Misc
ksharpe | June 30, 2008It's the second daily dispatch from the 58th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings by Beatrice Lugger, Managing Editor of ScienceBlogs.de.
Previous entry here.
International Dialogue
They come from all over the world to join this meeting and to communicate with each other. And what happens? They stare at their computers, read emails and Skype. But good luck—some of them are still used to the usual way of communication.
How Long Nobel Laureates Live
Lots of the young researchers are interested in this question (I've learned the youngest is only 21 years old). Ivar Giaever revealed one of the…
ejohnson | June 30, 2008In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Life Science. From Flickr, by angela7dreams
Physical Science. A "true color" mosaic of the Orion Nebula captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. From NASA/C.R. O'Dell, via pingnews.com on Flickr
Reader comments of the week:
On the Life Science channel, ERV describes how viruses have co-evolved with humans in Viruses know us better than we know ourselves. Certain viral molecules can mimic human proteins—called chemokines—that attract fresh…
ksharpe | June 29, 2008From June 29th through July 4th, 25 Nobel laureates and over 550 young scientists from all over the world are gathering in Lindau, Germany, at the 58th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. This year's meeting is dedicated to physics.
Beatrice Lugger, managing editor of ScienceBlogs.de, is in Lindau and will be sending her impressions of the meeting daily through July 4.
ScienceBlogs.de is also undertaking a German-language blog covering the meetings, here. Additionally, keep an eye out for short video interviews, in English, of Nobelists at Lindau on the ScienceBlogs homepage. Here's the first…
ejohnson | June 26, 2008In this post: the large version of the Medicine & Health, Brain & Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by Vox Efx
Brain & Behavior. Neurons in the brain. By Benedict Campbell at Wellcome Images, via LoreleiRanvig on Flickr
Technology. From Flickr, by jurvetson
Reader comments of the week:
In Energy Equivalence, Jim of Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge does the math to show that Americans have at least 3.713 kjoules of energy stored as excess fat. He also calculates the kjoules…
ejohnson | June 26, 2008In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Education & Careers. From Flickr, by arquera
Politics. From Flickr, by R80o (Mark Strozier)
Reader comments of the week:
In The Hippocratic Oath for Graduate Students? Really?, DrugMonkey shares a proposed oath published in the June 20 issue of Science which would require all incoming graduate science students to swear their commitment to ethical research. The oath met with mixed reactions from DrugMonkey's readers, some of whom like the…
ksharpe | June 25, 2008These are the stories that defined the past week at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de:
European Soccer Games
Not surprisingly, the 2008 European Football Championship is still topic number one in Europe. The ScienceBloggers are always on the lookout for new scientific studies about soccer. For instance, Frank Abel writes about finding that the temperature has a decisive influence on who will win a game. This is the result of an analysis of external factors such as wind, rain and temperatures. He writes, "the German national team needs to play around 73 Fahrenheit and weak winds for…
ejohnson | June 24, 2008In 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…
ejohnson | June 23, 2008In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week!
Life Science. Baby birds awaiting a meal. From Flickr, by SuperFantastic
Physical Science. Chemoluminescent luminol. From Flickr, by everyone's idle
Reader comments of the week:
On the Life Science channel, ERV introduces the pol gene, which codes for all retroviral enzymes, in Intro to ERVs: ENZYMES! The post is the final installment of ERV's crash course series in endogenous retroviruses.
Reader dreikin liked it so much he wrote:
I have a…
ejohnson | June 20, 2008
Alice Pawley is a woman in a man's world, but that's not going to be the case for long if she has anything to do with it. As an assistant professor of engineering education at Purdue University, she knows firsthand the barriers facing women in the hard sciences, so it was only natural for her to join ScienceWoman as a co-blogger on the (aptly titled) blog Sciencewomen. In her posts, Alice writes about the overlooked, but increasingly relevant intersection between engineering and womens' studies. In her Page 3.14 interview, as on her blog, she brings a refreshing blend of realism and humor to…
ejohnson | June 20, 2008In this post: the large version of the Technology channel photo, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week!
Edison mimeograph and electric pen. From the Edison National Historic Site, courtesy of the U.S. Department of the Interior
Reader comment of the week:
In Supercomputer breaks performancing record running model of the human visual system, the Neurophilosopher (of Neurophilosophy) introduces the new IBM supercomputer Roadrunner, which takes up 6,000 square feet of room at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The computer recently broke a performance record when it…
ksharpe | June 19, 2008Check out the top stories of the past week at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de:
First Meeting of German ScienceBloggers
Last Friday the German ScienceBloggers met in Munich in real life. Until the meeting, most of us only knew each other via blog, e-mail or phone. So we enjoyed this opportunity for a personal exchange and we collected lots of very good ideas.
