Glenn Beck's War on Reason | The Intersection. My latest hosted episode of Point of Inquiry is now up, and you can download it to your podcast player or stream it here. The show is an interview with Alexander Zaitchik, author of the new book Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. Here's the show write-up:...

Today's Mystery Bird for you to Identify (from Grrl Scientist's blog). SUMMARY : This stunning African bird has a very close relative in North America that also looks very similar, can you name the pictured species as well as its North American counterpart? tags: birds , mystery bird , bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] photographed on Nyumba ya Mungu...

No news is good news? I've been pretty quiet this week, mostly because I took your advice and started reading. Stephen King (yes, now you know I'm a fan of High Literature) has written about four novels since I stopped having time to read regularly back in college, and people keep buying them for me...

Words | The Intersection. I love this by film from Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante for WNYC's Radiolab to accompany this week's segment entitled Words:

Marc Hauser: the end is nigh? | Gene Expression. David Dobbs has a link roundup and commentary on what's been going down with l'affaire Hauser. It doesn't look good for Hauser et al., though it seems that the downfall was precipitated ultimately from within if press reports are to be believed. Part of the issue here seems to...

Branding Science Blogging: Cooperatives + Corporate Networks. Two recent posts by John Rennie, Do Open Networks Threaten Brands? Part 1 and Do Open Networks Threaten Brands? Part 2, prompted me to respond – first in comments there, and then an expanded version here (and to turn a … Continue reading →

Today's Mystery Bird for you to Identify. 

Neuromuscular Junction Cookie! This is adorable. From here , found via this science cookie roundup post that I also highly recommend you visit, if you enjoy stuff like anatomical cakes and cookies that resemble T-4 macrophages. Click to enlarge!

Seagull Poo. Scientists are only human, and one of the defining features of humanity is the ability to snigger at the thought of bodily waste. Which was why the Carnal Carnival was set up, in a twittered flurry of excitement to cover all such bodily functions normally thought of as...

Book Review: Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky (from Martin Fenner's blog). In his new book Cognitive Surplus Clay Shirky argues that in the last 50 years many of those living in industrialized countries have seen a dramatic increase in free time, paired with better education and a higher standard of living. But a very large part of that free time or...

I've got your missing links right here (14th August 2010) | Not Exactly Rocket Science. News Can autism be diagnosed with a brain scan? The lead author tells the Guardian that the test will be 90% accurate. No, says Carl Heneghan later in the Guardian -- the actual chances that someone with a positive result would have autism is 4.5%, or around 1 in 22. The authors...

The Psychology of Power. I've got a short essay this weekend in the Wall Street Journal on the dismal psychology of power: When CEO Mark Hurd resigned from Hewlett-Packard last week in light of ethics violations, many people expressed surprise. Mr. Hurd, after all, was known as an unusually effective...

Two degrees of separation? Spelke, Hauser and my baby (from Tinker Ready's blog). Something about Mark Hauser's now questionable research sounded familiar to me. Then I read that he worked with Harvard researcher Elizabeth Spelke. Turns out I enrolled my infant son (who is now 12) in one of her experiments. And from the citation below, it looks like he may...

The Psychology of Power. I've got a short essay this weekend in the Wall Street Journal on the dismal psychology of power: When CEO Mark Hurd resigned from Hewlett-Packard last week in light of ethics violations, many people expressed surprise. Mr. Hurd, after all, was known as an unusually effective...

More details on the errant Harvard psych researcher (from Tinker Ready's blog). The New York Times goes off campus to collect some detail on the case. Gordon G. Gallup, the psychologist who invented the mirror test and established that only humans, chimps and orangutans could recognize their own image, was skeptical of Dr. Hauser's result and asked to see...

Caturday night's all right for fighting | Bad Astronomy. Last Caturday, I posted a picture of my cat relaxing a little too well. This shows a slightly different side to her: That picture, taken my brother-in-law Chris, is somewhat more accurate. For some reason, she hates him (and his son Derek even more). She rears back, spits,...

