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krandall | May 19, 2011By Dr. Janice Bishop; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Dr. Janice Bishop is a chemist and planetary scientist who explores the planet Mars using spectroscopy. Her investigations of CRISM data of Mars are revealing clays and sulfates in the ancient rocks that provide information about the geochemical environment at that time. Dr. Bishop studies the spectral fingerprints of minerals and rocks in the lab in order to generate a spectral library for identification of these in the Martian data. Her research also involves collecting and…
pharyngula | May 18, 2011He came to Minneapolis to whimper about gay marriage, and he got glittered.
Although the guy at the end who menacingly claims that they [Republicans?] don't disturb their [gay?] events is rather creepy. I think the fact that they want to police what goes on in the bedroom goes beyond disturbing.
hrynyshyn | May 18, 2011Indeed:
The main thing is they are in absolute, abject and catastrophic denial about a straightforward set of facts that is probably the most important set of facts we face as a nation, and as human beings on planet earth. They have turned their faces away from climate change in a way that is simply and utterly unforgivable. They now apparently DO feel entitled to their own facts, and they live, campaign and purportedly do their jobs in a zone of outright lies. Lies they have every reason to understand are lies, and lies that will almost certainly result in massive destruction and death.…
lborkowski | May 17, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Charles Ornstein at ProPublica: Cardiac Society Draws Bulk of Funding from Stent Makers
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: A Chemical (Battle) Cry
Tara C. Smith at Aetiology: Ebola in Uganda: current and past outbreaks
Tim Lougheed in Environmental Health Perspectives: Phosphorus Paradox: Scarcity and Overabundance of a Key Nutrient
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Drug-resistant bacteria in bedbugs
mspringer | May 17, 2011Just though I'd try writing a post title in the style of a crank. Kinda fun!
Gauss' law, of course, is not wrong. But I got a question from a reader that deceptively simple and an interesting example of a theorem not quite working the way you'd expect. I've gone over Gauss' law before, so as a quick refresher I'll just say that it relates the electric charge at a location to the way the electric field lines diverge at that location. Symbolically (and in, appropriately, Gaussian units):
E is the electric field, ρ is the charge density. Draw a closed surface around the charge in question and…
pharyngula | May 17, 2011The Endless Thread is showing signs of stress and fatigue. I know, it wants to keep working, and it would probably willingly continue to sit there at its desk, scribbling madly, until it had a heart attack and keeled over, but as a kindly taskmasker hoping to wring a few more years of cheap labor out of it, I had to do something.
So I cashed in my frequent flyer miles and am sending the Thread to an exotic tropical island for a month.
Just imagine the Thread lying contentedly in a hammock on a sunny beach, with beautiful bikini-clad women and topless buff men bringing it sweet drinks in a…
mikethemadbiologist | May 16, 2011Links for you. Science:
MRSA, Meat, and Motown
More on the criteria for earning the Ph.D.
N50 talk length at CSHL Biology of Genomes conference
Other:
If You Haven't Been On Food Stamps, Stop Trying to Influence Government Policy (must-read)
The Koch Brothers and the End of State Universities
Count Me In With the Unsophisticated Six Year Olds
Macroeconomics is a rancid, putrefying pseudoscience
Fun With Charts: Making the Rich Look Poor
Mike Rowe's Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (on the need for skilled labor)
Hyperbole (and Progressive…
mikethemadbiologist | May 16, 2011A couple of weeks ago, I came across this discussion thread "Will you stop using 454?" It's a pretty good thread--not much to disagree with there, although, from my perspective, it missed a key point (I'll get to that).
But my answer is simple: I already have. My work focuses primarily on microbial genomics--that is, whole bacterial genomes. And 454 just isn't getting it done. Before I get to that, let's review very briefly how we assemble a genome (I'm simplifying greatly and leaving out a whole bunch of molecular biology and chemistry here--this is for the uninitiated).
We don't…
peconomy | May 15, 2011I was recently invited to teach a class for San Diego State University undergraduates interested in entrepreneurship: MGT 453.1 -- Creativity and Innovation. I accepted the invitation, and will begin teaching my brand-new class in the fall.
However, there's just one problem: What will I teach?
The good news is that I have an existing syllabus used by the current professor on which to model my own class. And as I reviewed the syllabus, it was no surprise to me that the arts are used to provide examples to students of how creativity and innovation work in the real world, and how they might be…
gregladen | May 15, 2011on Skeptically Speaking, recording live today.
