ksharpe | August 14, 2006"Smacking down more lies about Plan B"
"It's really not that hard to understand, but what's blocking acceptance are the amazing lies people say about Plan B emergency contraception." PZ sets it straight, here.
"The real Heathrow story...."
From A Blog Around the Clock: "Shakes has the quickest, clearest summary (with good additional links) about what happened at Heathrow last week, how media lied to you yet again, and who picked the timing and why."
"HIV and responsible journalism"
Tara Smith of Aetiology: "If I could have been at this week's conference for one session, it would have been…
bwolin | August 12, 2006A few tender morsels of readability to get your weekend started out right:
"Creationist Turkey should not be let into the EU!"
"The headline says, Evolution Less Accepted in U.S. Than Other Western Countries, Study Finds, but here is the money shot: 'The only country included in the study where adults were more likely than Americans to reject evolution was Turkey.'"
"A day at the Stevens County Fair"
PZ goes to the county fair and posts his pictures so you can vicariously experience every display there! From beasts to vegetables to a big blue machine which may or may not be a Swine Fecal…
ksharpe | August 11, 2006From a working journalist's perspective on the ground in Toronto, to a bench scientist's appraisal of the hottest research abstracts, three bloggers deliver running commentary on the 16th International AIDS Conference.
As part of Seed's exclusive coverage of the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, ScienceBlogs is hosting a special, short-term blog dedicated to the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. The Conference runs from August 13th-18th, and the blog will be up from now until Monday the 21st. Check in for daily updates from two Seed journalists in Toronto,…
ksharpe | August 11, 2006To what extent do you worry about AIDS, either with respect to yourself, your children, or the world at large?
ksharpe | August 11, 2006Ladies and germs, please say hello to the latest addition to the ScienceBlogs family circus, Molecule of the Day.
ksharpe | August 11, 2006"Taxicab Confessions: The Earwax Episode"
"I usually try to avoid the subject [of what i do] with some people, because when i say "I study the inner ear" a lot of people feel the need to unload their medical problems regarding earwax upon me." And: is it a coincidence? Sandra Porter also has a post about earwax, here.
"Vonnegut: Science Art"
Did you know that Kurt Vonnegut has a website with original works of art that you can buy? I didn't!
"Science losing a good friend in Lieberman"
"Say what you want about Joe Lieberman and the political scene, but Lieberman for years has been one of…
ksharpe | August 10, 2006"Platensimycin: Putative New Class of Antibiotic Medication"
Scientists from Merck report on a previously unknown class of antibiotic.
"A Necessary Twist (Values, part IV)"
Why can't we picture a fifth dimension? Stretch your mind with the fourth installment in Karmen's series, complete with illustrations by the author.
"Debunking the Upper Tail: More on the Gender Disparity"
Jake continues his previous discussion of gender differences in cognition: they exist, but are they significant enough to explain anything?
"Hillary for President? Not If You're Old."
Does Hillary make you feel proud…
ksharpe | August 9, 2006If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring seven recent ScienceBlogs posts with you, well, these would be the ones to choose.
"Extra Special K?"
This just in: treatment-refractive depressives respond reall well to...ketamine!?
"Where's the threshold for action?"
Kevin Vranes on why overwhelming scientific consensus alone isn't enough to spur action.
"In the Beginning There Was .. The Big Bang"
Artist and biologist John Kyrk has created flash animations of biological events great and small.
"Cabinets of Curiosity"
Because 'wunderkammer' is just about the best word there is…
ksharpe | August 8, 2006Editor's picks for your reading pleasure on Tuesday, August 8:
"Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut"
Benjamin Cohen on a book that stands up after a dozen readings.
"Buy Stock in Abloy"
Tim Lambert reports on a report that new innovations in thievery have made the pin-tumbler lock obsolete.
"Psychics at the Atlanta Zoo"
The Atlanta Zoo has hired psychics to predict whether their panda is expecting; Orac is not amused.
"Carnivalia, and an open thread"
Don't you love open threads? I do. They're like the digital equivalent of a Quaker meeting. PZ's got one up now over at Pharyngula...
"Where Does…
ksharpe | August 7, 2006Wake up and smell the content: a good week's reading starts here.
"Hurricane-Climate Books"
Two new titles look ahead to the one-year anniversary of Katrina's wrath.
"20,000 Year Old Australian Footprints"
The Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area in New South Wales, Australia, turns up traces of ancient humans on the move.
"Algal Bloom in the Charles River?"
Mike the Mad Biologist thinks he's observed an algal bloom in Boston's Charles River. Have any other Bostonians out there noticed this?
"The Synapse vol 1, issue 4"
Started on ScienceBlogs but drawing entries from throughout the…
ksharpe | August 2, 2006Author and science writer David Dobbs has written for the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American Mind, Slate, Audobon, and others. He is the author of the books Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral; The Great Gulf: Fishermen, Scientists, and the Struggle to Revive the World's Greatest Fishery, and The Northern Forest.