Japanese as Solarians | Gene Expression. One of the podcasts I subscribe too is Thinking Allowed from Radio 4. The most recent one was on the role which robots are envisaged to play in the future of Japan: Also, the rise of the ‘fembot'. The Japanese government is investing billions in the development of robotic...

K2 Spice associated with death of young Indiana mother of two. From the overnight e-mail referrals of PharmGirl, MD, whose insomnia fuels much of my blogging, comes a story from Middletown, Indiana, on the death of a 28-year-old woman from smoking a synthetic marijuana product. From WXIN-TV in Indianapolis: A mother of two is dead after...

GM Foods: The Misunderstood Hero (from Pream Neote's blog). I've been meaning to write about this when the news was hot on the headlines, but finally, a week laer, I'm doing it. You may have guessed it, I am going to write my opinions on the milk and meat from cloned cattle. Out of all the hot topics in science that have arose in the...

Afghanistan, an exceptional nation | Gene Expression. Most readers of this weblog are aware that the United States is in a mission of "nation building" in Afghanistan. I know that we probably deny that, but that's what it is. Going through Google data explorer I'm struck by what an exceptional nation we've decided to intervene in....

Did I mention I'm on Twitter? Okay, so I (Charlie) am not Simon King or Kenn Kaufman, but I do have a twitter account and I will be updating during the Birdfair and whatever else follows as my new ‘life outside the airline' develops. I'd be very flattered if you'd do the whole ‘follow' bit and I...

The Science Of Pleasure: Part II- Your Brain On Sexual Imagery. Sexual images trigger chemical reactions in your brain, which in turn compel us to act in specific ways, or be drawn to certain things, or motivated to engage in particular behaviors. It's common nowadays to have consultants whose job it is to find out exactly how your brain...

Food-Carrying Common Terns. I could watch terns all day long.  Flying, hunting, calling, preening, or just sitting around, I find terns fascinating.  It just seems so improbable that creatures that live in the air and on land could evolve to catch creatures that live in the water, but, of course, terns...

The wild silence and the wild dark. It is probably obvious by now that I have been reading Yeats. So let me share one more poem, "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven": Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the...

Top-down-anything does not work (videos). Part 1: Roads unfit for people: Part 2: Roads FiT for People: Filed under: Society, Technology

Search terms…. It is nice to know that this new blog is already getting some traffic from searches. Some are good, some are…interesting. And some are…wow! Here is a sampling of some of the recent ones…. psychology and scientific methods images nasty … Continue reading...

Predator X: Too Cool For Peer Review? Suffice it to say that earning the title Predator X should require a resume loaded with specific instances of statistically significant bad assery[1]. Big fangs or some kung fu lessons might get you Predator L or, even, E , but we are talking about Predator Freaking X here. By...

Show Off Your Research & Win Our Book! | The Intersection. A neat contest from the good folks at New Voices for Research: Stop, wherever you are. Quick, grab your phone or closest camera and take a picture of what's in front of you. Send it to hbenson at researchamerica.org to enter the Mystery Lab contest. What is the Mystery Lab...

Friday Focal Mechanisms: Haiti, revisited. One of the more interesting announcements to come out of the AGU Meeting of the Americas this week requires us to take another look at the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated Haiti 8 months ago, because it appears the tectonic … Continue reading →

Astronomers Set Priorities For Next Decade. How did the first stars and galaxies form? Are there other planets like Earth? What is the universe made of? These are the fundamental questions that astronomers hope to answer in the decade with a new generation of space- and ground-based telescopes. Today an expert panel...

F.D.A. Approves 5-Day Emergency Contraceptive. A pill called "ella" works longer than the widely used Plan B pill, but has drawn criticism from anti-abortion groups.

