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gregladen | May 12, 2009The answer will shock and amaze you.
At the moment, we don't officially have a state level Democratic Party, but rather, a hybrid known as the Democratic Farm Labor (DFL) party. But there used to be a Democratic Party, and it provided the state with a total of four governors. The Farm Labor party supported three, and the DFL gave us five. So, one could say that the state of Minnesota has sort of had 12 governors from what is now the equivalent of the Democratic Party.
A grand total of 26 Minnesota governors have been Republicans, and one independence (That's be Jesse). (That is a slight…
jwilbanks | May 12, 2009I was invited to join a meeting last week in New York to kick off something called the "Concept Web Alliance." It's an emerging non profit hoping to stimulate the emergence of lots and lots of marked-up content from the life sciences and it's claiming the mantle of open access. The potential value of a concept web is essentially the same idea as the semantic web, but with a little more savvy about branding - we can have a computable web of data linked into the literature, and a better way of asking very precise questions of a massively complex data space if the information has more structure…
grrlscientist | May 11, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The host for the upcoming 18 May edition of Scientia Pro Publica is Eric, author of The Primate Diaries. To send your science, nature or medical writing to Scientia Pro Publica, either use this automated submission form or use the cute little widget on the right (keep in mind that widget sometimes disappears when the mother site is sick). Be sure to include the URL or "permalink", the essay title and, to make life easier for the host, please include a 2-3…
gregladen | May 11, 2009It is time. Quiche Moraine has had its 100th post, so it is high time that we started to get serious about a Launch Party.
There is a discussion on this topic happening here.
Please step on over and tell us when and where we should consider doing this. And how and what. And so on.
mspringer | May 11, 2009The little picture of me in the left sidebar was taken on the northeast shore of Arkansas' Lake Ouachita two summers ago. It's a beautiful place where you can experience nature in a peaceful and quiet way.
There were several of us who went, and one of them gave me a book of his that he'd finished: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. It's not the book I'm reading in the picture, and while I've still not read it all the way through I often pick it up and read a few pages. Tolkien is someone who I admire immensely, and he was an example of a sort of person who was rare enough in his own day and is…
sb admin | May 11, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
The spate of swine flu articles in The New England Journal of Medicine last week included an important "Perspective, The Signature Features of Influenza Pandemics â Implications for Policy," by Miller, Viboud, Baliska and Simonsen. These authors are familiar to flu watchers as experienced flu epidemiologists and analysts of archival and other data. Analysis of archival data is sometimes described as archeo-epidemiologic research. In their NEJM article Miller et al. summarize what they see as some common features in the three flu pandemics of the…
cortex | May 11, 2009I've got a new article in the New Yorker this week on the pioneering work of Walter Mischel and the science of delayed gratification:
In the late nineteen-sixties, Carolyn Weisz, a four-year-old with long brown hair, was invited into a "game room" at the Bing Nursery School, on the campus of Stanford University. The room was little more than a large closet, containing a desk and a chair. Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow. Although she's now forty-four, Carolyn still has a weakness…
edyong | May 10, 2009The most comprehensive analysis yet of African genetic diversity was rightly hailed as "profoundly impressive" by Daniel MacArthur of Genetic Future. By looking at 2,400 people from 113 African populations, Sarah Tishkoff has "done justice to the sheer scale of the genetic diversity within the African continent."
The Scandal of the Week award goes to pharmaceutical company Merck and publishing house Elsevier, following news that the former paid the latter to produce six fake journals promoting their drugs. Janet Stemwedel considers the story and the difference between fake journals and just…
nisbetmc | May 10, 2009
If you are like me, you are looking forward to the May 27 Champions League showdown between Man United and Barcelona. No doubt, many here in DC will be taking a break from work to head to a nearby pub or to watch from the office. Even Obama seems to be a soccer fan. In an appearance on Univision last week, he spoke about his hopes for securing the US as a host for a future World Cup and the growth of the game in the States.
gregladen | May 9, 2009About one in 10 Americans have stopped hugging and kissing close friends or relatives because of concerns about swine flu, according to a survey released Friday. About the same number have stopped shaking hands.
Health officials have emphasized other measures to prevent spread of the virus, like washing hands and using hand sanitizers. The survey found about two-thirds of Americans are taking such steps.
source
Of course, with the Democrats in the White House, hugging was artificially inflated to begin with, but this downward trend is still ungood.
Have you stopped hugging?
nisbetmc | May 9, 2009With many ScienceBlogs readers probably taking in the new Star Trek film this weekend, I've opened this post as a thread for discussion.
What do you think, a pitch perfect re-invention of the classic series or too popularized to appeal to devoted fans of the original?
mspringer | May 9, 2009You know what I've been delinquent in? Posting about some of the other blogs out there that I take for granted as being great, because they are. A random sampling of good stuff:
Swans on Tea discussing entanglement in the popular press.
Chad Orzel on the physics of Rumpelstiltskin.
Dirac Sea on the fine art of research, and its ludicrous slowness.
Cocktail Party Physics gives Isis a run for her money with the physics of jewelery.
Would you like to learn how to generate Pythagorean triples in one post? Yes you (and I) would! Arcsecond will teach you how.
Here's Fryeburg Academy Physics on…
gregladen | May 9, 2009There is a spirited discussion regarding Minnesota's own woo vs. sue maneno at Quiche Moraine.
mspringer | May 9, 2009A while back, Texas governor Rick Perry made the news for the following comment:
We got a great Union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it, but if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that.
All things considered it's a very mild statement, consisting of an allusion, a hypothetical, and two caveats. Nonetheless it's a pretty stupid thing for a governor to say, especially since he's facing an uphill reelection battle (to put it gently - he's probably going to get wiped out) against fellow Republican senator Kay Bailey…
gregladen | May 8, 2009While I'm out on the lake catching dinner, I'd like you'all to make a list of possible country western song titles. The title of this post is an example. It happened to occur to me a little while ago while I was, well, looking for some vodka but instead found gin. What an unexpected taste sensation that was.
mspringer | May 8, 2009Three question E&M I final today, roughly as follows.
1a. As a starting point, calculate the electric potential on the axis of a ring (radius a) of uniform charge. (trivial)
1b. Use the expansion in Legendre polynomials to do an off-axis extrapolation of 1a to find the potential everywhere. (Conceptually not bad, mathematically tedious)
1c. Roughly speaking, examine the continuity of the r < a and a < r solutions at r = 1. (not difficult assuming you have 1b right)
2. Hollow dielectric sphere in a uniform electric field. Find the potential everywhere. (Average conceptual…
cwilcox | May 8, 2009Alrighty ladies and gents! Here's some fun for you all:
Carnival of the Blue #24 is up at Sea Notes, so definitely go check it out.
And if you enjoy carnivals, be sure to mosey on over to Oh For The Love Of Science! for the Carnival of Evolution #11.
While I'm at it, my boys over at Southern Fried Science have got the Shark O' The Week up for all of us to enjoy. They also make a great note about following them on facebook. It's a great idea! You can follow Observations of a Nerd, too. It's fun to follow on facebook because you can connect with other readers and authors, vote up stories, and…
sb admin | May 8, 2009We were delighted in March when President Obama issued a memorandum on scientific integrity, stating, âScience and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues.â The memorandum gave the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy 120 days to âdevelop recommendations for Presidential action designed to guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch,â based on six specific principles.
OSTP in turn is asking the public for comments that will help it craft the recommendations. If you have thoughts…