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grrlscientist | June 30, 2008tags: Seed Media Group, ScienceBlogs, ScienceBlogs.de
I have been made privy to a special 1 July 2008 press release from Seed Media Group, the parent organization for ScienceBlogs, which hosts my blog. The news is good.
In short, Seed Media Group announced that ScienceBlogs, the internet's largest science community, has experienced a phenomenal growth in readership: total visits for the first six months of 2008 has topped 14 million, an all-time high.
ScienceBlogs was launched in mid-January 2006 after inviting 14 science blogs [including my blog, Living the Scientific Life (Scientist,…
kevin z | June 30, 2008Dr. Maria Pia Miglietta, a postdoc in my lab at Penn State, just published a fascinating paper on a "silent invasion" happening around the world's oceans in the journal Biological Invasions. Those may look like tentacles, but in reality they are the nunchuks of rapid expansion of a stealthy marine invasion.
Intonjutsu: Cheating Death
In true ninja fashion the marine hydroid Turritopsis dohrnii disappears when the going gets tough. Instead of dying with honor, they "de-differentiate" into a cyst, settle to the seafloor and reform into a benthic polyp (see figure above). The polyps then…
cortex | June 30, 2008I've written before about the dangers of transparency and medical technology, at least when it comes to diagnosing back pain. Simply put, doctors tend to assume that any imaging technology with better resolution will lead to better diagnoses. But that's often not the case:
A large study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) randomly assigned 380 patients with back pain to undergo two different types of diagnostic analysis. One group received X-rays. The other group got diagnosed using MRI's, which give the doctor a much more detailed picture of the underlying…
grrlscientist | June 30, 2008My friend and colleague, Carl Zimmer, has some news that he is going to tell us about today at 5pm ET, so be sure to pop in to his blog at that time to see what's happening.
cortex | June 30, 2008This makes me feel very lonely:
The "Pillars of Creation" may be the most iconic Hubble photograph ever taken. "Located in the Eagle Nebula, the pillars are clouds of molecular hydrogen, light years in length, where new stars are being born," says Aguilar. "However, recent discoveries indicate these pillars were destroyed by a massive nearby super nova some 6,000 years ago. This is a ghost image of a past cosmic disaster that we won't see here on Earth for another thousand years or so-and a perfect example of the fact that everything we see in the universe is history."
Isn't that bleak? There…
cmcclain | June 29, 2008The previous post reminded of this video we posted awhile back.
From Youtube: This is the largest explosive burst that was observed at the Brimstone Pit during the Submarine Ring of Fire 2006 Exploration Jason dive J2-192. There were probably even larger bursts that could not be seen, at times when the eruption plume was so extensive and thick that we could not get near the vent. Video courtesy of Submarine Ring of Fire 2006 Exploration, NOAA Vents Program, NOAA-OE.
cmcclain | June 29, 2008
Can a volcano be explosive in the deep sea? What about violent? What about mildly aggravated?
Historically, we've assumed the answer to be no. Explosive eruptions were thought to be absent at depths below the critical point for seawater around 3000m. Combine this with the lack of evidence for a pyroclastic deposit [rock materials formed by fragmentation as a result of volcanic action] below 3,000m. On top of that add the hypothesis that mid-ocean-ridge basalts do not possess the volatility to produce impressive eruptions at high pressures.
A group of researchers report this week in…
cmcclain | June 29, 2008Please note that the following post is riddled with sarcasm. Those whose delicate nature cannot handle such are strongly encouraged to not read this post.
At DSN we seem to have a track record for stirring the pot when it comes to Texas T. Early on, I did this post which generated some lovely comments.
Recently, Kevin kicked off the Black Gold trifecta with his post on the Republican plan, which seems like a very liberal use of the word plan, to cure all of our oil problems. Well researched and insightful, it didn't really generate the heated debate Peter and I have come to expect from…
pharyngula | June 28, 2008D.J. Grothe and I tussled again in this week's Point of Inquiry podcast, in a continuation of last week's episode.
drorzel | June 27, 2008
Dynamics of Cats : Who is Obama's Science Adviser?
I'm available...