We look at the cutting edge science and old-fashioned wonder of the hunt for planets circling other stars. We'll talk to Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and author of Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life beyond Our Solar System. And we're joined by Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, to discuss the current progress, and the uncertain future, of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
This show records live on Sunday, May 15 at 6 pm MT…
gregladen | May 14, 2011I'm looking forward to the moment in a few weeks from now when Desiree Schell and I sit down and have a serious public conversation about approaches to promoting skepticism and science-based reasoning and policy. We'll also discuss New Atheism and Accommodationism, I assume.
As you know, Desiree hosts the highly popular radio program and podcast "Skeptically Speaking." This may be the first time she's engaged in a public conversation with some crazy New Atheist blogger anywhere other than on her own home turf (we'll be talking on Atheist Talk Radio, with Mike Haubrich hosting). It…
gregladen | May 14, 2011You can't easily. But you can do something similar, enjoy a rewarding experience, and have access to a tasty brew at a reasonable price and only a moderate level of fiddling. A while ago I bought a Cuisinox COF-M4 Milano 4-Cup Espresso Coffeemaker. It is a modernized version of the early 20th century "moka pot," which is designed to make an espresso-like beverage. The original moka pot is made of aluminum, which is an excellent metal for this job given it's heat conductive properties, but it also provides an undesirable addition to the taste of the final product. And, aluninum is not…
mikethemadbiologist | May 14, 2011You might have heard about the recent purchase gift to Florida State University's economics department that gives a Charles Koch-funded group veto power over who is appointed to the department. I've known for a while that Koch has been influencing political science and economics departments: the Mercatus Center of George Mason University has been funded by Koch to promote laissez-faire economics. But I was shocked to discover that he's also been funding my alma mater, Brown University--which is supposedly a liberal bastion of hippiedom (or something):
The Charles Koch Foundation funds the…
gregladen | May 12, 2011I had never felt airsick before, or since. But now I was a nauseated rag doll flopping around in the middle row of a six seater prop plane and I was ready to hurl at any moment.
A timely repost
BBC depiction of the path of Flight 447. I find it astonishing that the most important weather related feature on the planet is a "place where there are a lot of thunderstorms" or often not even identified at all. This is equivalent to a plane crashing into the Cascades and the news reporting that the aircraft went down in a "place with some hills" or not even noting the existence of the mountain…
gregladen | May 11, 2011Surly Amy has been (successfully) raising money to help defray conference costs for women interested in attending The Amazing Meeting. Moments ago, Emma Cating, Megan Wells, and Amy Peters, who has applied among many others to obtain this funding, were awarded the first Surly Women Thinking Free TAM Grants.
There are more women in need of funding and I know you can help. Please visit this blog post to find out how.
gregladen | May 11, 2011Did I use 'offing' correctly? Strange word.
Anyway, Mike Haubrich has pulled off another coup at Atheist Talk Radio. He has arranged for a conversation to happen, live, between Desiree Schell and yours truly. This will be in early June (details forthcoming). We'll be talking about multiple strategies for effecting change, especially with reference to things like skeptical (in a good way) thinking, science, and so on.
This is very timely because we are quickly approaching SkepchiCON (click here to donate), at which this will be one of the topics discussed in the track organized by the…
cwilcox | May 11, 2011Lionfish are one of my favorite animals (I study them, after all). They're stunningly beautiful. Of course, they're also a devastating invasive species. Though they've only been in the Atlantic Ocean for some 15 years or so, they've taken over reefs, eating everything in their path. They've been found to reduce the recruitment of native fish by 79% on average, and are occurring in densities 8 times higher than in their native range. To say they're bad is an understatement. The damage is so severe that they were listed as one of the top 15 threats to global biodiversity in 2010.
There's little…
gregladen | May 10, 2011It's Bora's birthday. He's here and here. Well, he's everywhere, but those are two places he be.
gregladen | May 10, 2011"We should not have published the altered picture"
Meaning, what exactly? Oh never mind. Have a look at this:
Here's a picture from the same newspaper:
I ask you: Who was the woman standing at that podium before she was erased?
Now, look at this picture:
Are we certain that the banana depicted in the vitamin ad is not a female? Certain, as in, stone the transgressor to death certain? I. Don't. Think. So.