This is the kind of question that is being addressed in a series of eight YouTube videos that convey a two-part videotaped lecture given in 2002 by Albert Bartlett, a retired professor of Physics at the University of Boulder.

He discusses growth curves, carrying capacities, Hubbert curves and Peak oil, starting and concluding with the observation that

“the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”,

particularly as it applies ...

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy ...

I’m reposting this because it still stands. There seems to be a lot of fuss about a re-match between Patriots and the Giants. Apparently, I’m supposed to hope the Giants win. Once some family drama ends, I’ll get back to science.

I like the junk food and parties associated with the SuperBowl – I’m just not invested in the game. The day before a Super Bowl party, I do a bit of research so I don’t sound like a complete idiot around those who know all kinds of fancy stats. As I get ready to learn a bit about this ...

There are lots of ideas on how to move forward, but for today, I’ll close with a view out of the window, taken during the signing procedure.

CLICK ON FULL SCREEN

Add The Music chosen by Arikia Millikan, Anton Zuiker (well sort of) and Graham Steel. :-

Track one chosen by Arikia

Track two chosen by Graham

Track three chosen by David Dobbs via Anton

–

Lots of #scio12 images, videos, podcasts & blog posts are on http://scio12.com/

NOTE: These pictures were taken by Lou Woodley and have been published here ...

This post, which is a response to Alice Callahan’s Momday guest post, was first published here.  Please note: the author is not advocating distrust towards doctors, scientists and the medical community.  Rather she advocates that clear rationale and logic should be the basis for making important decisions.

I recently read a blog article by a fellow scientist turned stay-at-home-mom on why she chooses to vaccinate. Although we both agree to vaccinate our children, I disagree with her reasons on why as a scientist and a mother, I should let a doctor stick a ...

I came across this video yesterday and thought it was quite funny (mostly because it is true).  As I sat doing my cell culture, some more shit scientists say just started flowing:

“I have to feed my cells.”

“I have to check the plugs in my mice” or “My mice won’t mate!”

“My favorite gene…”

“Hmm, sounds like abetalipoproteinemia.”

...

The cosmetics store is as brightly lit as an operating room. It is starkly designed, save the posters of beautiful young women with perfect skin, their tomato-red lips expressing the joy of their youth. In no form does the clientele resemble the posters – soar-faced teens with women in mom jeans and holiday themed sweatshirts, a group of girlfriends in their seventies, and me, in sneakers, jeans and a t-shirt, my hair air-dried.

I lose track of time at a lipstick display until a clerk approaches and offers her service. When she blinks I am transfixed ...

Educators, policy makers, and many local organizations have made it their official mission to instill a greater sense of confidence in young girls when it comes to STEM.  ...

Illustration by Adrian Forrow

I’ve just read the great piece (and very interesting comments thread) “Scientists, Share Secrets or Lose Funding: (by) Stodden and Arbesman” It reminded my of a bizarre incident that I came across myself a few years ago that I started writing about a few days ago and it ties in rather well.

Some background context

In my spare time, I acted as Vice-Chair for a small UK Charity 2001 – 2005.  Like many other such organisations, we didn’t have an official HQ other than (in our case) “the office” which was a spare bedroom in one ...

Little Birdie. Captured and edited using the HDR filter on the iPhone app Camera+

Sunset over Roosevelt Island. Again, iPhone, Carmera+, HDR filter.

View from 62nd Street. You guessed it...Camera+ HDR.

Winter Moon. This one I captured using a real camera and no filter!!

SOURCE

Over the weekend, I received an email from a researcher at Scripps which read:-

“Hi Graham,

Nothing unusual about that you might think.

Interestingly, I had no idea who it was from until I did a quick bit of searching and I have never had any contact with them before.

SOURCE

I’ve had contact with A LOT of researchers in this field spanning over a decade. In terms of making contact, ...

Having a PhD in science makes my job as a mother easier, but maybe not in the ways that you might expect.

My PhD is in Nutrition, so you would think that getting my kid to eat well would come easy for me. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.

