Uncategorized
grrlscientist | February 6, 2008tags: blog carnivals, science, nature, medicine
The 98th edition of the bi-weekly blog carnival, Tangled Bank, is now available for you to enjoy. This blog carnival focuses on linking to blog writing about science, nature and medicine, and they included something from me, too!
gregladen | February 6, 2008Debate: Are Science and Religion Compatible?
An Evening of Stimulating Intellectual Discourse, with Loyal Rue and PZ Myers
Sponsored by the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists
Thursday, February 7, 2008
7:00pm - 10:00pm
West Bank Auditorium- Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
See here for more details and discussion.
cortex | February 6, 2008Deprive the mind of sensory stimuli, and what does the mind do? It starts to hallucinate. It invents perceptions amid the emptiness, filling in the void with make-believe. This is known as Charles Bonnet syndrome, and it affects approximately 10 percent of who go blind:
It took almost 50 years, but slowly, slowly David Stewart went blind.
A former long-time executive at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington, D.C., Stewart has a hereditary disease, retinitis pigmentosa, which affects the rods and cones in his eyes. In his 20s, his vision narrowed. By the time he hit 80, he was…
kevin z | February 5, 2008One of our astute readers pointed us to this piece published in today's The independent titled The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan. IF EVER there was a reason to join Craig in his Just One Thing Challenge. Now is the time!
"A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris - in effect the world's largest rubbish dump - is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup"…
cmcclain | February 5, 2008I have to admit after being down in a sub and spending time looking at video feeds from ROV's, the crazy animals I see from the deep start to become commonplace. That is why the below video is absolutely off the freakin' hook! Drs. Eric Vetter and Jeff Drazen was in a submersible off the coast of Moloka'i when a 6-gill shark, at an estimated 17ft, swam within feet of the sub. UPDATE: Please note the follow post here in which Jeff Drazen discusses the encounter.
cmcclain | February 5, 2008How does fear drive a marine food web? That's right I said fear, as in blood-curdling-scream-I-think-I-just-wet-my-pants fear. Sharks just swim around and intimidate the hell out of other animals. What if a utopia state existed where sharks weren't invited and a society developed of peace, love, and understanding? What would that society look like?
In actuality we are not too far from that state as shark populations continue to decline. Frid and colleagues publish a model this week in the journal Oikos addressing the impacts of shark declines and "fear-released systems". The model is…
cortex | February 5, 2008That is, if your window happens to be a cockpit over Maui. I thank the reader who sent this photo in. Not only does the tropical sunset brighten another gloomy New England day, but it reminds us that even wind farms can be beautiful:
sb admin | February 5, 2008The push for a presidential candidate science debate is stronger than ever: Yesterday, the National Academies joined other prestigious organizations to co-sponsor the effort.
"This would provide a nonpartisan setting to educate voters on the candidates' positions on key science, technology, and health challenges facing the next administration, while giving the candidates an opportunity to discuss issues that are often overlooked in presidential candidate debates but that are critical to U.S. competitiveness," the presidents of the NAS, NAE, and IOM said in a statement.
"A discussion focused…
kevin z | February 5, 2008As a father of two, I realize the importance of finding good books and toys. My daughter is too young still, but my 27 month old son absolutely LOVES books and I absolutely LOVE buying him new and interesting books. I recently came across two children's books while perusing amazon.
The first is I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry. This is the tale of an arrogant giant squid who points out to everything in the ocean that it is the biggest thing evah! Well, that might not necessarily be true... (you have to read it to find out!) Kevin Sherry put together a fun book with good…
gregladen | February 5, 2008Blog Carnival is an easy way to submit your wonderful post to a blog carnival. As the name implies. Berry Go Round is a new carnival about plants.
I think what you need to do now should be quite clear.
cortex | February 5, 2008I'm morbidly fascinated by the massive losses recently incurred by the French Bank Societe Generale. My fascination is partly rooted in the sheer scale of the disaster, a scale that's essentially incomprehensible. (I have no idea what a $7,000,000,000 loss really means.)
