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My Wired Feature on Geoengineering

The latest issue of Wired is now on newsstands, though not yet online. In it, I have a lengthy feature story about the scientific mainstreaming of geoengineering, which has occurred because of several trends: 1. Global warming seems to be moving even faster than scientists originally expected. 2. Political solutions seem to be evolving even more slowly than many pessimists would have expected. 3. One geoengineering idea--putting reflective particles in the stratosphere--is outdistancing all the other proposals and has become a clear, and apparently affordable, front-runner. 4. With possible…

PZ Myers, Mind Your Manners

Dear PZ, [It's worth pointing out, my problem is not with profanity. Regular readers know that long before I entered the blogosphere, I've vocally celebrated the right to free speech and independent thinking. However, when influential and well respected professors argue like children in a very public online forum, substantive points decompose to nonsense blows, which puts a poor lens on a field that already has an image problem. As visible teachers and bloggers in the sciences, it's within our power to make strides to improve that, and a well argued rebuttal, over a dismissive profane…

WIRED on ScienceDebate2008

There's wonderful reason I've been quieter here than usual... ScienceDebate2008 has hit the ground running to so much enthusiasm and excitement, Chris and I are incredibly busy keeping up with all the hullabaloo! And we're also having a lot of fun working to make this incredible idea into a reality... We've been following the blogosphere and media reports, and here's the latest from WIRED: A Who's Who of America's top scientists are launching a quixotic last-minute effort this week to force presidential candidates to detail the role science would play in their administrations -- a question…

My Critique of Nordhaus and Shellenberger

My latest DeSmogBlog entry is up--it's a reaction to the recent Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger piece in the New Republic, which in turn is an excerpt/adaptation from their new book Break Through. You'll recall that these guys are the stylish authors of the famed "Death of Environmentalism" essay (PDF). Anyways, I think Nordhaus and Shellenberger are largely right, but also not really as revolutionary as you (or they) might think. As I put it: Not only do Nordhaus and Shellenberger get the central global warming message right--they go farther with detailed policy prescriptions. The…

Weekend video break: Journalism in the age of data

Knight Fellow Geoff McGhee created this polished video documentary series about how data visualization is infiltrating and transforming journalism. Interviews with Many Eyes creators Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg, Amanda Cox of the New York Times, and other dataviz luminaries are coupled with bios and links to further information, some history of visualization techniques, industry context (is dataviz profitable? who's doing it?) and lots of lovely examples. The last section of the video, "First Steps," is a mini-tour of useful DIY sites like Swivel and Wordle (which is ridiculously…

Science in Catalonia

I'm back in London now, after 5 days in Barcelona for ESOF2008. The trip has been rather hectic, and I neither attended as many sessions, nor saw as much of the city, as I would have liked. I still had a very nice time, but, as is always the case when travelling, it's good to be home. I still have more material on the event, so I'll continue to post about it for the next few days. During my time in Barcelona, Tobias Maier was kind enough to act as my host. Tobias and I met every day in the conference centre, attended a couple of functions together, and hit the town in the evenings. One…

Friday Deep-Sea Picture (10/19/07): The Art of Kawika Chetron

I am relaxing the 200m rule for DSN, to bring you some photographs from one of my favorites, Kawika Chetron. To say that Kawika's photos of the kelp forest are stunning would be a gross understatement. Luckily, you can view most of his portfolio online. "Deep Shale", Monterey Bay, California February 17, 2007: Often, when I show a picture to a non-diving friend, the first question they ask is "How deep were you when you took that?". The implication, of course, being that the deeper the depth, the better the photograph must be. This, then, is the very best photograph on the site. This…

Zoom into a Surreal Collaboration

I've had a link to the original zoomquilt on my blogroll for as long as I've had a blogroll. The idea of a collaborative online art project has always intrugied me. Can a dozen plus different artists around the world paint the same canvas, and still have a cohesive work of art? The first zoomquilt was strange, an eclectic collection of surreal and morbid scenes, each blending practically seamlessly into the next. Now, there is a second Zoomquilt available: Zoomquilt 2: Click to visit and zoom in. (Flash is required.) Like the first, this Zoomquilt is a montage of bizarre images. The scenes…

For shame, NPR, for falling for false "balance" about vaccines!

