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Five Dinners with President Ahmadinejad

Dr. Jim Walsh     The imagination reels.  Five dinners with Iran's President Ahmadinejad.  What would you discuss?  What would be your top questions? MIT alumnus Dr. Jim Walsh did just that, and will report to us via an interview on Monday, June 4 via a live chat.  From the announcement: My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Discussions on Iran, North Korea, and the Nuclear Age Jim Walsh PhD ’00 is an international security expert and a research associate at MIT’s Security Studies Program. He is one of a small number of Americans who has traveled to North Korea and Iran for talks with…

Have you seen Yahoo answers?

The two most annoying kinds of "hits" from an internet search are: 1) When you find a site with your question rephrased exactly as it should be, and the first few sentences of the answer you need, but to continue ... to be able to read the answer ... you must register, and possibly even pay; and 2) When all you can find is the answer on Yahoo Answers. The blockbuster success of Yahoo! Answers is all the more surprising once you spend a few days using the site. While Answers is a valuable window into how people look for information online, it looks like a complete disaster as a traditional…

Facial Processing and Human Cognition: New Findings

...rapid judgments of competence based solely on the facial appearance of candidates predicted the outcomes of gubernatorial elections, the most important elections in the United States next to the presidential elections. In all experiments, participants were presented with the faces of the winner and the runner-up and asked to decide who is more competent. ...Predictions were as accurate after a 100-ms exposure to the faces ...as exposure after 250 ms and unlimited time exposure .... Asking participants to deliberate and make a good judgment dramatically increased the response times and…

Paul Porter ~ Café Scientifique

Café Scientifique: Feeding Africa With Paul Porter, University of Minnesota Professor in Agronomy and Plant Genetics November 17, 2009  Doors at 6 p.m., Talk at 7 p.m.  Bryant Lake Bowl, 810 W Lake St, Minneapolis Tickets: $5 - $12 sliding scale Paul is a professor in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics at the University of Minnesota. He researches cropping systems with a focus on rye as a cover crop, canola, crop rotations, alternative crops and organic production strategies. With his cross-continental bicycle trip Paul's intent is to view agriculture, food and agro-ecosystems…

Lynn Margulis weblog tour

Here's an interesting opportunity: Lynn Margulis, the controversial scientist, is going on a 'blog tour' to promote her new imprint of science books called Sciencewriters Books. What does that mean? She's going to hang out for a little while on a few blogs and chat and answer questions. If you've wanted to have a conversation with the author of the endosymbiont theory and critic of neo-Darwinian theory, here's your chance. The tour will kick off on Monday, 12 March, at Pharyngula. She'll be sending me a short article that I'll post that morning, and we'll collect comments and questions. Later…

Is Google making us stupid?-What the Internet is doing to our brains

Nicholas Carr set out to explore how the ubiquity of text on the Internet is affecting our brains, after realizing that his increased Internet use may be affecting his ability to concentrate on reading long, detailed texts. His essay is published in the July/August issue of The Atlantic "Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain," he says. "The deep reading that use to come naturally has become a struggle." As the Internet becomes a universal conduit for most of the information that flows through our eyes and…

Online Reference Managers

(Cross posted from Christina's LIS Rant) We're just about set for a fabulous session on citation/bibliographic/reference managers at the upcoming Science Online conference. The session wiki page is here, so you can hop over there an add questions or suggestions if you'd like. John Dupuis and I are moderating and we'll have the following folks there talk about some of the most popular options: Kevin Emamy (CiteULike) Jason Hoyt (Mendeley) Trevor Owens (Zotero) Michael Habib (2Collab) John has a lot of experience with EndNote and we both have a lot of experience with RefWorks. The main point…

Wine and Whales

Every since I worked at wine merchant in Natick, MA to pay for my tiny apartment during graduate school, I have enjoyed Italian wines. My favorite? Castello Di Gabbiano.  My other favorite? Catello Banfi. Maybe they will both send me bottles for the online plug (hint, hint). My love of Italian wines is so great, and this news just bizare enough, for me to temparily loosen the 200m limit for DSN.  At the Banfi Estate a 5 my old, Plicoene, whale was discovered.  In total 16 vertebra, the size of footballs, were excavated.  At the time of the fortunate or unfortunate (depending if you are the…

