Misc
apalazzo | October 17, 2007... from my long extended vacation. And it's been over 3 weeks since I last posted anything original. (Hope you didn't mind all those reposts). So, what has happened since then?
The Nobels came out, and although I hadn't predicted any winners, the author of a certain comment did call the Medicine winners (3 out of 3!) Kudos to you kobeboy.
In other news, my manuscript got accepted at PLoS Biology. As soon as I can figure out what is happening with their server I'll sending them the final figures.
And of course I have tons of pictures and stories from Europe ... including many sciency things…
tqa | October 16, 2007
Our Coach Pitch baseball team just played the first game of the season. We had a very good game; the other team had a slightly better game. Everyone had fun, though, which is the key. A few quick thoughts on baseball and the 5-8 year-old group:
1: Before our next game, I'm going to make a recording of myself yelling "Play your own position!"
2: I'm going to make a recording of "Throw the ball to the pitcher."
3: At practice tomorrow night, we're going to spend most of the time working on the infield routine. The emphasis is going to be on throwing the ball after you catch it, with a…
ksharpe | October 15, 2007Have a look at the left-hand column of the ScienceBlogs homepage. You may notice that the list of channels there has changed. You may also notice that the home pages for the individual channels have been redesigned, with more color and new features. (Check out the new Life Science homepage, here.) Over the coming days we'll be adding even more features, including a science news feed on each channel homepage.
Why the changes? We re-jiggered the channels in response to feedback from our bloggers and readers. We think the new channels are more user-friendly and intutive, in name and content.…
ksharpe | October 11, 2007This is just what it looks like: an open thread for you to discuss the 2007 Nobels. Say anything, or take one of these as a starting place.
A Good Year for Europe
A commenter at Terra Sigillata said:
This year's Nobels (so far) have a distinctly European flavour.
I don't think any of the winners were born in the US, though two of the three Medicine winners are US citizens.
Two born in Germany, two in Britain, one in France, one in Italy.
A second commenter added:
Am I the only person who thinks that the prizes are getting rather less ink/pixels than they would if an American won?
Applied…
vhughes | October 10, 2007Studies have shown that kids whose parents are directly involved in their homework and classroom activities do better in school.
But for many parents, it's been a long time since they thought about basic science. One DonorsChoose project, created by a fifth grade teacher in rural North Carolina, aims to get parents involved in their kids' science projects. As the teacher proposes:
We want a family science night in which the parents are directly involved in being scientists, predicting, hypothesizing, experimentation, and finding results - all the time jotting their work in a scientific…
ksharpe | October 9, 2007Other ScienceBloggers have beaten 3.14 to the punch this time, but if you haven't already, stop by and give our newest blogger, Brian Switek of Laelaps, a gander!
stoat | October 9, 2007Via mt via the newly re-returned QS, I find this wonderful video. Having been a small child obsessed by building plastic models of tanks, I always found them rather beautiful, but this combination of their hulking threat and human fragility is iconic.
Previously I've only seen stills, and in some ways the video is less beautiful, but it makes the man even more courageous.
I haven't listened to the sound track so don't vouch for whatever the talking heads are saying. The political message at the end is a bit offkey too.
vhughes | October 3, 2007
This time around, we're interviewing new blogger Coby Beck of A Few Things Ill Considered.
What's your name?
Coby Beck
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I am a software engineer specializing in artificial intelligence applications, so that is my bread and butter activity. To avoid being a total geek who works and blogs and communicates on the computer all day, I am a regular hiking enthusiast, visiting trails and mountain tops in and around British Columbia's lower mainland. I also spend time every day walking my two dogs, Rhapsody the Chihuahua and Einstein the French Bulldog.
What…
vhughes | October 1, 20079.24.07 to 9.30.07
Announcements
Welcome New Sciblings
Welcome anonymous ScienceWoman, a first-year assistant professor in "-ology." Her blog's title, On Being a Scientist and a Woman, is sufficiently self-explanatory.
And second, welcome A Few Things Ill Considered, the climate blog of Coby Beck. Coby also writes at Grist.org's blog, The Gristmill, and is the author of the famed document "How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic."
