Uncategorized
esiegel | February 26, 2008I was thinking about the timeline that brought us here, today, from the origin of the Universe up through the present day. I realized that the most uncertain thing that we know of, the step that we have the least information about, is the origin of life on Earth. All hypotheses about how life on Earth originated fall into three categories:
Abiogenesis, or the idea that life came from non-life, somehow, on Earth.
Life originated elsewhere in the Universe, and was brought to Earth, where it now thrives (e.g., panspermia, or exogenesis).
Life was created or designed by an outside force/being…
cortex | February 26, 2008Molly Young has a really interesting article on the rampant abuse of Adderall in elite universities in n+1. Essentially, Adderall is a composite of several different amphetamines, which are digested by the brain at different rates. So many kids are prescribed Adderall nowadays that virtually every university has an excess supply, which is then sold or bartered to kids sick of using Diet Coke to pull all-nighters:
It is probably surprising that the drug backfired only once, when I stayed up on Adderall for 72 hours before a philosophy final. My appearance in the testing hall the next day was…
cortex | February 26, 2008I had an article in the Sunday Boston Globe Ideas section on the way our expectations of reality often trump reality itself:
Expectations have long been a topic of psychological research, and it's well known that they affect how we react to events, or how we respond to medication. But in recent years, scientists have been intensively studying how expectations shape our direct experience of the world, what we taste, feel, and hear. The findings have been surprising - did you know that generic drugs can be less effective merely because they cost less? - and it's now becoming clear just how…
ddobbs | February 26, 2008[This is a revised, expanded version of the original heads-up I put up last night.]
A large new meta-analysis of SSRI antidepressant trials concludes that the drugs have essentially no therapeutic effect at all. The study, in PLOS Medicine today, comes on the heels of another study published a few weeks ago (I blogged on it here) showing that SSRIs have little therapeutic effect if you include the (unflattering) clinical trials the industry had previously hidden.
The PLOS study is a meta-analysis of 47 clinical trials that account for almost all full data on clinical trials of SSRIs such as…
kevin z | February 26, 2008
Thanks to Rick MacPherson, Program Director for the Coral Reef Alliance (and fin-tastic blogger!), for this shirt. We met a few weeks ago at the N.C. Science Blogging Conference where we co-moderated a session (along with Peter, Karen and Jason) on Real Time Blogging in the Marine Sciences. It was a great experience. Go over to CORAL today and check out the website and see what awesome projects they have going on. Such as, providing over $350,000 in microgrants for local efforts to preserve and protect coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean. A truely noble effort empowering local…
ddobbs | February 25, 2008I've not had time to thoroughly read this yet. But on the heels of another study published a few weeks ago (I blogged on it here) showing that SSRIs have little therapeutic effect if you include the (unflattering) clinical trials the industry had previously hidden, PLOS Medicine now publishes a larger study -- a meta-analysis of all available data on clinical trials of SSRIs -- that shows that "compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression" --…
cmcclain | February 25, 2008Fig. 1 from Halpern et al. Global map (A) of cumulative human impact across 20 ocean ecosystem types. (Insets) Highly impacted regions in the Eastern Caribbean (B), the North Sea (C), and the Japanese waters (D) and one of the least impacted regions, in northern Australia and the Torres Strait (E).
Some readers dialed into the news might wonder why we have not blogged on a recent paper in Science by Halpren et al. In the paper the authors set out to provide a "synthesis of spatial data on the distribution and intensity of human activities and the overlap of their impacts on marine…
grrlscientist | February 25, 2008I just found that Columbia University Press's official blog linked to my humble blog. That's really wonderful, it made my day, in fact!
sb admin | February 25, 2008Most of us are lucky enough not to have to worry about our sewage. We flush the toilet, it goes away somewhere, and we don't have to worry about cholera or other diseases that spread when waste contaminates the water supply.
