ksharpe

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August 20, 2007
8.13.07 to 8.19.07 Homepage Buzzes 8/13: Science Panel on C-SPAN On Saturday, C-SPAN aired a televised broadcast of the "Science, Politics, and Activism" panel that took place on August 3 at the YearlyKos Convention. The video of the panel, moderated by Tara Smith and featuring science bloggers…
August 14, 2007
The volume is slim, just seventeen pages long--an elegant, tall rectangle of cream-colored paper. Looking at the scanned pages, it seems almost possible to reach out and touch the yellowed crease of the cover, the rusted staples. "INTRODUCTION TO OUTER SPACE," the booklet reads. "THE WHITE HOUSE;…
July 19, 2007
Please welcome the newest addition to ScienceBlogs, Angry Toxicologist. As the Toxicologist says in an introductory post, I am a Ph.D. scientist in the public health sector with a good amount of toxicology and regulatory knowledge. I'm not going to be dishing about projects I am privy to, but I am…
July 13, 2007
In this video by Seed video producer Jacob Klein, Seed's art director, Adam Billyeald, narrates the creation of the cover art for the August 2007 issue of Seed—from special E. coli-covered stamps and an agar-filled petri dish. The cover art hails author and ScienceBlogger Carl Zimmer's feature…
July 6, 2007
On July 1, ScienceBlogs welcomed a new addition: Neurophilosophy, by Moheb Costandi. Science writer, Englishman, and former student of developmental neurobiology (and future student of neuroscience) Costandi covers all matters brain-related, with special attention to good stories from history.…
June 28, 2007
Talk about your daily candy. This is the video for Fujiya & Miyagi's single "Ankle Injuries," directed by Wade Shotter, and it's all done with...dice!
June 11, 2007
This deserves a read: University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne has published an essay at Edge taking on Republican presidential hopeful Senator Sam Brownback's (R-KS) views on faith and evolution, as expressed in Brownback's May 31 New York Times op-ed. The Senator, who raised his hand at a…
June 6, 2007
Have you ever heard someone claim that a piece of paper can't be folded in half more than seven times? We had, and we were suspicious. So we thought about putting it to the brain trust, in the form of an 'Ask a ScienceBlogger' quesetion. Molecule of the Day responded immediately with a great…
May 21, 2007
Meet Ian Hart, the athletic and self-confessedly "BoBo" author of Integrity of Science, a blog about public policy and the abuse of science—a fan of Caravaggio and detractor of strip malls. What's your name? Ian Hart What do you do when you're not blogging? I'm the Communications Director for the…
May 15, 2007
Ah, science fairs. To the left, observe my colleague, fellow Seed-ster Lee Billings, feeling the science fair glow at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Intel ISEF is the world's largest and most acclaimed gathering of pre-college-age scientists.…
May 9, 2007
Looking at religious and monumental architecture the world over, you might be tempted to assume that a high ceiling has always been correlated with feelings of expansiveness and grandiosity, and more confined spaces with homelier contemplation. Nevertheless, no one had investigated the effects of…
April 26, 2007
How do copyright and fair use laws, framed before the internet was a twinkle in the eye, apply in the world of blogging? The answer, as a case that unfolded on ScienceBlogs this week demonstrates, may be "not so clearly." Ergo, we've asked a few experts and stakeholders to weigh in on the issue of…
April 25, 2007
Blacksburg, says ScienceBlogger Benjamin Cohen in Tuesday's issue of The Morning News, has a "bucolic town" reputation so entrenched as to almost have become a cliche. Cohen spent 11 years in Blacksburg—long enough to know the area's natural beauty deeply, and also to know that no town is simple…
April 17, 2007
Today, New York City is wringing itself out after a late-season Nor'easter. Saturday, it dealt with another kind of flood. On April 14, a "Sea of People" dressed in blue and bearing boats, beach balls, and other watery accoutrements descended on lower Manhattan. They gathered in Battery Park at…
April 9, 2007
