Search Content

Displaying results 3351 - 3400 of 87947

The View from the AIP Class: Week 2

M.'s latest update (see the first post for her bio) on what it is like to take the class.  It is funny - I always worry I'm not providing enough reading material for people.   Apparently that may not be a critical issue ;-).   This class is very different from any other I've taken. There are a lot of suggested readings, let's just say many of them have been posts from Sharon's blog and we know how long those can be! But there's also the class discussion, which is online. That alone is new to me, I've never taken an online class before.  Something I'm noticing every time I read through the…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Rare Microorganism That Produces Hydrogen May Be Key To Tomorrow's Hydrogen Economy: An ancient organism from the pit of a collapsed volcano may hold the key to tomorrow's hydrogen economy. Scientists from across the world have formed a team to unlock the process refined by a billions-year old archaea. The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute will expedite the research by sequencing the hydrogen-producing organism for comparative genomics. Are Hands-free Cellphones Really Safer?: Since April 1 when Nova Scotia outlawed the use of hand-held cellphones while driving, sales of hands…

Reed Elsevier's Experiment With Online Free Access

Today's New York Times notes this weekend's launch of Elsevier's OncologySTAT website: But now Reed Elsevier, which publishes more than 400 medical and scientific journals, is trying an experiment that stands this model on its head. Over the weekend it introduced a Web portal, www.OncologySTAT.com, that gives doctors free access to the latest articles from 100 of its own pricey medical journals and that plans to sell advertisements against the content. The new site asks oncologists to register their personal information. In exchange, it gives them immediate access to the latest cancer-related…

The War on Forestry

So after coming up with the term "The War on Epidemiology" which has been adopted by one other person (thanks Tara), I've been encouraged by that overwhelming success to devise another phrase: The War on Forestry. By way of DailyKos, I came across this LA Times article about a graduate student at the University of Oregon's Forestry School who has come under severe pressure due to a paper accepted and published online at Science. Members of the faculty even tried to prevent the paper from being published in Science by writing a letter to the editors claiming it was lousy science. Way to…

California madness!

Travel season begins again for me. I've already mentioned that I'm off to Winnipeg this weekend; the weekend after that is the Science Online conference. And then the whirlwind begins: I'm invading California, singlehandedly. Here's my schedule: W, 1/20: UC Santa Barbara Th, 1/21: UC Davis F, 1/22: Berkeley Sa, 1/23: UC Santa Cruz Su, 1/24: De Anza College (Cupertino) M: 1/25: CSU Chico T: 1/26 Sacramento City College W: 1/27: Stanford Th: 1/28: Sierra College That's insane. I may regret this when I stagger away from that grueling series. At least I'm giving the same talk at all of them, on…

Links for 2010-01-29

Physics Games - online physics-based games Just in case you were planning to get something done today. (tags: games physics science education internet computing) J.D. Salinger Dead « Whatever "Somewhere Holden Caulfield is pretending he doesn't care." (tags: books literature news blogs) Best Science Books 2009: The top books of the year! : Confessions of a Science Librarian "For the last little while I've been compiling lists from various media sources giving their choices for the best books of 2009. Some of the lists have been from general media sources, in which case I've just…

Great Moments in Vanity Searching -or- The Hotness of Physics

I was Googling for "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog" last night, to check whether a review of said book that I know is coming has been posted yet (side question: Does anybody know a good way to exclude the umpty-zillion versions of Amazon and other sellers from this sort of search? Most of the results are just product pages at one online retailer or another.). The review I was looking for isn't up yet, but I did find a goodreads page, a nice entry at the Cincinnati public library calling it "abstract science delivered painlessly," and this pre-publication alert from Library Journal. "Wait a…

Coming home and leaving again

So I got back Sunday night from a workshop at Arizona State University on Engineering and Science Ethics Education. The goal of the workshop was to explore the possibilities for blending microethics and macroethics in graduate engineering and science education; we spent 2 days talking about the history of such efforts, what micro and macro ethics might mean in the context of scientific and engineering education and practice, and how we might operationalize these ideas into 4 formats: a 3-credit course, a 9-credit course, a lab-situated set of discussions, and some online formats. The…

The upside of the Hollywood writers' strike?