While most of sewage systems do a great job of making the water look clean and getting rid of bacteria and viruses, they often aren't designed to remove synthetic chemicals. With so many of us dependent on daily doses of pharmaceuticals, we're excreting lots of drugs (or their metabolites), and they're sticking around in treated wastewater. Researchers are now starting…
sb admin | February 25, 2008In the LA Times, Victoria Kim follows up on the issue of USDA inspections related to the record-setting beef recall. The terrible practices caught on tape at the Hallmark slaughterhouse evidently occurred under the nose of USDA inspectors, and Kimâs article explains how this can happen:
Slaughterhouse workers watch every move of federal inspectors. They know when they take bathroom breaks. They use the radio to alert one another to the inspector's every step. They even assign the pretty talkative woman to work next to the inspector to distract him from his mission to safeguard the nationâs…
pharyngula | February 25, 2008In response to your efforts to turn Pharyngula's domination of the virtual scienceblog world into a real world conquest, John Wilkins has suggested another strategy for organizing meetups: Facebook. There is a Scienceblogs Facebook group, which could be a useful tool for finding people in your region. There is also a Pharyngula Facebook group and a PZ Myers for World President Facebook group (shouldn't that be "PZ Myers for Galactic Overlord"?)
So there we go, another mechanism for finding each other.
gregladen | February 24, 2008Our worst fears have been realized. We finally have a chance to boot the Republicans out of the White House, and now Ralf Nader has announced his insane plans to do whatever he can to make sure that a Democrat does not take that position.
Nader announced his quixotic and potentially destructive plan, in which he will abuse his name recognition, manipulating legions of mindless, moronic Nader-Simps, and get his jollies telling us all how much the system is broken while he single handedly guarantees eight more years of economic strife and bloody warfare ... in a Sunday interview on Meet the…
cmcclain | February 24, 2008
So how did going organic affect your pocketbook? I imagine for many of you it didn't add as much as you thought it would. This weeks will be a little easier and that is why I will ask you to continue it through the year.
The request:Go to the Seafood Watch and download a chart for your wallet or purse. Carry it everywhere you go from now on. Adhere to it and harass others to to the same.
The reason:Again, I could lay out a well-reasoned argument for why you should do this, but you know all the reasons. The good news is that I've moaned about all this before, again, and again, and again…
grrlscientist | February 23, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Carnival of Cities
I know you all are sitting around this evening bored, with nothing to do, so let me help you a little bit. I am hosting another blog carnival, the Carnival of Cities. This is a fun little blog carnival that is surprisingly popular. It focuses on any aspect of cities; where you currently live, where you once lived, where you visited. For example, have you ever visited or lived somewhere that you've absolutely enjoyed? What made that place so special to you? A special coffee shop, pub or restaurant? The city's proximity to wild places, the beach or…
grrlscientist | February 23, 2008tags: Elizabeth Dodd, Moonrise over chimney rock, photography, photoessay
Poet and writer, Elizabeth Dodd, and Moonrise over Chimney Rock.
Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU [wallpaper size].
I have mentioned Elizabeth Dodd's poetry on this blog in the past, so I thought I'd share this photoessay of hers, Moonrise Over Chimney Rock, that was recently published in Notre Dame Magazine. Elizabeth Dodd teaches creative writing at Kansas State University. Thanks to photographer Dave Rintoul, Professor of Biology at KSU, I have posted the images here that pertain to Elizabeth's piece, so you might want…
grrlscientist | February 23, 2008
Today's view out the windows of my new neighborhood coffee shop.
It's cold outside today, and, as you can see, it snowed.
GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view].
This past week has been a real challenge because my bathroom is apparently disintegrating, which has caused the building "super" and his assistant to bang loudly on my apartment door bright and early every morning this past week, even last Monday, which was supposed to be a holiday. Worse, they hang around most of the day, so that I cannot leave my apartment during business hours so I can, you know, do things.
Normally, I wake up…
grrlscientist | February 22, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Friday Ark
The 179th edition of the Friday Ark is now available for your viewing pleasure. This is the carnival that focuses specifically on sharing images of ANIMALS, although some of these images are accompanied by words.
razib | February 22, 2008(if you don't see Hebrew in the title please change "Character Encoding" to "Unicode").