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petnoyer | October 2, 2007Imagine this at the Weather Channel. The announcer is sitting on a beach waiting for a wave that comes once every four hours. He sits there eight hours, at least, to notice the wave roll in twice. To formulate a testable hypothesis about the periodicity he sits in the chair for a week. To understand the effect of the wave he will sit there for a month, or design an instrument to do it for him.
This is one reason why oceanographers seem to live in another world. They occupy a different space-time continuum than we do. We can only wish we had the time to watch a large internal wave breaking…
grrlscientist | October 1, 2007tags: blog carnivals, carnival of eating disorders, eating disorders
The latest edition of the Carnival of Eating Disorders is now available for you to enjoy. As you might know, eating disorders affect many people, either directly or indirectly. This blog carnival included an essay that I wrote, so be sure to go there and read it as well as their many wonderful pieces.
grrlscientist | October 1, 2007tags: blog carnivals, Writers block, writing
The latest edition of the Writer's Block carnival is now available for your reading pleasure. Even though there's plenty there to read, I think I've cornered their market for book reviews .. go check it out to see what they've got to read!
razib | October 1, 2007 It's that time of the year again! I'm getting involved in Donors Choose for the month of October, check out projects I'm trying to raise money for at the link.
There are other ScienceBloggers involved of course. Below the fold are further details from Janet:
This year, the challenge runs for the entire month of October. A number of ScienceBloggers have already put together challenges, but I suspect a few more may arrive fashionably late. Here's who's in so far:
A Blog Around the Clock (challenge here)
Adventures in Ethics and Science (challenge here)
Aetiology (challenge here)…
grrlscientist | October 1, 2007tags: blog carnivals, brain
The latest edition of the Brain Blogging carnival is now available, and they were fkind enough to include something that I wrote. Yeah, me! Be sure to go there and give them support by reading a few of their links.
hrynyshyn | October 1, 2007Freeman Dyson is one of those important scientists it's impossible to ignore, even when he's dead wrong. In an interview with Salon, he says lots of silly things -- don't worry about the polar bear, religion and science are compatible, and "we have no reason to think that climate change is harmful." But you gotta love the guy anyway...
You gotta love him for two reasons. First, because he came up with the very cool idea of the Dyson sphere, a mammoth shell surrounding a star that supplies the inhabitants of the interior with the maximum amount of solar energy. Second, because he's humble…
cortex | October 1, 2007There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Last week, the newspapers were filled with stories about rising divorce rates. It was widely reported that couples that married in the 1970's had a less than even chance of celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. But those statistics were misleading. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers report:
The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those…
cmcclain | October 1, 2007Last year DSN, although not a Sb'ling, participated in the Donor's Choose Campaign. Various bloggers here at Sb, with the help of our readers, raised money for classrooms across the US. DonorsChoose is an organization that helps teachers fund classroom projects and other student learning experiences. DSN raised over $500 dollars last year to send children from a southern California school on a field trip to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. You can catch read about this on today's other post.
Given the success of last year, DSN is again sponsoring a challenge to raise money. This year we…
cmcclain | September 30, 2007
Last year DSN and our readers raised money to send 53 seventh and eigth grade sciences students of Kipp Academy of Opportunity to the Aquarium of the Pacific.
KIPP Academy of Opportunity is a free public middle school of choice, which opened in the Summer of 2003 in South Los Angeles. This new charter school accepts 90 fifth graders each year, and serves approximately 360 students in grades 5 through 8. KIPP Academy of Opportunity enables students to become self-motivated, competent, and life-long learners. Armed with these skills and achievements, the students of KIPP Academy of Opportunity…
lua yar | September 30, 2007The neurobiology of intelligence
Where do people get the idea that intelligence has a biological basis? Oh yeah, from those geneticists, whose research has shown that intelligence levels can be inherited. One fairly new development for researching intelligence is through the conduction of brain imaging studies.