I’ve logged more than two years of postdoc research on fetal programming, which is basically how the uterine environment affects outcomes in babies. You might think that this has helped me to do everything right during my pregnancy. Instead, I think it just led to more ...

@David_Dobbs David Dobbs

The story in question involved a lot of emails, a few phone calls and I can’t be bothered reading through all the emails again, but I’ve glanced through most of them and recall the story ...

To illustrate this milestone, I checked for the most viewed image from PLoS ONE on ...

So included in the New Years Honours 2012 is a certain Mr Lester Firkins or as he is now known, Lester Firkins OBE.

“Lester Firkins. Chairman, James Lind Alliance, Strategy and Development. For services to Medical Research. (Nr Ipswich, Suffolk) “

During 2001 – 2003, Lester acted as Chairman of the Human BSE Foundation, and I was Vice-Chair 2001 – 2005.

We parted company. Lester went off to get involved in other things and in 2004, he was involved in setting up ...

It came with a personal message on the first page:-

“Graham,

I dedicate this book to your collaborative actions and enjoy watching you in action !

Tony”

It’s a great book and I can highly recommend reading it.

Yesterday on Google+, I spotted a post by Tony which read:-

“I’ve had a number of people ask me for some guidance about how scientists can use some of the available tools to brand themselves as a ...

Here’s an excerpt:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 68,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I spent Christmas in New Zealand one year. Sure, it was summer but as a Canadian, I thought I’d fit in well in another Commonwealth country. I’m sure there were more similarities than differences but ...

I have no external reason to be depressed. I’m aware of no precipitating event. If I reach, general anaesthetic might be a factor because I had operations within months of each depressive episode.

But my genetic load is probably a bigger influence. My family history is full of depression and alcoholism. In 1st-degree ...

A few notes: I am not against epidurals.  I think that they are a marvelous tool and can certainly add to the birth experience.  For me, however, I know that ...

During the tour, we were able to witness, firsthand, how vaccines are physically inspected.  All of the vials were hand inspected using a very thorough protocol, and ...

These days, I travel from Glasgow to London several times a year now. For a variety of reasons, I prefer to travel by train (Virgin Express only takes around 4 hours 15 mins).

I book in advance, choose a table seat with a power socket for my mobile devices, sit back and surf the web/read a book, iPod Nano for music etc. etc.

By default, I tend not to spark up a conversation with the person(s) opposite simply for “idle chitter chatter”.  However, should they decide to start a conversation,  I’ll happily contribute to it (if it is of ...

I wanted to participate in one of these, but I wasn’t exactly basketball material, nor did I have much of an interest.  However, my years in karate had conditioned me such that I was quite limber and strong.  Effortless were handstands and splits.  Balance was ...

I wanted to participate in one of these, but I wasn’t exactly basketball material, nor did I have much of an interest.  However, my years in karate had conditioned me such that I was quite limber and strong.  Effortless were handstands and splits.  Balance was ...

Woah.  ...

9.   Apple products.  Regardless of what the science says, I really think that I am in love with my iPhone.

8.   Rain boots.  There is nothing worse than having to work all day with wet feet.  The trick is making sure you check the weather before leaving the house.

7.    Feminism and those who practice it. 

6. ...

, via Wikimedia Commons”]

Thalia - Muse of Comedy. Jean-Marc Nattier [Public domain

Ever ...

Even though correlating sexual activity to level of happiness seems logical in a ...

Yes, there are many men, including Ed Rybicki, who suffer from ED.  But, I do have some shred of hope in humanity and I would like to think that for every misogynistic dickhead, there is ...

One thing at a time, though: What is SciFund? A “Kickstarter for science“, “the model charities ...

Despite the delay in posting this storify (related to this), I think this is quite a useful post.

Cross-posted from Alex Holcombe

For Open Access Week 2011, which starts today, I’ve made a video, a draft pledging website, an inspirational website, am giving a talk, and co-written a group letter. This post is about the letter.

As discussed in my last post, there’s a web-based course called “Responsible Conduct of Research” that many thousands of researchers are required to complete each year. Brad Voytek spotted this question that seems a bit hostile (although quite possibly unintentionally) to new forms of scientific communication outside traditional journals.

