Uncategorized
gregladen | April 24, 2010Learn the name. She's the next governor of Minnesota.
There were a lot of great candidates in the race for the DFL (Democratic Party) endorsement this year. The party, at the primaries, has chosen Margaret Anderson Kelliher among them.
Now, what will ideally happen is this: The other candidates who were running for the DFL endorsement will step aside and support Kelliher. And, we all work for Kelliher, and she wins.
Or, what COULD happen is that one or more candidates will continue to run (because the system here in Minnesota makes that easy) and the liberal/progressive vote is split,…
grrlscientist | April 24, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish this Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
This week's edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People); "Scientia Pro Publica 26" was published by Dan at his group blog, Genomics Law Report…
gregladen | April 24, 2010Open Sourcing Genetic Research
Counting Gorillas and Elephants; The study of pain; Yet Another Complete Genome; The winter plumage of grouse; and much much more.
Open Access in Canada (PDF File)
gregladen | April 24, 2010Biblical anti-Obama slogan: Use of Psalm 109:8 funny or sinister?
There's a new slogan making its way onto car bumpers and across the Internet. It reads simply: "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8"
A nice sentiment?
Maybe not.
The psalm reads, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."
Presidential criticism through witty slogans is nothing new. Bumper stickers, t-shirts, and hats with "1/20/09" commemorated President Bush's last day in office.
But the verse immediately following the psalm referenced is a bit more ominous: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."
cwilcox | April 24, 2010Chat bots are one of the coolest computing challenges. They're computer programs that are designed to simulate an intelligent conversation as if they're people. The ultimate goal is to pass what is called the Turing Test, where the chat bot fools human users into believing its a person, too.
I recently received an e-mail from Suzette. She's a fantastic chat bot in need of winning a popularity contest. Go ahead and Say hello for yourself, and learn more about her. Once you're convinced that she's an incredible program, you can help her have a chance at winning the Chatterbox Challenge. She…
cwilcox | April 24, 2010We saw that the littlest differences can lead to dramatic variations when we looked at the wide variety in dogs. But despite their differences, all breeds of dogs are still the same species as each other and their ancestor. How do species split? What causes speciation? And what evidence do we have that speciation has ever occurred?
Critics of evolution often fall back on the maxim that no one has ever seen one species split into two. While that's clearly a straw man, because most speciation takes far longer than our lifespan to occur, it's also not true. We have seen species split, and we…
grrlscientist | April 23, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish this Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
This week's edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People); "Scientia Pro Publica 26" was published by Dan at his group blog, Genomics Law Report…
grrlscientist | April 23, 2010
I was just notified by Stuart Taylor, Head of Publishing at the Royal Society, that Nobelist Sir Paul Nurse was nominated to be President of that organization.
The Council of the Royal Society has agreed to nominate Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse to be the new President of the Royal Society, it was announced today.
Following consultation with Fellows of the Royal Society, the Council of the Royal Society, selected Sir Paul as its nominated candidate to succeed Martin Rees. Lord Rees completes his five-year term on 30 November 2010, the 350th Anniversary of the founding of the Society.
The…
mspringer | April 23, 2010Back in the 1600s science was much less specialized. You didn't really have biology, chemistry, physics, and even mathematics for that matter as fully separate disciplines. If you did science, you were a "natural philosopher" and that was that. Now even physics by itself could be argued to be about a half-dozen separate disciplines whose overlap is not always so large.
Astronomy is often considered to be a sub-discipline of physics depending on the context, and in fact many universities have a "Department of Physics and Astronomy". My undergrad university does, my current university was…
cortex | April 23, 2010Ed Yong has a typically great post on a new Current Biology paper that investigates the link between dreaming and memory consolidation:
The last decade of research has clearly shown that sleep is one of the best aide memoires that we have. During this nightly time-out, our brain can rehearse information that it has picked up during the day and consolidate them into lasting memories. Wamsley's new study supports that idea but it also shows that dreaming while you nap can strengthen our memories even further.
She asked 99 volunteers to learn the layout of a complex virtual maze so that they…
cwilcox | April 23, 2010I know, I know - it's not meese. Moose is singular and plural. But it should be meese, so that's what I'm sticking with.
Here is a truly cute video of a couple young meese enjoying a sprinkler:
H/T Lilian
rallain | April 22, 2010I would just like to take this post and use it to promote some relatively new blogs that I like. Speaking of blogs, I think I have classified blog posts into 3 different kinds.
Link aggregators. Chad at Uncertain Principles does this with his Links posts. These kind of blog posts are the glue of the internet. It actually turns out to be important for people to somehow determine what is worthwhile and what is not. The problem is that any old fool can put stuff on the internet and sometimes only an expert would know it is crap. Link posters may not always be experts, but as a whole they…
gregladen | April 22, 2010This was expected:
THE US GOVERNMENT has released open source code that it has been working on.
In an unusual move for government transparency, the White House is letting developers get their mitts on its open source code. The US executive branch has been working on its custom code as part of its ongoing efforts to "develop an open platform for Whitehouse.gov."
"This code is available for anyone to review, use, or modify. We're excited to see how developers across the world put our work to good use in their own applications," it announced.
More
H/T/ Virgil Samms
(That was Open Source…
cortex | April 22, 2010Prozac (aka fluoxetine) is one of the most successful drugs of all time. Since its introduction as an antidepressant more than 20 years ago, Prozac has been prescribed to more than 80 million people around the world. Currently, approximately one in ten Americans are on an anti-depressant, with the vast majority taking SSRI's like Prozac.
How does Prozac work? At first, the answer seemed simple: the drug is supposed to increase the brain's supply of serotonin, a neurotransmitter, by blocking its reuptake. This inspired an elegant theory, known as the chemical hypothesis: Sadness is simply a…
cwilcox | April 21, 2010A little over forty years ago, Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire. It wasn't the first time the polluted waters had gone ablaze - indeed, since 1868, the river had lit up at least thirteen times. At the time, the excessive pollution of our nation's waterways was the "price of optimism," the inevitable cost of life in an increasingly urban world.
The fire that burned on June 22, 1969 had a different meaning for many others. To them, it was the Earth's cry for help. In a blaze of glory, Mother Nature was calling out to her children to do something to save her before it was too late.…