Influential astronomy priority list favors multipurpose telescopes. A blue-ribbon National Academy of Sciences committee released its decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics projects August 13, revealing its recommendations for 2012 to 2021. The influential report, produced by a 23-member committee and backed by nine expert panels together...

The New Happy Meal: A Burger With a Side of Cholesterol Meds | Discoblog. Just in time for the release of Denny's new Fried Cheese Melt, a study in The American Journal of Cardiology questions if cholesterol-reducing drugs called statins might pair well with fast food. A side of McStatins with that Big Mac, the study suggests, could decrease the risk...

The Next Decade of US Ground Based Astronomy | Cosmic Variance. On to the ground-based (i.e. NSF funded) recommendations (for large, new projects -- i.e., not including on-going investments in ALMA; there are a number of interesting medium scale projects recommended, but I probably won't have time to get to them). First priority was the...

Relief Well to Be Completed in Gulf. The government said Friday that work on a relief well will continue to plug the gusher permanently.

Synthesis of Hygromycin A. Retrosynthetic analysis of Hygromycin by Donohoe et. al. Shown to be a broad-spectrum antibiotic which also exhibits immunosuppressant activity, Hygromycin A has an intriguing structure and yet has only been synthesised once before (Ogawa et. al. 24 linear steps and 1% yield)....

Cosmetic surgery. So you'll have noticed that the layout has changed somewhat, as a result of WordPress changing the theme I as using to one more capable. I tried a few things, some of which readers hated, and some of which they … Continue reading →

New Antibiotic-Resistant Superbug Found: Should Everybody Panic? | 80beats. The antibiotics-resistant superbug that emerged in South Asia appears to have claimed its first life. According to doctors who treated a man in Belgium, he went to a hospital in Pakistan after a car accident, and there he picked up the bacterial infection. While the man died...

Farming's future in NZ: adapt or decline. 

Quick Links. Does the future of science publishing depend on the future of science blogging? Scientific blogging as a model for professional networking online Science's experiment in publishing Blog post echos echo chamber question from Journal of journalism study Cooking in a …...

What is Twilight (video). Of course, I want the app…. Filed under: Technology, Time

Why I Just Left Academia. This week a computer science researcher named Vinay Deolalikar claimed to have a proof that P is not equal to NP. Let's set aside what this means for another day, lest I get distracted.  The important thing now is that this is big. Huge, even! If, that is, he's correct. But...

Positive change in the world | Gene Expression. Just want to cheer you up a bit. Click play and watch how things are getting better….

Life in the Shadow of Coal | Visual Science. This photograph was made in a small town in Southeast Ohio, along the Ohio river, called Cheshire. To the left you can see the Gavin Power Plant, a coal-fired plant that provides electricity to Ohio, Appalachia, and the greater Northeast. The coal that is burned at Gavin Power...

BIO101 – From Genes To Traits: How Genotype Affects Phenotype. As you may know, I have been teaching BIO101 (and also the BIO102 Lab) to non-traditional students in an adult education program for about twelve years now. Every now and then I muse about it publicly on the blog (see … Continue reading →

The Angry Scientist: A web comic - Science Bumper Sticker Series: Rather be Guillotin'n. This one looked way funnier in my brain, I swear...; (read more) Source: Angry Scientist - Discipline: Science Politics

BlogWorld/New Media Expo 2010: Medbloggers + Las Vegas, Part Deux! We did it before, and we're doing it again! The medblogger track (aka: Social Health) is on for this year's BlogWorld/New Media Expo! ********** WHO should attend? You! Doctors, nurses, patients physician assistants, dentists, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, paramedics...

The Miracle That Wasn't: Everglades Restoration. Religious undertones seem relevant to the debate over purity that's been a big part of the Everglades restoration debate for decades.

UC Berkeley Halts Its Freshman DNA Testing Project | 80beats. Is it medicine, or is it not? In May, the University of California, Berkeley unveiled its "Bring Your Genes To Cal" program. The idea was, Berkeley's 5,500 or so incoming freshman would have the option to have their DNA tested for three particular characteristics: Their...

