Links
jgoldman | May 14, 2010Figure 1: From the good folks at Fake Science, something particularly relevant for me, these last few weeks.
Here's a round-up for this week. Since I missed doing it last week, I'll include a few extra things that I would have included last week.
Did you catch my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week? Here's a link. And last week's.
Also, we're relaunching Ask A Scienceblogger. Have any burning questions about science? Do you stay awake at night wondering about something? Ask us.
Awesome Things, Science and otherwise:
Check out Daniel Simons' awesome new version of the invisible…
jgoldman | May 11, 2010Here are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week.
This week, Psychology and Neuroscience blogging brings us some fantastic science, as always.
First and second, the fearless leader of ResearchBlogging, Dave Munger, provides us with two awesome visual illusions, and explains them: the Troxler effect, and spinning ellipses.
Next, Krystal D'Costa of Anthopology in Practice discusses Bullying and Emotional Intelligence on the Web and the potential consequences of over-sharing online.
Finally, another gem from Scicurious of Neurotopia: The Incredible Healing Mouse. Pierced, then not…
laelaps | May 8, 2010
Written in Stone is now available for pre-sale on Amazon.com (as well as a few other online stores)! The description of the book, author bio, etc. will have to be updated, but otherwise it is good to see it get its own page, and many thanks to the several of you who have already pre-ordered copies.Yet another cool new paleo blog - Crurotarsi: The Forgotten Archosaurs. Looks like I am going to have to update my blogroll again.In the "online first" section of Evolution: Education and Outreach there is a new paper on science communication (which also covers the Darwinius kerfuffle) by Carl…
jgoldman | May 4, 2010Here's are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week.
Topics covered this week are: chocolate, sex, the female touch, and cigarettes. Good times.
First, Bill Yates of the Brain Posts blog examines the relationship between eating chocolate and depression. I like his prescription: "If you like chocolate, depressed or not, enjoy in moderation."
Are male and female brains "wired" differently? Kevin Mitchell of Wiring the Brain suggests that "the behaviours that show the most robust and innate differences between the sexes are involved in mating, reproduction, parental behaviour,…
jgoldman | April 30, 2010
h/t to Dr. Isis for this awesome video.
Did you miss my Psychology and Neuroscience Editor's Selections at ResearchBlogging.org? Here you go again.
Hilarious Things:
Doctor Monkey, Doctor Becca, and (Micro) Doctor O and I (and some others) have been amusing ourselves on twitter.
Ambivalent Academic is battling allergies, but even through her drug-rattled brain, she is still awesome and hilarious.
Dr. Isis continues to be my hero.
Awesome Things, Science and otherwise:
How do chimpanzees deal with death and dying? Do they have a sense of their own mortality, or of that of their closest…
laelaps | April 12, 2010
Caterpillars must walk before they can anally scrape (Not Exactly Rocket Science)Twitter taphonomy conversation reminded me of one of my favorite books, Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and Their Paleobiological Implications by Johannes WeigeltDeep-sea scavengers risk low-oxygen levels to have ham for dinner (via @mjvinas)The explosive chemistry of coal mines (by @deborahblum)Lemur species rediscovered after 100 years (ht @dendroica)Watch out for those falling blocks! - NYC gets destroyed, 8-bit style (ht @PD_Smith)Creepy cadavers - photos of old school dissections (ht @Bonesholmes)The Science of…
cagapakis | March 31, 2010Because of my recent interest in autonomous, biologically inspired robots, my friend Tami sent me some fascinating links about designs and concepts for future flesh eating robots.
From New Scientist, furniture that captures vermin and uses the biomass to power fuel cells that run small electronics:
From Wired, Human corpse powered robots being developed by the Defense Department:
From the file marked "Evidently, many scientists have never seen even one scary sci-fi movie": The Defense Department is funding research into battlefield robots that power themselves by eating human corpses. What…
khannula | November 1, 2009Go to Dave's Landslide Blog for full details about this. I don't have access to the paper.