Why Tracker Video Analysis dominates

I have previously compared Tracker Video Analysis and Logger Pro - check that out here. Really, the only advantage Logger Pro has over Tracker is that maybe it is easier to use for simple things and maybe students are already familiar with it from other analysis. There are other video analysis programs out there. There is VideoPoint - but this is not free and I don't think it has been updated in quite some time. Also, don't forget Video Graph. A great program for it's time, but that time was 1997. So, this post is really about Tracker and its feature of calibration point pairs. What is…

Look around you sulphur module 5

Enjoy a little on-line learning.... This sounds like a young David Attenborough [Thanks Marta!]

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Emily Fisher

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Emily Fisher from Oceana to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific)…

Environment and Humanities & Social Science Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Environment and Humanities & Social Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week! Environment. A near perfect reflection in Squaw Valley, California. From Flickr, by jurvetson Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by frozenchipmunk Reader comments of the week: In Primer on greenhouse gases, III, the last of a three-post series on greenhouse gases, Revere of Effect Measure explains how some gases (like CO2) absorb electromagnetic radiation returning to the atmosphere from the Earth and cause the atmosphere…

Creation Science Homeschooler Science Fair

Every year the Twin Cities Creation Science Association puts on a science fair which is sometimes called the Home Schooling Creation Science Fair. It used to be held at Har Mar mall, which was great because it is always a pleasure to stop in at Har Mar. But for the last two years, including last weekend, it was held at a local Bible College. I haven't gone every year, but most years, as does The Lorax at Angry By Choice and a variable handful of others. This year, PZ Myers also attended. (Speaking of PZ I just noticed that his book is now available as an audio edition, just so you know.)…

New Songs from Old Singers

Having done a giant weighty physics post, I feel like I should post something more frivolous, so here's something about music... I recently purchased a bunch of stuff from iTunes (yeah, yeah, Amazon has DRM-free MP3's, blah blah, blah. 1) I had a gift card, and 2) I'm not Cory Doctorow), and there was a weird sort of theme to the purchases: new releases by guys whose previous bands I like: Bill Janovitz and Crown Victoria, Fireworks on TV. The singer and guitarist from Buffalo Tom, playing with a bar band from Boston. This is the best of the lot, and sounds pretty much like a lost Buffalo…

Eight More Companies (including Wal-Mart) Dump Glenn Beck

According to a press release put out today by the organization Color of Change, the campaign to encourage companies to pull their advertising revenue from Glenn Beck's FOXNews show earned some major new signatories: Eight more Glenn Beck advertisers, including Wal-Mart - the world's largest retailer - have confirmed to ColorOfChange.org that they pulled their ads from the controversial Fox News Channel broadcaster's eponymous show. Allergan (maker of Restasis), Ally Bank (a unit of GMAC Financial Services), Best Buy, Broadview Security, CVS, Re-Bath, Travelocity and Wal-Mart join the dozen…

The 2010 Wellcome Book Prize nominees: new medical fiction/nonfiction

The Wellcome Trust book prize honors books that "bring together the worlds of medicine and literature." This year's recipient was none other than Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - a well-deserved win for a nuanced exploration of the tensions between pure research, medical ethics, and social injustice (with a meta-message about the role of the science journalist in telling these kinds of stories). Some of the other books on the Wellcome shortlist were new to me, so I wanted to highlight them in case you're interested in some holiday reading. But I'll be honest, this…

Fuel for Thought

My recent posting on deepwater oil drilling raised questions about alternative energy sources. The news of more and more permits allowing deepwater oil drilling is discouraging given available alternative fuels, but understandable. Here's why. A recent Science publication by Richard Kerr provides an historical perspective of energy production and consumption since the 18th century. It is no surprise that fossil fuels are so popular, because: A coal mine or oil field, for instance, yields five to 50 times more power per square meter than a solar facility, 10 to 100 times more than a wind…

Did Someone Help Bear Stearns Tank?