An editorial in the current edition of the journal Nature suggests we science types take advantage of the writers' strike. It does this under the headline "A quantum of solace," stolen from the next Bond flick. The headline's a stretch, and so is the editorial itself, but hey... Here's the essential bit: Scientists often complain that they can never change the way that science is portrayed in films, which seems as if the screenplays are written on a planet with different laws of physics. But, to quote an earlier Bond film, never say never. Indeed, today is a propitious time for such…

Young on Pundit Payola

Cathy Young disagrees with the Iain Murray/Tom Giovenetti line on cash for comment: Sadly, some conservatives are now defending the practice of opinion writers serving as hired guns (hired quills?) for business and lobbying interests. Among others, Iain Murray in The American Spectator and Giovanetti in National Review Online (which, to its credit, has published strong critiques of payola in punditry) claim that a witch-hunt against conservative writers is afoot. Liberal pundits, they whine, are subsidized by the media, major foundations, and the publishing industry, while conservatives…

Redoubt Eruption Update for 4/7/2009

Image courtesy of AVO/USGS taken by Kristi Wallace showing the eruption plume on March 31, 2009. Today's update will be relatively brief: AVO has returned Redoubt to Orange/Watch status after this weekend's eruptions. The new dome continues to grow and this is accompanied by the usual volcanic seismicity associated with dome construction. We should expect to see the status fluctuate from Orange to Red as the eruption waxes and wanes - and likely get little to no warning of the next big explosive event. The eruptions of Redoubt has forced Chevron to halt activity for all its Cook Inlet oil…

A simple solution to poverty requires rethinking charitable giving

I linked last week to Matthew Yglesias's Slate piece "The Best and Simplest Way to Fight Global Poverty," which reports on a study that gave unconditional cash grants to poor young adults in Uganda and found that four years later, recipients of the grants had more business capital and higher earnings than those in a control group. I thought about the study again over the weekend as I listened to a Planet Money podcast about a charitable school-building project in Haiti that exemplifies how hard -- and potentially less effective -- it can be to give poor communities assets like schools rather…

What printer should you get?

I had a good printer experience, and I thought I should pass it on to you. Printers are, of course, the spawn of Satan. Especially the ink jet kind. For a long time, I had a cheap black and white laser, which worked OK for non color stuff, and an inkjet all in one, which was handy but cost a lot to keep in ink. When Huxley, at about age 5, figure out how to use the all in one as a photo copy machine or to print photos off an SD card (both functions I had not explored, but he figured out on his own), he incorporated the all-in-one into his artistic work flow, which involved making computer…

24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report

Al Gore announces an online event taking place on November 14: 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report:

The Bible in Translation

Watch Humanist Views: Humanism and the Bible in Activism & Non-Profit  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Drop in preterm births followed Colorado’s rise in long-acting contraception use (rerun)

The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on Feb. 29, is one of our favorite posts from 2016. by Liz Borkowski, MPH I've written before about the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, which in 2009 started providing free IUDs and contraceptive implants (the two forms of long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC) to low-income women at family planning clinics in 37 Colorado counties. Between 2008 and 2014, the state's teen birth and abortion rates both dropped by 48% (see this webinar for details). While teen birth rates have been declining…

The WorldNutDaily on Morality

Whenever you find something on Worldnutdaily labeled an "exclusive commentary", you can usually be assured that it's exclusive because it's so badly written and poorly reasoned that no one else would publish it. Such is the case with today's commentary by Mychal Massie entitled Morality Doesn't Evolve. It's badly written because it's written in that pseudo-highbrow style that uses words because they sound impressive, not because the resulting sentence is either eloquent or persuasive. To wit: Minority rule is now the consensus notwithstanding the majority, and heretofore the laws hold…

