Posts

May 22, 2013

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How’s this for a catch 22: A judge has ruled that a North Texas lesbian couple can’t live together because of a morality clause in one of the women’s divorce papers. The clause is common in divorce cases in Texas and other states. It prevents a divorced parent from having a romantic partner spend the night while […]

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3:00 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: National Science Foundation-funded IGERT project team

To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case

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1:16 PM | Thera, Golden State Warriors Cheerleader, shares her experiences as a Science Cheerleader

Science Cheerleader and Pop Warner Little Scholars are national partners in an effort to bring science to 100,000 youth cheerleaders. Several Science Cheerleaders were keynote speakers at recent Pop Warner Scholars Banquets. SciCheer Thera who is a space systems electrical engineer and Golden State Warriors cheerleader, addressed hundreds of kids in Reno, NV. Here’s a little look into her experience there” This Spring, I had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at the Scholar […]

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1:00 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: Upper-level biology students blog about their independent research projects.

To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case

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12:30 PM | Academic salaries: some numbers and graphs

The topic of academic salaries came up recently and I figured I'd look a little further. Where does chemistry stand? After all, jobs are scarce--how do academic positions pay compared to other disciplines?Lots of resources exist for salary issues that are much more data-thorough, so take the following numbers with a grain of salt. For more in-depth info, a few resources include HigherEdJobs, The Chronicle of Higher Education, or a web search.I took a (somewhat) random single institution […]

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11:00 AM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: Chemicals Are Your Friends

To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case

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9:15 AM | On the science communication value of communicating "scientific consensus": an exchange

So either (1) I am a genius in communication after all ( p = 0.03), having provoked John Cook and Scott Johnson to offer thoughtful reflections by strategically feigning a haughty outburst (I acknowledge that I expressed my frustration in a manner that I am not proud of). Or (2) Cook & Johnson are sufficiently motivated by virtuous commitment to intellectual exchange to create one notwithstanding my bad manners (p = 0.97). I don’t propose we conduct any sort […]

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9:00 AM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: AntarcticGlaciers.org

To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case

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4:50 AM | Streets are for People

“All of these things wouldn’t have happened a couple of years ago because there wasn’t enough room on the sidewalks”

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3:08 AM | How Much Does Keystone Really Cost?

In its report on the Keystone XL pipeline, EPA identified “significant environmental impacts” and noted that full assessment of these impacts was not possible due to insufficient information. The monetary value of the damage is arguably as much as $100 billion per year.

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2:46 AM | Desertification of New Mexico

This week’s U.S. Drought Monitor shows a swath of red and dark red across New Mexico, indicating extreme and exceptional drought conditions. The last 12- and 24-month periods have eclipsed even those dry times of the early 20th century and the 1950s.

May 21, 2013

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9:37 PM | Stem Cell Lobbying Group Closing Its Doors After 12 Years

With federal funding for human embryonic research no longer an issue, advocates move on to other policy issues

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9:10 PM | Oklahoma Tornado Relief

The recent tornado seasons have given us much to think about, but first things first. The Oklahoma tornado was particularly devastating. It's easy to lend a hand, though

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5:03 PM | Sequester's 5% Cut Rolls Through Biomedical Labs

Specific hits are hard to pinpoint

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2:42 PM | Moon versus asteroids on the path to Mars

The space subcommittee of the House Science Committee is holding a hearing at 2 pm EDT today on “Next Steps in Human Exploration to Mars and Beyond”. The focus of the hearing, based on the hearing charter, will be whether NASA’s plans to redirect a near Earth asteroid into lunar orbit, to be then visited [...]

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12:22 PM | Cultural resistance to the science of science communication

I’m in Norway. Just stepped off the plane in fact. Am going to be giving an address at a conference sponsored by the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. The conference is for professional science communicators (mainly ones associated with universities), and the topic is how to promote effective public dissemination of and engagement with the IPCC's 5th Assessment Report, which will be released officially in October. Obviously, I will stress that it […]

May 20, 2013

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11:00 AM | Week in Review, or Tragedy of the Commons

Little changed this week in the overall funding picture for FY 2014. A $90 billion dollar chasm still exists between what the House is willing to grant and what the Senate is willing to work with as a topline funding level for the FY 2014 budget. Republican House Appropriators did indicate that the 302(b) allocations, [...]

