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cmcclain | August 4, 2008...and where it goes...how it got there..its trials and tribulations.
This week in carbon sequestration theater we explore Little Petey Carbon and (sing out loud) Ollll' Mannnn Rrrriverrrr.
Rivers are major transporters of material to the oceans and on into the deep. Below are estimates from Schlunz and Schneider's (2000) of just organic carbon flux (as opposed to total material). The numbers are fluxes in 10^12 g or 1,000,000 tons per year. That's lot of carbon!
Certain events like typhoons can amplify the amount of sediment that is carried out to sea. New research appearing in Geology…
cmcclain | August 4, 2008...is now up at Sea Notes, the wonderful little blog of the mighty Monterey Bay Aquarium
sb admin | August 4, 2008On July 28, five representatives of the crane industry met with OMB OIRA, including several who were members of the OSHA Neg/Reg committee, to press OMB to complete its review of the agency's proposed rule on cranes and derricks. The existing OSHA rule dates back to 1971. Efforts to update the crane safety standards began in 2003 when a negotiated rulemaking (Neg/Reg) committee was appointed and given just 1 year to complete its work. Since then the draft proposal has languished at OSHA and with Secretary Chao, until it was finally sent on June 17 for final White House scrutiny.…
cortex | August 4, 2008Razib has a super-interesting post on the prevalence of obesity among individuals of mixed race. His post was based on this paper:
The sample included 215,000 adults who reported one or more ethnicities, height, weight, and other characteristics through a mailed survey. ... The highest age-adjusted prevalence of overweight (BMI greater than or equal to 25) was in Hawaiian/Latino men (88% ; n = 41) and black/Latina women (74.5% ; n = 79), and highest obesity (BMI greater than or equal to 30) rates were in Hawaiian/Latino men (53.7% ; n = 41) and Hawaiian women (39.2% , n = 1,247). The…
pharyngula | August 4, 2008I regret to report that Blue Collar Scientist has lost his struggle with cancer and that he died last night.
cortex | August 4, 2008Robert Krulwich had a really lovely piece on Weekend Edition discussing Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, split-brain patients and the emergent self. Much of the piece was drawn from my chapter on Woolf in Proust Was A Neuroscientist.
Here is how I summarize the paradox in the book, using the phenomenon of blindsight to make my point:
The one thing neuroscience cannot find is the loom of cells that creates the self. If neuroscience knows anything, it is that there is no ghost in the machine: there is only the vibration of the machinery. Your head contains 100 billion electrical cells, but not…
mspringer | August 4, 2008A few days ago Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy wrote a beautifully clear post about why there are no green stars. If I can summarize, it's because anything that's been heated up enough to emit green light is also hot enough to emit red, yellow, and some blue as well. The combination appears to us as a brilliant white. The equation that tells you just how much light is being dumped out by an object at a given temperature is called Planck's law, after the legendary Max Planck. The radiance per frequency emitted by a blackbody (most hot things you meet in daily life are blackbodies to a good…
gregladen | August 4, 2008PLoS ONE. You are ONE today. Does this mean that starting today you are PLoS Two?
For a recent history of the Public Library of Science, see this earlier post.
petnoyer | August 4, 2008Lifeguards in the Mediterranean have a new problem, and they have overfishing, pollution, and global warming to thank for it. Stinging jellyfish invaded beaches off Barcelona a few weeks ago injuring 300 people and sending 11 to the hospital, reports the New York Times. Now patrol boats skim the water with nets and lifeguards post red and yellow flags to warn of approaching swarms.
These jellyfish near shore are a message the sea is sending [to] us saying, 'Look how badly you are treating me'
- Dr. Josep-Maria Gili, a jellyfish expert from the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish…
grrlscientist | August 3, 2008The people at Seed Media Group have designed a survey for the readers of ScienceBlogs in an effort to learn more about what you think we can do to raise science literacy. The survey should take roughly 20 minutes and they anticipate several thousand responses. As a small reward for your time, Seed Media Group is giving away several items in a random drawing; an iPhone 3G, a MacBook Air and a 40GB Apple TV. Of course, I am not eligible, so I am hoping all of the prizes are won by my readers!
grrlscientist | August 3, 2008Here's a couple blog carnivals that you will enjoy;
Carnival of the Godless, 3 August 2008 issue. This blog carnival deals with atheism and the joys of living a rational life.
