ksharpe | June 9, 2006Dear Visitor,
Welcome to the new ScienceBlogs! Beginning today, you'll notice a newly designed homepage (built from your feedback) at scienceblogs.com and the addition of 25 new blogs to our network.
Science is driving our global conversation unlike ever before. From climate change to intelligent design, HIV/AIDS to stem cells, science education to space exploration, science is figuring prominently in our discussions of politics, religion, philosophy, business and the arts. New insights and discoveries in neuroscience, theoretical physics and genetics are revolutionizing our understanding of…
ksharpe | June 7, 2006Ask a Big Question, get...fewer answers. But really well-considered, provocative ones.
This week, the ScienceBloggers mulled:
"Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it?"
Read on for their relplies.
Most of the bloggers pointed out the question isn't asking about a "brain drain" as it's most commonly defined -- rather, it's asking whether the influx of foreign…
ksharpe | June 5, 2006This week, I'll post the Ask A ScienceBlogger question early, before the roundup. Here's the query that the ScienceBloggers will be mulling over this week. Look for their answers, accumulating until Wednesday:
"Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it?"
ksharpe | May 31, 2006This week, ScienceBloggers tackled the question of how much control the public ought to have over the scientific research that its tax dollars pay for. The question was phrased like so:
"Since they're funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making bodies?"
And the answers? Well, the answers depend on what you mean by "justify."
(continued below the fold...)
Most of the ScienceBloggers claim that letting the public vote directly on which specific projects will or won't receive…
ksharpe | May 24, 2006This week, the ScienceBloggers lined up to take a crack at this fine question:
"If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?"
Below the fold, in their own words, twelve ScienceBloggers name the ideas they'd be happier if we all grasped firmly.
But first, an above-the-fold reminder to send your Ask A ScienceBlogger questions to askablogger@seedmediagroup.com.
Razib at Gene Expression would have the public understand that the essence of science isn't findings, but process:
"my reply is that the public needs to know that the most important idea…
ksharpe | May 17, 2006For this week, ScienceBlogs editorial asked its cabal of bloggers to answer, if the spirit moved them, the following question:
Will the 'human' race be around in 100 years?
More consensus this week than last -- but that is the nature of a yes/no question. Luckily, there was some fine exposition along the way.
The good news: at least 7 out of 10 ScienceBloggers expect humanity as such to endure for at least ten more fun-filled decades.
Their answers, glossed and linked, below the fold.
At Cognitive Daily, the Mungers answer: yes, but.... In 100 or, more likely, 1000 years, advances in…
ksharpe | May 12, 2006Drumroll, please.
ScienceBlogs can now be enjoyed on the go, in podcast form.
In our first podcast, Sb editors talk with Janet Stemwedel of 'Adventures in Ethics and Science,' who presents her views on plagiarism in the sciences: why it matters, who it hurts, and what, just maybe, can be done about it.
The program can be found for downloading and listening in the podcast area of Seedmagazine.com, where it is described thusly:
The Worst Thing A Scientist Can Do
ScienceBlogs' Janet Stemwedel discusses scientists' cheating ways.
Lie, cheat, steal: Scientists have been known to do all three on…
ksharpe | May 11, 2006Last week, we at the Seed mother-ship taxed the collective brain-power of the ScienceBloggers with the following question:
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?
Their responses have swooped from the sublime to the ridiculous...and back again.
ScienceBloggers' picks for most despicable invention, below the fold.
Janet Stemwedel, of Adventres in Ethics and Science, fingered "embedded advertising", like product placements in TV shows and movies, after toying with nominating cell phones and realizing she's mostly…
ksharpe | May 8, 2006Thanks, Tim, for the link to this story in Kuro5hin, by an individual who claims to have cured himself of hay fever and asthma by deliberately infesting himself with hookworms.
This first-hand story, as its author notes, "isn't for the faint hearted and for some should not be read while eating."
But I recommend putting that afternoon snack down, and checking it out.
ksharpe | May 8, 2006This is the debut of a new weekly feature on ScienceBlogs. It's called Ask A ScienceBlogger, and it is Sb's own mini blog carnival -- a chance for the bloggers to weigh in, briefly, about a question of general interest.
This week's question is:
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?
Check back to Stochastic on Wednesday for a full, annotated run-down of the bloggers' answers. In the meantime, check a few early responses here, here, and here. Oh, and here.
To suggest a question for the next Ask A ScienceBlogger…
ksharpe | May 3, 2006Hay fever, as those of you who have it know, can be a most remarkable feeling.
Your eyes itch, and your joints ache. You feel as though you were coming down with the flu.
