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cwilcox | April 12, 2010While reading through the science news headlines today, I came across a very interesting one from the Telegraph: "Handling cash 'better at killing pain than aspirin', study claims."
Intrigued, I sought out the paper mentioned in the article. It turns out it wasn't published recently at all - it was published last year in June. Of course, they were probably fooled by the fact that the University of Minnesota just published a press release on it. Regardless, the real question is whether money was truly more effective than painkillers at preventing pain. So what did the researchers find?
The…
cwilcox | April 12, 2010The Wildlife Conservation Society has just released their newest book, State of the Wild 2010-2011. It's a collection of essays that center around current and emerging issues in conservation from conservation experts and powerful nature writers. It's a must-read for anyone driven to understand and protect our ecosystems.
In this year's edition, there is a particularly interesting essay called "Rarest of the Rare." It highlights twelve of the most endangered species on the planet, only two of which are on the Road to Recovery. These are animals that may disappear in the next decade or two, and…
gregladen | April 11, 2010Check out this report at The Raw Story:
Up yours, scientists.
That's essentially the message sent by former politician Sarah Palin during a recent speech to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where she disparaged the work of thousands of the world's top minds to the delight of a large crowd that laughed, clapped and cheered her on the whole way.
revere | April 11, 2010To mark the end of grant writing, a bit of a departure: Music that isn't political. A French band called Okou (words are in English). Tatiana Heintz (vocals) is a French woman whose mother is from the Ivory Coast and Gilbert Trefzger (steel guitar) is Swiss. His father is from Egypt. They are now based in the UK. I'm not sure how to describe their music, but I learned of it from one of my favorite blogs (and a daily read), The Brain Police. The blogger Microdot lives in rural France, hails from Detroit and was a professional musician. He and his wife are old friends. Enjoy:
cwilcox | April 11, 2010When I saw these pictures over at Zooborns, I knew they had to be this week's dose of cute. These are some of the cutest animals I have ever seen!
These photos were taken by Flickr user PeterH81 at the British Wildlife Centre.
Red Foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are the species that we tend to think of when we think of a "fox." The name comes from their characteristic orange-ish, red-ish brown fur. The fox's amazing flexibility and intelligence that have given it a mischievous reputation have served it well evolutionarily, and the red fox is the most abundant species of fox on the planet. They're…
mspringer | April 9, 2010In every cop drama there's a scene where a suspect is being questioned in an interrogation room. The room contains a large mirror, and behind that mirror the detectives and district attorneys are observing and arguing about the progress of the case. The mirror is a two-way mirror.
These kinds of mirrors aren't complicated. Light shines on them, and some fraction is reflected back while some fraction passes through. The suspect in the brightly lit room can't see the dark room beyond the mirror because the bright room light washes out the much smaller amount coming from the adjacent dark…
grrlscientist | April 9, 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 on 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?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the…
gregladen | April 8, 2010
I would have been happier without the background music, but at least she's not you know who.
cortex | April 8, 2010The 2010 NFL Draft is later this month, and there is already plenty of speculation about which QB will go first, and which DT is a better choice, and which teams will trade up for a higher draft pick. The stakes for the teams are huge, as a failed draft pick will not only waste millions of dollars in salary but will also come with a high opportunity cost. So there is a strong incentive to get the decision right, and to have a decision-making system that leads to the right personnel pick.
And yet, that hasn't happened. Instead, NFL teams remain tethered to useless metrics. Just look at the…
ddobbs | April 8, 2010
The Tax Foundation recrently ranked the states according to their tax load, with low taxes generating high rankings. My home state of Vermont did not fare well.
Enter my friend David Goodman (Davidgoodman.net)
who has written several books with his famous radio-host sister, Amy, and whose wife, Sue Minter, is a Vermont state legislator. David found some notable correlations with these rankings. He used them to create this Interesting Facts sheet for Sue, so she could remind people what taxes do.
Do you ever wonder which states offer the worst education, have the highest school…
dblum | April 8, 2010
Almost 200 years ago, methane gas ignited in a coal mine in England, setting off an explosion that killed 92 miners. These were not miners as we think of them today - in the pre-child-labor-law world almost half were children, as young as eight years old.
So that one can make an argument - regarding last Thursday's methane gas explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, that killed 25 adult miners and left another four so far missing - that we've made some progress in protecting children from mine disasters. Our track record in protecting adults is less impressive - that is they…
agelman | April 8, 2010Felix Salmon comments on a report that econ czar Larry Summers is likely to be leaving the government:
But if it's true, where is he leaving to? . . . "Wall Street consulting" is probably a polite way of saying "a return to DE Shaw", which happily paid Larry $5 million for one year of one-day-a-week work . . . The Summers exit could well be the most lucrative use of the revolving door yet seen in the short history of the Obama administration: if he was willing to work full time, Summers could command significantly more than the $10 million a year Citigroup paid Bob Rubin when Rubin left…
agelman | April 8, 2010John discusses an argument by Bruce Bartlett that it made sense for conservatives to support Hillary Clinton in 2008, based on the following reasoning:
Surveying the political landscape, I [Barttlett] didn't think the Republican candidate, whoever it might be, was very likely to win against whoever the Democratic candidate might be. Therefore I concluded that it was in the interest of conservatives to support the more conservative Democratic candidate . . . Hillary Clinton . . . probably would be governing significantly more conservatively than Obama.
I'm surprised to hear this, because I…
mspringer | April 7, 2010Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the worst physics news article I have ever seen:
Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes Exist
Every word in the title is wrong but "physics". It's not freaky, doesn't prove anything we didn't already know, and has nothing to do with parallel universes nor does it shed any light the question of their possible existence.
Look past the details of a wonky discovery by a group of California scientists -- that a quantum state is now observable with the human eye -- and consider its implications: Time travel may be feasible. Doc Brown would be proud.
Quantum…