Science
laelaps | October 15, 2007Welcome to the 10th edition of Oekologie, the best of what the blogosphere has to offer when it comes to the eponymous area of natural science. This edition is particularly special, however, in that it falls on Blog Action Day, so be sure to visit the event's main page to peruse the best of today's environmentally-focused posts.
Agriculture
Diversity is not only important to natural ecosystems, but it can be invaluable to agriculture as well. Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog fills us in on why it's better to encourage variety when you're growing rice.
If you're interested in organic growing…
tqa | October 15, 2007
Since today is Blog Action Day, it seems like a good day for a post I've been meaning to write for a while now - what my family is doing to reduce our impact on the environment, and what else we can (and should) add to the mix.
I should probably admit right off the bat that I'm not doing enough to minimize my effect on the environment. I tend to suffer from inertia sometimes, and if something hasn't been made easy for me to do, I tend to not do it. That might not make me all that different from many (most) Americans, but it's still not good. While we were living in Honolulu, we didn't do…
drorzel | October 15, 2007In the spirit of the newly clarified regulations governing the Academic Competitiveness Grant and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grant Programs administered by the Department of Education, I am pleased to announce the Uncertain Principles Physics Scholarship Program. Under this program, I pledge to personally pay the full tuition for any student who is:
From a low-income family, or a historically disadvantaged group,
Enrolled as a full-time student at an accredited four-year college or university, and
Taking courses toward a degree in physics or related…
oracknows | October 14, 2007Yes indeed, if you ever want to cite any of the pearls of brilliance laid down on a regular basis here, you can. Heck, you can even cite comments on blogs!
So now you know.
Here's a sample citation.
tqa | October 14, 2007
Late last week, the IRS released figures showing that the income gap in the United States is larger now than at any time since they began tracking that data in 1986, and may be worse now than at any time since the 1920s. The figures, which are based on 2005 tax returns, reveal that the richest 1% of Americans accounted for 21.2% of income, up from about 20.8% in 2000. The bottom 50% of families earned 12.8%, which is a drop from the 13% that they took home in 2000.
When the Wall Street Journal asked President Bush about the widening income gap, he said:
First of all, our society has had…
oracknows | October 12, 2007Although his taste in music is questionable at best, Snowball the Cockatoo definitely knows how to get down and get funky.
I can't say I've ever seen anything like this before. Now maybe if we introduced Snowball to some old Parliament-Funkadelic. Tear the roof off the sucker, Snowball, and give up the funk!
catdynamics | October 12, 2007The NSF is doing a time audit (Nature 4 Oct p 512 - sub) to check that grant recipients are actually spending the promised time on their research.
Apparently they (and the NIH, and DoE, and DoD) just noticed that "top researchers" tend to have grants totalling to more than 100% time committment.
And, y'know, if they were actually working more than 40 hour weeks, than they'd be due overtime: triple overtime... (really, the time I worked 110 hour weeks one summer we got triple time after the first 80 hours - only double time on hours 40-79 though).
How to solve this...
Nah, better to "fine" the…
tqa | October 12, 2007
As you are undoubtedly aware, this year's Nobel Peace Prize is being split between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, in recognition of "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
Like almost everybody else here at Scienceblogs, I think this is absolutely fantastic. Gore has worked his butt off over the last few years. He's been tireless in his efforts to focus attention on climate change, and he's made a real difference. The…
grrlscientist | October 12, 2007tags: book review, science essays, technology, Present at the Future, Ira Flatow
Many months ago, I was signed up for the HarperCollins email list that briefly describes their books that are hot off the presses, prior to their public release. The publisher then holds a contest where they ask you to email them a little essay describing why you would be the best person to review a particular title in their list, then they choose the winners and mail the books. Even though HarperCollins published several scientific books this past year, including one that dealt with evolution, my essay was…
catdynamics | October 12, 2007Congratulations to the IPCC and Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize
So, Attenborough Award, Oscar, Emmy and Nobel in one year.
Not bad for a Harvard grad.
Wonder what he will do next?
PS: hey I got one right...
I suppose there is no hope now of the US joining the rest of the world in making Nobel prize winnings exempt from income tax...?
ok, I think Scalia has taken the SCOTUS supermacy over international rulings thing too far
and they leaked the ruling to the White House - can't trust anyone
drorzel | October 12, 2007There's been a bunch of talk about the apparent European dominance in Nobel Prizes this year, and whether it means that American science is in decline, blah, blah, blah. I'm a little surprised at this-- nobody took last year's abundance of American laureates as a sign of the collapse of European science, after all-- but then, there seem to be large numbers of people who will seize on anything at all to be evidence of the end of American dominance in whatever area.