...There Are Children Starving in India

The subject of food waste is not sexy. Anyone faced with the statistic that we waste 40% of our food in America is almost certainly appalled - for a second or two. But they also probably stop thinking about it just a tiny second later, probably after a moment of thinking "not us, though." And yet, it almost certainly is us. A recent study is very clear about the costs of wasted food - food waste has risen by 50% in my lifetime, and the average American now wastes 1400 kilocalories a day of food. That adds up to 1/4 of all freshwater use, 300 million barrels of oil spent in agriculture (…

The Vicious Cycle of Physics PR

In which I talk about why it is that particle physics and cosmology are so over-represented in popular physics, and why my own books contribute to that. [The too-short excerpts on the new front page are beyond my ability to change, so I'll be doing Victorian-style "In which..." summaries at the start of posts as a work-around, so a casual visitor has some idea what a psot is about before clicking through.] One of the maddening things about the recent upgrade of the ScienceBlogs back end has been that a lot of things have been posted during that time that I wanted to respond to. Near the top…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Cockroaches Are Morons In The Morning, Geniuses In The Evening: In its ability to learn, the cockroach is a moron in the morning and a genius in the evening. Dramatic daily variations in the cockroach's learning ability were discovered by a new study performed by Vanderbilt University biologists and published online recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DNA Extracted From Woolly Mammoth Hair: Stephan C. Schuster and Webb Miller of Penn State, working with Thomas Gilbert from Copenhagen and a large international consortium, discovered that hair shafts provide an…

Tangled bank #45

...is up over at GreyThumb blog. Check out some of the best online science writing in a variety of fields.

Tell the Sb Overlords What You Think

The Sb Overloards have a poll up to learn what y'all think about the upcoming Sb on-line forum reform.

Story Time

This post was prompted by the combination of three events: a visit with the founder of PubGet, an invitation to keynote at a conference on publishing, and an interview with Bora about the Science Online 2009 conference last January in RTP. The past year has seen an explosion of talk about the future of the scientific article. It's wonderful to see, even if the results are either depressingly complicated to achieve or depressingly incremental innovation. Both of those results are better than when I got into this - I remember at a conference in Sweden in 2006 hearing a grand high priest of the…

Myriad Oral Argument Recordings

The oral arguments in Monday's Myriad appeal are online here. (Scroll down and look for Association for Molecular [Pathology] v. PTO).

Neandertals in Siberia & Central Asia

I don't know if we should believe Svante Pääbo anymore, but his lab has some new findings re: Neandertal mtDNA: Neanderthals in central Asia and Siberia Nature advance online publication 30 September 2007. doi:10.1038/nature06193 Authors: Johannes Krause, Ludovic Orlando, David Serre, Bence Viola, Kay Prüfer, Michael P. Richards, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Catherine Hänni, Anatoly P. Derevianko & Svante Pääbo Morphological traits typical of Neanderthals began to appear in European hominids at least 400,000 years ago and about 150,000 years ago in western Asia. After their initial…

Techno losers

Gmail's "chat" app is now integrated via AJAX with the email application. In other words, if you've sent someone an email from gmail to gmail you will show up in their user list for chat automatically. I was explaining this to a coworker and I proceeded to demonstrate it. One woman that I always saw as "green" (online) on my chat list had emailed me only once, she had thanked me for some help in data collection that went into a presentation she was giving for the lab. I didn't know her well, though she sure was a talker. In any case, I was like, "Check it, people never notice when you chat…

Friday Fun: Furious Facebook investors pacified by amusing picture of kitten

It's unseemly to revel in the misfortunes of others. Words to live by, ones I usually take very seriously. Of course, all bets are off for my Friday Fun posts, so let's revel a bit in the misfortunes of Facebook and the man seated at the throne in King's Landing. As its share value continued to plummet towards zero in its first week of trading, social media giant Facebook has seen off a major revolt by thousands of furious shareholders by issuing a series of heartwarming and whimsical posts featuring kittens and other adorable internet memes. *snip* A number of disgruntled investors used…

