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Posts

May 01, 2013

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9:51 AM | Astronomers warn about NASA planetary funding cuts
When President Obama spoke Monday at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, to mark that institution’s sesquicentennial, space got only the briefest of cameos in his address, and even that managed to rub some scientists and space activists the wrong way. “Today, all around the country, scientists like you are developing therapies to regenerate [...]
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7:22 AM | Will Kosovo’s new science law turn the tide on its poor research funding?
The tiny nation of Kosovo has a new science law, which mandates the government to invest 0.7% of its budget in research. This is great news for the nation of less than two million which has been through a bloody break-up with its bigger neighbour Serbia. A previous law that regulated science funding, from 2004, said that government should devote "up to 0.7%" of its budget to science. But critics say that this ambiguous wording allowed it to often invest... Read more
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2:01 AM | Up Next: The General
So — we know what’s coming up next in Massachusetts: Ed Markey vs. Gabriel Gomez.  Markey’s a 36 year veteran in the House; Gomez is an alledgedly “pure” non politician with all the attributes the national Republican Party wants to see — Latino, a former Seal, private-equity “job creating” vampire. We’ve seen how this can [...]

April 30, 2013

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8:07 PM | European Court Wants Drug Data Kept Secret
Ruling sides with two U.S. companies in conflict over transparency
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8:00 PM | We note our place with bookmarkers that measure what we’ve lost
Sandra Steingraber writes about her children developing "snow anxiety".
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7:57 PM | Toddler Receives Synthetic Trachea
First such operation in the United States
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7:00 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: The Beagle Project, Galapagos Live & ISS Wave
Selected responses categorized into 'helped', 'helped and harmed' and 'harmed'.
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5:00 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: Marine Science & Conservation Outreach
A twitter TeachIn about marine protected areas, hosted by @RJ_Dunlap on 4/8/2013
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3:53 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: Career changing and pseudonyms
To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case
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2:28 PM | Tar Sand Pipeline Politics in British Columbia
Tar sands pipelines have become big issues in the final stretch of campaigning for the May 14th British Columbia provincial election.
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2:23 PM | Sea Level Rise, Storm Surge, and Sewage Spills
Climate Central points out that massive sewage releases were part of the Hurricane Sandy event. Coastal inundation can cause very large pollution events.
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2:03 PM | Exxon Controls Access to EPA at Spill Site
InsideClimate reporter Lisa Song, trying to contact onsite representatives of EPA, entered the command center for the cleanup operation in Mayflower, Ark., but was told to leave by Exxon. "You've been asked by security to leave. If you don't you'll be arrested for criminal trespass."
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12:36 PM | Deja voodoo: the puzzling reemergence of invalid neuroscience methods in the study of "Democrat" & "Republican Brains"
I promised to answer someone who asked me what I think of Schreiber, D., Fonzo, G., Simmons, A.N., Dawes, C.T., Flagan, T., Fowler, J.H. & Paulus, M.P. Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans, PLoS ONE 8, e52970 (2013). The paper reports the results of an fMRI—“functional magnetic resonance imagining”— study that the authors describe as showing that “liberals and conservatives use different regions of the brain when they […]
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12:00 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: #SciStuChat
To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case
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10:30 AM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: AAAS Annual Meeting 2013
To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case
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4:15 AM | Quote of the Week: It’s arrogant to despair.
"Why is there so much febrile resignation? It’s arrogant to despair. We’ve multiplied so many options we can’t even name them. Anything is possible, and that’s what gets me out of bed." -Bruce Sterling

April 29, 2013

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11:13 PM | Italy Appoints New Research Minister
Female engineer handed job in broad coalition government
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10:12 PM | “You Can Keep The Gun” — Guest Post
What follows are friend-of-the-blog Jim Bale’s reflections on our recent bad days in Boston, Cambridge, Watertown and environs.  He picked up the loathesome suggestion by an Arkansas state rep who misunderstands so much about both Boston and the concept of society that I could come up with nothing but sputtering obscenities.  Jim, a better man, [...]
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9:32 PM | Obama Promises to Protect Peer Review in Salute to NAS
Speech marking Academy’s 150th anniversary includes warning against "political maneuvers"
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9:13 PM | European Commission Goes Ahead With Controversial Pesticide Ban
Two-year moratorium on neonicotinoids to protect bee health takes effect on 1 December
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5:00 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: This is what a scientist looks like
To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case
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4:04 PM | Economists Unconcerned
Economists on social media are continuing to suggest that climate change is a modest concern.
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4:01 PM | The Complete University Guide 2014: Computer Science
Today saw the publication of The Complete University Guide 2014, one of the many university ranking guides, and the start of the university ranking season in the UK. Comparing against the 2013 university league tables, there are two new entrants in the top 10 UK institutions for Computer Science: Ranking 2013 1. ↔ University of [...]
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4:00 PM | On the Fossil Fuel Front
Lots of fresh links on the end of peak oil and the boom in fossil fuel production.
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3:00 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: Android Malware Genome Project
To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case
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1:00 PM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: Sun|trek project
To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case
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11:17 AM | Week in Review, or Picking on Peer Review
As the impacts of sequestration continue to emerge, mounting airport delays due to the across-the-board spending cuts spurred Congress into action last week. The Senate and House both passed bills (S.853/H.R. 1765) which would give the Department of Transportation additional flexibility to move funding between accounts and restore some of the furloughs (days off without [...]
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10:00 AM | Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: Crafting for Chemistry
To tie in with this month’s SoNYC birthday celebrations, we are hosting a collection of case
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8:00 AM | Could the ‘brain drain’ be good for the Western Balkans?
The dreaded brain drain from the Western Balkans may actually be good for development, according to a report which finds that most students emigrate only to return more educated within five years, bringing back newly acquired skills. "Skill migration should be viewed [...] as the export of intermediate goods to be processed in advanced countries and re-exported to the countries of origin," says the report published earlier this month. But in order for countries to fully benefit, their 'brain […]
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5:13 AM | 92 vs 12
92 / 12 is the ratio of American prime time major network news stories on the British Royal family to those on climate change in 2012. Media Matters has a petition to the networks to improve on climate reporting.
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