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petnoyer | October 8, 2007Today is Cephalopod Awareness Day. Jason at Cephalopodcast asks us to "embrace your inner octopus and let the world know what we think of our tentacled friends."
At the moment, Craig is in the running for a spot on a documentary series about the deep-sea. He is one of five finalists on the casting couch in Boston today, so I am taking the opportunity to revive an old post documenting known attacks of the Kraken. As you will see below, I don't think of squid as "friends". Quite the contrary...
These are turbulent times. Lately, an awesome sea rides in on violent storms ravaging Gulf coasts…
jlynch | October 7, 2007Births
1850 - Henri Louis le Chatelier, French chemist
1883 - Otto Heinrich Warburg, German physician and Nobel Prize laureate
1917 - Rodney Robert Porter, English biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1927 - César Milstein, Argentine scientist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1647 - Christian Sørensen Longomontanus, Danish astronomer
grrlscientist | October 7, 2007tags: reading quiz, online quiz
What Kind of Reader Are You?
Your Result: Dedicated Reader
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You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
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Literate Good Citizen
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Book Snob
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Fad Reader
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Non-Reader
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What Kind of Reader Are You?
cortex | October 6, 2007This year, California will spend three times as much operating its prisons than running the UC system.
jlynch | October 6, 2007This morning we successfully funded two further projects and are now impacting the science education of approximal 190 students in Illinois, California, and North Carolina. Many thanks to all who have donated so far.
This project (for twenty kids effected by Katrina) needs a further $381 in the next five days. The teacher says this about their students:
Science is important to them because science is all around them. Pre-K students develop a love for living things and other science concepts during their first year of school.
My "little scientists" include 20 four and five year old "at-risk…
tlambert | October 6, 2007The latest issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPANDS) has attracted the attention of Eli Rabett and Lauredhel. Rabett notices that JPANDS has published an updated version of the paper used to mislead folks into signing the Oregon Petition, while Lauredhel looks at a dodgy study they published arguing for an abortion breast cancer link. (It just looks at aggregate data and is obviously trumped by studies that use individual data.) This issue even has a favourable review of Tom Bethell's Creationist tract.
Kathleen Seidel has the definitive examination of all the…
cmcclain | October 6, 2007Spent some time today remodeling the website. The biggest difference you will notice is a rotating masthead. Currently there are three in random rotation. The first one is the one you are familiar with. Those of you with us since the old days will recognize the second masthead, our very fist for DSN. The third is a new one inspired by one of my favorite movies. Here's the exciting news! Create a banner for DSN and if it is up to our exacting standards will include it in the banner rotation. Banners needs to be 756 by 101 pixels. Post links here or send them by email.
thescian | October 6, 2007Before I get to the post, some contest updates. I have started reading the contest stories. To level the field, Ramya downloaded the stories from the contests email, edited the author identities out and has given me a folder full of stories without author names on it. I am reading blind, so to speak (if you want to pursue this technique yourself, Margaret Atwood speaks of this in her book Curious Pursuits). To the post now.
I watched Sunshine an hour ago. It is a wonderful movie with rare depth of science seen these days. I enjoyed the movie, the intense drama created by existential questions…
cmcclain | October 5, 2007This is HUGE thank you to all of you who have pushed up to 86% of our goal. Our goal is $1100 which was more than we needed to fund three classrooms. At this point we need a mere $166, to put us over our goal and fund a fourth classroom. If we make our goal, we Donor's Choose will give us a bonus to apply to a fifth classroom! I am very excited we are so near our goal. As this week closes, I bask in the contentment of knowing we accomplished something great and are inspiring tomorrow's marine scientists and conservation minded citizens. So help me make this final push.
The final…
blue_expo | October 5, 2007In discussing Soul Made Flesh this past Wednesday morning in PZ's neurobiology class, I brought up what I thought to be an interesting, though somewhat tangential, point. Zimmer mentioned Anne Conway and how ambitious she was in her studies despite not being allowed to attend a university. The fact that females were not given the same opportunities throughout history is something I remember learning about in grade school. But where did the ideology that females are inferior to males begin?
One of my fellow students argued that because females give birth they were probably not expected to…
grrlscientist | October 5, 2007tags: worry, online quiz
Your Worry Factor is 67%
The amount you worry is definitely borderline unhealthy.
