the boards (including Step 2 Clinical Skills, or CS, which costs 1200 bucks, requires you to travel to one of a few cities in the country hosting it, and is sealed by a EULA that forbids me from talking about what the test was like), and am winding down my medschool career in the next few weeks. It's about 2 weeks from Match Day (the 19th), when I'll find out for sure where I will spend the next 5 or so years of my life. I'll be sure to have a post up a little after noon that day when I find out what the answer is…

Hunger in the Classroom: I Blame the Corrupt Union Thugs (or Not)

Sadly, I'm not talking about the desire to learn. A recent survey of teachers (pdf) revealed the following about hunger in the U.S. classroom: â¢When K-8 public school teachers consider a list of problems they face in the classroom, they rate discipline as the top problem (83 percent), with student hunger falling among the second tier of problems (40 percent), alongside lack of supplies (42 percent): â¢Similar to 2009, four in ten teachers say that children coming to school hungry because they have not had enough to eat at home is a serious problem at their school (43 percent rate the…

Pink Attack!

I don't think I really recognized how much stuff I've avoided dealing with by only having boys until I read _Cinderella Ate My Daughter_ by Peggy Orenstein.  You see, despite the fact that I joke about living in the testosterone house, or being the only female in a house of guys (until C. and K. recently returned to their family, there were 8 males and me - now we're down to a mellow six males), my boys are growing up in a household without much in the way of rigid gender roles, or their toys.    Given the combination of no girls and no tv, I am only vaguely aware of phenomena like Miley…

Bang! Another shot fired in the War on Christmas

How nice: the Atheists Guide to Christmas is available as an e-book for only $1.01. Somebody buy a copy for Bill O'Reilly and any of the other lunatic Christmas warriors.

From the Archives: Sharing, Privacy and Trust in a Networked World by OCLC

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of Sharing, Privacy and Trust in a Networked World, is from November 19, 2011. ======= OCLC's newest state of the library world/environmental scan report was published a few months ago: Sharing, Privacy and Trust in a…

Elizabeth Edwards is all of yours' neighbor, too

I went to Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on Monday to hear Elizabeth Edwards read from her new book, Saving Graces (I could not make it to the earlier event in Chapel Hill as I was picking up the kids from school at the time). Quail Ridge Books and the surrounding area can get quite busy when a famous person is coming in to sign books (e.g., when Al Gore and Jimmy Carter came there) so I made sure to come really early. By 6:45pm I have already dropped the kids off at grandma's yet I still had to make a couple of circles to find a parking space and the bookstore was already full. I'd say…

More on Pepsi

More and more of the other ScienceBloggers have weighed in on the Pepsi-written nutrition blog being hosted here at SB. A few more have announced blogging sabbaticals or simply shuttered their SB blog and opened up shop elsewhere. In addition to a mea culpa sent to the bloggers, the overlords have made some adjustments to the Pepsi blog to better reflect its advertising content. The blog's banner includes the PepsiCo logo, and the Profile now explains: "This blog is sponsored by PepsiCo. All editorial content is written by PepsiCo's scientists or scientists invited by PepsiCo and/or…

Facebook Friends

In the latest New York Review of Books, Charles Petersen has an interesting and even-handed analysis of Facebook and social networking: What many find most enticing about Facebook is the steady stream of updates from "friends," new and old, which sociologists refer to as "ambient awareness." This is not a new phenomenon: everyone from our Cro-Magnon ancestors to Jane Austen has known how it feels to be surrounded by the constant chatter of other people. Facebook's continuing attraction comes from its ability to reduce the Internet's worldwide chatter to the size of a college, or a village, or…

I Got 8600 -- How About You?

Try this online sheepdog trial game and see how good you are at preventing those pesky sheep from escaping! Get a high enough score and you can challenge a friend.