(tags: politics US science)
Colby pig could live happily ever after
"If you were a pig and you go to a pig roast, you'd run away, too. It's not the ideal spot to hang out."
(tags: animals academia silly)
Graphic: How Class Works - New York Times
Including a widget (under "components of class") to let you determine your own class standing.
(tags: economics US society politics statistics education)
cortex | June 27, 2008Somewhere, Walt Whitman is smiling:
From "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry":
FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
The lovely photo is by Nicole Bengiveno of the NY Times. And the waterfall is…
cortex | June 27, 2008Language is the stuff of thought. I'm reminded of this truism every time I sip a glass of wine and some pretentious snob (usually me) insists on saying something about the Chianti Classico smelling like cherries, or how the New Zealand sauvignon blanc exudes the perfume of pineapple. As soon as I hear those nouns, my olfactory cortex goes into dishonest overdrive and, before I know it, all I can smell is those damn cherries. My experience of the wine is completely altered by a few choice words; language subverts reality.
Of course, this isn't always a bad thing. Parmesan cheese and vomit, for…
cmcclain | June 27, 2008
Hat Tip to Matt for pointing us to this post at Ectoplasmosis. Two parts beautiful and three parts disturbing you're unlikely to forget this video for the rest of the day. It somehow seems a fitting video following my previous post. It tells the story of one man's love for the giant squid...which is still illegal in California.
cmcclain | June 27, 2008Craig meet Fate...Fate meet Craig...Fate you can now proceed to slap Craig in the face.
In my 2 year reign tenure at MBARI, I have literally spent a total of two months at sea off the central California coast...a day here, a week there. But of course I haven't seen a giant squid nor did I expect to. Sightings of the elusive deep-sea denizen are rare off the California coast, only a handful in the last 100 or so years. Then yesterday I get news that the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation collected a giant squid floating about 20 miles off the coast of Santa Cruz.
Well isn't that just freakin…
gregladen | June 26, 2008 to get is phone. He even brought some muscle. Some tough looking guy.
He tried to claim the fish was his, of course. He was like "Yea, I had that in my pocket. I was gonna eat it later" and shit. But I didn't even listen 'cause I remembered it from last month, not making it home from the store in all. It was in the car the whole time.
Which all leads me to ask: What ARE all those spaces where things can fall into and get lost in your car doing there? Can't they be designed OUT of the system?
kevin z | June 26, 2008The following polychaete worm, probably a Nereid, was found in our deep sea mussel tanks. Often times we will collect a bunch of mussels in a scoop which results in gathering some other rare deep sea creatures and their larvae. Our last collection of the mussel Bathymodiolus childressi from the Gulf of Mexico was in Fall of 2004, from a depth around 600 meters. This worm has been living in our aquaria for at least 4 years.
One interesting point is that these mussels have methanotrophic ("methane feeding") bacteria in their gills. We only feed the aquaria methane, which is bubbled into…
sb admin | June 26, 2008The American News Project â a new nonprofit project producing âonline journalism that mattersâ and offering their content for free â turns its cameras to the problem of hunger in the U.S. Garland McLaurin reports that 28 million people will use food stamps in 2009, but the low benefit amounts mean that many of these recipients still must turn to food banks or other sources to meet their food needs.
Many of those struggling to feed themselves are elderly, and the seven-minute film features comments from two seniors; one compares herself to a hamster running on a wheel, while the other…
cortex | June 26, 2008There's an interesting review on prediction errors and temporal difference learning theory in the latest Trends in Cognitive Sciences. (Really, it's fascinating stuff.) But I don't want to talk today about the content of the article. Instead, I want to discuss its form.
The vast, vast majority of science articles follow the same basic pattern: abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion. (Update: As bsci points out in the comments, review articles obey a slightly less strict pattern, but they're still pretty predictable.) There are no stories, no narrative, no amusing anecdotes. (…
sb admin | June 25, 2008Susan announced this project a few weeks ago, and itâs worth repeating. At the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University School of Public Health, weâve launched a multi-part study to understand the current policies surrounding scientistsâ work at government agencies and to create recommendations for policies that support strong science and the appropriate role of scientists and researchers within our health and environment agencies.
Many talented government scientists leaving the federal agencies that protect our health and environment, and one of the…