Now he brings his expertise and passion to ScienceBlogs in the form of Smooth Pebbles, a blog that reflects his wide-ranging interests in science, medicine, nature and culture.
Look for a Q & A with David Dobbs in this space soon,…
ksharpe | August 2, 2006Five posts so red-hot I wouldn't recommend touching the screen while you read them.
"Science Is Not a Path to Riches"
"They're not getting out based on a rational assessment of career possibilities, they're getting out because they don't like the first class or two that they take. By the time they find out about the lousy career possibilities, they're too far in to change majors..."
"Zombie DDT Myth Will Not Die"
"The restrictions on the agricultural use of DDT that [Rachel Carson] helped inspire have prevented the development of resistance and are the reason why it can still be used today…
ksharpe | August 2, 2006What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally.
ksharpe | August 1, 2006"Testosterone and Euphoria"
Another rumple in the mysterious case of Floyd Landis.
"Early childhood exposures and a healthy life"
Aetiology on the links between infectious and chronic disease; many avenues of research converge to show that our health is strongly influenced by our exposures in the first few years of life, or even in the womb.
"Save the Australian Lungfish!"
PZ Myers wants YOU to help this magnificent endangered creature.
"FDA moving on Plan B" and "An acceptable quid pro quo on Plan B?"
At last, the FDA has decided to over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive.
"…
ksharpe | July 31, 2006Just what your case of the Mondays needs:
"Darwin has nothing to do with science....There's not a shred of evidence that Darwin was a scientist."
Ben Cohen heard a guy on the radio claim that there was 'no evidence that Darwin was a scientist.' And he asks: What? What does that even mean? He is curious, intrigued, and a little bit weirded out.
"Collaboration, competition, and turf wars"
Janet Stemwedel's continuing coverage of the bouhaha over MIT professor Susumu Tonegawa's role in the decision not to hire job candidate Alla Karpova. Notes on life in "the snakepit" of academic science.
"…
ksharpe | July 29, 2006What to read when you're drinking coffee in your jammies:
"Antisense Oligonucleotide Therapy for ALS patients?"
Lou Gehrig suffered from ALS, as does Stephen Hawking. A new treatment promises relief for some sufferers of this intractable disease.
"Mountaintop [Coal] Removal, Part II: Is a stream without fish still a stream?"
Ben Cohen and Dave Ng chat about Appalachia, the march of progress, "and the questions oddly left unasked about coal, energy, and where we get it."
"Friday Sprog Blogging: how the dinosaurs really went extinct."
"Please pass the ketchup. I'm going to make a tar-pit on my…
ksharpe | July 28, 2006"How to Get a Ph.D. and Never Pay a Dime For It!"
If you're in the sciences and you're paying for your Ph.D., says Shelley, you're getting fleeced. Plus, there looks to be a lively discussion shaping up in comments.
"Science and Hard Work: II"
Is science hard work? Steinn compares a summer job in a fish-processing factory, fieldwork as a hydrologist, and the life of a Caltech graduate student (including taking the last class that Feynman ever taught). The verdict? No. And yes.
"Life and Death in a Lady Beetle Colony"
Karmen's trees are infested...with a gardener's best friend.
"Antibiotics…
ksharpe | July 27, 2006"Compared To Your Pet Iguana, You Are Practically Blind"
How poorly do mammals see? More poorly than we ever could have imagined before discovering melanopsin. Visial photoreception is only the tip of the iceberg.
Speaking of complexity: "A Simple Story Gets Complicated"
Promiscuity in some individuals (we're talking about voles, here) is not as elegantly accounted for by genetics as we once thought.
"Somewhat Less Gleeful Gleevec"
Gleevec, a drug for chronic myelogenous leukemia, hit the market in 2001, and was welcomed as the harbinger of a new generation of cancer treatments. Now it's been…
ksharpe | July 26, 2006Today on ScienceBlogs:
Ten leading climate scientists say: even those who disagree about global warming can admit that overdevelopment on the coasts sets us up to lose life and property to hurricanes
A Tale of Two Job Searches (Having A Family and an Academic Career, Part 4)
Morgan Spurlock (of Supersize Me fame): "We need to turn scientists back into the rock stars they are."
A new sunscreen may blow previous sunscreens out of the water
New levels of complexity discovered in DNA; Cassini sends back photographs of Titan's murky "lakes"
Hybrids vs. Hummers redux: Sticking up for corporate…
ksharpe | July 26, 2006I heard that within 15 years, global warming will have made Napa County too hot to grow good wine grapes. Is that true? What other changes are we going to see during our lifetimes because of global warming?