If there was a crucial tile in the Jenga Pile o'Shit (also known as the recent financial meltdown), it was the cratering of Bear Stearns stock. I can't have been the only one who thought, "Damn if I had only shorted Bear Stearns...." Turns out some anonymous investors did just that under some...unusual circumstances: As the story lacked prurient interest, it was left to Bloomberg.com to unearth persuasive information that the Wall Street firm was seemingly brought down by a conspiracy that netted its participants a profit of upwards of $250 million on an investment of $1.7 million in a week…

Science Blogging Conference Update

The conference is only 19 [13] days from today! It's getting really exciting! The program is shaping really well: On Thursday (January 18th) we will have a teach-in session. About 20 people have signed up so far (update: 30, thus the session is now full). We'll use Wordpress to help them start their own blogs, so I'll have to make one of my own in advance and play around to figure out the platform before I teach others. On Friday (January 19th), we'll have dinner and all the bloggers present will read their posts. We have not decided on the place yet, but perhaps a site that has wifi, or…

Brendan Koerner in Wired how, why, and if Alcoholics Anonymous works

The last two days (here and here), you lovely commenters and I have been bantering about legacy media's reluctance to use the original literature citation in print or online coverage of science, medicine, and health stories. The discussion has drawn input from working writers as well as scientists and bloggers and I also draw your attention to the comments at the impetus for these posts over at The White Coat Underground with PalMD. But remember, my dear ink- and pixel-stained friends, I am also a graduate advisory board member and instructor in a science and medical journalism program at a…

Kill the post-embargo publication window

I can't find the paper you've written about and your link doesn't work. What's going on?  I keep having to answer this question and it's getting tiresome (although, as we'll see, this no fault of the people who ask it). This post is borne of that frustration. At the bottom of every piece I write about peer-reviewed research (which is most of them), I include a citation for the paper in question and a link. This is good practice. Every journalist should, in theory, do it. The link is almost always to a DOI number rather than to the journal page. And often, those links don't work.…

What a difference a year makes: tweeting from Cold Spring Harbor

I've been quiet for the last two weeks, largely due to some feverish last-minute analysis in the lead-up to this year's Biology of Genomes meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where I spoke in (and co-chaired) the Genetics of Complex Traits session. Long-term readers may recall that I sparked off a minor controversy at last year's meeting by writing several blog posts summarising presented work. While I deliberately steered clear of discussing unpublished or contentious work, basically focusing on the "big picture" messages emerging from the sessions rather than the technical details, I…

"Can any business seem more fitted to heighten [pallid hopelessness] than that of continually handling these dead letters and assorting them for the flames?"

Shorter Disco. 'tute's David Klinghoffer: Paul McBride, Darwinist Hero of the Hour: Why don't real scientists take our book seeking to throw out all of paleoanthropology – self-published by a lawyer, an insect geneticist, and a bacterium geneticist – seriously? That paleoanthropologist who tore it to shreds doesn't count: he hasn't got good enough credentials. Honestly, here's David Klinghoffer's actual opening: The debate about evolution is conducted in large part on blogs… Defending Darwinism from critics and advocates of alternative scientific theories like intelligent design should be a…

My picks from ScienceDaily

'Regressive Evolution' In Cavefish: Natural Selection Or Genetic Drift: "Regressive evolution," or the reduction of traits over time, is the result of either natural selection or genetic drift, according to a study on cavefish by researchers at New York University's Department of Biology, the University of California at Berkeley's Department of Integrative Biology, and the Harvard Medical School. Previously, scientists could not determine which forces contributed to regressive evolution in cave-adapted species, and many doubt the role of natural selection in this process. Darwin himself, who…

My Job in 10 Years: Social Media and the 21st Century Classroom

On Thursday, February 4th, I attended the Social Media and the Modern Day Classroom session that's part of Social Media Week Toronto. It was hosted here at York and most of the presenters were local faculty or staff. It was a very interesting session in which all the speakers brought something different and valuable to the table. Neel Joshi moderated and gave an overall shape to the session, asking provocative questions and mostly focusing on Twitter as a learning and community building tool. Laura D'amelio is the Manager of Print & E-Media Content here and she talked about how York…

Voting Ends TODAY for the Kavli Video Contest! Get your vote in now!