Homepage Buzzes
9/25: Ahmadinejad on Science
On Monday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a packed audience at Columbia University. The president,…
tqa | September 29, 2007
Those tricky Culture Warriors - they've gone and launched the latest assault in the War on Christmas early this year, denying the Evil Secularist Conspiracy the chance to properly prepare for battle. They didn't wait until Thanksgiving this year, or even until Halloween. They're in the stores and fighting now:
ksharpe | September 25, 2007Put your hands together and give a warm (ahem) welcome to A Few Things Ill Considered, the climate blog of Coby Beck. Before coming to ScienceBlogs, Coby had been blogging for almost two years here; he also writes as Grist.org's blog, The Gristmill, and is the author of the famed document "How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic." He also blogs weekly digests of global warming news from around the world.
We're excited to have him here. Don't hesistate to stop by, leave a comment, update your blogrolls, and generally welcome Coby to the neighborhood!
vhughes | September 24, 2007So lately everybody's been blogging about the supposed dearth of prominent female science bloggers.
In light of this, we at the ScienceBlogs editorial corner are oh-so-pleased to announce our newest scibling, ScienceWoman, a first-year assistant professor in "-ology." Her blog's title, On Being a Scientist and a Woman, is sufficiently self-explanatory.
Here's what she said on her old blog platform about the move to Sb:
I've been blogging here for almost two and a half years, and over that time I've probably had at least a dozen readers thank me for writing this blog, for talking about the…
apalazzo | September 23, 2007Jenni and I spent the last 3 days in the big city, meeting friends, celebrating weddings and preparing to leave for the mother country.
We stayed with our good friend Jan who lives in Morning Side Heights near the Columbia main campus. Right outside his apartment the Cohen brothers were filming their latest flick "Read an Burn" (?) - all we can say is that Grant's Tomb was transformed into the Department of the Interior.
I wanted to tell you something about this incredible result about cells and left/right asymmetry (yes, I know that sounds strange but it's incredible), but we are leaving…
apalazzo | September 21, 2007I'm off to NYC and then Italy for a whopping 3 weeks. I'll be visiting my mother's hometown, my father's father's hometown and other sites along the Apennines. I may post little items while I'm gone, but until I'm back some old entries will be appearing on The Daily Transcript.
Ciao.
stoat | September 19, 2007Stein already took the better title. I only mention this because we had that Mike Baillie at BAS a week ago, talking about his theory that comets caused a couple of notable events - the black death amongst them - and not only that, but they caused a "corruption of the air"; by which he meant not just clouds of steam but, in some way, toxic vapour. And then along comes the Peruvian meteorite causing a mystery illness. It all fits I tell you...
[Update: I've read a bit more into his book and its hard going. Meanwhile, colleagues at work were not impressed. Its getting less plausible as time…
stoat | September 13, 2007I happened to be visiting ESA's page, and found its image of the week, which is Rotterdam. So I thought I'd look at googles version and - its much better. And of course you can scroll in to far better detail.
And conveniently embed it here, so lets have a play:
View Larger Map
[Update: several people have complained that this post is unfair, and/or silly, because it compares the incomparable: while google looks pretty, there are lots of exciting things you can do with ESA imagery. That misses my point, which was: once upon a time, not very long ago, an ESA image like this really would have…
stoat | September 12, 2007Ive just finsihed a nice puzzle game. It has 30 levels; if you get to the end all you get is "you won" but its fun.
And another thing... sign o' the times: Miriams new bike comes with a CD
stoat | September 12, 2007On another topic... I did my bees last sunday. Only a little honey, and I left them that for the winter. Disappointing: it must have been a poor summer. It *was* a fairly rainy summer. Hopefully this isn't the first sign of colony collapse: presumably not, as there were plenty of them.
[Maybe I should say... mine may be disappointing but my friends ones are dead :-( -W]
apalazzo | September 5, 2007At the end of September I'll be taking off for Italy to visit the land of my origins. At some point I'll be in Paris, visiting a good friend of mine and I'll be giving a talk at the Universite Pierre & Marie Curie entitled: The Signal Sequence Coding Region: promoting nuclear export of mRNA, and ER targeting of translated protein. I believe that the seminar is scheduled for October 12th at noon. See you then.
hrynyshyn | September 4, 2007Read the Science Creative Quarterly's list of 15 statements that are as close to being true as we can get without invoking dogma. You won't learn much, but I might win an iPod, allowing my wife and me easy access to our music collection without having to figure out a way to keep all those CDs easily accessible, but still out of reach of our 10-month-old son.