ScienceBlogs

"Publishers are librarians’ best friends, they know what’s good for us and we should just follow their lead in important matters. Heaven knows, as librarians we’ve enjoyed so much publisher hospitality at conferences — the wine! the cheese! the free pens! — that it’s really time for us to give back. There have been too many years of tragic misunderstanding and animosity between the two communities." [Image by Stewart Butterfield http://bit.ly/1RSrWU5]

"This has allowed antivaccine activists to keep hitting their pro-science targets with new bans almost as soon as an existing ban expires, resulting in their being locked out of Facebook for long periods of time and, when they get back on Facebook, being forced to be very careful about what they say and constantly look over their shoulder for potential attacks. If one of your outlets as a pro-science activist is Facebook, these attacks can essentially shut you down by taking you offline intermittently and making you a lot more measured in what you say. It also—intentionally—discourages pro-science activists from calling out the antivaccine misinformation promoted by those who use this tactic."

"Since ancient times, gems were believed to bestow various traits and good fortunes upon those two whom they were gifted. In more recent times, we’ve associated gems with the time of the year someone was born, assigning each individual month a birthstone associated with it. Yet scientifically, the individual gemstones themselves hold an impressive tale, with a variety of structures, stories and histories behind them all. What we think of as the magnificence or even the defining characteristic of some gems often arise from impurities, and one of the most coveted stones of all isn’t even a mineral!"

"Yesterday I learned about a cool new tradition among metal detectorists. They’re having images of their favourite finds tattooed, often on the arm with which they hold the detector! Note that in Scandinavia these are generally objects that the finders have handed in to museums – they keep them only as tattoos. [...] Hugo Falck found this beautiful brooch in 2014 while collaborating with a colleague of mine over an important new site in Østfold, SE Norway."

"I came across this neat video summarizing a study that found some birds build nests near alligators to protect themselves from other predators. But the protection is not without a price." The price of a few extra children... http://scienceblogs.com/…/birds-seeking-safety-of-alligato…/

"The Australian Giant Cuttlefish aggregation is truly one of nature’s great events. Thousands of cuttlefish congregate in the shallow waters around the Spencer gulf in South Australia, to mate and perpetuate the species. The cuttlefish, like alien beings, display an array of patterns, textures and colours to indicate their intentions. As male courts a female or wards off other males, and entourage of suitors stay poised for an opportunity to mate with the female. A visual delight and a rare glimpse of nature in all its glory." [By Scott Portelli]

"These industries could have done something very different. They could have started to develop and deploy clean energy solutions, and dissolve their fossil fuel based assets. But they didn’t. So we are in a bad situation right now. Meanwhile this systematic and effective denial of science has kept public opinion confused, with many people failing to accept the reality of global warming. But now, we are seeing a major shift away from denial and towards accepting, if not fully understanding, the science, and getting on board with a shift in policy."

"NASA’s Dawn mission has just revealed a huge suite of data about Ceres, our Solar System’s closest dwarf planet. No longer merely taking pictures, at its orbital altitude of just 240 miles (385 km), it’s now gathering information from many instruments, measuring the chemical composition and neutron/gamma ray fluxes from the surface. Three big surprises have emerged, including a new theory for the salt deposits in Occator crater, the possible existence of sub-surface icecaps at the poles, and a new set of white spots in Oxo crater, which are water-ice after all!"

"The computer won the first three (out of five) games, thereby winning the match, against Go world champion Lee Sedol. In the press conference after the third game the tenor was that it was impressive that Sedol was able to compete as strongly as he had, given the handicap of a mere human brain to work with. But then Sedol won game four! Yay humanity! It even looked like he was on his way to winning game five as well, after poor opening play by the computer. But the beast rallied and managed a come from behind win." [Image by Chad Miller http://bit.ly/1RkTtKx]

"We screen for disease based on the belief that catching potentially deadly diseases like cancer early, before they produce clinical symptoms, will allow earlier intervention and save lives. It seems blindingly obvious that this should be the case, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, real life biology and pathophysiology aren’t quite so neat and tidy, and the relationship between early detection and improved survival is muddied by phenomena such as lead time bias and the Will Rogers effect, in addition to overdiagnosis."

"In another example of the value of investing in public health, a recent study finds that PulseNet, a national foodborne illness outbreak network, prevents about 276,000 illnesses every year, which translates into savings of $507 million in medical costs and lost productivity. That’s a pretty big return on investment for a system that costs just $7.3 million annually to operate. Created 20 years ago and coordinated by the CDC, PulseNet includes 83 state and federal laboratories and identifies about 1,750 disease clusters every year." [Image by NIH, http://bit.ly/1T47bUy]

"Note the eyes on stalks; the tubby body; the long ‘snout’ terminating in a toothy jawed mouth. People have been grappling with its taxonomic identity for decades, and it’s been labeled as various kinds of worms, or a mollusc, or an odd relic of some Cambrian phylum. The latest comparisons, though, have convincingly identified on common trace in the fossil as the remnant of a notochord — that makes it a chordate, and everything else begins to fall into place. It’s got a 3 lobed chordate brain, and gill openings, and rays of cartilage internally, and segmental myomeres."

"Other animals undergo periods of rest characterized by slowed, regular respiration and heart rates along with decreased sensitivity to stimuli in their environment, such as fish and insects. Some animals experience what is called unihemispheric sleep in which only half their brain dozes at a time (marine animals, some birds). [...] Some think that migratory birds may even experience unihemispheric sleep or slow-wave sleep involving both hemispheres during flight." [Image by Flavio~, http://bit.ly/22jT7bY]

"Metal detectorist Dennis Fabricius Holm made a pretty sweet find yesterday: the third known Birka crucifix. These little wonders of 10th century goldsmith work are named for the first find, made in 1879 when Hjalmar Stolpe excavated in the cemeteries of Birka near Stockholm."

"Ian Barry, shown in the picture below this paragraph, spends the entire year in Antarctic, working about a mile and a half away from McMurdo at a site called Arrival Heights, where he is part of a research project that measures the temperature at the edge of space using laser detected shifts in the electronic state of iron atoms in the troposphere. Here he is on the roof holding a card over the emission tube for one of the lasers. This picture is posed similarly to a hundred year old Ponting picture of Nelson measuring the temperature under the ice on the Terra Nova."

"So we learn from the article that Dr. Ryan has been 'feeding pets herbs and sticking tiny needles in their scalps and for a year and a half' and that these are an 'increasingly popular option for owners who have exhausted conventional drugs and surgeries.' It’s amazing how, animal or human, the same arguments for quackery prevail. In the article, a systematic review of animal acupuncture that found no compelling evidence that acupuncture should be used for any veterinary condition or disease."

"Instead of a uniform, reddish-hued icy world, [Pluto] was revealed to have mountains, craters, smooth plains, pitted regions and more, which range in color from white to yellow to deep red. This was initially a mystery, but subsequent analysis has revealed that Pluto’s atmosphere and outer surface consists of a great many volatile molecules, including water, nitrogen and methane. While water ice and nitrogen ice simply sublimate, methane undergoes a complex interaction with ultraviolet light, resulting in the production of tholins, which turn the surface red where they’re deposited."