Saturday roundup

Again, I never get to discuss all the topics I find interesting. So to keep you busy over the weekend, check out a few that I didn't have time to emphasize this week: Neurotopia on the zombies among us. Orac's series on medicine and evolution: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 4a New studies suggesting that mercury fillings aren't harmful. Can you name that virus over at Buridan's ass? Professional societies spurning women editors? (More here from Evolgen). Ewen on the science behind the recent monoclonal antibody drug trial gone bad. The National Science Foundation website is up for a…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Formula Discovered For Longer Plant Life: Molecular biologists from Tuebingen, Germany, have discovered how the growth of leaves and the aging process of plants are coordinated. Human Or Animal Faces Associated With At Least 90 Percent Of Cars By One-third Of Population: Do people attribute certain personality traits or emotions to car fronts? If so, could this have implications for driving and pedestrian behavior? Truls Thorstensen (EFS Consulting Vienna), Karl Grammer (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Urban Ethology) and other researchers at the University of Vienna joined economic interest…

Science Blogging Manifesto

Daniel Brown has written quite a nice post about science blogging, what it is, what it is for, and why one should read (and write) science blogs: Science Blogging: The Future of Science Communication & Why You Should be a Part of it: Over the past few years, a new development has arisen in the world of science amongst those who wish to purvey the wonders of reality to the general public. I'm speaking of course about the ascension of the Science Blog. Many articles have been written on the burgeoning importance of science blogs for the processing and dissemination of scientific knowledge (…

Another role for Open Science

When I teach BIO101 I usually give at least one assignment that entails finding a biology-related article, writing a short summary of it and explaining the gist of it to the rest of the class. We did that this Monday and the students picked, as usual, some interesting topics (including some that take us way outside of the scope of the course, e.g., game theory and Evolutionarily Stable Strategies). The sources, as usual, are popular science magazines like American Scientist (the last one that is still of high quality, I'm afraid to say), Scientific American, Discover, Natural History, etc.…

Fornvännen's Winter Issue On-Line

Fornvännen's winter issue (2009:4) is now on-line and available to anyone who wants to read it. Check it out! Anna-Sara Noge looks at burnt mounds, Bronze Age heaps of fire-cracked stone, with bones in them, just like I once did for my first academic paper. But unlike me she has actual osteological data showing that there are human bones there! Ny Björn Gustafsson looks at Viking Period bellows shields, pottery or stone barriers that kept a metalworker's bellows from catching fire from the heat of the furnace. Mathias Bäck presents new evidence for Viking Period settlement outside Birka'…

What If Al Gore Were Arrested?

If Gore Were Arrested is the title of an article at The Nation online. According to this report Al Gore has been invited to participate in civil disobedience with the Rainforest Action Network and he is considering it! The article finishes its headline sentence this way: If Gore did end up getting arrested during a protest against a coal-fired power plant, it would make front-page news throughout the world and put a spotlight on what some climate scientists and activists consider the single most important priority in the fight against climate change: halting the use of coal as the world's…

Atheist Voices of MN Authors' Event - Har Mar Barnes & Noble

Wed, October 10th Join us at the Barnes & Noble in Har Mar Mall in Roseville at 7pm, Wednesday, October 10 for a fun evening. The Atheist Voices of Minnesota will be featured for an authors' event and we would love to see a room full of occupied seats! Six of the book authors will read and/or discuss their essays and then be available to take questions from attendees. The featured authors are Norman Barrett Wiik, Stephanie Zvan, Robin Raianiemi, Tim Wick, Kori Hennessy, and August Berkshire. The host will be Eric Jayne. After the one hour (maybe an hour and a half) event some of us will…

June Pieces Of My Mind #2

Nyckelviken's folly Dropping off Jrette at sailing camp for her 2nd summer. Just like her brother in '09. Just like me in '86. Heard new interviews with Andy Weir and Larry Niven on Planetary Radio. I love the Internet! Kelley Johnston on self-defense training for daughters: "I'd rather bail you out of jail than identify you at the morgue". Depeche Mode's 1984 Some Great Reward was the first album I bought. I just listened to "Blasphemous Rumours" for the first time in decades and was impressed. Starting from the lines "Taken away to the dark side / I wanna be your left hand man", I began…

Hiking boots: what the hell happened with the Vasque Sundowner?