Time itself can seem distended, warped. Your hands feel like balls of dough, and you're sleepy...so sleepy.
You feel preternaturally calm on the one hand; on the other, you can't focus (your mind, or heck, sometimes even your eyes) to save your life. You start to wonder whether this is what it feels like to have ADD.
I'm dizzy today. I feel as though someone had wrapped my head in several layers of cotton wool. There's a…
ksharpe | April 25, 2006I find it funny, somehow, that I learned it's National Poetry Month by reading ScienceBlogs. 'The web's largest conversation about science' seems a strange place to find contributions to a celebration of poetry, but maybe it's not. Scientists and poets are alike in being keen observers of the world. Perception and description are the poet's, and the scientist's, stock in trade.
So perhaps it's apt for a science-minded blogger to call me out of the hustle and bustle of my day for a moment, by giving me a poem that makes me percieve the world just a little more deliberately.
Following, a…
cmims | April 24, 2006...reads the headline of this article from the The Times of London.
Pump prices have risen by one third over the past year and in some parts of the US have topped $3 (£1.68) a gallon. Among the ultra-rich of Beverly Hills, the cost of fuel has even slipped over the $4 mark.
This is, of course, still far less than the equivalent of about $8 being paid by British motorists, but such comparisons hold little sway in the US where, for many, the unfettered freedom of the individual to drive across wide-open spaces is almost part of the Constitution. By contrast, public transport has, historically…
cmims | April 21, 2006
When I hear "glacier" I think of words like "fjord" and "Greenland."
It's easy to forget that there are some not so far away from us, rapidly receding like most of their brethren.
Ex seed staffer done good Ted Alvarez visited one of them, in Canada's icefield parkway, and brought back some stunning shots:
Canada's Icefields Parkway: 250 Kilometers of Solitude
Canada's Icefields Parkway: Pure Backcountry Front Country
joshua roebke | April 21, 2006A while back, I wrote what some might call a fairly provocative article on the promiscuity of famous physicists entitled Getting Physical. Besides getting picked up by a porn site or two and this possibly NSFW link (So what if you've been on Slashdot? How many science articles can claim this distinction, huh?), I received quite a few responses from some rather aghast SEED lovers questioning the veracity of my claims.
Let me just say this: I am equally SHOCKED. You fell into that tired stereotype that scientists are all asexual freezy pops? Sorry people, don't want to ruin your next…
ksharpe | April 21, 2006You know what they say about great minds.
In the April 14 issue of Science Magazine, two environmental scientists opine that scientists can, and must, become active bloggers and readers of blogs, for two main reasons. First, hard-blogging scientists will ensure that sound scientific information makes it to a wide public audience (while by shunning blogging, the scientific community will cede the conversation to other voices and other interests). Second, scientists have, in the blogosphere, an unprecedented tool for sharing and soliciting ideas, data, and hypotheses. A blog-literate scientific…
ksharpe | April 20, 2006Non-U.S. Stochastic readers, we've heard you. You tried to answer the Seed survey, tried to fill in the questions about where you live, and all you got was a lousy selection of U.S. states to choose from.
We're sorry. Seed knows (and loves) that we have readers all over the world, and we're working on a revised version of the survey with an expanded list of places that will, we sincerely hope, include the one you call home.
Thanks so much for your responses.
cmims | April 19, 2006
Y'all may have noticed that there are a bunch of us blogging on Stochastic.
That's because there are a bunch of us working at Seed.
Here's my (and a little bit of our) story:
My name is Christopher. I was hired as a writer. Now I'm an editor, managing editor, web producer, writer, project manager, graphic designer, human/systems interface designer, information architect and general layabout.
On the masthead I'm listed as a web editor. But everyone wears more than a few hats here at Seed, according to our respective abilities. For instance our Science Blogs editor also coordinates podcast…
ksharpe | April 19, 2006Seriously. Who are you, yeah you, the one reading ScienceBlogs, right now?
Seed wants to know, and we're hoping that you'll tell us, by replying to the brief survey that you can find in the right-hand column of the ScienceBlogs homepage.
As though love alone weren't enough to motivate you, survey completers will be entered for a chance to win an iPod nano.
Go on, get clicking. Answer the questions, help us improve.
ksharpe | April 19, 2006An interesting piece posted on Slate.com yesterday called attention to the results of a NIMH study that might help rank existing antidepressant medications in order of effectiveness.
The study, which goes by the awkward moniker of STAR*D (Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression), focused "on the common clinical question of what to do next when patients fail to respond to a standard trial of treatment with an antidepressant medication," according to the study's website. The study, the website continues, aimed "at defining which subsequent treatment strategies, in what order or…