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pharyngula | June 3, 2009This is a sad story: Dahl's daughter Olivia, to whom he had dedicated James and the Giant Peach and The BFG (I remember reading both of those to my kids when they were little) died at the age of 12 of measles encephalitis. He wrote a short piece urging everyone to immunize their children 20 years later, after a reliable vaccine had been developed.
We've benefited in these recent years from good medicine that prevents serious childhood diseases. It wasn't that long ago that children were dying fairly often from illnesses that nowadays parents cavalierly expose their children to in 'exposure…
cortex | June 3, 2009Daniel Engber has a very interesting series of articles over at Slate on Pepper the Dalmation and the use of stolen pets in biomedical research. In 1965, the theft of Pepper from a Pennsylvania farm - she ended up dying in a Bronx lab, sacrificed so that scientists could experiment with cardiac pacemakers - created a media sensation:
The dog-napping of Pepper marked the beginning of the end of canine experimentation. Outrage over her demise, and the theft and killings of other family pets, would soon turn public opinion--and federal law--against the use of dogs in biomedical research.…
clock | June 2, 2009There are 23 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the day - you go and look for your own favourites:
The Emergence of Predators in Early Life: There was No Garden of Eden:
Eukaryote cells are suggested to arise somewhere between 0.85~2.7 billion years ago. However, in the present world of unicellular…
gregladen | June 2, 2009... is not entirely accurate scientifically, but it is very inspiring.
Hat tip: Miss Cellania
And while you are over at Miss Cellania's place, check out this scary video.
gregladen | June 2, 2009PZ Myers has called for help on this one, as it's a tough cookie. One New Snow Dot Com has a crazy yahooistic poll asking your opinion on LGBT Pride Month.
Check out PZ's site for the state of the poll earlier today, then click through to vote.
grrlscientist | June 2, 2009As you know, my friend and colleague, John Wilkins has left ScienceBlogs for greener pastures -- and yes, I think this is a terrible loss for SB. But he has purchased his own site name and opened shop there, so here's his new location -- Evolving Thoughts -- please pop in and say hello. But remember to handle him carefully: like all Australians, he spends all his time upside down, with the blood rushing to his head and crushing his primate brain into a squishy pancake. I know this is fine if he was a bat, but alas, he is a silverback gorilla.
gregladen | June 2, 2009Carnival of Evolution #12 is up and swimming at Deep Sea News, and it's a good one.
gregladen | June 2, 2009I am having lunch in an eatery, a cafeteria sort of place, where you get your food, pay at the cash register, and sit down somewhere. At one table is a woman reading. At another table there is a young man eating a muffin. At another table is a pair of women having a quiet conversation. At another table is a man looking over some papers. I'm off to the side with my laptop out writing this.
And in the middle table is a woman with a fairly large voice standing at her table making a series of phone calls. She is discussing personnel related issues and contract related issues connected to…
mspringer | June 2, 2009All right ladies and gentlemen, today we're performing an experiment! More of a demonstration, really, but one that's very easy and will impress your friends. You will need:
1) One remote control.
2) One camera phone.
The vast majority of remote controls operate via an infrared light-emitting diode situated at the front of the device. You press a button, and the diode lights up in a particular pattern of pulses corresponding to the button you pressed. A little sensor at the front of the TV detects these pulses and converts them into the electric signals that tell the TV to switch from…
cortex | June 2, 2009Over at Neurophilosphy, there's a wonderful post on "confabulatory hypermnesia," or severe false memory syndrome:
In the journal Cortex, researchers describe the case of a patient with severe memory loss who has a tendency to invent detailed and perfectly plausible false memories (confabulations) in response to questions to which most people would answer "I don't know", such as the one above. They have named this unusual condition confabulatory hypermnesia, and believe that theirs is the first study to document it.
For example, when asked about his brother's job, he told the researchers that…
pharyngula | June 1, 2009Frank Schaeffer, who with his father was one of the aggressive peddlers of anti-choice ideas, has commendably accepted part of the blame for the Tiller murder, admitting that he and his kind contributed to the atmosphere of hate. Unfortunately, he fails with this bit in the middle.
Contributing to an extreme and sometimes violent climate has not only been the fault of the antiabortion crusaders. The Roe v. Wade decision went to far, too fast and was too sweeping. I believe that abortion should be legal. But I also believe that it should be re-regulated according to fetal development. It's the…
nisbetmc | June 1, 2009Several science bloggers this month are spotlighting sexual violence as a social problem and the Scienceblogs portal has jumped on board. The focus is mostly on international cases but it's important to also think about how sexual violence is framed and addressed here in the U.S.
This past semester, Katherine Broendel, one of my graduate students here at AU, reviewed studies of how sexual violence is framed in news coverage and public discourse, synthesizing this research to come up with a generalizable typology of commonly appearing frames and interpretations. These frames are important…
grrlscientist | June 1, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) blog carnival was just published! This blog carnival celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days. This issue is the result of Kristjan Wager's valiant efforts, despite an anaphylactic reaction that landed him in the hospital. So go read Scientia Pro Publica 5 and leave a comment there!
To send your science, nature or medical writing to Scientia Pro…
jwilbanks | June 1, 2009I'm happy to say that I'll be doing a forum at the British Library on July 22, called Scientific Findings in a Digital World: What is the Genuine Article? There's a Nature Network group you can join to participate in the creation of the agenda.
This is pretty cool. The British Library is a legendary institution, and has some personal resonance for me too - my dad wrote a big chunk of his dissertation in the reading room there. I'll make a few introductory comments and then do my best Oprah impersonation.
sb admin | June 1, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
Since I talk a lot about flu in my real life as well as on the blog, I get questions from moms and care givers who wonder when they should start to get worried about a sick child or relative. It's context dependent, of course. The same symptoms that would be shrugged off at any other time take on a different meaning during a flu outbreak, especially when everyone seems uncertain about what is happening or what might happen. There's nothing irrational about this. Infection with influenza virus is always potentially serious and when the young and…
pharyngula | June 1, 2009A few years ago, the creationist organization Answers in Genesis launched an ill-conceived ad campaign that featured kids with guns; the message was "If God doesn't matter to him, do you?". They were trying to hop onto the fear bandwagon, so popular among conservatives now, of trying to convince people that you must support their aims, or some Other will kill you.
That sign and the whole aborted ad campaign (it died away fairly quickly after AiG started it) has everything backwards. We start with the recognition of and respect for the right of every person to live, and then…it doesn't matter…
nisbetmc | June 1, 2009Over at his blog for the Office of Research Communications at Ohio State University, Earle Holland provides more back stage insight on the media strategy surrounding the fossil Darwinius:
Prior to the press conference, only a handful of select reporters got an advance look at the scientific paper, and they were sworn to secrecy until the unveiling. Normally, scientific journals will share advance copies of such papers with science writers who will have enough time to accurately report the story, not just parrot back statements offered at a press briefing. This insures input from experts in…