In some ways, the proper reaction to the whole thing is probably the reaction of a colleague of mine in Economics. I asked him who…
oracknows | October 12, 2007
Regular readers of this blog are probably aware of my general opinion about Reiki and other "energy healing" modalities. In short, they're woo, pure and simple. Consequently, one might reasonably ask why I've never featured the woo that is Reiki in Your Friday Dose of Woo. There's a simple reason for that.
Basic Reiki is boring.
Really, I mean it. In and of itself, it just doesn't reach the level of sheer ecstatic nuttiness that I like to feature every week. Oh, sure, there's lots of handwaving about "channeling the universal energy" through the healer to augment the life force of the…
drorzel | October 12, 2007(WASHINGTON, DC) On the heels of reports from Oslo that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US Vice President Al Gore, a White House spokesman issued a statement saying that "significant uncertainty" remained regarding the recipient of the prize.
"The President feels that at this time, it's too early to say for sure whether Al Gore has won the Peace prize," said White House spokesman Scott Stencil. "The science is just not conclusive yet. The President feels that more study is needed before we agree that this honor…
pharyngula | October 11, 2007We've got a question going around: it's been a good year for Europe in the Nobel Prizes, so what does it mean for American science? Are we slipping? Is there a European bias?
I'm going to go way out here on a limb and say the obvious: it means nothing at all. Winning a Nobel does have a political element to it, of course, but the people who win these things usually have a track record of decades of work, and the Nobel is just the most prominent tip of the iceberg of the scientific enterprise. It's hard to judge trends in the foundations of research from the year-to-year vagaries of what's…
catdynamics | October 11, 2007This year Nobel prizes, to date, are a sweep for Europe.
Is this a trend, or a fluke?
Before world war 2, Europe dominated Nobel prize winnings, in the sciences and medicine, after the second world war, the US rapdily developed dominance, partly by virtue of having brought over a lot of the best European scientists - the US paid better, had more and more stable research funding, and had much better research facilities.
List of Nobel prize winners by nationality - note that a lot of the winners post-WWII lived in the US at the time they won the prize. eg in the 70s, 6 out of 20 US winners…
pharyngula | October 10, 2007This is a nicely done periodic table on the web — I particularly liked the little slider that would let me change the temperature and see which ones would melt and boil.
ddobbs | October 10, 2007
This week's post at Mind Matters, the Scientific American blog I edit, looks at an intriguing study of gene-environment interactions in abused children. Charles Glatt, who wrote the review, outlines the rather encouraging results of this study, which suggest -- with all the usual caveats about wider applicability and replication of results -- that some reliable nurturing can often override even a triple-whammy of two "bad" genes and an abusive home.
Some readers objected, however, to Glatt's assertion that the study argues well for the idea of free will. One reader wrote:
I see no impact…
drorzel | October 10, 2007Attention-grabbing anecdote about science-related issue.
Short biographical sketch of quirky researcher working on scientific problem.
Short explanation of the scientific problem's history and significance.
Anecdote about quirky researcher's work on scientific problem.
Short explanation connecting back to initial attention-grabbing anecdote.
Pithy summary of What It All Means.
(Repeat steps 2-4 as needed to fill out word count.)
I got a review copy of The Best American Science Writing 2007 from Seed a little while ago, but I haven't had much time to read lately. I spent six hours on a bus…
drorzel | October 10, 2007I'm running short of Dorky Poll topics-- suggestions are welcome-- but it occurred to me that a meta-dorky-poll might be worth a shot. So:
There have been many Dorky Polls here over the last year or two. Which Dorky Poll question was the most dorktastic?
"Dorktastic" is in the eye of the beholder, obviously-- it might mean "I cant believe you ased that," or it might be "I can't believe fifty people have an opinion about that." But which of the questions that have been asked so far is the epitome of the Dorky Poll?
oracknows | October 10, 2007One development that will increasingly pose an interesting and perhaps uncomfortable question for newspapers is the increasing addition of blogs run under the banner of newspapers. I'm not sure if it's cluelessness about the blogosphere leading newspapers to think that they can have bloggers write whatever they want under the newspaper's banner and not have it reflect on their reptuation, but reputable papers have in some cases allowed some seriously credulous people to spread misinformation in a seemingly respectable form.
This thought occurred to me when I was made aware of a blog entry by…