This is going to be uncharacteristically short, for me that is. I sometimes listen to NPR as I drive home from work, and I happened to be doing just that yesterday evening when I heard a story about the new Institute of Medicine report on vaccines and the vaccine schedule. (Stay tuned for my post on that in a few hours.) The report was crisp and summarized the findings of the report quite well. Then, at around what I know to be the three minute mark (now that the audio is up) I heard something most dismaying. Yes, believe it or not, for the "other side" of an issue for which there is no other…

Animals Gone Wild Web Cam

Have you ever said to yourself, "Self, have you ever said to your self, 'What are African wild animals up to right now?'" Now you can satisfy your self's overly demanding curiosity with National Geographic's WildCam. Don't worry, unlike most streaming webcam feeds, this is one you won't have to delete from your browser's history. The WildCam program is designed to inspire more talk about conservation by plopping viewers down right in the middle of the wild. Like, the real wild. Like, the no-messin-around-or-animals-gone-eat-you-up wild. In an age where people are inundated with edited sound…

Vermes

What's 200 feet long, has 18 ways to reproduce, and breaks into pieces? The worm. Vermes. National Geographic is running a beautiful multimedia story about Hawaii's Unearthly Worms. This week couldn't ask for better recommended reading material, except... "where did all the words go?". Nat Geo has evolved into a little multimedia jukebox right before our eyes. I remember stacks of old National Geographic magazines filled with text. Not any more. They probably have those online. You can check out the photo gallery and three videos. They let you copy fotos, like this Hawaiian Chaetopterus sp…

Amy Bishop, the Stephen Glass of biology?

Ruchira Paul points me to a blogger who's been digging through Bishop's recent published works, and there's a lot of fishy stuff in there. You have to read it to believe it. Here's the conclusion: There is no question that Dr. Bishop is smart. But it also seems very evident that she suffers delusions of genuis. Far from establishing a record of accomplishment warranting the grant of tenure, since joining UAH Dr. Bishop took a long nap on her one true laurel -- her affiliation with Harvard . Evidence strongly suggests that Dr. Bishop used her husband, her family and by all appearances the…

Cancer and the Mind

The Cartesian wall separating the mind and body has been so thoroughly deconstructed that it's newsworthy when a bodily condition is not affected by our mental state. After all, recent studies have shown that everything from chronic back pain to many auto-immune diseases are all modulated by various psychological factors, such as stress levels. But cancer appears to be relatively immune to the mind. Those tumor cells don't care about what you think or feel. Here's the Times: The idea that emotional well-being can affect the course of disease finds no support in a new report on head and neck…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Old Flies Can Become Young Moms: Female flies can turn back the biological clock and extend their lifespan at the same time, University of Southern California biologists report. Their study, published online this month in Molecular Genetics and Genomics, casts doubt on the old notion of a tradeoff between reproduction and longevity. Flies May Reveal Evolutionary Step To Live Birth: A species of fruit fly from the Seychelles Islands often lays larvae instead of eggs, UC San Diego biologists have discovered. Clues to how animals switch from laying eggs to live birth may be found in the well-…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Study Of Bear Hair Will Reveal Genetic Diversity Of Yellowstone's Grizzlies: Locks of hair from more than 400 grizzly bears are stored at Montana State University, waiting to tell the tale of genetic diversity in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. My friend Tim Langer has done a very similar study here in North Carolina. Squirrels Use Old Snake Skins To Mask Their Scent From Predators: California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew up rattlesnake skin and smear it on their fur to mask their scent from predators, according to a new study by researchers at UC Davis. Anne-Marie has more. Pinot Noir…

