Misc
stoat | February 9, 2008I'm ploughing my way through the Mad Bish's Speech. As Paul notes, its turgid stuff. At least you have to give him credit for getting religion back in the headlines.
Round about the end of page 2 I read this implies in turn that the Muslim, even in a predominantly Muslim state, has something of a dual identity, as citizen and as believer within the community of the faithful and I find it odd, because you can say exactly the same about a Christian (or Jew or Hindu or...). There is always a conflict between religious and secular law. As far as I know the clearest artciulation of the idea that…
vhughes | February 8, 2008
Today Page 3.14 interviews the anonymous PhysioProf, who writes (along with the anonymous DrugMonkey) at our new blog DrugMonkey. (For more about the blog, see Abel's introductory post.)
PP's responses here are short and sweet—which is odd considering what's supposedly PP's "most marked characteristic."
So, PhysioProf, what do you do when you're not blogging?
Basic science faculty member at a private medical school.
(More below the fold...)
What is your blog called?
DrugMonkey. I also have a less-science, more politics blog at http://physioprof.wordpress.com.
What's up with that name?…
tqa | February 6, 2008
Tangled Bank #98 is now available at The Quintessence of Dust. Read and Enjoy.
apalazzo | February 5, 2008After arriving back home from the Keystone symposia, I jumped right into preparing for lab meeting where I'm presenting mostly new data. I haven't fully digested the conference, but I'll just leave you with a couple of remarks.
1) The miRNA field is a mess. It remains unclear whether all or any of the proposed mechanisms for miRNA mediated silencing are true.
2) RNA granules are everywhere. Anytime the cell does something funky with it's mRNA (be it NMD or miRNA induced silencing) it shoves the mRNA in question into a granule. But why? Could it be a general response to stress? Paul Anderson…
vhughes | February 4, 2008(This guest post was written by Abel Pharmboy)
Let's say you're a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow in the biomedical sciences. You're questioning your choice of career but know you want to stick with it and just need some objective advice from someone who isn't as invested (or uninterested) in your success.
Or maybe you are a NIH-funded researcher at the assistant or associate professor level who is looking to commiserate with fellow scientists in the blogosphere, only to find there are very few of your kind out there.
Well, as of 23 January 2008, ScienceBlogs has a solution—DrugMonkey…
stoat | February 3, 2008Here is a test: this a definiton of X. What is X?
Definition: The fulfillment of what exists potentialy insofar as it exists potentialy is X: namely, what is alterable qua alterable , alteration: of what can be increased and its opposite what can be decreased, increase and decrease: of what can come to be and can pass away, coming to he and passing away : of what can be carried along. Examples will elucidate this definition of X. When the buildable , in so far as it is just that, is fully real, it is being built, and this is building. Similarly, learning, doctoring, rolling, leaping,…
ksharpe | February 1, 2008If you've been following along with ScienceBlogs news, you might already know that we've teamed up with the German media company Hubert Burda Media to bring you ScienceBlogs' first sister site, ScienceBlogs.de.
From January 20-22, Hubert Burda Media held its annual, forward-thinking Digital, Life Design Conference (DLD) at the HVB Forum in Munich.
Seed CEO and Editor-in-Chief Adam Bly was there: after the jump, a few pictures from the proceedings.
From the "Reality Formula" panel, moderated by Adam Bly: Matthew Ritchie, Lisa Randall, Francesca von Habsburg, Hector Parra, Adam Bly.
At the…
jrice | January 28, 2008For your weekly viewing pleasure, here are the large-scale 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 David Prior
Physical Science. From Flickr, by darkpatator
Environment. From NSF, via pingnews.com
Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by…
apalazzo | January 26, 2008I often read these guys - the lives they describe are something that any struggling young scientist trapped in the web of academia and the NIH can relate to. Since their move to Sb, they've even managed to post on grant writing. Go check 'em out.
stoat | January 25, 2008 A colleague at work has parents who keep bees, and has instrumented their hives. See here for the top level, and the webcam. As well as being jolly fun, its also quite useful. Looking at the weights of the hives, especially through the year (bottom pic) you can see how they are doing over winter, when the flow has peaked, and so on. There is also a bee counter (in units of bees per 5 mins, averaged over the day, I think; its done by only allowing the bees in/out via a set of holes, each of which has a photo-detector above them). The activity is very different to what I would expect, in that…
apalazzo | January 25, 2008Wake up, make breakfast. Espresso, two slices of bread from a French batard from Clear Flour Bread with some mouhamara spread from Arax. In the newspaper I read about the primaries, the financial crisis and nothing too important. I waste an hour with email, signing up to some HHMI online system, reading teh intertubes and blogging. Time to work on the grant. I read the background and significance section ... did I compose that crap? After rewriting a bit I move down to preliminary data. Not so bad. I add some clarifications here and there ... man I have to finish the methods section and it's…
tlambert | January 22, 2008John Lott claims:
The final numbers will be out in March, but the initial information makes it look as if 2007 will be the coldest in a decade. So much for the claim that "the probability that 2007 would be the hottest year as 60 percent."
NASA has 2007 tied for second, but he's referring to the RSS version of lower troposphere temperatures, which have 2007, far from being the coldest in a decade, in fifth place:
Looks like someoen got caught by an error in the satellite data.
jrice | January 22, 2008As always, take a gander at the large-scale 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 jurvetson
Physical Science. From Flickr, by Tetine
Environment. From OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory, via pingnews.com
Humanities & Social Science.…
hrynyshyn | January 21, 2008We bloggers tend to assume, or at least hope, that blogging is intrisincally a Good Thing. But at this past weekend's North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, some even dared ask if we can save science. If that's not a tall order, I don't know what is.
The conference drew a couple of hundred veteran bloggers, students and scientists from across the continent and abroad -- including a healthy representation from our own ScienceBlogs.com gang -- to the Sigma Xi headquarters in Research Triangle Park for a day of debate over what blogging can and cannot do, its relationship to journalism,…
stoat | January 20, 2008There I was, happily listening to R4 about some nonsense about obese kids, when suddenly I'm listening to a "Dr Stoat". Good heavens. He does indeed seem to exist, it wasn't my ears, e.g. here. He's a GP, not a holder-of-a-doctorate, but its close enough.
Next step, anyone ever listened to a Dr Weasel? Dr Malaysian Honey Badger?
apalazzo | January 20, 2008
And if you enjoyed that clip, here's another video of a crow performing an incredible act of intelligence:
vhughes | January 20, 2008
Well, folks, PZ Myers surfaced again at the NC Science Blogging Conference. I'm sure he'll try to deny that he was drinking heavily in the hotel bar when the conference was over, but Brian, Zuska, Janet, and Dave can attest that he was there.
More photographic evidence below the fold.
(BTW, Bora's listed all of the blog posts written about the conference so far. Quite the fodder.)
(That's Peter gesticulating off to the right...)
vhughes | January 19, 2008Alright, here's the money shot of ScienceBloggers (TM!) from the NC Science Blogging Conference (except Shelley, darn! she must have been over by the popsicle table):
From left to right...
Back row: Brian, Abel, James, Jennifer, Chris, Sheril, Peter, Kevin, and Bora
Middle row: Dave, Zuska, Tara, and Martin
Front row: Karen, Janet, Evil Monkey, Ginny, and Josh