Misc
ksharpe | June 11, 2008What's New on ScienceBlogs.de, June 5-11
It's hot outside. You look like you could use four cool stories that made headlines this week at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de:
Europe-wide Nuclear Alarm
Last Wednesday evening we had to spend some hours knowing that a nuclear radiation alert had been issued throughout Europe. That long Wednesday evening we had to remain calm as we waited for some more detailed information. Christian of Frischer Wind and Beatrice of Neurons
reported all night until the cause of the alarm, a nuclear power plant in Krsko, Slovenia, was finally shut down. The…
ejohnson | June 11, 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 great things from the Life Science, Physical Science, Environment, Humanities, Education and Politics channels; below, please check out what we selected from the Medicine & Health channel:
Spreading awareness. From Flickr, by MastaBaba
Reader comment of the week:
In Socializing promotes survival of new nerve cells & may preserve…
ejohnson | June 10, 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 what the Life Science, Physical Science, Environment and Humanities channels turned up; below, please find our favorite pickings from the Education & Careers and Politics channels:
Education & Careers. From Flickr, by Don Fulano
Reader comment of the week:
On In defense of amateurs, Brian Switek of Laelaps discusses a discouraging…
ejohnson | June 9, 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 what the Life Science and Physical Science channels had to offer; below, please find a few gems from the Environment and Humanities channels:
Environment. Hurricane Kate: from NASA, via pingnews.com on Flickr
Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by shioshvili
Reader comments of the week:
In What is the Ecological Footprint of…
ejohnson | June 6, 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 kicked it off this week with Life Science; now, please enjoy the photo, comment, and a few particularly outstanding posts from the Physical Science channel below:
A naturally framed view of Arches National Park, Utah. From Flickr, by James Gordon
Reader comment of the week:
In Alien or puppet? You be the judge!, Orac of Respectful Insolence shares a photo…
ksharpe | June 4, 2008It's back! Here are the stories that were moving and shaking this week at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de:
From a Science Museum Basement
What do you know about Germany? We wear lederhosen and dirndls, we drink lots of beer...and we have the Deutsches Museum! At the moment huge efforts are going on to modernize it. Which makes it all the more interesting to take a look in the basement, where past exhibits and miscellaneous collections are kept. Jürgen Scriba, a photographer and science writer, invites us to share some of his views and impressions of the Deutsches Museum.
New…
ejohnson | June 4, 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. To kick it off, please enjoy the photo, comment, and a few particularly outstanding posts below:
Life Science. From Flickr, by angela7dreams
Reader comment of the week:
In Who needs sex? - Rotifers import genes from fungi, bacteria and plants, Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science reports a new finding that bdelloid rotifers, a peculiar freshwater animal…
vhughes | June 2, 2008Everybody loves those Mac commercials...you know, with Mac and PC anthropomorphized? (Greg Laden's got a few spoofs with Ms. Linux, too.)
Many of the ScienceBloggers swear by Macs and the Mac OX operating system. Others say that they have to use Windows for a lot of specialized lab software. I thought it'd be an interesting poll for a larger audience, as I'm sure many of you are working in labs much of the time.
So, which operating system do you use the most often?
Click Here for PollOnline Surveys | Online Polls | Email MarketingView MicroPoll
Want to know the results? We'll publish…
ejohnson | May 30, 2008The large versions of this week's channel photos are bigger and better than ever.
(Have a photo you'd like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag "sbhomepage" to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an "attribution only" or "share and share alike" Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)
First photo here, the rest below the fold.
Life Science. A male Mandarin duck enjoys a swim. From Flickr, by law_keven
Physical Science. The polished surface of Brazilian eudialyte. From Flickr, by kevinzim
Environment. From Flickr, by…
ejohnson | May 23, 2008The large versions of this week's channel photos are bigger and better than ever.
(Have a photo you'd like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag "sbhomepage" to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an "attribution only" or "share and share alike" Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)
First photo here, the rest below the fold.
Life Science. From Flickr, by frozenchipmunk
Physical Science. From Flickr, by tanakawho
Environment. From Flickr, by rappensuncle
Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by Ctd 2005…
ksharpe | May 21, 2008These are the stories that were moving and shaking this week at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de:
Biodiversity Issues
Thousands of experts on biodiversity from 191 countries are spending May 19-30 in Bonn, Germany, at the ninth meeting of the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Convention is a U.N. treaty that was signed into law at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It exists to preserve biodiversity and promote smart, sustainable use of the Earth's resources. Key issues on this meeeting's agenda are directly linked to the current food price crisis, the loss of…
ejohnson | May 20, 2008Every year at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), over a thousand high school students gather from all around the world to present their original research and to meet other young people with a passion for science. Hundreds of judges volunteer their time as well in order to choose the best of the best from the presentations. This year, ScienceBlogs' own ScienceWoman made the trip to Atlanta to be a judge, though it was hardly her first time attending; not only has she judged before, she actually took the top prize herself when she was in high school, winning a trip to…
apalazzo | May 19, 2008I heard Sachs being interviewed in the latest Nature Podcast.
Oliver Morton: I think one of the striking things, Jeff that you say very early on in [your new book, 'Commonwealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet'] is that the great crisis point is that we have a unified global economy and a divided global society and well as the big question is how can we use the first of those things to fix the second?
Jeffrey Sachs: I think the key is better understanding of the unique situation we find ourselves in. The world is now so crowded. The extent of resource use is so remarkable and unprecedented…
apalazzo | May 19, 2008This weekend I was back up in Montreal for my brother's wedding. It was actually held in St Antoine sur-le-Richelieu, a little picturesque town east of the city. This hamlet was also the site of a famous battle between the Brits and the local heroes, Les Patriotes.
Inspired by the American Revolution, a band of local rebels founded a new political movement who fought for greater freedom for the mostly French lower classes that were effectively ruled by a British elite, also known as Le Chateau Clique. In 1834 the party (first call Le Parti Canadien, then renamed Le Parti Patriote) won 77 out…
stoat | May 16, 2008Cycling back from town yesterday, I saw: in a chestnut tree of moderate height in the middle of an open field miles from the river, a heron. And three crows flying at it, "dive bombing" it is tempting to say although their flight was mostly level. They were trying to drive it away, I suppose, and the heron kept turning to face them, but as far as I could see they never touched it. After perhaps 5 minutes they gave up. And a minute later the heron flew off.
ejohnson | May 16, 2008Because we know you've been waiting for them, here are the large versions of this week's channel photos.
(Have a photo you'd like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag "sbhomepage" to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an "attribution only" or "share and share alike" Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)
First photo here, the rest below the fold.
Life Science. From Flickr, by badjonni
Physical Science. Quartz crystals trapped in a glittering geode. From Flickr, by seeks2dream
Environment. From Flickr, by Claudia…
stoat | May 15, 2008I love the language and thought in Leviathan:
Feare of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, RELIGION; not allowed, SUPERSTITION. And when the power imagined is truly such as we imagine, TRUE RELIGION.
Concision achieved by cogitation; so different to the ill-thought out ramblings on blogs.
ksharpe | May 14, 2008Germany had bank holidays this week, but the bloggers at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de, still had time to write about these stories:
Germany: How Green?
Germany is often seen as an environmental pioneer. Tell a German about the American trend of going shopping with a re-usable bag instead of getting plastic at the store, for example, and they might sneer: Germany launched a huge "Jute statt Plastik" ("jute instead of plastic") campaign 30 years ago.
So the bloggers at ScienceBlogs.de are puzzling over an an international comparison of environmental awareness that places Germany…