Obama wins the First Quarter financial race

What? All the media report that Hillary Clinton raised a record amount and is clearly in the lead? Oh, who ever said that journalists know how to calculate? You know, math is hard. But let me explain. Point by point. This, the first quarter, is absolutely the most important because it is the ONLY one that gets reported by the media. All the money that comes in later is important for the functioning of the campaign, but if the 1st quarter brings in a lot of media attention that emboldens more donors to give more money - it is a feed-forward system. Those who underperform in the 1st…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

Now that registration for ScienceOnline2010 is open I intend to, like I did in the past years, introduce the participants to my blog readers in a series of blog posts. Of course, you can check out the entire list for yourself (already at 201 people!) but I will try to provide a little more information about everyone so, if you are attending, you may be on a special lookout for someone you really want to talk to or, if you are not attending, to see what you're missing so you can tune in virtually next January and make a firm promise to yourself that you will try to make it in person next time…

ScienceOnline'09 - Saturday 9am

Like everyone else, I had tough choices to make - which session to go to out of four in each time slot! Of course, I spent a year planning, and talking with moderators/panelists/presenters and building each session over time. Now I wanted to see them all. How could I afford to miss any one of them?! But choices had to be made, and I knew I could rely on the blogosphere to write about other sessions so I could get the idea of how the other stuff went. The blog/media coverage linkfest is growing fast (perhaps start at the bottom and work your way up, posting comments on the way and saying…

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life

I notice that the Moon-man is flogging Carl Zimmer's new book. So I feel it's time to pile-on, buy Microcosm! Carl is of course giving a series of talks at fine bookstores near you....

Offsetting?

Kevin Vrames at Climate feedback has a nice post on a perverse-incentive problem with one part of the CDM. Which is one small part of the reason I don't buy any offsetting at the moment.

Who won last night's Republican presidential debate?

UPDATE for Feb 6th debate: This post was originally written for the previous GOP debate. Here are a few comments on last night's debate. I watched the debate at a debate watching party of DFL activists, so naturally I saw very little of it because we were a loud and raucous crowd. But this morning I re-watched portions of the debate, and checked out the online commentary and polls. Once again, most of the commentary by experts has little to do with the on line polls. The on line polls show Trump as having won by a huge landslide, while the experts are talking about this or that lower level…

Dichloroacetate (DCA) Phase II Trial To Begin

Do you remember dicholoroacetate (DCA)? In a letter dated 24 September (PDF here), Dr Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta announced that his group had received approval from Health Canada and U of A's institutional review board to begin a Phase II clinical trial of dichloroacetate (DCA). The trial will enroll 50 patients with astrocytomas or glioblastomas, two classes of malignant brain tumors, who have either been newly diagnosed or have not responded to previous therapies. The purpose of a Phase II trial is to provide an initial assessment of drug efficacy in a small…

Anthro Blog Carnival -- Pulp SF Edition

The thirty-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Hot Cup of Joe. Archaeology and anthropology from outer space!!! And check out the new Skeptics' Circle!

ScienceOnline'09 - Sunday blogging

And here is what bloggers wrote so far today: The Logical Operator: Not-so-live blogging Science Online '09 The Logical Operator: Science Fiction on Science Blogs - Science Online '09, Day 1 The End Of The Pier Show: Lines Written At 1.20 am ET Sunday 18 January The End Of The Pier Show: Prevarication, 7.30 am ET, Sunday 18 January Highly Allochthonous: ScienceOnline Day 1: generalised ramblings Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Nature Blogging 101 White Coat Underground: Carolina dreamin' Makroskop, laboratorium przyszÅoÅci: Science Online '09 The Flying Trilobite:…

Clock Quotes

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Multimedia Friday : Brain Power - the shirt and video!

I swear I'm not being paid... but it does follow the theme of our blog. Check out their merchandise as well :) Ok.. who is going to buy me one of these shirts? HT: Sandra!

The Bush Administration Modus Operandi...

...find anything the government does that works and break it. I really never thought that we would be debating lead standards: The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments. Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits. A preliminary staff review released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week acknowledged the possibility of dropping the health standards for lead air pollution. The…

Friday Fun: Starbucks Trenta + Whisky in a Can = ??????

Two recent developments that I think are connected in a strange way. Starbucks just came out with a new drink size, the Trenta, where the volume of coffee is bigger than the human stomach. Wow, that's a lot of caffeine. In the same vein, there a company out there that's come up with a 12 oz "Whisky in a Can" product. Yeah, that's 8 full shots of whisky. In a non-resealable can. Ok, so my idea is this. Buy the coffee, empty out a little of it and dump in all booze from the can. Instant Scotch coffee. Or Irish coffee. Or rotgut coffee, more likely, given what they're probably putting in…