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5:36 AM | The Value of Peer Review

Via Stoat, an excellent survey of the epistemological value of peer review by Victor Venema.

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4:05 AM | Do We Need to Remember How to Plan?

Naomi Klein, a couple of years ago, observed that "it is not opposition to the scientific facts of climate change that drives denialists but rather opposition to the real-world implications of those facts." She quotes Dellingpole: "Modern environmentalism successfully advances many of the causes dear to the left: redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, greater government intervention, regulation." and offers her own "inconvenient truth". She says that on this point, Dellingpole is right.

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2:00 AM | Hansen Interview

Yes, you’ve heard it all before, but if you know someone who hasn’t yet, this would be a good place for them to start.

May 19, 2013

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5:29 PM | Differing perspectives on commercial crew

Speaking at the meeting Wednesday of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) in Washington, NASA administrator Charles Bolden made another pitch—this time to a rather sympathetic audience—for the agency’s commercial crew program. “If NASA had received the president’s requested funding for this program then,” Bolden said, referring to the rollout of the [...]

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1:06 PM | What is to be done?

A thoughtful commentator sent me this email: I was reading through the sublinks [in Andy Revkin's "The Other Science Gap" column] with interest tonight, but also growing frustration-- as in I can understand and agree with you and others focusing on the role partisanship and social cognitive barriers play, but I am a guy who lives in the trenches and wants to know--are there any solutions? I urged my climate law students this month to be advocates and not give up despite all the pessimistic […]

May 18, 2013

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6:45 PM | More conversation -- & an announcment of my commitment to the same

There are a lot of interesting conversations going in the comments section following my post on the new study on the extent of scientific consensus on climate change. Indeed, it's all much more interesting than anything I "said" in the post, which I think was deficient (particularly in the material before the "update" field) in the quantity of reasoned reflection, and the quality of constructive engagement, that usually are necessary to get a worthwhile exchange of views going. So thanks to the […]

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4:47 PM | The Hard Way

Business guru Malcolm Gladwell argues that practice is more important than talent.

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2:43 PM | Migratory Species Vulnerable to Five Key Threats

The ‘Big Five’ primary causes of biodiversity loss … are habitat destruction, overharvesting and poaching, pollution, climate change and introduction of invasive species.” Migratory species are especially vulnerable “as they depend entirely on a network of well-functioning ecosystems to refuel, reproduce and survive in every ‘station’ they visit and upon unrestricted travel.”

May 17, 2013

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7:33 PM | Taylor Wilson: My radical plan for small nuclear fission reactors

Taylor Wilson, is known as the boy who played with fusion, because at the age of 14 became the 32nd individual on the planet to achieve a nuclear-fusion reaction.

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1:55 PM | NASA operating plan may reverse Congressional increase in planetary science

NASA’s operating plan for fiscal year 2013 will reportedly reverse the increases awarded to the agency’s planetary science program by Congress, according to a report. The Planetary Exploration Newsletter (PEN) reported Wednesday that the operating plan, which details any tweaks NASA plans to make to the final FY13 appropriations passed in March, will return planetary [...]

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11:50 AM | Annual "new study" finds 97% of climate scientists believe in man-made climate change; public consensus sure to follow once news gets out

Hey! Did you hear? A new study shows that 97% of scientists believe that human activity is responsible for climate change! We all need to be sure this new information gets reported far and wide -- not only because it is genuinely newsworthy, a true addition to what's known about the state of scientific opinion -- but also because public unawareness of this degree of consensus surely explains cultural polarization over climate change. The ugly, demeaning, public-welfare-enervating debate […]

May 16, 2013

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8:56 PM | Ecuador opening its rainforest to oil drilling despite bitter past experience

Perhaps they are hoping that this time, China will do better at respecting indigenous people’s rights, health, and the integrity of the jungle environment than Texaco was able to do?

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8:53 PM | U.S. Senate Confirms Ernest Moniz as Secretary of Energy

MIT physicist had served as undersecretary during Clinton administration

May 22, 2013

May 21, 2013

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