Carnival of the Vanities, the 2 August 2008 issue. This blog carnival is the original blog carnival that inspired all the other blog carnivals, and it celebrates the best writing in the blogosphere, regardless of topic.
gregladen | August 3, 2008You always hope this happens, but it never does. But every now and then JUSTICE PREVAILS!
So, we're driving north on 371 just out of Baxter. Amanda, who is an excellent driver, is at the wheel. Moderate traffic, overcast but no precipitation, just before nightfall.
Suddenly, from the corner of our eyes we see a black pickup truck with two young men in it accelerated down slope from a shadowy parking lot, speeding down the steeply sloped drive. The pickup swerved onto the road directly into our path. Amanda, skillfully, swerved and braked, averting a collision with the pickup and…
grrlscientist | August 3, 2008Okay, here's something totally weird: I ran across a site that analyzes your browser history and uses a mathematical algorithm to identify your gender. According to this algorithm, I am male;
Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 6%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 94%
Hrm. Do you suppose this is the reason my email boxes are all jammed with ads to increase my penis size? How about you? Does your browser history predict that you are male or female?
grrlscientist | August 2, 2008Hey everyone, it seems that Microsoft's Internet Exploder (IE) is at it again: it is making life difficult for some of you because IE5.5 and older versions cannot load many of the ScienceBlogs sites, including this one. This occurred because sitemeter changed the coding for their widget yesterday (but didn't mention it to anyone) and this made it incompatible with older versions of IE. I have installed their newest MT-compatible sitemeter code to (hopefully) make things work for you, so I would appreciate it if you let me know whether you can see my blog. All the other browsers apparently…
grrlscientist | August 2, 2008Here's a couple blog carnivals for you to enjoy;
Friday Ark number 202. This blog carnival focuses on photography, and animals are the stars!
American Economics blog carnival, 1 August 2008 edition. This blog carnival focuses on economic topics -- realities and perceptions -- as well as some information on how to deal with the personal impacts of national economic shifts.
mspringer | August 2, 2008Weekend posting here is usually pretty light, but it's only the second day here so I think a little extra is a nice way to kick things off. How about a little bit of solar sailing, since it fits pretty well with what I'm teaching in my intro class?
We all know light carries energy. Go outside on a sunny day and you can feel the energy being absorbed by your skin. You feel it as heat, but visible light energy allows you to see and ultraviolet light will induce chemical changes which will finally result in your body making itself a bit more tan. What's less apparent is that light also…
kevin z | August 2, 2008For those who care what blathering I have to espouse, my friend Peter Buckland of the blog Forms Most Beautiful, interviewed me regarding my work in the Deep Sea, my views on atheism and religion, evolution, science communication and tattoos. Peter is a nice guy who is doing a PhD in education at Penn State studying the Evolution/Intelligent Design-Creationism issue in schools covered the Dover Trial for the newspaper Voices in Pennsylvania. If you enjoy reading about science and evolution in politics and issues in atheism, I recommend bookmarking his blog!
gregladen | August 1, 2008Carnival Of The Liberals is at The Cult of Gracie.
The Carnival of Cinema: Episode 85 - Journey to the Center of the Blog at Good News Film Reviews
Friday Ark #202 at The Modulator
New and Exciting in PLoS this week
Soup To Nuts, the Progressive Dinner Blog Carnival is at The Gonzo Papers.
mspringer | August 1, 2008Welcome to the new home of Built on Facts, now happily hosted at ScienceBlogs. For those of you who've been readers of this site for a while, I'm honored that you like my scribblings and I hope you enjoy this new location even better!
For those of you who are curious about this new physics site here on ScienceBlogs, you can get a good idea of the flavor of the writing here by perusing the archives at the old site. In short, I usually write about physics in a style that fills the gap between pop-physics writing and actual physics textbooks. In other words, people who know nothing about…