The top statement of the day was: "My boss knows I am a blogger."
If you would like to see what we look like and what we experienced, Beatrice (of Neurons) has posted two articles with many pictures of ourselves and impressions…
ejohnson | June 19, 2008In this post: the large versions of the Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week!
This week's Medicine & Health photo was kindly submitted by one of our own bloggers, the Neurophilospher.
Medicine & Health. Surgical saws at the Wellcome Trust's Medicine Man Exhibit. From Flickr, by mcost
Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by DerrickT
Reader comments of the week:
On the Medicine & Health channel, revere takes on Big Pharma in Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline to its scientists: fuck off. The pharamaceutical…
stoat | June 18, 2008So, I was down the pub (the Castle) and after a few pints the conversation turned to religion, and the assertion that England (joint with some other country we couldn't name; I went for Iceland, Andy for Denmark) was the most godless in the world (in some unclear sense involving religious belief) and that the least godly city in England was Cambridge, joint with... Brighton I think.
Bit of a bland subject I know, but does anyone else have anywhere less godly to propose? Not, of course, in the sense of god-forsaken, we all know that is (picks random city that no-one likes).
Just to keep things…
ejohnson | June 18, 2008In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week!
Education & Careers. From Flickr, by foundphotoslj
Politics. Barack Obama supporters fill the Excel Center in St. Paul, Minnesota as he claims victory. From Flickr, by shiladsen
Reader comments of the week:
On the Education & Careers channel, ERV laments the lack of funding for research scientists in What ya wanna do when you grow up? As an aspiring P.I. she fears that many brilliant plans never come to fruition without the money to…
stoat | June 17, 2008Chesterton came 3rd in the X-Press head though I don't think thats very useful for seeding crews for the City bumps in July. 9:42 is a passable time, on the right side of 10 mins, though a long way short of City's 8:59. But the boat was full of subs (like me) so will hopefully go faster once the real crew is in place. Meanwhile, Chesterton 2 is chasing Tabs *8* on the first day, which should be fun.
vhughes | June 17, 2008ScienceBlogs is, without question, the largest online conversation about science. We have 71 blogs, almost 70,000 posts and 850,000 comments. How does one reader keep up?!
One of the easiest ways is to subscribe to the ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap, a fun email newsletter that summarizes the previous week's happenings.
Find out more ways to read—with and without RSS feeds—below the fold.
If RSS feeds aren't your thing, then I'd suggest starting on the ScienceBlogs homepage and checking out: the Buzz (the topic that's featured at the very top of the page); and a bit further down the page, the "…
ejohnson | June 17, 2008In 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. From Flickr, by Jam Adams
Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by jcheng
Reader comments of the week:
On the Environment channel, Benjamin Cohen of The World's Fair links to an article in The Gospel of Consumption which describes how our current culture of consumerism was driven by manufacturing giants in the early 20th century. According to the article's authors, such an excessive emphasis on production is…
ejohnson | June 16, 2008In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week!
Life Science. From Flickr, by eye of einstein
Physical Science. From Flickr, by iboy_daniel
Reader comments of the week:
In Friday Sprog Blogging: extinction, Janet of Adventures in Ethics and Science relates a conversation between her elder and younger sprogs (ahem, children), in which it is decided that ants should be allowed to remain alive as a species only where anteaters are around to eat them—which does not include the Stemwedel house.…
ejohnson | June 13, 2008
The ScienceBlogs Book Club launched earlier this month with Carl Zimmer's new book, Microcosm. Zimmer is a widely prolific science writer whose articles appear regularly in the New York Times, National Geographic and other publications; he also maintains a blog here on ScienceBlogs, The Loom, on which he muses about recent discoveries in life science. Microcosm is his sixth book. It is an intimate portrait of the E. coli bacteria, a familiar and yet widely misunderstood organism with limitless potential to reveal the secrets of life.
For it's inauguration, the ScienceBlogs Book Club…
ejohnson | June 13, 2008Each week we post a new picture and a choice comment from each of our nine channels here at ScienceBlogs on our channel homepages. Now, we're bringing you the best of the week in daily postings that will highlight individual channels. We've already seen Life Science, Physical Science, Environment, Humanities, Education and Politics and Medicine & Health; below, please find our selections from the Brain & Behavior and Technology channels:
From Flickr, by ul_Marga
From Flickr, by chaosinjune
Reader comments of the week:
On Office noise: Are your homicidal thoughts about your…