milhayser | December 11, 2009Benjamin Cohen of The World's Fair tells us he's "moving on to Blogger Emeritus status."
I am ending my tenure here at The World's Fair, the blog Dave and I started back in June 2006. I'll finish up and sign off for good by the end of the month. Between now and then, I'll be posting my top ten favorites from these past three years.
David Ng will continue blogging on The World's Fair, who Cohen suggests will announce a new co-author for the blog. So read the best of Cohen's posts before he goes, say goodbye, and stay tuned.
milhayser | December 10, 2009
Last month, lawmakers in Ontario, Canada introduced legislation that would award prescription rights to graduates of two naturopathic schools. Should students subject to different educational standards be granted the same powers of prescription? On Terra Sigillata, Abel Pharmboy calls it inconsistent for the naturopathic community to "want the right to prescribe regulated medicines while simultaneously decrying medicine and science-based investigative methods," adding that "homeopathy is diametrically opposed to dose-response pharmacology." You can learn more about homeopathy here. Then…
milhayser | December 9, 2009
Last month the US government released new guidelines for breast cancer screening mammography, a revision which Orac writes has "shaken my specialty to the core." For most women, the guidelines now recommend beginning biennial screenings at age fifty, instead of annual screenings at age forty. Around the same time, a study came out which "suggested that low dose radiation from mammography may put young women with breast cancer-predisposing BRCA mutations at a higher risk for breast cancer." Get some perspective on Respectful Insolence before breaking out the snake oil. Then visit Andrew…
milhayser | December 9, 2009After nearly five years online and two years with us here at ScienceBlogs, ScienceWoman is stepping away from the fray to focus on "Peace and Joy" for 2010.
This will be my last post as SciWo or ScienceWoman. I've come to peace with the realization that blogging as SciWo is no longer a source of joy for me. I treasure the true friendships I share with many of you, but I know that we can continue to revel in and grow those friendships even without this blog.
Alice Pawley is also hanging up her blogging shoes, so Sciencewomen will go dark. Stop by and say goodbye, wish well and carry on.
milhayser | December 8, 2009
A potentially historic climate change conference began in Copenhagen Monday and will run for the next two weeks as leaders and diplomats from around the world attempt to reach an agreement about global warming. Meanwhile, the stolen emails of Climategate are still making some headlines, but why? Dismissing cries of conspiracy, ScienceBloggers have moved on to consider the broader implications of the event. Josh Rosenau on Thoughts from Kansas decries the invasion of privacy, writing "I'm sure the server contained private notes to the researchers' loved ones and family and a host of other…
milhayser | December 7, 2009Two of our resident bloggers show their faces on Bloggingheads.tv, in an in-depth video interview on the subjects of science, evolution, and group selection. If the entire 66-minute video is too long for you, there are links to shorter segments with specific topics. You can see more of David Sloan Wilson on Evolution for Everyone, and Razib Khan on Gene Expression.
milhayser | December 7, 2009
A raging ERV says we could see this coming in April, when the wife of 400-million-dollar contributor T. Boone Pickens wanted to bar the veterinary school at Oklahoma State University from receiving funds. Ms. Pickens cited the cruel treatment of dogs—doomed shelter animals who were apparently appeased with cheeseburgers before being operated on and euthanized. Now, a proposed "ethics panel approved, NIH funded" anthrax vaccine project using baboons as test subjects has been canceled by the school president. "WTF?" wonders ERV. DrugMonkey also gets up in arms, writing that the NIH is "the…
milhayser | December 4, 2009
On Wednesday, the NIH approved thirteen new embryonic stem cell lines for federally-funded research, with ninety-six additional lines still under review. These new approvals come as a direct result of the "Obama administration's new rules on federal funding for stem cell research, which reversed the Bush policy of prohibiting such funding in most cases." Read more about the new rules and a dismissed lawsuit against them on Dispatches From the Culture Wars by Ed Brayton. On Framing Science, Matthew C. Nisbet suggests that public attitudes toward stem cells are changing, and reminds us that…
milhayser | December 3, 2009
When it comes to human nature, everyone's an expert—so let's argue about it, shall we? On Cognitive Daily, Dave Munger reviews an investigation into the truly fairer sex which suggests that "men are more tolerant of their friends' failings than women." Not convinced? Then counter your intuition on The Frontal Cortex, where Jonah Lehrer writes "nothing destroys a luxury brand like a sale." Consider the possibility of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps on Laelaps, where Brain Switek discusses Louis Leakey's "fuzzy" postulation that "the invention of stone tools allowed humans to domesticate…
milhayser | December 2, 2009
In the nearly thirty years since AIDS was first diagnosed, the disease has killed tens of millions of people, and more than 33 million are currently infected with HIV worldwide. Although recent UN reports show the number of new infections is falling, AIDS remains a major global issue. So take some time today for a retroviral education on ERV. New vaccine research suggests that inoculating cells with a gene that produces a protein found in HIV's envelope can "prime" the immune system to start recognizing the invader. Refuting bigots, ERV also says that "HIV/AIDS research does not only…
milhayser | December 1, 2009