Even when things are going well, you find yourself fixating on the negatives.
Try to remember the times you've been able to let your worries go.
If you can do that again, you'll be much happier!
Do You Worry Too Much?
Have you ever been able to "let your worries go"? I haven't, but then again, I have very good reasons to worry all the time!
sb admin | October 5, 2007By Kristen Perosino
Spinach. Peanut butter. Hamburgers. Pet food. No, Iâm not preparing for a trip to the grocery store (but if I were, I might unknowingly be adding salmonella, E. coli, and aflatoxin to my grocery list). Iâm talking about food safety.
Americans have been made more aware lately of the flaws in our current food safety system, and many lawmakers agree that reform is necessary. However, they donât agree (yet) on the most effective way to address this issue. Letâs look at some of the food safety problems.
The U.S. food safety system is over 100 years old. It was…
cortex | October 5, 2007This seems like a really good thing:
In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a soft-spoken civilian anthropologist named Tracy.
Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team's ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations -- in one case…
signout | October 5, 2007As recompense for the daily slog that is residency, Signout is going away for a much-needed week or so at the beach. She promises that when she returns in mid-October, she will be tanned, rested, and ready to resume taking everybody's shit. Meanwhile, please enjoy some of her greatest hits [in her own mind].
Since it's October, and therefore time to start preparing in earnest for Christmas, today's selection is presented as a seasonal offering. If you are a wacky gentile and it happens to whip you up into a holiday frenzy, Signout cannot be held responsible for your resultant purchases…
cmcclain | October 5, 2007Here it is, you have earned it! Still trying to figure out the salmon which doesn't really look like a salmon at all. It might pass as a subyearling Chinook from a long distance. Someone who knows salmon please feel free to comment further. Regardless, love the video and song.
harderkid13 | October 4, 2007Sorry about that last post. I am still trying to figure out how to format this blog correctly. Here are links to the abstracts of the articles I used to design my experiment. Admittedly I played up the sophomoric college student part a bit. Apparently a bit too much. To answer a few concerns about this experiment, the fish are not likely to die. I would never preform an experiment that was cruel or served no purpose other than my own personal enjoyment. While, it is not likely that I will have any groundbreaking results, I hope to further my own personal research experience and possibly…
harderkid13 | October 4, 2007There are those who have questioned the reason for getting fish drunk. I could stumble through the explanation and make the issue much more confusing than it has to be, or I could just post a few of research articles I used to design my experiment.
Gerlai, R., Lahav, M., Guo, S., Rosenthal, A. 2001. Drinks Like a fish: zebra fish (Danio rerio) as a behavior genetic model to study alcohol effects. Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior. 67:773-782
Dlugos, C.A., Rabin, R.A., 2003. Ethanol effects on three strains of zebrafish: model system for genetic investigations. Pharmacology, Biochemistry…
petnoyer | October 4, 2007
This is one of the stamps Dr. Frederick "Ted" Bayer painted for a coral reef series from the country of Haiti. Dr. Bayer passed away earlier this week. This stamp is part of his legacy.
The image depicts the deep-sea scleractinian cup coral Stephanocyathus diadema, one of the most ornate and beautiful cup coral skeletons. The skeletons are small. Most specimens could fit easily in the palm of your hand. Stephanocyathus is known from 220-2553 m, S. diadema from 795-2553 m, so it is the deepest in its genus of 14 spp. (S. Cairns, NMNH, pers. comm.).
It's remarkable that Dr. Bayer put a…
grrlscientist | October 4, 2007tags: finances, blog carnival
The 4 October 2007 edition of the Carnival of Financial Planning has just been published. This carnival takes a long-term view of personal financial planning for individuals and families. They focus on efficient and sustainable personal financial planning practices that can lead to lifetime financial security. Unless, of course, you can't afford health insurance and find yourself dreadfully sick! But ohwell, that's just a minor detail, insn't it?
Anyway, be sure to go there and take a peek around at the links they've collected.
grrlscientist | October 4, 2007Does anyone out there have access to the PDF version of Scientific American's "The Mind"?
If so, I'd like the most recent issue .. not sure of it's the September or October issue, so maybe you can just send both to me and I'll figure it out?