Which is the coolest science video? You tell us! Cast your vote now for the Kavli Video Contest People's Choice Award! TODAY is the last day to vote. Let us know what video you think is best and best expresses why Science is COOL! Just check out all the great science videos online, and then you rate them! And be sure to give your favorite a 5 stars rating. Voting for the People's Choice Award is fast and easy !!! First, you need to register and log into the SciVee site http://www.scivee.tv Then view all of the Kavli science videos here Click the star rating you prefer under each video that…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Mary Ann Spiro is a Biotechnology graduate student and science writer/media director in the Institute for NanoBioTechnology at Johns Hopkins University. She writes for Baltimore Science News Examiner and tweets. At the conference, Mary will lead a workshop on Storyboarding your science video and posting it online and do an Ignite-style presentation "The Story of…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants: SciBlings

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Dorothea Salo is an academic librarian in Wisconsin who blogs on The Book of Trogool. She tweets as well. At the conference, Dorothea will co-moderate the session "Scientists! What can your librarian do for you?" and teach a workshop "Repositories for Fun and Profit". Peter Lipson is a physician in Michigan. He blogs on White Coat Underground and Science-Based…

The Psychology of Cyberspace

The Psychology of Cyberspace is a course taught by John Suler in the Department of Psychology at the Science and Technology Center at Rider University. The website is a collection of a large number of thought-provoking essays on various aspects of human behavior online: This hypertext book explores the psychological aspects of environments created by computers and online networks. It presents an evolving conceptual framework for understanding how people react to and behave within cyberspace: what I call "the psychology of cyberspace" - or simply "cyberpsychology." Continually being revised…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (The Media)

There are 91 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 95 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Helen Chickering is a longtime television health reporter, now working with the NBC News Channel Dan Barkin is the deputy managing…

Challenging Harry Potter Quiz

Do you remember how, at some point in the recent past, I wished that the Harry Potter online quizzes were more challenging? Well, someone heard me. Because this Harry Potter quiz relies on questions written by readers, it nicely confirms my working hypothesis that the most difficult quiz/exam that could ever be written is the one composed by the students themselves. [flash required] Since I spent most of last night watching Harry Potter DVDs, I thought this quiz would be easy. Oh, how wrong I was. Besides the fact that the questions are written by a bunch of 12 year old HP fanatics, these…

History of Science and American Science Policy

Tim @ Deltoid beat me to posting about the new (online at least) Naomi Oreskes talk in which she discusses the tactics of the Western Fuels Association (go here), so instead I'd like to take the opportunity to highlight a paper she and Zuoyue Wang contributed to the Isis Focus section on the value of history of science. The abstract reads: Historians of science have participated actively in debates over American science policy in the post-World War II period in a variety of ways, but their impact has been more to elucidate general concepts than to effect specific policy changes. Personal…

AU Forum Focuses on Young Voters & Obama: A Year Later

Tonight, the AU School of Communication's American Forum series focuses on "Change + 1: Are young voters talking back to Obama?" A diverse panel of experts will look not only at how the Millennial generation views Obama personally but also how this age-group views the important issues facing the country today, including the economy and health-care as these issues affect them, transparency in government and the effectiveness of social-networking to govern versus social-networking to get elected. Panelists include David Gregory, moderator, NBC's Meet the Press and AU alum; Jose Antonio…

Wi-fi Talking Bunny Set to Take the US by Storm

You know all those times you wish you'd had a cute plastic wabbit to read you your email? Well, wish no more, for yout wildest dreams are fufilled! The plastic bunny with ears like TV antennae can read out emails and mobile phone text messages, tell children to go to bed, alert one to a stock collapse and give traffic updates by receiving internet feeds via a wireless Wi-Fi network. "It gives a visual and vocal representation of what is on the internet," explained Paul Jackson, an analyst at research house Forrester. "It is also a nice way of making physical your relationship online with…

Life Versus Squiggles

In the new issue of Smithsonian, I've got an article about life on Mars. I'm not writing about anything NASA has actually found, but instead about the difficulty of just recognizing life, even if the evidence is in your hand (or in your rover's spectrometer). While the chances of life existing today on the surface of Mars aren't fantastic, a lot of researchers are pretty optimistic that there are fossils to be found. But it turns out that fossils of microbes are even more difficult to identify. You just need to consider some of the fierce debates over some of the oldest fossils on Earth--a…

Casual Fridays: Twinsult or Twompliment?