Some stats. It occurred to me that I don't do a very good job of tracking the stats of the three incarnations of this blog. So here they are: Posts Hits ET 1 : 411 142,117 ET 2 @ Scienceblogs : 1,272 … Continue reading →

Daily Data Dump -- Friday | Gene Expression. Immune Responses During Pregnancy Linked to Schizophrenia Among Offspring. This is a known association, but the interesting point is that there may be conditionalities to the response based on genetics. That would explain the heritability. ‘Fused' People Eager to Die and...

The Next Decade of US Space Astronomy | Cosmic Variance. So, the Decadal Survey ("Astro2010″) results are out. I missed the webcast (which I heard was of pretty sketchy quality), but read Roger Blandford's slides, and have skimmed or read a reasonable fraction of the preliminary report. Here's my summary and first reactions,...

Lessons in Resilience From New Orleans. Lessons from New Orleans history on withstanding, or succumbing to, inevitable disasters.

Two weeks, two geeks: Mythbusters edition | Bad Astronomy. I've told you about Geek A Week before: artist Len Peralta is interviewing one Alpha Nerd ever week, and drawing a cool trading card for each. I was honored to be included, and I also mentioned my friend Brea Grant was one as well. Len recently interviewed two other friends of...

Enclosure downloaded on 8/13/2010 at 2:41 PM. 16.9MB.

Nissan Leaf Road Test: Fully Charged Goes for a Spin (Video). 

Prince of Tides: A Mammoth Turbine. The allure of producing clean, reliable power from the daily flux of tides continues to attract significant investment.

Do You Speak Brain? Try Studying These Neurons-on-a-Chip | Science Not Fiction. The neurons of a patient suffering from Alzheimer's. You may not be consciously aware of it, but at any given time your brain is playing host to billions of simultaneous conversations (and no, I'm not talking about those voices). I speak, of course, of the conversations between...

Katz | Gene Expression. 

Found: One of Neptune's Asteroid Stalkers | 80beats. Astronomers have confirmed it: Neptune has a stalker. They have spotted, for the first time, an asteroid follower that keeps a fairly constant distance behind the planet in its orbit around the sun. And there may be many more. Asteroid 2008 LC18 can't help itself. It's caught...

The Scientist and the Anarchist - Part II. The latest stop in the #PDEx tour is being hosted by Dr. SkySkull at his Scientopia blog Skulls in the Stars . Peter Kropotkin's notoriety as a political radical was equaled only by the high esteem held for his scientific and scholarly achievements. The discoveries he had made...

Video: The Different Shapes of Iciclology. A team of Canadian iciclologists has put to rest the notion that one frozen cone of drips is exactly the same as the next. By growing lots of icicles in controlled laboratory conditions, the scientists have uncovered evidence that runs counter to an earlier theory saying that...

Balanced Instability - Am I ruining your marriage? Hooray for the demise of Prop 8!! It is about fucking time! Here's hoping that the decision sticks.OK, so I am biased, being a lesbian* and all. But I really wish that someone could explain to me how, exactly, my family is ruining America. Dr. Isis posits that the folks making...

In which the anticipation mounts: second call for Fringe-Frivolous Unconference 2010 (from Jennifer Rohn's blog). I must say I'm starting to get excited about the prospect of being trapped on the Roof with the likes of you. Resistance is futile, but at least there will be Beer. As always, a stonking big thanks to Mendeley for their generous sponsorship.We still have 18 places left, so if...

Energy Funds Went Unspent, U.S. Auditor Says. Only about 8.4 percent of the $3.2 billion voted by Congress for energy efficiency projects has been disbursed, a report says.

A.I. Ecosystem Engineering Could Turn Sprawl Into Sanctuary. For over a decade, University of Arizona ecologist Michael Rosenzweig has preached a gospel of what he calls reconciliation ecology: designing everyday landscapes to support as many plants and animals as possible. He says it's the only way of averting ecological catastrophe,...