Nymph of the Sea

tags: Cinerocaris magnifica, Nymphatelina gravida, ostracod, arthropoda, crustacean, fossil, zoology, biology Recently, geologists made a stunning discovery: hard boiled eggs that are over 425 million years old! The scientists, who are from the USA and the UK, discovered a female from a new ostracod species, Nymphatelina gravida -- a minute relative of the shrimp -- complete with a brood of approximately 20 eggs and 2 possible juveniles inside her body. Other parts of her soft anatomy were also preserved, including legs and eyes. "Ostracods are common, pin-head sized crustaceans known from…

Iron Age Multi-Burial Contains People From Different Centuries

Here's something new in burial archaeology! In 2008 a cremation burial of the Pre-Roman Iron Age was excavated at Skrea backe near Falkenberg in Halland province. It's unusually rich for its time, being housed in a continental iron-and-bronze cauldron and containing three knives, an awl and 5.3 litres of burnt bones from a lamb, a sheep, two pig's trotters, a bird and three people. I've never seen a knife-handle like that before, with an iron-rod frame, but I've never really worked with the period nor with Halland so that counts for little. A bizarre detail though is that a foot bone from…

She Blinded Me With Science!

I am a science teacher. I think I am actually a pretty good science teacher. So, it came to me as a surprise as how much I was baffled by the new SEED AskTheScienceBlogger question: What makes a good science teacher?... The answer, I guess, depends on the precise definitions of the words "makes", "good", "science" and "teacher". [read the rest under the fold] Is this the question about inherent talents shared by the good science teachers, or the methods one may use to turn a lousy or mediocre teacher into a good one? Being extroverted helps. Being a natural performer helps. Loving…

PLoS, it rhymes with floss: Interview with Liz Allen

Today I have to be very, very careful, because Liz Allen is the person who hired me for PLoS and is my immediate supervisor. This means, in PLoS terms, that we work great as a team, talk on the phone a couple of times per week and exchange approximately five gigazillion e-mails every day, enjoying every second of it as we are both true believers in our mission - getting everyone to LOVE Open Access and Public Library of Science. Liz is the Director of Marketing and Business Development at PLoS and the person in charge of communications, online and offline. Some of you had the good fortune…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Tom Linden

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 Tom Linden from the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present? My passion always has…

PNAS: Katherine Porter, Educational Content Editor

(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Katherine Porter, an editor of textbooks and other educational materials.) 1) What is your non-academic job? I work as a science content editor for Words & Numbers, an educational content developer. Our…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 27 brand-new articles, just uploaded on PLoS ONE. Here are a couple of titles that drew my immediate attention: Maternal Enrichment during Pregnancy Accelerates Retinal Development of the Fetus: Although much is known about the harmful effects parental stress has on offspring, little is understood about how enriching a mother's environment affects fetal development. In this paper, the authors experiment on developing rat embryos and find that an enriched environment speeds up the development of the nervous system. The results suggest that development of the visual system is…

What's the difference between HeLa and HeLa S3 cells? Part I: Launching the lab

When I first started my independent academic laboratory in 1992, it was in a brand new facility across the parking lot from a then 40-year-old building named in honor of the woman to the right. I took on a big teaching load from day one and while I had some cash left from the $50,000 start-up package, I didn't hire a technician immediately. So it fell upon me to do all the ordering of the basic supplies to get the operation rolling. No problem, right? I ordered much of my own stuff as a postdoc so it should be no problem to get everything I need to start the lab from scratch. One of the…

How nice

Finally, after months of silence, my old server at pharyngula.org lives again. It turns out that all my head-desking was for nought — the reason it was offline is that it had been intentionally blocked on suspicion of harboring illicit p2p activity. They just forgot to mention it. Anyway, all anybody will really care about there is that my daughter's blog, Lacrimae Rerum, is back online now.

The Adman Can Attack Afflictions!

The Times' Amanda Schaffer covers a retrospective of public health posters on display at the National Academies until December 19th, 2008. The catalog (pdf) is online. My favorite: It reads: "No home remedy or quack doctor ever cured syphilis or gonorrhea. See your doctor or local health officer." You could replace "syphilis or gonorrhea" with just about anything! Perhaps we should reissue this poster to deal with the modern quacks!