It's never been easy to communicate clearly online (or in person, for that matter). Often a statement meant as a compliment can be taken the wrong way. Or someone can mistake a statement made in jest for a serious statement. Now with tools like Twitter and texting limiting the total number of characters in a message, it may be even more difficult to convey nuance. Does everyone read these messages the same way? Or are some of us better-prepared to understand the nuances of online communication? I think I may have come up with a (non-scientific) way to shed some light on those questions. You'…

News from JoVE

A new deal: Wiley-Blackwell and JoVE Unveil Groundbreaking Online Video Publications Moshe on TV:

Evolution: Education and Outreach

The second issue is now available online. Open Access. Most articles are highly 'bloggable'.

It's alive!

The Panda's Thumb is back online again, in case you've been missing it.

Gadgets for the ladies. Some are pink, most not.

I want the peek. Watch CBS Videos Online Hat tip: Bora, a real technology ladies man.

The Bugle

A hilarious podcast by John Oliver (of Daily Show) and Andy Zaltzman at Times Online.

Global Orgasm for Peace

Finally, some spirituality I can live with... I was a little disappointed with the online store, though.

ScienceOnline2010 - Program highlights 8

Continuing with the introductions to the sessions on the Program, here is what will happen on Sunday, January 17 at 10:15 - 11:20am: A. Article-level metrics - Peter Binfield Description: In an attempt to measure the article, as opposed to the journal it is published in, PLoS has recently implemented a suite of article-level metrics on all PLoS Articles. These metrics include online usage, citations, social bookmarks, comments, notes, ratings, and blog coverage. This presentation will go into the motivation for this program; provide information on how it has been implemented; and cover…

From the Archives: Interview with Timo Hannay, Head of Web Publishing, Nature Publishing Group

During my summer blogging break, I thought I'd repost of few of my "greatest hits" from my old blog, just so you all wouldn't miss me so much. This one is from July 3, 2007. It's one of the most popular posts I've done, and it was linked quite widely in the science blogosphere. The interview series has lapsed a bit this year, but that's mostly due to a couple of the people I was approaching just not working out. I will definitely relaunch the series in the fall and try to do one every other month or so. ===== Welcome to the most recent installment in my occasional series of interviews…

Patient-led “clinical trials” versus clinical research (2012 edition)

Dying of cancer can be a horrible way to go, but as a cancer specialist I sometimes forget that there are diseases that are equally, if not more, horrible. One that always comes to mind is amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It is a motor neuron disease whose clinical course is characterized by progressive weakness, muscle atrophy and spasticity, with ultimate progression to respiratory muscles leading to difficulty breathing and speaking (dysarthria) and to the muscles controlling swallowing. The rate of clinical course is variable, often…

Your Blogiste and Black Friday

I'm going to guess that not many of my readers would have imagined that your blogiste would be planning to be out at the stores at 5am on Friday. She never has done anything of the sort before. While not really much of an advocate of "Buy Nothing Day" (I'm more for "buy little year"), generally speaking I'd rather rip my own eyeballs out than go shopping anyway, and the idea doing it among the crowds on black Friday would be even less appealing. And yet, that's precisely what I'm planning on doing. Let's back up to last Wednesday, however. Last Wednesday Eric and I accepted an emergency…

My recent Seed column…

… is now available online. It's a brief introduction to some interesting observations about the pufferfish genome.

Tangled Bank #103

The 103rd edition of the Tangled Bank is now online at the Nature Network!

These posters look strangely familiar

There are several other versions online, and plans to sell them as full sized posters.

Tangled Bank #86

The Tangled Bank came early this week — the latest edition is online at Fish Feet.