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grrlscientist | December 19, 2007tags: Tangled Bank, blog carnivals
The newest edition of Tangled Bank is now available, and they included some stories that I wrote, too, so go there and read, read read!
cortex | December 19, 2007Malcolm Gladwell endorses the use of Human Growth Hormone for athletes, at least when it's used to recover from injury:
What, exactly, is wrong with an athlete--someone who makes a living with their body--taking medication to speed their recovery from injury? Is it wrong to take ibruprofen? Is it wrong to ice a sore elbow? For that matter, is it ethical or even legal for Major League Baseball--or indeed any employee or governing body--to deny an employee access to a potentially beneficial medical treatment?
The closest analogy I can think of here is to medical marijuana, which is another…
cortex | December 19, 2007Ben Wallace-Wells, in Rolling Stone, recently wrote a fantastic and tragic article on America's War on Drugs:
All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes - a twelvefold increase since 1980 - with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the…
cmcclain | December 19, 2007
The buccinid gastropod Neptunea amianta (Dall, 1890) is a deep-water species found off the North American west coast. Typically boreal, the range extends as far south as Punta San José, Baja California with depths usually between 300 and 1500m. In approximately 15 years of video sampling by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute with remote operated vehicles in Monterey Canyon, N. amianta has been documented from 100-3500m, yet dense aggregations, uncommon in deep-sea snails, seem to occur only between 200-2000m. This range extends the species into the oxygen minimum zone, where…
gregladen | December 18, 2007Before I sign on to this, I want to know what happens when the vehicles become self aware and take over the planet:
Vehicles That Talk to Each Other Know What Lanes They're In from PhysOrg.com
A standard GPS receiver has an average 2D-positioning accuracy of about 13 meters. While this precision is high enough to direct you to your hotel, it's quite a bit lower than the accuracy required to determine which lane your car is in while driving down the highway.
[...]
But wait, this could also be robots. Robots fighting in outer space:
Intergalactic 'shot in the dark' shocks astronomers from…
gregladen | December 18, 2007Pursuant to a discussion here regarding the use of the word "evolution" in various scholarly contexts, consider the article in PLoS: Evolution by Any Other Name: Antibiotic Resistance and Avoidance of the E-Word
The increase in resistance of human pathogens to antimicrobial agents is one of the best-documented examples of evolution in action at the present time, and because it has direct life-and-death consequences, it provides the strongest rationale for teaching evolutionary biology as a rigorous science in high school biology curricula, universities, and medical schools. In spite of the…
gregladen | December 18, 2007The good news is that the object that hit the earth at Tunguska 1908 was much smaller than previously thought. The bad news is that the object that hit the earth at Tunguska 1908 was much smaller than previously thought. In other words, if such a small object can do so much damage, then the prospect of something bad happens goes up orders of magnitude...
This is from a press release which, in turn, stems from a paper given at the geophysie meetings last week:
The stunning amount of forest devastation at Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid only a fraction…
cortex | December 18, 2007Are teenagers too rational? That, at least, is the conclusion of a recent study showing that teens overestimate the riskiness of things like unprotected sex and drunk driving, yet choose to do them anyways:
A study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that teenagers were more likely than adults to overestimate risks for every outcome studied, from low-probability events like contracting H.I.V. to higher-probability ones like acquiring more common sexually transmitted diseases or becoming pregnant from a single act of unprotected sex.
"We found that teenagers…
grrlscientist | December 18, 2007tags: vocabulary, United Nations, free rice, online quiz
This linked online vocabulary game has an interesting premise; for every correct answer you provide, twenty grains of rice will be donated to the United Nations to end world hunger (they increased their reward from ten grains of rice). This game was invented by a man who was trying to help his son improve his vocabulary in preparation for the SATs. How many grains of rice did you donate?
grrlscientist | December 18, 2007Did you hear about the christmas card that was delivered -- 93 years late?
A christmas card that was mailed on 23 December 1914 in Alma, Nebraska, was just delivered to its destination in Oberlin, Kansas. It was mailed by cousins to Ethel Martin. However, the intended recipient had already died, so the card was given to Bernice Martin, Ethel's sister-in-law. Bernice Martin was impressed with the pristine condition of the card, despite its age and mystery.
"We don't know much about it," she said. "But wherever they kept it, it was in perfect shape."
The postcard features a colored drawing of…
pharyngula | December 18, 2007'Tis the season for ridiculous commercialism: I've been seeing these unbelievable commercials that feature some smug guy surprising his wife by giving her a luxury car (with a bow on top) as a present, or popping open a box with a big honkin' diamond in it. The women always clap their hands with glee and lean in for a hot passionate kiss. I see these and I wonder…just how stupid do advertisers think men are?
I can tell you exactly what would happen if I spent a month's salary or more on jewelry (or worse, a year's income on a car). My wife would look aghast, and waver between calling the…
cmcclain | December 18, 2007A new study in Nature: Geoscience suggests that current estimates of sea-level rise in response to global warming are too low. Rohling et al. utilize a "combination of a continuous high-resolution sea-level record, based on the stable oxygen isotopes of planktonic foraminifera from the central Red Sea and age constraints from coral data to estimate rates of sea-level change" during the last ice age (124-119 kyr). Their findings indicate in a climate 2 degrees C warmer than the present the oceans were 4-6m higher than the present. Overall, sea-level increased by 1.6m per century. An…
cmcclain | December 18, 2007Mark at blogfish is the bearer of bad news this morning. Ocean acidification is permanent, even with reductions in CO2 (like that will ever happen).
"For all practical purposes, this is permanent," said Steven Emerson, UW oceanography professor. "That's not true of temperature. But with ocean acidification, the time scales are long."
grrlscientist | December 17, 2007tags: Open Lab 2007, blog books
You might remember that one of my essays from 2006 was included in the book, Open Lab 2006. I was lucky because the editor of the book submitted my essay for me, and the judges seemed to like it enough to include it in the final book. Yea, me. Well, this year, I am on my own, except for your suggestions and support, so I would appreciate it if you would submit an essay I've written to this year's edition of Open Lab. They have 450 submissions so far, and out of those, they will select only 50 -- one per blog -- to be in the final book. GAH! That means that my…
grrlscientist | December 17, 2007tags: Oekologie, blog carnivals
The 12th edition of Oekologie is now available for you to enjoy. They included two contributions from me this time!
gregladen | December 17, 2007
The Minnesota Citizens for Science Education Teddy Bear!
I know you want one...
I personally have a mug, a tee-shirt and a hat. Hey, they should add bumper stickers.