According to Dave Petley, there's a new paper in Nature Geoscience about the Slumgullion landslide. Slumgullion is in my greater neighborhood - it's in Colorado's San Juan Mountains, between Lake City (former home of Alferd Packer) and Creede (former home of Doc Holliday), and I think it's got the coolest name of any landslide (and possibly the coolest name of any geological feature). It's a strange landslide for its slow movement, and it's being monitored in excruciating detail by the US Geological…
razib | October 20, 2009Eric Michael Johnson is doing some serious science blogging. Worth checking out.
khannula | September 2, 2009I've spent 15 hours in the classroom teaching in the past three days, and several more meeting with students to sort out schedules and brainstorm ideas for senior thesis projects. My brain is fried, but I'm going to try to share some interesting stuff I've run into:
- Early this afternoon, I posted a frantic plea for good Google Earth locations to use to demonstrate tilted rock layers in my first Structural Geology lab. I should have just checked SERC first. They now have a collection of images and latitude/longitude coordinates that are both beautiful and beautifully deformed. I started my…
khannula | August 18, 2009Geobloggers (and tweeters) are very social, but we often exist in our own world apart from the rest of the science bloggers. Here are some opportunities to remind the rest of the science-blogging world how cool we are:
1st: ScienceOnline 2010 is a conference devoted to science on Web 2.0 and to open-access science. This year's version will be held January 15-17, 2010, in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Some of the proposed sessions include "blogging (tweeting, sharing photos, etc) from the field," "Arctic/Antarctic blogging," and "nature blogging." I figure geobloggers do more…
khannula | August 17, 2009I've recently taken to using the magic of the internet to give my students access to readings, assignments, and images outside of class. It's great - if my sophomores lose their map, they can print another one. If a student misses class, there's no excuse not to do the homework anyway. If students can't draw their own pictures, they can print out images and study them on their own. And it's possible to go even further with online teaching materials - to have students prepare for class by doing online readings, or watching a video, or listening to a podcast, and then responding to online…
khannula | August 16, 2009I'm the department Luddite. I use Powerpoint less often than any of my colleagues, and I'm the person who argues that rooms in a new building need to be designed to allow natural light and views when desired (as well as be able to be darkened adequately). But I'm also the person in my department who plays around with our newish course management system (Moodle), experimenting with a variety of online assignments and quizzes and data-sharing. And I'm the only person to have taught a "lecture" class that met in a computer classroom. (And, of course, I blog, and Tweet, and I was on Usenet before…
khannula | July 29, 2009Earth Science Week 2009 will be October 11-17 (ending on the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake!). This year's theme is "Understanding Climate." There are photo, visual arts, and essay contests, and Thursday is going to be the first "Women in Geosciences" day. (And then Friday will be "frantically put posters together for GSA" day. Maybe the people who prefer AGU can make this year's Earth Science Week happen...)
The Association for Women Geoscientists has a new website (at the old address). They're now collecting dues online, but the transition to a paperless world has been…
khannula | July 28, 2009Last month, another structural geologist came to town to check out possible sites for a future field class. While we were out looking at one of my favorite teaching sites, he commented that geologists seem unusually willing to share their secrets with one another. (We had met at one of the Cutting Edge workshops, where great teaching ideas are free for the taking, technically unpublished but shared online and in person.)
A few weeks ago, I learned about another example: Outcropedia, a project of the International Union of Geosciences' TekTask group. From the organizers' e-mail:
The…
razib | July 22, 2009Rocket Science
Irreplaceable data
The Neuroscience of McGriddles
Very off topic: Why I won't be at my high school reunion
The Best Eclipse of the Century is Tomorrow!
razib | July 15, 2009Sunday Function
Imaging a Superior Mnemonist
The Last 100 Years: 1998 and the accelerating Universe!
Swearing increases pain tolerance
Swoopo
khannula | July 9, 2009Geophysicist Marcia McNutt, currently President and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, is going to be the next director of the US Geological Survey. She will join this group of people, who (as Andrew Alden pointed out), are all men. (Cian Dawson points out on Twitter that the current acting director is also a woman - but it's still cool to see Marcia McNutt in a list with John Wesley Powell!)
Andrew points out that Dr. McNutt will also be the first geoscientist to be the science advisor to the Secretary of the Interior.
(And check out the profile published by Geotimes in…
razib | July 8, 2009Sunday Function
The subsidiary patient
Pavlov's Dogs: Proving the Null With Bayesianism
UK House of Lords report on genomic medicine: implications for DTC genetic testing
More fuss over Enceladus