amillikan | March 14, 2009
When will humans turn over the job of war to robot slaves? According to Peter W Singer, author of the new book Wired for War, it's happening already. In this week's Science Saturday, Peter and John Horgan discuss the role of robots in the success of the Iraq surge and whether America is starting to look like a bit like Skynet to the people of the Middle East. They also discuss reasons to fear the coming of cyborgs and whether robots might not someday bring about the end of war.
amillikan | March 13, 2009
Yesterday, Seed Media Group was proud to launch a new and improved SEEDMAGAZINE.COM. The site is loaded with rich content, advanced navigational tools and display features where design and functionality are flawlessly combined to guide you through all the glorious science you could want.
From the editors of SEEDMAGAZINE.COM:
Science is changing our world. It is behind the transformations--social, economic, artistic, intellectual, and political--that are defining the 21st century. Through this lens, and with the newest tools of media and journalism, we aim to tell the fundamental story of our…
ksharpe | March 12, 2009Originally posted by Brian Switek
On March 10, 2009, at 11:14 AM
In 1857 Richard Owen proposed that our species, Homo sapiens, belonged to a distinct subclass separate from all other primates. He called this new group the Archencephala and based it as much upon human powers of reason as minute neuroanatomical differences between apes and humans. What's more, our "extraordinarily developed brain[s]" not only placed us above all other creatures but gave us new moral responsibilities, and in closing Owen stated;
Thus [Man] fulfils his destiny as the master of this earth, and of the lower…
ksharpe | March 11, 2009Originally posted by Brian Switek
On March 8, 2009 6:32 PM
On November 8, 1882 the paleontologist O.C. Marsh, popular minister Henry Beecher, industrialist Andrew Carnegie, and other influential men of the late 19th century converged on Delmonico's Restaurant in New York. They were there to toast Herbert Spencer, the social scientist who had gone beyond Charles Darwin's studies of natural transmutation to outline the evolution of society itself. All present, in one way or another, had been influenced by Spencer's work, and they ate and pontificated long into the night despite the fact that…
amillikan | March 10, 2009Pictures from the Building_Space_With_Words event:
The maze.
The venue.
The interface.
The Seed stand.
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Photos by Sheila Prakash.
amillikan | March 10, 2009Among the non-coding DNA that composes a large percentage of the genomes of humans and other eukaryotic organisms, pseudogenes are genes that were once active but were rendered defunct by mutations at some point in evolutionary history. But some pseudogenes may regain their functionality. A study published in PLoS Genetics last week revealed that a gene that codes for a member of the immunity-related GTPase protein family, IRGM, was subject to a frameshift mutation in an ancestor of primates 40 million years ago, due to insertion of a small fragment of DNA. The non-functional pseudogene…
amillikan | March 10, 2009President Obama signed an executive order today to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research signed into place by President Bush in 2001. The ban limited funding to fewer than two dozen existing lines of embryonic stem cells, severely crippling scientists who use embryonic stem cells to research diseases like diabetes, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's, among others—now, over a hundred lines developed since then will be eligible for funding. Said ScienceBlogger James Hrynyshyn of The Island of Doubt, "the news that...science will no longer be held hostage to fundamentalist…
ksharpe | March 10, 2009Originally posted by Jessica Palmer
On March 7, 2009, at 11:00 PM
Brevity can be a creative coup. Consider Claire Evans' "Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds", which shoehorns our entire history into one minute: as the clock slowly ticks away, it makes me fear for a moment - implausible as it may seem - that it might run out before we evolve. Then there's the genius of Hamlet as Facebook updates (or Pride and Prejudice, though I don't find it nearly as good as Hamlet.) Maybe it's a symptom of our increasingly short attention spans, the acceleration of the news cycle, or simply the accumulation…
amillikan | March 9, 2009
Last Wednesday I took a voyage into the blogosphere. Upon entering this physical manifestation of the place I spend most of my time, a mix of words and light swirled around me, illuminating my field of vision from every angle as thoughts, desires and observations rushed forward from the trenches of hyperspace and darted out of view again. Through my fingertips, my thoughts were instantaneously transfered to the space around me for everyone in the room to see. No, I wasn't on drugs and it wasn't a dream—I was at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University art exhibit, "…
amillikan | March 9, 2009In an opinion piece published in the Huffington Post Wednesday, a woman dying of leukemia vehemently spoke out against animal testing in medicine, positing that scientists might have found a cure for her condition by now if "they weren't sidetracked by misleading animal tests." While acknowledging the unfortunate nature of the woman's situation, ScienceBloggers are criticizing her stance that animal trials are not beneficial or are somehow to blame for the woman's sickness, asserting the necessity of using animal models for drug research and reinforcing that researchers must proceed in ways…
ksharpe | March 9, 2009Originally posted by John Lynch
On March 6, 2009, at 1:17 PM
This being the bicentenary of Darwin's birth - and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterwork - many folks seem to have the goal of reading Origin for the first time. Generally speaking the first edition of 1859 (or the second of 1860) is taken as the best edition to begin with - in later editions Darwin muddies his ideas in response to critics and it becomes increasingly difficult to clearly delineate what "Darwinism" entails.