I used to live in a place where if you lacked proper hiking boots you could actually die, or be very badly injured. My 1991 Vasque Sundowner hiking boots are now barely good enough to wear while cutting the lawn (damn monoculture!) in my now-suburban life. (Then again, that means they are old enough to go to college.). At least I still have some great state parks very close to me and some great national parks within 3 hr where we could backpack. When looking to order a new pair of Sundowners online (since our local REI stopped carrying the version for my wide stubby feet), I was shocked to…

Pretty Good Snark

This is good.  Indeed, it may qualify as the type specimen ( href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holotype">holotype) of snark.  From The New Yorker: href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2009/08/clinton-north-korea.html">It's So Obvious From Avi Zenilman, online news editor, The New Yorker:     Do you think the right is upset about President Clinton's mission because he didn't free the hostages by going through the Japanese to sell arms to the North Koreans and then use the proceeds to support anti-Chavez guerrillas? Posted by Hendrik Hertzberg On the…

Europe Unveils 57 Newly Discovered (Incredibly Boring) Species of Freshwater Fish

The results of a seven year survey of Europe's rivers and lakes has finally arrived, and to the delight of Ben Stein, CPAs and colorblind people around the world, 57 new species of new nonthreatening, completely unexciting, brownish-gray fish have been identified. Europe now boasts 522 drab freshwater species as opposed to the laughable 485 of the olden days. Take that Azerbaijan! Reportedly, the photographer fell asleep while taking this picture. "The new species come from all over," said Jörg Freyhof of the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, Germany…

Fungus kills caterpillars but may help humans

Caterpillars with fungus growing out of their heads. Image of Cordyceps sinensis fungus from http://cordyceps-sinensis-mushroom.blogspot.com/ Whoever thought that a brain-attacking fungus might actually be good for you? This particular type of fungus, cordyceps, is known for attacking and killing caterpillars and can be found in the mountains of Tibet. Touted as a cure for various ailments including cancer, asthma, and erectile dysfunction, it is sold in Chinese markets as the "golden worm" or "Tibetan mushroom" for as much as $50,000 per pound! A new study published in RNA provides some…

Wikispecies and Fishbase: A Collaboration for the Ocean?

It seems like most of us agree: Wikipedia is blessed though, like pop music (or an ugly partner), it is easy to love it and then deny one's affection for it publicly, especially in the science world. Now, with the introduction of Wikispecies, started in August 2004 by Wikimedia, several other debates of how an open source, free content catalogue of all things living can work. Daniel Pauly is not only the father of the term "shifting baselines" but co-father to Fishbase with Dr. Rainer Froese. This online database is a multilingual melange of expert information, including taxonomy, growth…

Beer Keg Theft Rising -- But they want the metal, not the beer

What's the world coming to? This irresistible news nugget comes from Al Tompkins at Poynter Online: Beer Kegs Attract Thieves USA Today said: Across the country, crooks are snatching stainless steel kegs in alleyways behind bars and breweries or not returning them after keggers to sell for scrap metal. The trend comes as the stainless scrap price has more than doubled in the last five years, making an empty 18-pound keg worth more than $13, according to price data for steel scrap sold in Chicago. Hawaii actually passed legislation making beer-keg theft a crime.  They may not have needed…

Title IX and Women's Success

From the Chronicle of Higher Education today: Women who play sports in high school are more likely to earn a college degree than women who do not, according to a new study by Mikaela J. Dufur, an assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, and Kelly P. Troutman, an adjunct instructor of anthropology and sociology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania...The findings..."suggest a societal benefit to female sport participation in the form of increased educational attainment," they say. Therefore, they argue, "rather than looking for ways to excuse schools from Title IX…

