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kevin z | July 6, 2008That is the advertising campaign of the National Aquarium in Baltimore. I LOVE their new ads. You can even make your own aqua faces!
Here is one I made using the aquafaces creator.
kevin z | July 6, 2008
"The United States faces unprecedented environmental and economic challenges in the decades ahead.
Foremost among them will be climate change, sea-level rise, altered weather patterns, declines in freshwater availability and quality and loss of biodiversity."
So says a group composed of the heads of both NOAA and USGS in a recent issue of Science. NOAA, covering the atmospheric and oceanic realms, has a budget of approximately 4 billion employing 12000 employees, while USGS, in charge of the earthen and freshwater realms, is sitting at 1 billion with 8500 employees. Though NASA oversees…
cortex | July 6, 2008I've got an article in the Boston Globe Ideas section on the new science of depression:
Prozac is one of the most successful drugs of all time. Since its introduction as an antidepressant more than 20 years ago, Prozac has been prescribed to more than 54 million people around the world, and prevented untold amounts of suffering.
But the success of Prozac hasn't simply transformed the treatment of depression: it has also transformed the science of depression. For decades, researchers struggled to identify the underlying cause of depression, and patients were forced to endure a series of…
cmcclain | July 6, 2008
Saint Brendan of Clonfert is often referred to Brendan the Voyager. He is Irish monastic saint born in 484 in Ciarraighe Luachra, near the present city of Tralee, County Kerry and died in 577. Besides founding several monasteries across Ireland, Brendan made a legendary journey.
The tale of begins with Brendan and 60 (other stories range from 15-150) pilgrims making their way to The Isle of the Blessed or Paradise across the Atlantic Ocean searching for the Americans around 512-530 AD. Brendan was originally motivated by stories of this strange and distant land from another Irish monk.…
cmcclain | July 6, 2008Comic book artist Michael Turner passed on late last month at age 37. Although young, Turner already had an accomplished much including art for Witchblade, Fathom, Superman/Batman, and various covers for DC Comics and Marvel Comics. He was American born and southern boy heralding from Crossville, Tennessee.
I mention him here because not only did he draw the covers for Submariner #1 and #5 (see the cover at Wikipedia), he created and owned the comic Fathom, which is just as cool as it sounds. The concept is a female superhero with water-based powers and of course since this is a graphic…
cmcclain | July 6, 2008
Sure you can do that deep scuba dive in 47 degree Fahrenheit water off the California coast. Sure you might get to see some kelp, marine life, and spectacular rock formations, but 47 is just 15 degrees from freezing. Why not dive indoors in a balmy 86 degrees? Ahh, but you wondering how you can get a deep dive in a 10 feet deep swimming pool?
Make way for Nemo 33 in Uccle, Belgium, the deepest pool in the world. 108 feet to be exact with "two large flat-bottomed areas at depth levels of 5 m (16 ft) and 10 m (32 ft)". A circular pit allows you to visit Davy Jone's Locker. There is also…
gregladen | July 6, 2008The Carnival of Cinema: Episode 81 - On the Bloggerfront
Carnival of Education (178th Edition)
Carnival of Homeschooling - Celebrating July 4th
Festival of the Trees
Friday Ark #198
The 90th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle
Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival: The Fourth Of July Everything is Just Fine We've Got It Under Control In America Edition
The next Tangled Bank Blog Carnival will be hosted HERE. No, don't click on that ... here!, where you are looking right now. Send me your posts!!!! We're slated to put it up on July 9th, so hurry with the submissions before it is TOO LATE…
pharyngula | July 5, 2008Next week at this time I'll be in lovely downtown Atlanta, staying at the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel. If we're going to have a Pharyngufest, probably the best time would be Saturday, 12 July, and somewhere not too far away from the hotel. Anyone interested? Any locals want to make suggestions for good meeting places? We need something that isn't too noisy, that serves good refreshments, and offers exemplary Southern hospitality, 'cause that's what I expect when I go to Georgia. If nothing else, the hotel has two bars, and I suppose we could hit one of those.
If anyone wants to suggest better…
gregladen | July 5, 2008I was looking for something else and came across this instead. I've seen this in person. There is probably a group like this in your neighborhood, check them out!
gregladen | July 5, 2008
The House of Commons (U.K.) Select Committee on Science and Technology investigated Open Access publishing alternatives, and pursuant to this obtained written evidence from Nature Publishing Group consisting of answers to specific questions about "pay to publish." Here are excerpts from the document. Given the current discussion on Open Access publishing, this may be of interest to you.
Nature Publishing Group's Publishing Model: Evidence to the House of Commons, April 2004.