But I'm also interested in how, exactly, a trader could lose so much money and not get noticed. It now appears that the risk-taking culture of Societe Generale is partly to blame:
The 144-year-old bank allowed a culture of risk to flourish, creating major flaws in its operations that enabled the rogue trader's activities to…
cmcclain | February 4, 2008From CNN...
The Navy must follow environmental laws placing strict limits on sonar training that opponents argue harms whales, despite President Bush's decision to exempt it, a federal judge ruled Monday..."We disagree with the (exemption) judge's decision," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "We believe the (exemption) orders are legal and appropriate."
Bwahahahahaha.
grrlscientist | February 4, 2008tags: Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, online game
Do you want to take a fun little break while you write your book report, your dissertation or even that big NSF or NIH grant? Well, now you can, by playing Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. In this online game, you are a raptor, and you drive around in a jeep, knocking over dinosaurs, smashing into stuff, and pulling off cool stunts. Seriously. Despite its technical limitations, Off-Road Velociraptor Safari is crazy enough to be fun. For raw dinosaur-based jeep-driving carnage, look no further.
cortex | February 4, 2008I'm really looking forward to reading Anne Harrington's new book on the history of mind-body medicine. I thought this factoid, from her interview with the Boston Globe Ideas section, was quite interesting:
IDEAS: One of the things I learned reading the book is that there's no word for "hot flashes" in Japanese because menopausal women there don't get them.
HARRINGTON: This is the work of an anthropologist named Margaret Lock, who looked at older Japanese women and found that this very common symptom of menopause in Western countries didn't seem to be widely known in Japan.
IDEAS: How does she…
cortex | February 4, 2008This video is shamefully manipulative. It's just a bunch of celebrities, from Scarlett to John Legend, harmonizing over a particularly eloquent Obama speech. The rhetoric is beautiful, poetic and vapid. The camera work is a little too artful. The crescendo at the end is a little too obvious.
And yet, it works. The short video manipulates you even though you know you're being manipulated. I'm not a big fan of celebrities mixing with progressive politics, but I still got shivers at the end of the song, right when the "Yes we can!" chorus picks up speed.
Those shivers are the sole message of…
cortex | February 4, 2008Apparently, if you breathe in vaporized bits of swine cortex you have a decent chance of getting very sick. That, at least, is the tenuous conclusion of a doctors in Minnesota:
The ailment is characterized by sensations of burning, numbness and weakness in the arms and legs. For most, this is unpleasant but not disabling. For a few, however, the ailment has made walking difficult and work impossible. The symptoms have slowly lessened in severity, but in none of the sufferers has it disappeared completely.
While the illness is similar to some known conditions, it does not match any exactly.…
gregladen | February 3, 2008The next version of Ubuntu is getting closer to a new release. My one version old installation is working so well, I have not actually upgraded to the most current version. Here is an overview from a group that tested this new Alpha version, in which they discuss some of the new features and stuff.
cmcclain | February 3, 2008This is a tale of how a singular event can lead to two simultaneous outcomes, one absurd and one enlightening. Recently, I've needed to have a medical procedure to keep my body functioning. The first procedure over two years ago worked great till last fall. In December, I needed to have this procedure again.
The enlightening part: Kevin was nice enough to send a copy of the Civilization and the Limpet by Martin Wells. Although aware of Well's research, I was wholly unaware of this book. I triumphantly finished it yesterday and am admittedly impressed. The book is unabashedly Mollusc…
cmcclain | February 3, 2008
Now were off with #2:
The request: Use no plastic grocery and shopping bags for the next week. Use, and purchase if necessary, reusable bags. Recycle all plastic bags around the house at a participating location.
The reason: In the North Pacific gyre plastic outnumbers plankton by 6:1. The plastic can clog the stomachs of the marine vertebrates killing more than a million seabirds and 100,000 mammals and sea turtles each year. Moreover, plastics attract chemicals like DDT and PCB poisoning any animal digesting them. Plastics leach endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can alter…