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sciencesociety | December 6, 2007On November 14th, Seed Media Group and Schering-Plough hosted the first in a series of discussions on Capitol Hill, gathering leading researchers and policy experts to discuss topical issues in science.
The first session, entitled "The Future of The Vision for Space Exploration," discussed how to build an efficient, sustainable and progressive space exploration infrastructure.
Speakers were Louis Friedman, Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Planetary Society; Steven Squyres, Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University and Principal Investigator on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission;…
pharyngula | December 5, 2007The holiday season is upon us, and our source of cocoa is going on strike. I hope the US Strategic Chocolate Reserve is well stocked, or Santa will go into withdrawal this Christmas eve.
(We 'podmas celebrants have no worries, at least, unless the herring supplies are depleted.)
petnoyer | December 5, 2007
This is a funny story about a recent expedition to Saba Bank in the Netherlands Antilles. I've been engaged in a few of these over the last couple years, and each trip was funny in its own right. For instance the time we rode four hours each way in 12 foot seas to survey a barren sandy piece seafloor we couldn't reach (~125'). That was bad. I hovered 40 minutes with a whiteboard squinting at coralllimorphs 20 feet below in an unintended "blue dive". If you missed past postings on Saba you can find them here and here.
The latest dive expedition was funny because our unofficial job was to help…
cmcclain | December 5, 2007
As this holiday seasons quickly approaches, I am left pondering what I would like to appear under the tree.
1. The search for a tenure-track faculty position continues. It could be going much better. A nice juicy job offer or even an interview would be fantastic.
2. The most vital piece of science gear I have, my ipod (now several generations old), just quit. My travel, expeditions, and lab work now continue without a soundtrack of block-rockin beats. So a new ipod would be great. However, given #1, #2 is not likely to happen.
3. I have a bit of a science crush on Sylvia Earle. Who…
nisbetmc | December 5, 2007
For readers on campus or in the area, on Monday I will be giving a lecture hosted by the Program in Science, Technology, & Environmental Policy (STEP) at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The talk is scheduled for 1145am to 1pm and will be in 300 Wallace Hall. Below is a description:
Framing Science: A New Paradigm in Public Engagement?
Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D.
School of Communication
American University
Over the past several years, controversies over evolution, embryonic stem cell research, global climate change, and many other topics…
cmcclain | December 5, 2007A little something to get you past the mid-week hump.
CLICK the play button. Then CLICK and DRAG on the video screen to pan across the 360° view.
Embed this video in your blog
CLICK the play button. Then CLICK and DRAG on the video screen to pan across the 360° view.
Embed this video in your blog
cmcclain | December 5, 2007There is a nice write up in Nature about the ARGO (Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography). Argo is network of automonous floats, now numbering over 3000, that record temperature and salinity in the upper 2,000m of the water column. ARGO has greatly increased our knowledge of these factors that were based before on measurements from research vessels and merchant ships. Obviously, this restricts where the data come from and yields poor coverage for many avoided or ignored areas.
gregladen | December 5, 2007From Blogfish: Blue Crabs are Disappearing from Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay's famous blue crabs -- feisty crustaceans that are both a regional symbol and a multimillion-dollar catch -- are hovering at historically low population levels, scientists say, as pollution, climate change and overfishing threaten the bay's ultimate survivor.
This fall, a committee of federal and state scientists found that the crab's population was at its second-lowest level in the past 17 years, having fallen to about one-third the population of 1993. They forecast that the current crabbing season, which ends…
cortex | December 5, 2007From VSL comes this list of truly weird scientific studies. My favorite was this one, which "assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates":
Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun…
gregladen | December 5, 2007
National Geographic has a new project called Dino Death Trap. This is a movie due to be released on December 9th, straring the Junggar Basin of western China known as "The Pit of Death" is found.
Don't miss it.
In the mean time, you can go here and there is a live web cam in Central Park showing people walking by. You click on a button and it makes a dinosaur roar from the bushes near the people, and they piss in their pants and run away because they are scared of the dinosaur. Really, not kidding. Go do it now before the cops find out and remove it.
cortex | December 5, 2007From the great Harold McGee comes an investigation into raw milk, bacteria and cultural evolution:
On our journey up to the Stichelton Dairy last September, Mr. Hodgson [a cheesemaker] explained how cheese quality progressed for centuries, then declined in the age of mass production and supermarkets.