Quick Picks on ScienceBlogs, August 8

Editor's picks for your reading pleasure on Tuesday, August 8: "Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut" Benjamin Cohen on a book that stands up after a dozen readings. "Buy Stock in Abloy" Tim Lambert reports on a report that new innovations in thievery have made the pin-tumbler lock obsolete. "Psychics at the Atlanta Zoo" The Atlanta Zoo has hired psychics to predict whether their panda is expecting; Orac is not amused. "Carnivalia, and an open thread" Don't you love open threads? I do. They're like the digital equivalent of a Quaker meeting. PZ's got one up now over at Pharyngula... "Where…

Half-Life

Time goes on and turns our attention, but radioactive isotopes take a long time to decay. On Greg Laden's Blog, Analiese Miller and Greg update us on the nuclear crisis in Japan. Although the dangers faced at the Fukushima power plant have diminished, the long term consequences have just begun. Greg writes "it has been a while since extensive fission has occurred in the leaking reactor" and "there is real progress in hooking up the plants to outside power sources." Meanwhile, Ana's extensive news feed documents irradiated produce, neglected and euthanized livestock, and a widened evacuation…

The Laboratory is Open -- and we're there

Bora Zivkovic (aka Coturnix) is the Scienceblogs.com maestro at Blog Around the Clock. He is also a bona fide circadian rhythm researcher, which explains how he is able to blog so prolifically, orchestrate the community participation of PLoS One and still have time left over to compile the only anthology of scientific blogging, Open Laboratory, now in its second offering covering 2007. He's figured out how to go without sleep. We didn't submit a post for consideration last year (our goof), but we did this time. I am glad to say we were one of the 50 posts selected (out of 486), so we are…

Desk? No: Head-desk! McCain is....Jesus Christ!

Little Light explains the strange tale about the school desk from Huckabee's speech. As we should have known by now - it is a dogwhistle: Sound familiar yet? Please tell me it does. This is the doctrine of "Grace, Not Works" or "Grace Alone," a theological position expounded during the Reformation, cuddled by Calvin, and popular among evangelical Christians. It's not a desk, it's a place in Heaven. And it's not soldiers we're talking about, it's Jesus Christ. Don't buy the connection of this story as an allegory for the doctrine of Grace Alone? Here's a few ways to put it. And the guy…

Darwin Quotes

Here, poor Forbes made a continent to N. America & another (or the same) to the Gulf of weed. - Hooker makes one from New Zealand to S. America & round the world to Kerguelen Land. Here is Wollaston speaking of Madeira & P. Santo "as the sure & certain witnesses" of a former continent. Here is Woodward writes to me if you grant a continent over 200 or 300 miles of ocean-depths (as if that was nothing) why not extend a continent to every island in the Pacific & Atlantic oceans! And all this within the existence of recent species! If you do not stop this, if there be a lower…

Darwin Quotes

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is…

Michael Pollan's new book

Nice interview in Grist magazine: The new book is called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It's a book that really grew out of questions I heard from readers after Omnivore's Dilemma, which was basically so how do you apply all this? Now that you've looked into the heart of the food system and been into the belly of the beast, how should I eat, and what should I buy, and if I'm concerned about health, what should I be eating? I decided I would see what kind of very practical answers I could give people. I spent a lot of time looking at the science of nutrition, and learned pretty…

Gift Ideas to Give to your Favorite Scientist

My friend, Sara, sent me two Yellow Ibis t-shirts so I could postpone, by a couple more days, that long and lonely trudge through ten foot high snowdrifts to the laundromat. Yellow Ibis is a small company that sells science-based products such as mugs, engravings, prints and t-shirts. The shirt that I am wearing today is light blue with Darwin's "I Think" Tree of Life on it. This tree is copied from the first one ever drawn by Darwin (pictured) in his notebook, Transmutation. As I see it, this shirt is essential apparel for any practicing evolutionary biologist. I am anticipating that PZ…

Our politicians are bozos

So, nothing new there you may well say. My morning paper tells me that Broon has won a pointless victory over the bizarre 42-day-detention stuff. He had to buy off the Ulstermen to do this, and the Lords will veto it, and he is only doing it for cheap popularity, and he will fail, and it will all be useless. If he actually wants to increase our security, perhaps he might stop his people leaving "intelligence" documents on the train. But in a stunning bid to make Broon look competent by competitive incompetence, Tory David Davis has decided to resign and fight a by-election errrm, for some…