| Den of Antiquities Craig Childs explores archaeology’s ethical debates and the costs of discovering lost history. feeds.nytimes.com |
Scientia Pro Publica blog carnival | GrrlScientist Welcome to the 39th edition of Scientia Pro Publica! This blog carnival showcases the finest science, medical and environment writing published in the blogosphereWelcome to the 39th edition of the blog carnival Scientia Pro Publica! I apologise for the utilitarian look of this carnival, but my internet provider once again has mysteriously cut off my access, so I have been doing my best to put this issue of Scientia together while mooching free wi-fi from Starbucks (which has a 2-hours-per-day limit). So the next time you are in Starbucks, please do purchase a latte (using your own mug, of course) in honor of their generosity to science, medicine and the environment. Without further ado, here's this edition of Scientia Pro Publica for you to read and enjoy. As always, please do leave questions and comments on these essays.BiologyThis essay part of an ongoing series by LabRat about Xtreme bacteria – bacteria that thrive under some of the most inhospitable conditions that you can imagine. Be sure to nominate your own favourite Xtreme bacteria in reader comments.Jeremy, a doctoral candidate who writes the independent blog Denim and Tweed, discusses a recently published study that suggests that the sort of interaction between plant-eating insects and their host plants also determines how specific those interactions are. More than Honey presents a charming and personable narrative about how one bee aficionado figured out "bee miles" – the distance that a honeybee flies for every kilogram of honey they produce. After finishing this seemingly simple exercise, the author concludes that. (1) Numbers can be deceiving. (2) Different numbers don't always mean right and wrong. (3) Variation can be (and in biological systems most often is) part of the game."Chuck presents some data that call into question the belief among fishermen on the west coast of the United States that spiny dogfish are the source of crashing fish populations in his essay Voracious Beyond Belief? published at Ya Like Dags?. This essay was nominated by David "Why Sharks Matter" Shiffman. This story is part two of an ongoing series about endangered species 2010: Sarcopterygii and Chondrichthyes. The author of Ninjameys, who goes by the pseudonym Thonoir, is an independent blog writer and zoology student about to embark upon an MRes in wildlife conservation at the University of Leeds, where I attended the British Ecology Society meeting last week. This is a meticulously researched and beautifully written blog article by The Roaming Naturalist about the coyote – Coyote: Leader of the Bad Rap Crew – and why it is so hated in the western United States. This essay is an excellent example of why I particularly love long-form blog essays: it gives the writer the space necessary to carefully explore and discuss an important and complex issue. The birders in the crowd will enjoy Kazimierz's photoessay about his guided birding tour through several habitat types in Costa Rica, published at Science & Soul. Earth and GeologyJohn takes a look at those mysterious round holes bored into solid rock in his photoessay, Patience Pays Off for Pothole Populations, published at Kind of Curious. He also mentions the unique populations of animals that appear in these potholes. Several images are quite striking. What do maps, history and Texan religious wingnuts have in common? This amusing story, Antarctica Made Large, answers that question beautifully. This essay was nominated by David "Why Sharks Matter" Shiffman. EnvironmentThis is a "blog" in the traditional sense because it provides space for reader comments and discussion. But it is important to note that this is actually an interactive graphic that was created by a media company instead of an individual blog writer. I include it here for two reasons: first, I think this is an example of one direction that blog writing (and online media) will develop in the future, and second, because this graphic is a powerful (and valuable) look at humans' many damaging effects on the planet. HealthDr David Rabiner, who co-writes the group blog Sharper Brains, presents a long but thoughtful discussion of a recently published paper that investigates the effects of altering the diet of children who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): A Controlled Trial of Herbal Treatment for ADHD. Ah, the power of belief when treating illness is always a tricky issue to address or even to understand. My friend and colleague Akshat, who writes The Allotrope, discusses the state of homeopathy in a country where 62% believe in its mystical powers. Speaking of beliefs, there is a growing number of us who are either agnostic or atheist – people who either doubt the existence of a god or gods, or who are convinced that god(s) do not exist at all. The author of the blog Epiphenomenon focuses on trying to understand why some people still believe in god(s), and what the psychological and social consequences of those beliefs are. This short essay presents data from a recently published scientific study that compiled responses to a survey mailed to people in south east England (Woking and Guildford, to be precise). Have you ever wondered why people can react to the same experience in opposite ways? Warren Davies, author of Positive Psychology Digest, wondered the same thing. In this piece, he pokes around in the primary scientific literature to understand the phenomenon of differential susceptibility. The author of Providentia provides an interesting transition from psychology into our next topic area, astronomy, by discussing the overlap between these fields. Comet Crazy collects some of the stories about the wacky things that people do when a comet pops up in the night sky. AstronomyI have met too many people in my life who accuse scientists of being unable or too logical to experience "wonder" when confronted with a natural phenomenon. I counter this silly assertion with my own silly response (hoping they will realise how silly we both are): the "wonder" that a scientist experiences is far deeper than what a non-scientist experiences because a scientist understands what she is seeing and still is astonished. For example, Phil Plait, author of Bad Astronomy, wrote this interesting piece about his sense of wonder when he realised he was looking at the dying gasp of a very, very strange star system. MathsIt wasn't very long ago when an incomprehensible (to non-mathematicians) paper was published that made a lot of people jump up and take notice. My friend and colleague, Mark, was one of those people. He discusses this paper in his amusingly entitled essay Holy Freaking Cow… P ! = NP?? The reader comments that accompany this piece are also interesting reading (keep reading to the end). Science, Law and SocietyBlog writing is often criticised by scientists, especially if they discover that one of their colleagues has the temerity to write a science blog. But if you read science blogs regularly, then it is not news to you that the science blogosphere is playing an increasingly important role in the criticism and occasional retraction of scientific papers that are ... just plain bad. This short blog entry, Journal, heal thyself, published by one of my Nature Network colleagues at The Great Beyond, draws attention to this process. Since I mentioned that the science blogosphere has been involved in several paper retractions in the recent past, I thought you might be interested to know what happens to a scientific paper after it has been retracted. Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch provides a case study about the process of retraction due to falsified data that occurred in the journal Endocrinology. Here's a long but very interesting study from Vision of Earth, a group of (mostly) graduate students based in Canada: Does nuclear power lead to weapons proliferation? According to co-author Ben Harack, this article is one of several that relied upon months of research into the feasibility of nuclear energy for the authors' home province of Saskatchewan. Ben writes: "We believe that this [article] may be the most important subject with regards to society's possible acceptance of nuclear energy."Before I stop, I thought I'd leave you with a disconcerting thought: Did you know that 20% of your genes are patented? According to the US Government Patent Office, more than three million gene patent applications have been filed so far, and over 40,000 patents are currently held on sections of the human genome, covering roughly 20% of our genes. This raises all sorts of issues, many of which are deeply worrying. This online interview and video, Who Owns You? 20% of the Genes in Your Body are Patented, is by Drew who writes Singularity Hub.---This ends the 39th edition of the blog carnival, Scientia Pro Publica. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I have putting it together for you. If you write a blog about science, medicine or the environment and would like to share your writing or photography with a large and appreciative audience, you are invited to use the automated submission form. You can access the complete blog carnival archives from the Scientia site. Of course, we are always seeking hosts so if you wish to host this carnival on your blog, do check the schedule for available dates and either leave a comment there or send email to me so we can discuss this further.GrrlScientistguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Video | From the British Pathé archive: Test flying the T.S.R.-2 Test pilot Roland Beamont takes the T.S.R.-2 bomber out for her maiden flight. The project, which cost Harold Wilson's government hundreds of millions of pounds, was mired in political controversy guardian.co.uk |
Carbon wins a cluster of Nobel prizes Carbon scientists' dual Nobel success prompts calls for more government funding of 'curiosity research'It is the stuff of coal, soot, diamonds, radiocarbon dating, pencils, climate change, graphite lubricants, charcoal – and a startling number of Nobel prizes. Carbon, it turns out, is the element most likely to win you the ultimate scientific prize. Last week two different awards – the chemistry and the physics Nobels – went to groups of researchers working on the element, adding to an already sizeable number of prizes given for carbon research.Examples include the 1996 chemistry Nobel, which was given to UK researcher Harry Kroto and others for creating carbon "buckyballs", in which 60 atoms of the element were linked together to form a sphere, opening the door to the creation of tiny carbon-based, super-fast computers. And earlier last century, the Nobel chemistry prize was given to US researcher Willard Libby, who exploited the decay of a naturally occurring isotope of carbon to date ancient artefacts. Radiocarbon dating has since transformed archaeology.And then there are the Nobel prizes for medicine. Every one awarded over the past 110 years could be said to be a prize for carbon research. All living things are made of carbon, including human beings whose bodies are 18.5% carbon by weight. By definition, a Nobel prize for medical or physiological research is therefore a prize for carbon research.However, it is the potential for carbon to be used for industrial and technological applications that has driven recent prizes. These include the unprecedented award last week of two separate Nobels for carbon research. In the case of the chemistry prize, this went to US and Japanese researchers – Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki – for work that has made it easy to create new ranges of carbon-based, organic chemicals, while the physics prize went to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both at Manchester University, for their research on graphene.Graphene is a flat sheet of carbon just one atom thick; it is almost completely transparent, but also extremely strong and a good conductor of electricity – and that is an extremely promising set of properties. Short-term uses for graphene include using it to manufacture light, robust touch-screens and mobile phones.However, graphene has a longer-term potential – one that reveals just how much carbon is beginning to touch our lives, as materials researcher Professor Ton Peijs of Queen Mary, University of London, explains. "People have been working on all sorts of different forms of carbon. For example, 50% of the new Boeing 787 is made out of carbon fibre, making it light and fuel efficient. Now we have the opportunity to use graphene to make even lighter and stronger carbon fibres and so make our aircraft even lighter and stronger." In this way, new forms of carbon will reduce aircraft weight, subsequently cutting the burning of fuel and dumping of carbon in the atmosphere. Other scientists predict that graphene could one day replace silicon, the current basic material used to make transistors.However, there is a crucial aspect to all this carbon research, stresses Professor Laurence Eaves, of Nottingham University. "Breakthroughs like buckyballs and graphene come from curiosity research. They are not driven by some policy maker under a Stalinist system, dictating what should be done. Kroto, Geim and Novoselov could not have said what their work would produce when they began their research. Yet their results turn out to have enormous potential. If politicians want British scientists to continue winning Nobels and opening up new technological processes, they need to realise they have to support and fund curiosity research."Nobel prizesPeople in scienceScience prizesRobin McKieguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Patients protest Chinese doctor's risky surgery By GILLIAN WONG 2010-10-19T14:37:41ZBEIJING (AP) -- At one moment, the Chinese urologist seemed to be at the height of his career: He had invented a surgical procedure to help patients overcome incontinence and was training doctors in America and elsewhere. The next, Dr. Xiao Chuanguo was in handcuffs, confessing that he'd hired thugs to attack two persistent critics who called him a fraud.... hosted.ap.org |