"I think of it as a Darwinian process," he said. "People make cheeses many times a year, in many ways, and all kinds of factors -- accidents, chance, laziness, intentional changes -- cause variations in the result. In the past, the changes that caused an improvement survived because consumers…
grrlscientist | December 4, 2007I am sorry that I haven't been posting as many essays as usual recently, but I am hosting a surprise houseguest (a friend needed a place to crash for ten days or so, so I am providing floor space). As a result, I have been cleaning my apartment (just finished laundry today, ugh), and I will be packing up more textbooks (they are currently spread all over the floor) and stowing them away, as I'd planned to do a couple days ago before I was interrupted. Of course, because I am trying to make the place presentable, this means that I don't have regular access to wifi (I need to go to the library…
gregladen | December 4, 2007The Kirtland's Warbler is now breeding in Canada after a 60 year hiatus.
Conservationists "thrilled" as Kirtland's Warbler returns to Canada
30-11-2007
Bird Studies Canada (BirdLife's Canadian co-Partner) has expressed delight at news that a pair of Kirtland's Warbler Dendroica kirtlandii have bred in Canada - the first in over 60 years.
The discovery of the birds -found at a Canadian Forces Base in eastern Ontario- has provided useful data for scientists researching the distribution of this species, listed globally as Near Threatened by BirdLife.
Kirtland's Warbler does not normally breed…
pharyngula | December 4, 2007Here's a horrible story: a man who bears a grossly disfiguring tumor on his face, one that threatens his life and has afflicted him since adolescence, is only now considering surgery to correct the problem.
Why not before? Because it might require (and now definitely would require) blood transfusions. And he's a Jehovah's Witness. You have to wonder what wretched, evil excuse for a human being among his church associates has been telling him that he shouldn't get this life-saving surgery because God wouldn't like it.
blue_expo | December 4, 2007This week is the second to last week of the semester before finals and everything is coming down to the wire, including my neurobio lab project. PZ was so kind as to come in and help me out this past Sunday morning; the morning after the blizzard had quieted leaving everything covered in various quantities of snow. In going over my methods we found that I wasn't adding a drop or two of water on top of the auger layer with the immobilized zebrafish. The reason this is important is that so after the spinal cord severing is accomplished, the auger layer is separated allowing water to surround…
jlynch | December 4, 2007Births
1852 - Orest Khvolson, Russian physicist
1908 - Alfred Hershey, American bacteriologist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1123 - Omar Khayyám, Persian poet, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher
1798 - Luigi Galvani, Italian physicist
1935 - Charles Robert Richet, French physiologist
cortex | December 4, 2007As I note in my book, the most famous impressionists all suffered from serious medical problems:
Monet became blind (but didn't stop painting the bridges of Giverny). Vincent Van Gogh, drinker of kerosene, turpentine, and absinthe, probably thought the coronas he painted around stars and streetlamps were real. Edgar Degas became severely myopic, which led him to do more and more sculpture ("I must learn a blind man's trade now," Degas said.) Auguste Renoir, poisoned by his pastel paints, became a rheumatic cripple.
Now scientists are able to simulate exactly what Monet would have seen…
cortex | December 4, 2007I had the pleasure of driving for a few hours in yesterday's New England blizzard. (I was coming back from a radio interview for "On Point," which is broadcast out of WBUR in Boston. You can listen to me here.) While driving up a white I-93, I counted more than a dozen vehicles that had lost control, zoomed off the highway shoulder, and ended up trapped in snow banks. So far, so normal. A snow storm makes for treacherous driving. But here's the surprising observation (at least, it was surprising to me): 8 of the 13 cars were trucks. Big, brawny 4x4's. The kind of vehicle that people buy…
petnoyer | December 3, 2007 This month's Carnival of the Blue is happening now at The Natural Patriot. The quality and layout have improved remarkably over time, due largely to the efforts of past Carnival hosts. This is also one of the better moderated collections so far. Host Emmett Duffy does a great job providing a few words of background on each of the eighteen ocean stories hosted there.
The Carnival sideshows include musings on sharks, seagrass, snapping shrimp, Cyclone Sidr, and the Carbon Tax, as well as a profile of the "modern pirate" at the helm of the Sea Shepard, interesting talk about a jellyfish diet,…