David Quammen has produced a very nice edition of Origin that relies on the first…
amillikan | March 7, 2009
In this week's episode of Science Saturday, John Horgan and George Johnson discuss a recent debate about the identity of humanity's closest living relatives, an anthropological case study in the link between technology and violence, and the dizzying complexity of the mathematics of the financial crisis. And just in case you'd forgotten that John and George aren't fanatics about the Internet Age, they made sure to squeeze in a bit of curmudgeonly ranting against Twitter.
ksharpe | March 7, 2009Originally posted by Mike Dunford
On March 6, 2009, at 8:24 AM
A few weeks ago, I read, enjoyed, and reviewed Phil Plait's Death From the Skies. After I caught my daughter looking at the book a couple of times, I managed to bribe convince her to write a review of the book. The result is the following review. I fixed the formatting a little bit, but I had absolutely no role in the development of the text.
Death From the Skies
When I got death from the skies I thought that it would be about people getting an unpleasant visit from flaming meteors, I was wrong. It was about the ways the world…
amillikan | March 6, 2009The third edition of The Open Laboratory 2008, a compilation of the best science-related blog posts of last year, is now available for purchase in the Lulu Marketplace. The book was started by ScienceBlogger Bora Zivkovic in 2006 as a way to lend credibility to the new media form of blogging and package it in a way that is accessible both online and off. "This book was produced communally with people submitting over 800 posts, other bloggers reading and judging them, bloggers editing them, bloggers designing the cover and typeset, and bloggers publishing it - Yes We Can!" Bora said in an…
amillikan | March 6, 2009The confirmation of two of President Obama's top science advisers was delayed yesterday as several senators placed anonymous holds on what was expected to be a quick vote. John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco, Obama's nominees to head the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, respectively, were first blocked by a hold from Senator Robert Menendez (D–N.J.), for reasons unrelated to the nominees themselves. But new reports emerged later that Menendez was not the only senator to place a hold. John D. Rockefeller IV (D–W.Va.),…
amillikan | March 6, 2009After complaining during a U.S. Senate hearing that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine he spearheaded wasn't yielding results that validated such practices, Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA) is facing the backlash of his statements from ScienceBloggers. Many of the alternative medicine practices Harkin advocates have already been subject to the thorough scrutiny of the NIH and other scientific institutions, which failed to find convincing evidence that these practices are beneficial compared with placebos and with established medical practices. Many have questioned whether…
amillikan | March 5, 2009
Sunday March 1, Seed employees and friends of Seed ventured up to the NY City College campus to help judge the annual New York City Science Fair. The event was sponsored by Seed, as science fairs are an important part of the learning and scientific development process for young minds. Additionally, Seed's founder and CEO Adam Bly won the "Best in Category" Grand Prize in biochemistry at the 1998 Intel International Science Fair, so the enthusiasm for science fairs runs deep throughout the company.
To start off the day, five of science's most intriguing figures took part in a panel on…
ksharpe | March 5, 2009Originally posted by Brian Switek
On March 1, 2009, at 7:42 PM
I don't quite know what to make of Richard Fortey's latest book Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret life of the Natural History Museum. When I opened my copy to the first chapter I was expecting something like Douglas Preston's written tour of the American Museum of Natural History, Dinosaurs in the Attic, but Fortey's book turned out to be something entirely different.
I enjoyed Preston's book because it used a motley collection of artifacts, both on display and behind closed doors, to tell stories about the AMNH and the people who…
ksharpe | March 4, 2009Originally posted by Grrlscientist
On February 27, 2009, at 12:53 PM
I love art, birds and travel, and because Africa has such a huge variety of exotic wildlife that I've only ever seen in zoos and aviaries, it is high on my list of places to visit. Recently, David G. Derrick, Jr., the author of a new book that combines art and African wildlife into an unusual diary format, asked if I would like to read and review his new book, African Diaries: Sketches & Observations (self-published, 2008).
This slim paperback is an unusual travel diary because it is comprised of more than 140 of hand-…
amillikan | March 3, 2009Day in and day out, scientists devote their time to exploring the unknowns of the physical world. Here on ScienceBlogs, our many contributors do the same so that they may provide enlightenment about the questions that plague us. Questions such as: Why does black ice form? What's up with that serotonin stuff anyway? And the one question you probably find yourself wondering the most frequently throughout your daily life—why in the world do beetles have such monstrous phalluses? Today, ScienceBlogs salutes the inquisitive nature of scientists, for without them, we would be liable to just make…