Can you stand another dose of KKMS?

Yeah, I know, I already had you listen to our drecky Christian radio station earlier this week, but today at 5pm Central, KKMS-AM will have the president of Minnesota Atheists, August Berkshire, online for an interview titled "Understanding and Responding to Atheist's Beliefs". It could be interesting, just for the experience of seeing how these clowns treat August (I already know that August will be polite to them.)

North Carolina Gubernatorial Debate tonight

Tune in tonight at 7pm for another live televised debate between Beverly Perdue and Pat McCrory. You can watch the debate in the Charlotte area on WMYT, in the Triangle on WRAL, and in the Triad on WFMY. In addition, you can listen live on WUNC or watch online at WRAL.com. The debate will also be replayed numerous times across the state. Check the schedule here.

What's Your Ideal Career?

This is relatively accurate, as online quizzes go. What are your results? Your Career Type: Investigative You are precise, scientific, and intellectual. Your talents lie in understanding and solving math and science problems. You would make an excellent: Architect - Biologist - Chemist Dentist - Electrical Technician - Mathematician Medical Technician - Meteorologist - Pharmacist Physician - Surveyor - Veterinarian The worst career options for your are enterprising careers, like lawyer or real estate agent. What's Your Ideal Career?

What Kind of Reader Are You?

tags: reading quiz, online quiz What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader   You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more. Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm   Literate Good Citizen   Book Snob   Fad Reader   Non-Reader   What Kind of Reader Are You?

How Much of You Does Your Blog Own?

62.5 % My weblog owns 62.5 % of me. Does your weblog own you? I am especially curious to know what my blog siblings scored on this quiz. I think my results are skewed since I am unhappily unemployed, which means that I have no meaningful life whatsoever, outside of my blog, that is. And depending upon whom you speak to about the relative value of blogs, even that assertion is suspect. tags: online quiz

AAAS 2010 meeting - quick update

AAAS meeting is in full swing. Follow hashtag #AAAS10 on Twitter. My session is tomorrow at 8:30am. It will be recorded, I think, so you'll be able to see it in a day or two after. Sorry for no (live)blogging but there is no online access in the convention center.... I will wait until I am back home and write a summary post after the event is over.

Bush's Power Base Finally Realizes Their Mistake

A friend emailed this image, prompting me to ask; when will the pastor of this congregation be arrested and detained indefinitely as a terrorist? A reader points out that this sign was created using an online church sign generator. Well, of course! That explains why the sign was not vandalized. Create your own church sign and feel free to share it with my readers! . . tags: Bush, politics, terrorism, freedom of speech

Significant SF

I see the Sciblings are reading most significant science fiction and fantasy I've read 46 of the 50 for what it is worth, never could finish "Little Big"... I see most people are missing Cordwainer Smith, his work is mostly out of print, but the New England Science Fiction Association has a nice new edition for sale online It is well worth reading, the short stories include some of the best written.

On BBC radio…

I was interviewed by a rather baffled radio announcer about the destruction of crackers (I know! Who would have thought such a silly event would be the focus of so much attention?) on BBC Radio Ulster. Reader DaleP tells me that it will be available online only until Saturday, so if you want to hear another flat-voiced nasal American talking to the lovely lilting voice of an Irishman, here's your chance.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The seventy-sixth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Afarensis. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is in less than two weeks, on 7 October. No need to be an anthro pro.

Culture and Tradition

Science Education Researcher Marie-Claire Shanahan, primatologist Eric Michael Johnson, and I joined Desiree Schell on on Skeptically Speaking to have a conversation very apropos this time of year in The West: The concept of Tradition. We said a number of very smart things which you can hear by clicking here and listening to the podcast. I should mention that all four of us will be at Science Online 2012 in January.

