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Note: This is a Guest Post by Jim Godwin. Jim has spent decades working outside and conducting studies on the natural history and conservation of amphibians and reptiles. He has countless stories. I'm trying to convince him to contribute to this blog regularly; please help me encourage him in the Comments.
I have had a life-long interest in amphibians and reptiles
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At the 2013 ASM meeting in Denver, Colorado, Stanley Maloy discussed human infections with avian influenza H7N9 virus with Ronald Atlas, Ph.D., University of Louisville, KY; Robert Webster; St. Jude’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN; Albert Osterhaus; Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; and Carole Heilman, NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, MD.
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A Green Step For HumanityUnder the headline: "Absolute emissions cap proposed for China", Australia's Business Spectator reports that "According to local Chinese media, the government’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has proposed that China adopt an absolute cap on its greenhouse gas emissions by 2016."RT (TV-Novosti) asks "Is China Going Green?" and notes that the initiative "must now be approved by the Cabinet before it is enacted."
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For the U.S. college students who will be paying for a four-year bachelor’s degree long after graduation day, here’s some consolation: At least it didn’t take you six or eight years. College is expensive, yet unpredictably so. Some students pay little for degrees from elite private institutions, after tuition discounts and financial aid. Many of their peers, however, will pay far more than they expected for lower-cost universities. A big reason for this is the increasing
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At 3:33 a.m. on May 22, 2013 (just a few hours ago as I write this) in Hawaii, the sky was briefly lit up by a huge expanding bubble of light in the east. I got word of this event from astronomer Adam Draginda, who is a telescope operator at the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, located at the top of Mauna Kea.
An all-sky camera at the observatory monitors the sky for weather, and captured the event:
How cool is that? When Draginda emailed me, I remembered writing about a very similar event in
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Justin E. H. Smith in his blog: A student in rural Iceland, of sheep-farming stock, had her guard down, or didn't yet have a guard. She didn't know how to talk to foreigners, or perhaps felt there was something she...
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The Canadian twitter world has been split in the last couple of days. You have of course the Duffy-Brazeau-Harb-Wallen-Wright-Perrin saga filling the trend boxes. But then, you have the story of the Tories’ problem with science, be it defunding, muzzling, … Continue reading →
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Jalees Rehman in The Guardian: The bulk of contemporary science journalism falls under the category of "infotainment". This expression describes science writing that informs a non-specialist target audience about new scientific discoveries in an entertaining fashion. The "informing" typically consists...
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Yesterday, I told you about the 1st ever crowd sourced satellite, the Skycube. I turns out however, that Sunday NASA also launched three low-cost smartphone satellites aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.’s Antares rocket. The PhoneSats are transmitting data packets on the amateur radio spectrum. You can see what data is being transmitted … Continue reading »
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Do you remember the Rossi E-cat machine? It was featured in Popular Science and debunked by skeptics. Now, a new study is out. Let’s take a peek. Hmm… Finally! Independent Testing Of Rossi’s E-Cat Cold Fusion Device: Maybe The World Will Change After All – Forbes. I haven’t posted about Rossi and his E-Cat since last August simply because there wasn’t much to report other than more of Rossi’s unsupported and infuriating claims that included building large-scale […]
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Teasing out the insulin effect.
On the face of it, the study seems to come out of left field: A group of researchers claimed that marijuana smokers showed 16 per cent lower fasting insulin levels than non-smokers. The study, called “The Impact of Marijuana Use on Glucose, Insulin, and Insulin Resistance among US Adults,” is in press for The American Journal of Medicine. The authors are a diverse group of medical researchers from Harvard, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and […]
Penner E.A., Buettner H. & Mittleman M.A. (2013). The Impact of Marijuana Use on Glucose, Insulin, and Insulin Resistance among US Adults, The American Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2013.03.002
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No summary available for this post.
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I loved this story: Pareidolia and geomorphology. How neat is that? These Artists Are Mapping the Earth … With Facial Recognition Software – Megan Garber – The Atlantic. Have you ever looked up into the sky and seen a cloud that vaguely resembles your mom? Or gazed at the twisted trunk of a tree, only to see an old man staring back at you? Then you have experienced pareidolia, the human mind’s tendency to read significance into random stimuli. You have learned what […]
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Razib Khan in Gene Expression: My own inclination has been to not get bogged down in the latest race and IQ controversy because I don’t have that much time, and the core readership here is probably not going to get...