Recently, two neuroscientists by the names of Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine and Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico, compiled a review of 37 such intelligence imaging studies. With this data, and current neurobiology studies that indicate intelligence is a…
petnoyer | September 30, 2007 The Carnival of the Blue thing has really come together lately thanks to Mark Powell, the power of the blogosphere, and a dedicated online ocean public that includes you. Go see the latest line up of stories at Shifting Baselines-"the cure for ocean amnesia".
Where else you gonna upload your migration tracks for bob-tailed godwits into Google Earth (DC Birding Blog), and set yourself "strait" on the meltdown in the Northwest Passage (Island of Doubt)?
Lots of good stuff to see and read there.
grrlscientist | September 30, 2007tags: sorting quiz, online quiz
Just in time for a new term at school; it's time to get sorted into your house!
The Sorting Quiz
Your Result: Ravenclaw
You are smart, intelligent, and perceptive. You love information and flourish in facts. Though some Ravenclaws (like Luna) have an open mind, you might not have such an open mind, you might need proof for everything. But this isn't always a bad thing!
Gryffindor
Hufflepuff
Slytherin
The Sorting Quiz
cmcclain | September 29, 2007 To kick off the new badge "I'm a marine biologist and, to be honest, I kind of hate dolphins", Science Creative Quarterly has published an article about the realities of being a marine biologist. Milton states it clearly.
Just be honest with yourself. If you want to talk to dolphins you don't want to be a [marine] biologist. What you really want to do is explore your past lives, get in touch with the Cosmic Oneness and conduct similar-minded individuals on tours to Central America looking for evidence that We Are Not Alone. Our experience is that people who feel this way last about 6.5…
blue_expo | September 28, 2007As one of my fellow classmates has already described in part, we have proposed to study the effects of sleep deprivation and alcohol on zebrafish. We have a good idea of how to execute experimentation on this topic. The meaning behind it however remains, as of yet, a bit vague. The idea was brought up during our last class discussion that we could experiment with the effects of sleep deprivation and alcohol on zebrafish development or adult mating and feeding patterns. We also thought of experimenting with the behavior of zebrafish on cocaine, or with the effects of alcohol and sleep…
grrlscientist | September 28, 2007tags: sesame street, online quiz
You Are Cookie Monster
Misunderstood as a primal monster, you're a true hedonist with a huge sweet tooth.
You are usually feeling: Hungry. Cookies are preferred, but you'll eat anything if cookies aren't around.
You are famous for: Your slightly crazy eyes and usual way of speaking
How you life your life: In the moment. "Me want COOKIE!"
The Sesame Street Personality Quiz
Hey, how did they know that my favorite snack is a .. COOKIE!!
cmcclain | September 27, 2007The Washington Post is sponsoring the onBeing project that
is a project based on the simple notion that we should get to know one another a little better. What you'll find here is a series of videos that takes you into the musings, passions, histories and quirks of all sorts of people. The essence of who they are, who we are.
One of these videos is Chris Mah, master of all echinoderm, displaying the passion that drive his research and makes interacting with Chris a pleasure. Catch this Chris's guest post at the old DSN.
cmcclain | September 27, 2007
Yo DIC (Dissolved Inorganic Carbon), Let's Kick It! Hat tip to Christina Kellogg for pointing this out to me.
grrlscientist | September 27, 2007tags: blog carnivals, nature, science, medicine, tangled bank
Good news, everyone; the 89th edition of The Tangled Bank blog carnival is now available for you to enjoy. Sorry I am late with this announcement, but you know, shit is what happens as you try to life your life.
cmcclain | September 27, 2007The question is whether crops belong in your mouth or your gastank? Bioscience has a interesting article from June with National Geographic following on their heals this month. Both are very interesting and worth the read. Nash in Bioscience lays out what are the potential ill effects of moving to biofuels:
Diversion of food crops such as corn and soybeans into gas tanks
Release of greenhouse gases
Conversion of wildlife habitat into energy-crop farmland
Accelerating soil depletion
Drawdown of scarce water resources for irrigation
Spread of invasive species used as energy crops
Illusion of…