Four Stone Hearth Celebrates First Birthday

The twenty-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Remote Central. Tim is celebrating the carnival's first birthday, yay! Archaeology and anthropology to make you and take you for the ride of your life. The next open hosting slot is on 5 December. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro -- come as you are.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The twenty-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at The John Hawks Anthropology Weblog. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to scratch your itch and soothe your yearnings. The next open hosting slot is on 24 October. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. You don't have to be an anthropologist -- you don't even have to be anthropoid!

Vendel Period Manor at Slöinge

Check out Lars Lundqvist's web site about the Slöinge excavations in Halland, Sweden! It's been on-line for ages and I only found it just now. All in English. The above picture shows a tiny gold foil figure of an embracing couple -- possibly the divine ancestors touted by Vendel Period aristocrats. You find them in the post holes of the period's mead halls. If you wet-sieve, that is.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The seventieth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Afarensis. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 12 August. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro. And check out the latest Skeptics' Circle!

Anthro Blog Carnival

The sixty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Wanna Be An Anthropologist. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 29 July 12 August. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The fifty-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Archaeoporn. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 3 December. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro. And check out the latest Skeptics' Circle!

The HHMI Bulletin on Science Blogging and Sciblings

The HHMI Bulletin, the monthly magazine of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, runs a lengthy feature on science blogging in its November issue. I am quoted in the article with fellow Sciblings Tara Smith and Alex Palazzo. Readers of Scienceblogs are likely to find the article of strong interest along with the other features at the online version of the Bulletin. You can subscribe for free to the print edition here.

SDB 2011: Posters!

Those of you who've been to a poster session at a science meeting know that they're noisy and chaotic and entirely reliant on interaction to work…so I'm not even going to try and describe it. Instead, I strong-armed Eric Röttinger into describing his poster on video for me, and here it is. He's describing his work on Kahikai, an online database for collecting information about the development of marine invertebrates.

Dawkins at ASU

Richard Dawkins was talking here tonight. Unfortunately because of family commitments I wasn’t able to make it and ended up giving my ticket to Wilkins who has his thoughts already online. Jim Lippard (whom Wilkins and I are grabbing a beer with on Saturday) has a comment or two on the talk up. By either account, I didn't miss much beyond what I already read in The God Delusion. I suspect Saturday's discussion will be interesting!

Darwin online

I've been waiting for this for a while. The Darwin Online project is now live and ready for customers - your one-stop-shop for scans and transcriptions of not only Darwin's published works (and reviews thereof) but also his notebooks, lesser known papers, and other materials. Props to the good folks at Cambridge University, especially John van Whye, for making this valuable resource available to the history of science community.

Pottery Bwahahahaharn

Skeleton appetizer plates Pottery Barn I usually just toss my Pottery Barn catalogs, because I no longer have a house to decorate. But the Halloween edition just arrived and there's some good medical-specimen stuff in there. In addition to the skeleton appetizer plates above, which I totally covet, they have a skull tray, vampire teeth placeholders, and glossy black skull candles. But alas! This smashing skull cocktail shaker set is "no longer available" online. . .

Promenade 'Round the Cochlea

A great learning tool online is Promenade 'Round the Cochlea, which is in both French and English. I've just been swamped during the conference, but my presentation went great yesterday and I got lots of feedback to keep me busy with experiments forever and ever Ramen. Anyway, check out the app, as it does a great job of explaining some aspects of inner ear biology with pictures. Also, Happy Valentines!

ScienceBlogs Book Club meets October 1-10.

The ScienceBlogs Book Club is back! The online fans of dead-tree books will be springing back into action tomorrow to discuss Autism's False Prophets by Paul Offit. It's worth noting that Dr. Offit himself will be participating in the discussion, so you won't want to miss it. I'm planning in joining the discussion, but first I will try to post a brief review of the book here. Stay tuned.

The latest Seed

My latest column for Seed, Variant Genes-in-Waiting, is now online. If you subscribed, you would have already read it earlier this week. By the way, my mom subscribes, too, and she gives it a thumbs up. I'll have to find out what she thinks about my next column, which is all about beetle testes (and that's all you get to know about it—you'll just have to wait).