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gregladen | May 6, 2008Calamari for Everyone! And I mean, Everyone!!!!!
Worry, Willie Geist (or whatever his name is) again.
gregladen | May 6, 2008Willie Zeit (or whatever his name is) is very, very annoying. So I hesitate to show this. But religion is even more annoying. Therefore, I show this (only the first bit is essential).
It is conceivable that this is the most fun these kids will be having for a long time. At least they are not getting any body parts sliced off.
kevin z | May 6, 2008This is the final installment of VBS.tv's TOXIC-Garbage Island series. Part 12 is more of an epilogue of sorts. The bonus interview with Frederick vom Saal is very informative!
I would like to thank the producers and hosts of the film series. Even though I ragged on them quite a bit, the issue is very important and I am grateful they were able to go out there and document some of this stuff. They even occassionally made some very good points ; )
I also wish to thank the captain and crew of the Oceanographic rRsearch Vessel Alguita for their dedication to conservation issues. You can read more…
cortex | May 6, 2008In recent years, there has been lots of speculation on the potential intersection of neuroscience and the legal system. Will brain imaging became a fool-proof lie detector? Are some violent offenders suffering from a defective emotional brain that's beyond their control? Should we replace the insanity defense with a less rationalist account of human morality? etc, etc. The assumption is that the latest tools of science can help us refine our squishy concepts of justice, which we've inherited from Plato, the Old Testament and the 18th century British legal system. Needless to say, Plato didn't…
cmcclain | May 6, 2008Finally, I have a back up plan if this whole marine biologist thing doesn't work out.
And to continue with the theme of PowerPoint...
cmcclain | May 5, 2008As I was catching up on all of my favorites blogs, I noticed that James Hrynyshyn at The Island of Doubt posted about the recent oddness at the Heartland Institute. To catch you up to speed the DeSmogBlog notes...
Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares. The article, by Hudson Institute director and Heartland "Senior Fellow" Dennis T. Avery, purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that…
cmcclain | May 5, 2008When a scientist is writing a scientific paper we look for that one quintessential figure that tells the whole story. Other figures are ancillary to fill in the specifics but the 'cardinal figure' is where all the meat of the paper is distilled to one remarkable graph. A senior scientist once told me that deciding on and constructing this figure is the hardest part of writing the paper. After the "cardinal figure" everything else writes itself.
Think of the "cardinal figure" as manuscript feng shui. An off-balance figure with improperly aligned objects lead to paper disharmony. Bad figure…
cortex | May 5, 2008The Times recently had an article on the booming business of brain fitness:
Decaying brains, or the fear thereof, have inspired a mini-industry of brain health products -- not just supplements like coenzyme Q10, ginseng and bacopa, but computer-based fitter-brain products as well.
Nintendo's $19.99 Brain Age 2, a popular video game of simple math and memory exercises, is one. Posit Science's $395 computer-based "cognitive behavioral training" exercises are another. MindFit, a $149 software-based program, combines cognitive assessment of more than a dozen different skills with a personalized…
pharyngula | May 5, 2008It's an event that caused more than 10,000 dead in Myanmar, and who knows how much devastation.
All we have to do, though, is wait a few days, and it will disappear from the news.
cortex | May 5, 2008It is, perhaps, the most nightmarish of neurological conditions: when the brain stem is selectively injured, a person can be perfectly self-aware and yet completely paralyzed, so that they lose control of virtually all voluntary muscles. The technical name of the syndrome captures the horror: "Locked-In Syndrome".
This weekend, I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (newly released on DVD), which tells the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist, who suffered a massive stroke that left him painfully cognizant of his complete paralysis. He ended up writing a memoir by…
cmcclain | May 5, 2008Take a few moments to let the size of the Colossal Squid really sink in
In my absence for a body size evolution workshop and during Peter's coral week spectacular the media took the opportunity to spread disinformation about my favorite phyla-Mollusca. To bring you up to speed, a crack team of teuthologists* dissected both Giant and Colossal Squids at the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand last week. This is where the confusion arises as a Giant Squid AND 2 Colossal Squid were dissected. One of these was the 495kg giant caught over a year ago by fisherman in the Antarctic (oh yeah...she's a…
kevin z | May 4, 2008Continuing the series of VBS.tv's TOXIC-Garbage Island series. Contains some vulgar language. It finally gets good. In part 10, "Its totally not like the money shot, its totally worse". Says it all right there, totally. Watch the net closely in part 11, disgustingly amazing.
cmcclain | May 4, 2008I would like to say I have never used any of these statements in my papers but...