My Perspective In Issues In Science And Technology

The latest publication of Issues In Science And Technology features an article I co-authored with ScienceDebate CEO Shawn Lawrence Otto. We discuss building the ScienceDebate2008 initiative, lessons from the election, and what's needed to create an environment where the public's understanding and appreciation of science policy will make scientists critical in the political process. Here's an excerpt from Science on the Campaign Trail: Probing further, the Science Debate team learned that science was seen as a niche topic by the campaigns, and a presidential debate dedicated to science policy…

New/Old Approach to Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050401976.html?hpid=topnews">Resilient Infections Worry Military Doctors" is a headline in the Washington Post.  It reflects a serious concern often noted here at ScienceBlogs.  I read it and worried, again.  But perhaps there is hope: maggots.  From News@Nature.com: href="http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070430/full/070430-13.html">Maggots eat up resistant bacteria Creepy crawlies are the latest weapon in the anti-MRSA arsenal. Published online: 4 May 2007 doi:10.1038/news070430-13 Katharine…

Consumer genetics needs more transparency, not excessive regulation

An excerpt from an article I co-wrote for Xconomy with Genomics Law Report's Dan Vorhaus - link to the full article below. Are you ready for consumer genetics? Is your government? Recent announcements of federal investigations into the budding direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing industry suggest that authorities are preparing to increase regulation of companies offering consumers access to their own genetic data. However, rather than rushing in to clamp down on the industry, regulators should slow down and focus, first, on understanding this complex field. An increasing number of…

Commenting at Cell

Over the last month, many things have been happening in the world of scientific publishing. Nature is trying something new, and they are having a public debate about how to alter the review process. PLoS is pushing ahead with a new type of publishing platform, PLoS ONE. And they are blogging about it. Now Cell has started an online comment section. Similar to ArXiv.org that displays trackbacks, and to the suggestion left at Nature's peer review blog that articles should be publicly debate both before and after they have been published, Cell is providing a public posting area so that…

More Clicker stuff

I am seriously late on this stuff. First, by clickers I mean student response systems. In a previous post, I stated how much I like these things. The basic idea (in case you have never heard of them) is that these are small devices that students in a class have. The instructor (learning facilitator) presents some multiple-choice questions and the students click a button to represent their answer. The summary of the student responses can then be presented to the class. Big whoop you might say. But it is a big whoop and here is why: Technologically and logistically, these are trivial to…

PepsiCo has been expelled

We just got this note from Adam Bly: We have removed Food Frontiers from SB. We apologize for what some of you viewed as a violation of your immense trust in ScienceBlogs. Although we (and many of you) believe strongly in the need to engage industry in pursuit of science-driven social change, this was clearly not the right way. How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? How can a large and diverse online community made up of scientists and the science-minded public help? How do companies who seek genuine dialogue…

Information Overload!!!

I don't have the attention span to write this article. In the course of penning this introductory paragraph, I've taken umpteen email breaks, gotten distracted by several Wikipedia wormholes, and taken an hour's time out to watch Frontline documentary clips on YouTube. It has taken me, in toto, seven days to write a five-paragraph article about my generation's decreasing attention span. At least the irony isn't lost on me. A social researcher tracking my movements across the web might discover that, in the words of University College of London professor and director of CIBER (the Centre…

Announcing The Open Lab Finalists!

It's here! After more than a month of reviewing, I am pleased to announce the list of posts that will be included in this year's edition - the fifth - of The Open Laboratory! In no particular order: Givin' props to hybrids by DeLene Beeland The decade the clones came: Beware the mighty Marmokrebs! by Zen Faulkes Can seabirds overfish a resource? The case of cormorants in Estonia by Hannah Waters The Data Speak by Andrew Thaler Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis by Darren Naish Shark week! by EcoPhysioMichelle Size really does…