If you've ever complained that the kids today just don't understand how things used to be in the good old days, then you've grasped the concept of shifting baselines. The phrase, coined by University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre Director Dr. Daniel Pauly in 1995, refers to the way that…
April 6, 2007
It's Friday afternoon, and scores are in for the Erlenmeyer Flask vs. Fossil Fuels game at Chemical Arena. Erlenmeyer Flask went into the first quarter hoping to contain Fossil Fuels. The team (sometimes known by its nickname, Conical Flask), clearly—and of necessity—adheres to the philosophy that…
April 4, 2007
Starting today, ScienceBlogs is introducing a new-and-improved feature that allows you, dear reader, to tap into the brain-power and expertise of the ScienceBlogs collective mind—all to answer your most burning questions about matters scientific. Every couple of weeks, a ScienceBlogs blogger will…
April 3, 2007
Hello, and welcome to the Sweet Sixteen round of the Science Spring Showdown—ScienceBlogs' answer to March Madness. (Feeling confused? Catch yourself up on what this is all about, here). The phrase "Mad as a March Hatter" might be apposite. But be that as it may, Page 3.14 is nothing short of…
March 29, 2007
The Pharmalot blog reports today on a Reuter's story about an oral vaccine for Alzheimer's that proved successful at diminishing signs of Alzheimer's in a study of 28 mice bred to develop the disease. Limited testing of the vaccine in humans may be next. The vaccine works by reducing the amount of…
March 27, 2007
Feeling irritated? Getting blown off course by the emails pinging into your inbox, or the six open tabs in your web browser? Take a deep breath...but also, if you can, take a nap. A Dutch researcher named Harm Veling has conducted research into distraction and concluded that the state of being…
March 26, 2007
Source: xkcd
March 23, 2007
During the too-warm New York winter of 2007, a parent at Brooklyn's PS 58 started Little Grassroots as a place for children to blog about global warming. On it, the children of PS 58 are joined by kids from as far afield as France, the UK, and Singapore. Their contributions to the blog are lightly…
March 14, 2007
As the New York Times reports today, the British government has introduced a sweeping bill that would cut the UK's carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050. Read the article, or watch Britain's environmental minister, David Miliband, introduce the bill on YouTube:
March 13, 2007
This just deserved a greater calling-out: the evil geniuses over at The World's Fair have put together a "Science Spring Showdown", aka "the thinking person's ccomplement to the NCAA tournament!" Take a look at the brackets, and thrill to such potential match-ups/epic battles as 'Darwin vs Jesus…
March 12, 2007
A leaked memo from an official in the U.S. Department of the Interior warns government officials traveling to other countries to avoid discussing topics "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears." While the Bush administration continues to debate whether or…
March 10, 2007
If you're thinking about pollen much and you're not a farmer or a beekeeper, chances are you probably suffer from wicked seasonal allergies. Then again, you could be an artist. Kysa Johnson, a painter whose work explores microcosmic and macrocosmic natural phenomena, opens a show this weekend at…
March 9, 2007
While I wouldn't be surprised if he'd seen all the good cephalopod kitsch before, I would like to offer, in honor of squid-loving blogger PZ Myers' birthday today, an image of this scientifically-inaccurate but highly awesome painting of a T-Rex, a sperm whale, and a giant squid having it out in a…
March 8, 2007
When weird-science group the Athanasius Kircher Society held its inaugural meeting in New York City this January, the meeting's flaming grand finale was a live onstage performance by a 20-foot-long Rube Goldberg contraption. The device's designer, Jesse Ferguson, has posted a video of the machine…
March 7, 2007
...because Jessica Hagy, author of the indispensable fun-with-charts-and-graphs blog Indexed, has landed a book deal. We expect it will be full of gems like this: Image: Indexed.
March 6, 2007
"When I was in high school, I remember friends who were jealous that my parents knew math and science," writes Janet Stemwedel of ScienceBlogs' Adventures in Ethics and Science, over at the current issue of the Science Creative Quarterly, since obviously that meant I could ask them for help with my…