Statement
Really means
It has long been known...
I haven't bothered to look up the reference.
It is thought that...
I think so.
It is generally thought that...
A couple of other people think so, too.
It is not unreasonable to assume...
If you believe this, you'll believe anything.
Of great theoretical importance...
I find it interesting.
Of great practical importance...
I can get some good mileage out of it.
Typical results are shown…
cortex | May 4, 2008I completely agree with the sentiments voiced in this column, by William Rhoden:
Why do we keep giving thoroughbred horse racing a pass? Is it the tradition? The millions upon millions invested in the betting?
Why isn't there more pressure to put the sport of kings under the umbrella of animal cruelty?
The sport is at least as inhumane as greyhound racing and only a couple of steps removed from animal fighting.
It's hard to think otherwise after watching the brutal death of Eight Belles. And, of course, it's not just high-stakes races like the Derby that are so hazardous. A recent article in…
kevin z | May 3, 2008Welcome to the 32nd edition of the Circus of the Spineless. It our distinguished pleasure to be host here at Deep Sea News. To make it easier for you to navigate through 95%+ of the diversity of animal life, I've developed a dichotomous key to help you work through it. Naturalists will undoubtedly be familiar with such a tool, but for the beginner I provide a brief overview. Read both parts of the number and follow path that best describes the post you are looking for. If there is a number at the end, go to that number and repeat until you come to a post you are attempting to identify. Simple…
petnoyer | May 3, 2008Well, all good things must come to an end, so this is it for Coral Week. I wanted to finish things on a high note with the "naked coral" hypothesis. Does it sound like something out of an Austin Powers movie? Really, folks, its in Science! It probably won't save corals from global ocean overturning or anything, but its important to know anyway for your oral exams, for breadth of perspective in the face of doomsday scenarios, or just for good cocktail party conversation.
It was a good theme week here at DSN, our third. Seven or eight different blogs participated. We posted 27 stories in seven…
petnoyer | May 3, 2008There remains a cause for optimism. Shallow-water corals have weathered a host of insults over the last 18,000 years. The Atomic Age is just one in a long list. Since the Pleistocene Era, sea levels rose ~100m to the current sea stand. This literally drowned once thriving tropical reefs. You can scuba dive to 30m on Saba Bank, Caribbean Sea to a 1m high notch that indicates a wave swept shore, so long ago. Another 20m below, gorgonians grow on the dead coral heads of an ancient reef-crest. But who sheds a tear for the Pleistocene?
Corals are tougher than we give them credit for. They…
petnoyer | May 3, 2008This is the fifth of five articles about the shared characteristics of shallow and deep-water corals. It's far from complete, I'm afraid.
Deep corals are out of sight, but not out of reach. The commercial fishermen working above just trawled an old growth sea forest near New Zealand. The bubblegum corals (Paragorgia sp.) on deck in the pictures below are on the order of 100-200 years old. Notice there's not one colony on the deck, but several. The corals were collected from a seamount by commercial fishers trawling for "orange roughy"- the fish formerly known as "slimehead". They changed the…
petnoyer | May 3, 2008a special guest post by John Guinotte, Marine Conservation Biology Institute
The answer is uncertain as very few manipulative experiments have been conducted to test how deep-sea corals react to changes in temperature, seawater chemistry (pH), water motion (currents), and food availability. It is likely that the effects of climate change will not be positive for deep-sea corals, because they are highly specialized and have evolved under very stable (cold, dark, nutrient-rich) conditions. Temperature, salinity, seawater chemistry, and light availability control calcification rates in shallow…
pharyngula | May 3, 2008Did you all catch Keith Olbermann's Worst Person in the World segment? Ben Stein almost made the top of the list — he was beaten by Ann Coulter, though, so the competition was fierce.
The other "almost"…what prompted the nomination was Stein's claim that listening to me reminded him that science is all about killing people. Alas, Olbermann only mentioned me as a generic scientist, not by name. Oh, well.