I suggested we should write to the organization ...

“Peter Binfield, PhD, publisher of PLoS ONE, discusses the scholarly journal and open access publishing at the Stanford Summit @ Medicine 2.0 on Sept. 16, 2011″.

—-

And a brief discussion (thus far) of this on Google+

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

SOURCE

–

DUH!

To help his chem class remember the difference between metals and non-metals, my husband tells the following joke:

A metal and a non-metal are walking down the street.  The metal gets struck by lightening and says “oh no! I think I lost an electron!” The non-metal says “Are you sure?” The metal responds “I’m positive!!”

There are so many iterations of these memes to help kids (and adults!) remember the scientific properties of whatever it is they are studying at the moment. (Kind of like OIL-RIG: oxidation is losing; reduction is gaining).  But, last night, I was brought back ...

“Everything?” Watch/read on.

“Kirby Ferguson is a quirky New York-based filmmaker with an interesting idea” says Gregg Gordon, President and CEO of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). I bumped into Gregg on Twitter the day before this weeks rather excellent (Third) International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference which took place at Freie Universität, Berlin #pkp2011

I was unaware about this event until I saw a tweet from Gregg and followed events as best as I could via Twitter. Being off work for the week, I was hoping that something of interest would pop up so this was great stuff.

...

www.michaelnielsen.org

So, several months ahead of my most recent trip to London for this years Science Online: London Conference in September, I put on my proverbial thinking cap.

IMAGE SOURCE

Let’s cut to the chase and I’ll explain thereafter how I/we managed to pull this off put this together.

00:00 – 03:09 Intro

03:09 – 13:27 Discussion about the background of the Guardian’s Science Weekly Podcast
13:28 – 17:44 How much science literacy can you assume in your audience when reporting ...

Joyce Cacho, PhD

It seems as if every other word used at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting had something to do with the concept of “sustainability.”  Given the rate at which the human population is growing, finding innovative ways that would allow our society to endure (and to do so comfortably) is no small task.  However, there are many pieces to the sustainability puzzle, including that which is associated with food supply.  And this is exactly what Joyce Cacho, PhD, Chief Sustainability Officer at Novus International, Inc., is addressing on a global level.

Joyce is well versed on ...

Randy, right before he shows mommy how the piggies eat.

“Meatloaf beatloaf double s[h]meatloaf…”  Was little Randy on to something?

Food engineering has been on an incredibly strange journey, but there is none stranger (at least to me) than the concept of in vitro meat.  Colloquially referred to as “shmeat,” a term born out of mashing up the phrase “sheets of meat,” in vitro meat may be available in our grocer’s refrigerator section in just a few years.  But how exactly is shmeat produced and how does it compare to, you know, that which is derived from actual animals?  Here, ...

The other day, I observed the Manhattan skyline from a rooftop in Brooklyn.  The sun was setting to my west and the Empire State building was directly in front of me.  Next to it was the Chrysler Building, basked in golden hues.  With the latest “good” news relating to our war on terror reported only days ago, ...

The man, Tim Gunn (image from People.com)

If you are looking to become a mentor but don’t know where to start, or if you already hold that title and are looking for ways to improve your mentoring skills, ask yourself “What would Tim Gunn do?”

Yes, you read that right – I wrote Tim Gunn.  While I have had a very limited exposure to Tim Gunn and his hit television show “Project Runway” (not necessarily by choice as I do have a soft spot for high fashion), he is known for his constructive feedback as well as his ability to ...

(c) Hybrid Medical Animation

Well, it has happened again. Someone has confused the concept of heritability. A recent Slate article discusses the difficulties of twin studies but screws up the concept of heritability in the first paragraph, saying that genes determine 50% of the likelihood that you will vote among other things. I’ll leave others to critique the rest of the paper and I’ll focus on trying to explain heritability.

Heritability is a measure of how much variation of a trait within a population is due to genes compared to variation due to environment. It is a POPULATION measure of ...