Listen up, procrastinators—Coturnix reminds us on A Blog Around the Clock that we only have until the stroke of midnight to submit the best blog entries of the year to OpenLab 2009. He writes "we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics" as well as essays. You can see which posts have already been nominated, and order previous years' editions. So start scrounging the archives! And while you're at it, head over to Effect Measure to learn about the inner workings of viruses from Revere. You can compare photomicrographs of the swine flu virus with highly detailed, colorful…
milhayser | November 30, 2009
Last week, hackers pulled a data heist on the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, releasing thousands of stolen documents and emails that purportedly exposed a scientific conspiracy to fabricate evidence of global warming. Climate change skeptics dug into the data with forks and knives, choosing the choicest morsels as evidence of fraud. But ScienceBloggers are unimpressed by the stunt. On A Few Things Ill Considered, Coby Beck places tongue in cheek, rejoicing that the Greenland ice sheet is now refreezing. On Deltoid, Tim Lambert reports that NASA is being sued by the…
milhayser | November 25, 2009
Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published 150 years ago today, and it continues to inform, illuminate, and stir up controversy. Of course, some tortoises live longer than that, but Darwin's lasting legacy seems assured. On Gene Expression, Razib Khan tackles a study on the Fore, a cannibalistic people who ate their dead up until 1960. This diet left an imprint on their genes: a deadly prion-caused illness called Kuru led to selection against homozygosity in key alleles. Elsewhere, ERV explores invasive species and their fitness versus native species when both are infected with the…
milhayser | November 24, 2009
Faster computers come out all the time, but it's what we do with a CPU that determines its true usefulness. On Good Math, Bad Math, Mark Chu-Carroll introduces us to Google's new programming language, Go. Noting the minimalist design of the language, Chu-Carroll writes "if you want a C-like language with some basic object-oriented features and garbage collection, Go is about as simple as you could realistically hope to get." On the hardware side of things, Jonah Lehrer reports on The Frontal Cortex that IBM researchers have simulated the synaptic equivalent of a cat's brain, using 147,456…
milhayser | November 23, 2009
Good science takes time, but good science fiction hinges on impatience. Why wait for the invention of real technological marvels when you can imagine them yourself or see them on TV? On The Quantum Pontiff, Dave Bacon ponders the formative links between fantasy and reality, spurred by an Intel talk on the possibilities of "fictional prototyping." He writes, "the creative act of telling a story shares many similarities with the creative act of developing a new research idea or inventing a new technology." On Built on Facts, Matt Springer compares phasers with lasers, writing "it's a nice job…
milhayser | November 20, 2009
The pitched battle between evolutionary theory and Intelligent Design has become one of the signature conflicts of the decade. On Pharyngula, PZ Myers picks up the pieces after his debate with Jerry Bergman on whether ID should be taught in schools. Unambiguously he writes, "creationists are not the heralds of a coming paradigm shift; they are the rotting detritus of the old regime of unreason." Elsewhere, on Gene Expression, Razib Khan crunches some numbers which show that 10-20% of people in certain Muslim countries believe in evolution, versus 80% in certain European countries. The…
milhayser | November 19, 2009
Forget fashion; when it comes to expressing yourself, it's your genes that wear you! On Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed Yong discusses the explosive evolution of AEM genes in humans and elephants—two long-lived, social animals with "very, very large brains." Big brains need more juice to function, and AEM genes, which govern how mitochondria metabolize food energy, may be a key to evolving intelligence. On Gene Expression, Razib Khan explores the links between gene transmission and language transmission, writing that "linguistic affinity" could modulate gene flow, and vice versa. On Mike…
milhayser | November 18, 2009
We often hear that "you are what you eat," but the relationship between what goes in our bodies and what our bodies make of it is really quite complex. On Respectful Insolence, Orac laments that "diet does not have nearly as large an effect as we had hoped" on the prevention of cancer, and that by the time we reach adulthood, dietary interventions may be too late. Elsewhere, Joseph on Corpus Callosum examines a new study which suggests that drinking coffee lowers the risk of hepatitis C progression in afflicted individuals. Bucking the study's correlative conclusion, he says it's "not…
milhayser | November 17, 2009
On Friday, NASA scientists confirmed the discovery of water on the moon. Using spectral analysis to determine the composition of the plume resulting from last month's LCROSS rocket collision, they found more than 100 liters of water. Steinn Sigurðsson on Dynamics of Cats calls the presence of water on the moon "amazing," but cautions that at these concentrations, it's "dry by Earth standards." Razib Khan on Gene Expression considers the implications of water on the moon: "Since humans are mostly water by weight, this is very important when assessing the practical difficulties of…
milhayser | November 15, 2009
In Ethan Siegel's ongoing treatment of dark energy on Starts With A Bang!, he considers a number of alternative explanations for the dimming of redshifted supernovae. Could photon-axion oscillations be to blame, or does a "grey dust" pervade our universe? In another post, Siegel appreciates that our galaxy smells like raspberries and rum, and not, for example, Uranus. His diss to Andromedans: "I bet you stink compared to us!" For more things unseen, Greg Laden on Collective Imagination points us to Kameraflage, a technology that writes secret messages and draw pictures only visible to a…