Augmented Reality iPhone App Points You to Every Nearby London Bike-Share Hub Nearby. 

More on NDM-1. One of the frustrations of being a working journalist and a blogger is that, when a big blog-story breaks, you're likely already to be working on something else. And so it is, unfortunately, with NDM-1: I'm on a magazine assignment and will be off interviewing people when I...

Inquiry on Harvard Lab Threatens Ripple Effect. Marc Hauser is one of Harvard's most visible academics and is frequently quoted in articles about language, animals' cognitive abilities and the biological basis of morality.

Lust & Love Apps: Playboy Tames Down, Imaginary Girlfriend Steps Up | Discoblog. Those subscribing to the iPad version of Playboy really will be reading it for the articles: The magazine has announced that it will forgo the naked women photos to conform to Apple's stance against all apps deemed (pdf) obscene and pornographic. The Telegraph reports that a...

On Our Radar: Fealty to Kentucky Coal. Declaring opposition to any energy bill that would undercut Kentucky's coal industry.

Dark Energy and Exoplanets Top List of Astronomy Priorities. Dark energy and extra-solar planet studies received strong endorsement today in a once-a-decade astronomy and astrophysics prioritization report. The National Research Council recommended that the highest priority large-scale projects for the next decade should be the...

Crazy-Looking Redbearded Monkey Turned Up in Colombia | 80beats. The good news: After decades of wondering whether this immaculately bearded monkey really existed, but not being able to confirm it because of never-ending violence in Colombia, scientists say they've finally found evidence of the Caqueta titi monkey. The bad news: Because of...

Toronto Gets Bixi Bike System, Sponsored by Dutch Bank ING. 

Outsourcing Alzheimer's diagnosis. In the middle of all that disappointing news about failed treatments targeting beta-amyloid, here's some silver lining. A lot of people think that the real reason all these drugs are not fighting AD is not because they are ineffective per se but because they are administered too...

Today's Mystery Bird for you to Identify (from Grrl Scientist's blog). SUMMARY : This bird and its sister species are unique in their genus for a particular reason. Can you tell me what feature makes them so special? tags: birds , mystery bird , bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] photographed on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge -- one of the most...

Today's Mystery Bird for you to Identify. 

Featured - Peer review, schmeer review. There is a recent piece in the The Scientist titled "I Hate Your Paper" that outlines the problems with the current peer review system and describes some of the alternatives that have been suggested. This has been discussed by Orac, which was followed up on by...

From Bench to Business - Making it Official: The First Big Step in Starting your Bio-Business. So, you have a great idea, and a great business plan, now what? First step you you can take is to become an LLC and fill out all the necessary paperwork. I have had to do this myself for a previous companies new branch, and the task seemed daunting. Where do you get this...

Tales of the Genomic Repairman - A letter to the other graduate student in my lab.... I'm going to fucking stab you!You team-killing fucktard I want to shove you into a pond and hold you down until the bubbles stop coming up. Okay, that's a little harsh but lets rewind back to yesterday. We have designated workspace in our lab for radiation that also has a few...

Pondering Blather - Peer review, schmeer review. There is a recent piece in the The Scientist titled "I Hate Your Paper" that outlines the problems with the current peer review system and describes some of the alternatives that have been suggested. This has been discussed by Orac, which was followed up on by...

The Best of Nature Network: 7-13 August 2010 (from Nature Network Team's blog). BlogsAnother new blogger joined the Nature Network ranks this week. Jim Caryl is a microbiologist from the University of Leeds, UK. His rather unusual project (and blog name) involves subjecting his bacteria to a ‘Gene Gym'. Jim explains the workout in his introductory...

Three anniversaries and an open thread | Not Exactly Rocket Science. I love anniversaries, and particularly when they coincide with one another. Today, I have three causes for celebration: Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that Sunday's post on the microbiome was my 800th piece for Not Exactly Rocket Science (including all full-length posts,...