Question: You stated that, under a pay-to-publish system, Nature would have to charge authors between £10K and £…
gregladen | July 5, 2008 PLoS The flap that started with the ill advised commentary by Delcan Butler started out looking like it MIGHT be an Orwellian, perhaps Nixononian attempt by a well established publishing icon in the fields of science to damage an up and coming competitor, the Public Libary of Science in particular, and the Open Access Movement more generally. As time goes by, however, I start to get the impression that it does not merely look this way, but may actually be this way.
I think it is very important for people who are interested in defending Open Access as a concept and perhaps PLoS in…
gregladen | July 4, 2008 Nature (left) vs. OpenAccess A number of bloggers, including myself, had recently responded to a news item in Nature by suggesting that anti-OpenAccess and anti-PLoS position taken by the author, Delcan Butler, constituted an attack of one company against another. How silly of us to have done so. Here's what we should have been thinking instead:
There were also quite a few comments to the effect that the article was self-serving given Nature's business interests. That completely ignores the overall balance of Nature's coverage, which in my opinion is broadly supportive of open access…
grrlscientist | July 4, 2008I have lived with companion animals for my entire life. Cats, dogs, a variety of bird species ranging from finches to chickens, parrots and lories, tropical fish, goldfish and koi, hermit crabs, ants, stick insects, golden hamsters, dwarf hamsters, mice, rats, guinea pigs, bunnies .. and that's just the short list of animals who lived in my bedroom with me! So you would think that I am an expert at dealing with the death of a companion animal, but honestly, nothing could be farther from reality. I still have not gotten over the deaths of several of my pets (and cannot even say their names…
cortex | July 4, 2008You know what makes me proud to be an American? The fact that the black presidential candidate with the funny African-Muslim name is leading in the polls against the white aviator war hero married to a beer heiress. And I'm not just saying that because I want universal health care and a progressive tax policy (although I do). I think what it really illustrates is just how far this country has come within Barack Obama's lifetime.
Now, I'm not sure I agree with that recent Shelby Steele quote about how "white Americans have made more moral progress in the last forty years than any people in…
gregladen | July 4, 2008 Ana One of my favorite commenters, and a good friend off line, known to you as Ana, is having a birthday today. Born on the Fourth of July, she is one of the most patriotic individuals I've ever met in my life. In a radical overthrow the government if necessary kind of way. Although we fight sometimes our love and friendship always wins. Happy 25th plus/minus birthday Ana!
Now that you've been introduced, I can tell you an Ana story.
One year, quite a few yeas back, I was having one of those down periods ... life was ruined, everything sucked, you know the story. It was Christmas…
kevin z | July 3, 2008From National Geographic's new Translucent Creatures photo gallery:
A hydromedusa spreads its luminescent tentacles in the Weddell Sea near Antarctica.
Photograph by Ingo Arndt/Minden Pictures.
This medusa is like totally coming at me like a spider monkey with those nunchuk tentacles. Meet some of its friends below the fold!
A close-up of a bristleworm's head in Antarctica's Weddell Sea shows the tiny predator's trumpet-shaped mouth. Photograph by Ingo Arndt/Minden Pictures
A transparent larval shrimp piggybacks on an equally see-through jellyfish in the waters around Hawaii. Photograph by…
gregladen | July 3, 2008I have a partially written half baked (eventually to be fully baked) post expanding on Open Access publishing and the PLoS - Nature controversy (which is heating up quite nicely). But I may or may not finish it. What I do want to point out now is that I've made a couple of changes in my earlier post on the Nature commentary on PLoS by way of correction. There are two simple points to make here:
1) My own criticism of "peer review" is really meant to be a broader critique of the publishing process overall. Furthermore, my belief is NOT that the situation with science publishing is totally…
sb admin | July 3, 2008The six-year term of John Howard, MD as director of the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety is coming to an end.  An annoucement today from CDC's Media Relations office said:
"Dr. Julie Gerberding met with Dr. John Howard and let him know that HHS/CDC will begin a search for a new NIOSH director."
That was the lead sentence. Ouch....that's cold.
The announcement came despite appeals from two organizations to President G.W. Bush and HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt to reappoint Dr. Howard.
The American Society of Safety Engineers wrote
"under [his] creative and dedicated…
sb admin | July 3, 2008Obviously, the economy and Iraq are big issues on votersâ minds, but a new poll from Scientists and Engineers for America shows that candidates would also be smart to demonstrate their support for science. In fact, SEAâs Michael Stebbins reports that although the organization expected positive answers to their questions, they were stunned by the overwhelmingly affirmative response:
Eighty-six percent of those polled, for example, say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is committed to preparing students with the skills they need for the 21st Century through public…