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This is the thirteenth of 16 student posts, guest-authored by Jessica Ludvik.  One Disease, Many Species Brucellosis, more commonly known as undulant fever in humans or bangs disease in cattle, is one of the oldest bacterial scourges of livestock-producing nations, especially those in which the animals live in close proximity with the human population.  The disease is caused by bacteria of the genus Brucella.  Within this category are many species of bacteria, each almost exclusive to a particular animal species.  A few of the most common seen in veterinary and human medicine today are…

First, I have a new post up at 10,000 Birds: Evolution of the Multi-Media Bird Then, you should check out the recent adds at Free Thought Blogs. You probably know that Zinnia Jones and Ashley Miller were added recently. The other day, Aron Ra of the Ace of Clades was added. And, today, Christina Rad and TunderfOOt were added.

This is the twelfth of 16 student posts, guest-authored by Stanley Corbin. Disease in wildlife is an important concern to the health and safety of humans and domestic animals. The expanding growth of our nation and resultant land use changes with urbanization has resulted in a shrinking habitat and fragmentation for all animals, including humans. The effects of ecological disruption are universally recognized and adversely effects wildlife through multiple mechanisms. Hand it to the coyote (Canis latrans) for its ability to exist with humans. The resilience of this animal can be attributed to…

Why Twitter Matters: Tomorrow’s Knowledge Network Available now: a guide to using Twitter in university research, teaching, and impact activities If you don’t have social media, you are no one: How social media enriches conferences for some but risks isolating others Twitter: My go-to learning network How Will MOOCs Make Money? Not Free, Not Easy, Not Trivial — The Warehousing and Delivery of Digital Goods University Students Are Unaware of the Role of Academic Librarians Patrick Nielsen Hayden Explains eBook Territorial Rights For You The Publishing Buffet: An open-access journal with an…

We can't say how long the 'verge' is. Certainly years. But is it years-years or decades-years? Quite possibly sooner than many might have guessed just a few years ago. I like to be cautious about predicting breakthroughs that have not happened yet, but the results reported a few days ago at a major conference seem to have solved or significantly advanced solving some of the key problems in using stem cells to grown eye tissue. There had been a lot of promising news over the last few years, and one of the most astonishing finds was reported from Japan just a few days ago at the annual…

Music of the Birds by Lang Elliott is a classic book and CD combo well over 10 years old, that provided bird lovers with a chance to learn to identify and appreciate the songs of numerous species. Over the last decade or so many other CD-based bird song offerings have become available. More recently, Lang teamed up with Marie Read to produce an iBook (iAuthored) version of Music of the Birds which takes advantage of the iAuthored iBook format in many ways. This is my first review of an iAuthored book, and obviously the first one on this blog, so I want to use the opportunity to discuss what…

Apologies to everyone for the radio silence - lots of stuff going on here and the blog has been horribly neglected.  Between trying to get the final garden push done, a bunch of goat birthing (including four beautiful babies yesterday for Eric's 42nd birthday - Urania gave us Tybalt and Mercutio in the wee hours while Calendula delivered Beatrice and Benedick), a lot of legal and medical proceedings involving C. and K, our foster sons, and the end-of-school stuff (Eli is transitioning from the program for kids with autism that he's been in since kindergarten to a new program for middle school…

Cringing in Kansas The renewed complaints of a few members of the Kansas state board of education about evolution is making Kansans cringe, according to the editorial board of the Lawrence Journal-World (June 15, 2012). As NCSE previously reported, when the board heard a presentation about the current status of the Next Generation Science Standards on June 12, 2012, Ken Willard, a member of the board, distributed a letter arguing that the draft standards " ignore evidence against evolution, don't respect religious diversity, and promote secular humanism."... Read the rest here. NCSE's Newton…

The other day I found myself with Huxley standing outside a townhouse with no way to get in, within a walled-in court yard, in Minneapolis. Suddenly a K9 Patrol car with dogs came tearing into the courtyard. Other police cars showed up. Cops with drawn guns were running around. It was interesting to contemplate the difference in strategy to avoid ricochet bullets within the stone and brick enclosed area vs. attack dogs who might assume that we were bad guys. I moved Huxley to a corner facing away from the action and then I watched, prepared to throw him up on my shoulders while I wrestled…

I wrote a remembrance of Phillip Tobias for Scientific American Blogs. Please have a look. Thank you very much.

Loud Debate Rages Over N.Y. Library's Quiet Stacks Shh! Scholars Fight Over Library Plan (more on NYPL renovation plans) Editors With Ethics One Culture. Computationally Intensive Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences: A Report on the Experiences of First Respondents to the Digging Into Data Challenge Disintermediating preservation Amazon’s markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000% What's Right With Publishing Business Schools: Who Are Your Competitors? Howard Rheingold on how the five web literacies are becoming essential survival skills An Open Letter to the Guys…

Hi folks We did a google hangout thingie yesterday which went very well (you can see it here) but my webcam apparently sucked. Even though I changed the tagline under my name several times to various very funny comments you can't read it, and this is presumably because the resolution of the web cam was low so the whole thing got messed up. (Compare my part with other people who had better resolution.) The folks who made this video are passing around notes on what seems to work but I thought I's start a thread here to discuss it as well. What are your recommendations?

by Kim Krisberg When most of us think of sustainability and construction, the usual suspects probably come to mind: efficient cooling and heating, using nontoxic building materials, minimizing environmental degradation — in other words, being green. But in Austin, Texas, a new effort is working to expand the definition of sustainability from the buildings themselves to the hands that put them together. Launched about a year ago, the Workers Defense Project's Premier Community Builders program certifies major new developments as sustainable for workers. That means making sure construction…

F. Cunningham gave a great talk today at the ASM 2012 meeting on the discovery of provitamin A synthesis, Vitamin A deficiency and the creation of Golden Rice. Read my twitter stream here.    

If you happened to try recently to get to one or more of the currently inactive yet still extant Scienceblogs.com blogs, you will have gotten an enigmatic message about how the blog is now archived or suspended. That is a technical glitch. The blogs are still there even though you can't see them. In fact, for some people logged in a certain way, they can be visited. I am assured that this is being looked into and will be fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience! There is a huge amount of really important and cool stuff in those blogs. The evolution of the science blogosphere happened there. It…

Check out this interview of me by Dan Fincke at Camels with Hammers.

I knew you'd want to know this: I've written my first novel,and I did it yesterday and this morning. As part of a fundraiser for the Secular Student Alliance, I produced one chapter (some shorter, some longer) per hour (plus/minus) from just after midnight yesterday morning until a few minutes ago. It has adventure, it has primates, it has sex, and it has ... other things. You can read Sungudogo by clicking here. And go from there.

New study concludes" "The western bean cutworm is neither a 'new plant pest' nor 'caused by GE corn' as stated by Greenpeace."  

GM crops good for environment, study finds | Environment | The Guardian.