NCBI ROFL: An electrophysiologic study of female ejaculation. | Discoblog. "Opinions vary over whether female ejaculation exists or not. We investigated the hypothesis that female orgasm is not associated with ejaculation. Thirty-eight healthy women were studied. The study comprised of glans clitoris electrovibration with simultaneous recording of...

Scenes From the Future: Send Tweets From A Tattoo | Science Not Fiction. Tattoos are a nerd's best friend. The Loom's science tattoo emporium is all the proof I need. But Frog Design's idea for Dattoos takes things to the next level: The concept of the Dattoo arose in response to current trends towards increasing connectivity and technology as...

Ash hole on the Moon | Bad Astronomy. The Moon is a funny place. It's literally the closest astronomical object to us in the entire Universe, but in some ways we know surprisingly little about it. It's literally covered in craters, but for a long time their origin was a mystery. Until the 1870s, most scientists...

Address Mistrust, Scientists Urge Nuclear Panel. Scientists argue that a presidential panel on nuclear waste needs to address issues beyond the technological.

Ruse on Hull: a memoir. The following memoir of David Hull is from Michael Ruse, who has graciously given permission to post it on this blog: DAVID HULL (1935--2010) I first met David Hull in the fall of 1968, at the first meeting of the … Continue reading →

Breath-taking. ‘Greenwash of the Week' Award goes to Tusk Mining of South Africa, who says because they are committed to reducing their footprint on the South African landscape they have "undertaken to only begin new mining operations in countries other than [SA]. To this end, we have...

Future-proofing antibiotics... (from Jim Caryl's blog). By now many people will be aware of one of this week's topics of conversation, the emergence of the resistance determinant New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase 1 (or NDM -1), which is an enzyme that confers resistance to a group of very useful antibiotics, the carbapenems; it does...

Flooding in Pakistan. For the past two weeks, unusually heavy monsoon rains have deluged Pakistan, resulting in flooding and landslides. Pakistan is heavily populated all along the Indus River valley, so this is a slow-moving disaster of epic proportions. The latest news reports … Continue...

Tales of the Genomic Repairman - Friday morning groovin by the Fratellis. "Flathead" by the Fratellis. Have a good weekend.; (read more) Source: Genomic Repairman - Discipline: Music

Tales of the Genomic Repairman - The Apprentice: The Finale! Graduation Day Motherfuckers!So tomorrow is my apprentice, Genomic RepairGirl's last day. She will be giving her final presentation to all her fellow interns, faculty, trainees, and parents. I think her stuff is solid and she will give a great presentation if she can conquer her...

At a Crossroads With Myself (from Linda Lin's blog). "I'm at a crossroads with myself,I don't got no one else. And possibilities at your door…Can you see the world through a window?Are you having problems in droves?"~ Laredo, Band of Horses Band of Horses – Laredo (Official Music Video) . Watch more top selected videos...

New Titi Monkey Species Discovered In Amazon. A newly discovered species of titi monkey purrs like a cat and looks like a leprechaun. Although it was first spotted in 1976 by biologist Martin Moynihan in the southern Caqueta province of Columbia, frequent armed conflict in the region has prevented scientists from being able...

Friday Ark #308. We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....? Visit all the boarders, Link to the...

Limits on Lasers. Physicists are planning to create a laser so powerful that it will tear apart spacetime, well, it won't destroy spacetime, but it will tear particles out of the vacuum with dire consequences for the laser. I first made the statement that 'lasers will tear apart spacetime' when...

Birding Ramshorn-Livingston Sanctuary. My final outdoor adventure of my weekend upstate was a brief visit to the Ramshorn-Livingston Sanctuary in Catskill, NY, just over the county line in Greene County.  Early on Sunday morning my brother needed a ride to Catskill to meet up with a fellow golfer so they could hit...