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This week we opened the first of 17 jackets from the Yorktown whale, which we’ve nicknamed “Cornwallis”. I had not planned to open any of these jackets until the fall, but it turns out we needed a large whale vertebra … Continue reading →
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Nighttime Visitor
For more Wordless Wednesday, visit the main site.
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Dothan, Ala Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection # 7309 My thanks to the reader who sent me the link to the following Alert Message from the Alabama Department of Health on the unidentified respiratory cluster in and around Dothan, Alabama (see Updating The Dothan, Alabama Respiratory Cluster Story). Alabama Department of Public Health ALERT Message 5/21/13 On 5/16/13, a pulmonologist in Southeast Alabama reported to the Alabama
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Cow pies, scat, droppings, guano, dung, manure, night soil, poop, fecal matter, sh*t. Call it what you may, excrement plays a crucial role in evolution, culture and the environment.
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The number of challenges the design team had to over come is staggering! How does one:
1. place sensors miles below the seafloor without being damaged by the environment?
2. get a tool to stay in the ocean floor and seal it off in a way that prevents ocean water contaminate yet allows the data to be collected?
3. keep the sensors working for years?
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One way around the difficulties of traditional scientific illustration? Invent your own species, then nobody can argue with your rendering of the details. Vladimir Stankovic, a Serbian-born illustrator who now lives in Finland, regularly dreams up new species, and even … Continue reading →
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We no longer have to wonder what self-awareness looks like, says neuroscientist Daniel Bor – now we can see for ourselves (full text available to subscribers)
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Is the obesity epidemic due to the addictive qualities in food or that a lot more food is cheap and plentiful than ever before in history?
A paper presented at the 2013 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience - Association Canadienne des Neurosciences (CAN-ACN), says the problem is addiction rather than food wealth - the authors claim that high-fructose corn syrup can cause behavioral reactions in rats similar to those produced by drugs of
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I started my Yellow Road plan on February 9 when I was 245.2 pounds.
I decided that my first target weight would be my actual weight on February 9: 245.2. Every day this target weight goes down by 0.1 pounds. I weigh myself every morning and compare my actual weight to my target [...]
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by Meg Lowman One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. – Luciano Pavarotti, opera singer One of the best parts of spring is waking up with Mother Nature. Eagerly hitting the trail for an early […]
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by Charlotte Rosher, OBR-Manchester Correspondent MANCHESTER, Greater Manchester – OBR is hosting a three part seminar series at the University of Manchester which will outline how academic discoveries can be transformed into successful businesses, step-by-step. The first seminar, titled ‘Getting Your Biotech Idea Funded’ will be held on the 28th May at the University of [...]The post From Discovery to Market: How Invention Happens – a three-part seminar at OBR-Manchester
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If you are attending this year’s history of science and all the rest monster bean feast in Manchester in July and are holding a lecture there for the first time in your life at a major conference then I recommend … Continue reading →
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Tweet Healthcare reform discussions frequently center on the changes anticipated for the general population. But people with disabilities — about 56 million in the United States — are generally left out of the healthcare reform picture. That absence is not … Continue reading →
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To expand the conversation on climate change, we are highlighting EPA climate change research with Science Matters articles. Below, we share an article about how EPA researchers and partners are working to help protect wild salmon from warming water. Helping to Protect Wild Salmon EPA researchers and partners are working to help protect South Fork Nooksack River Watershed salmon from [...]
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Well, I thought it was funny. Get it? Yahoo thinks remote workers are inefficient, but just spent $1.1 billion on a blogging site whose content is entirely generated by remote users. On the up side, the odds that I will … Continue reading →
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We’ve been following this story about Portland Oregon’s vote for or against fluroridation. They have voted ‘no’ which is disappointing to health advocates. Portland rejects water fluoridation, the largest US city without plans to add the chemical. The mayor of Portland, Oregon, has conceded defeat in an effort to add fluoride to the city’s drinking water. With more than 80 per cent of the expected ballots counted late Tuesday night, the Multnomah County election […]
