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Monday, April 4, 2016
Well-Manicured Wastelands
You had me at your contempt for mowing lawns
Pharyngula March 28, 2016
The Roaming Ecologist has a few words about lawns. Lawns – those myopically obsessive (and evil) urban, suburban, and increasingly rural monoculture eyesores that displace native ecosystems at a rate between 5,000 and 385,000 acres per day* in favor of sterile, chemically-filled, artificial environments bloated with a tremendous European influence that provide no benefits over…
Residential Water Use in California: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Significant Figures by Peter Gleick November 19, 2014
Guest Post: Matthew Heberger Pacific Institute, Oakland, California New monthly water use data for California water utilities shows that residential water use varies widely around the state, and that the response to the drought has been uneven. Moreover, in some areas, residential use averages more than 500 gallons per person per day, indicating that we…
Down the Drain: The Power and Potential of Improving Water Efficiency
Significant Figures by Peter Gleick July 9, 2015
by Peter Gleick and Heather Cooley Debates about water in California, the western U.S., and indeed, worldwide, have traditionally focused on the question of how best to further expand water supply to meet some hypothetical future increase in water demand. And the solution frequently offered is to build massive new infrastructure in the form of…
Channel Surfing
Life Science
Today marked the official start of the Experimental Biology meeting for the American Physiological Society! The highest award the society offers a scientist is named in honor of Dr. Walter B Cannon, the physiologist (and 6th President of the society) who came up with the term ‘homeostasis’ in his 1930 book The Wisdom of the…
I am packing my bags and heading out to sunny San Diego for the annual Experimental Biology conference, which officially kicks off today!
The Squid Scientists take a photo of their baby animals, and unwittingly reveal what they’re actually doing. Look behind the squid — I know it’s hard, why would you want to look past cephalopods? — and what do you see? That blurry poster in the background? It’s a space shuttle launch. And now you know.…
Physical Science
Starts With A Bang
Comments of the Week #104: from black hole jets to our motion through the Universe
“All the evidence, experimental and even a little theoretical, seems to indicate that it is the energy content which is involved in gravitation, and therefore, since matter and antimatter both represent positive energies, gravitation makes no distinction.” -Richard Feynman It was a big last week at Starts With A Bang, and you might not realize it…
Starts With A Bang
Ask Ethan: does the climax of the movie ‘Gravity’ violate simple physics? (Synopsis)
“You’ve got to learn to let go.” -Matt Kowalski, Gravity Objects in motion remain in constant motion unless acted upon by an outside force. That’s Newton’s 1st law of motion, and that’s why you’d expect an orbiting satellite and two astronauts orbiting with it to have absolutely no relative forces. Yet if you watched the movie…
“The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It’s less about the speed and more about investing the right amount of time and attention in the problem so you solve it.” –Carl Honore Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity tell us that there’s no Universal, preferred frame of reference. But that…
Environment
President Barack Obama said Donald Trump “doesn’t know much about foreign policy…or the world generally” in response to Trump saying Japan and South Korea should obtain nuclear weapons.
It’s time to get passed thinking that workplace fatalities are “just accidents.” A new toolkit by the Center for Progressive Reform will help worker- and community-coalitions encourage prosecutors to review on-the-job fatalities for possible criminal charges.
With the approach of summer, a timely study was published in the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology on whether inflammation plays a role in heat stress-related complications in muscles. Heat stress is a major problem in the livestock industry. In the United States alone it is reportedly associated with a loss of approximately…
Humanities
The Martian is a feel-good, science positive, uplifting film about the power of the human spirit, botany, and engineering. It looked, from the credits, like it had at least 8 scientific advisors from NASA (and possibly other places). Too bad that Ridley Scott only half listened to them. As one of the primary sci-fi filmmakers…
Don’t forget to vote for your favorite Phantastic Physiology Voyage video from trainees sponsored by the American Physiological Society. This year’s theme is “Function Follows Form.” Here is just a sample of the phantastic videos (from YouTube) in the contest: To see the rest of the videos and vote for your favorite, click here!
A peek inside the life of Miami’s hotel housekeepers during spring break; a tie vote at the Supreme Court is a win for labor unions; California on track to adopt statewide minimum wage of $15; and Los Angeles nurses go on strike for safer working conditions.
Education
The Martian is a feel-good, science positive, uplifting film about the power of the human spirit, botany, and engineering. It looked, from the credits, like it had at least 8 scientific advisors from NASA (and possibly other places). Too bad that Ridley Scott only half listened to them. As one of the primary sci-fi filmmakers…
Don’t forget to vote for your favorite Phantastic Physiology Voyage video from trainees sponsored by the American Physiological Society. This year’s theme is “Function Follows Form.” Here is just a sample of the phantastic videos (from YouTube) in the contest: To see the rest of the videos and vote for your favorite, click here!
With the approach of summer, a timely study was published in the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology on whether inflammation plays a role in heat stress-related complications in muscles. Heat stress is a major problem in the livestock industry. In the United States alone it is reportedly associated with a loss of approximately…
Politics
We are in the Primary Doldrums. For the last several days and the next several days, there is not too much happening, big gaps between the action. Wisconsin is important, and it is Tuesday, Then Wyoming by itself, then New York by itself, then a sort of Super Tuesday with several states. As you know…
A peek inside the life of Miami’s hotel housekeepers during spring break; a tie vote at the Supreme Court is a win for labor unions; California on track to adopt statewide minimum wage of $15; and Los Angeles nurses go on strike for safer working conditions.
A new poll (March 24th) by Monmouth University says, “Among Democrats who support Bernie Sanders for their party’s nomination, 78% say they would vote for Clinton over Trump in November, while 12% would actually vote for Trump and 7% would not vote at all.” The Republicans have a similar problem, where “two-thirds (68%) of voters…
Medicine
Respectful Insolence
An antivaccine activist explains how she uses Facebook reporting algorithms to harass and silence pro-science bloggers
I wish this post were an April Fools Day joke, but it is not. Three weeks ago, Skeptical Raptor and I wrote posts describing how a particularly vicious, nasty antivaccine troll named Heather Murray had successfully gamed Facebook reporting algorithms intended to report abuse in order to silence pro-science bloggers. It is, unfortunately, a tactic…
Don’t forget to vote for your favorite Phantastic Physiology Voyage video from trainees sponsored by the American Physiological Society. This year’s theme is “Function Follows Form.” Here is just a sample of the phantastic videos (from YouTube) in the contest: To see the rest of the videos and vote for your favorite, click here!
Over the last week or so, I’ve noticed (or had brought to my attention) a series of articles discussing a phenomenon related to alternative medicine that I don’t believe that I’ve addressed before, at least not directly anyway. I had filed some of these in my folder of topics for blogging, but somehow never got…
Brain & Behavior
Don’t forget to vote for your favorite Phantastic Physiology Voyage video from trainees sponsored by the American Physiological Society. This year’s theme is “Function Follows Form.” Here is just a sample of the phantastic videos (from YouTube) in the contest: To see the rest of the videos and vote for your favorite, click here!
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.
A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph found that the use of certain pesticides impacts wildflower pollination by bees. According to a quote by study author Nigel Raine, published in CBCNews, the use of neonicotinoid-type pesticides “modify the way in which information flows through the nervous system.” The research team found…
Technology
For the chess fans, the big candidates tournament begins in Moscow tomorrow. Eight of the top players in the world will be competing for the chance to face Magnus Carlsen in a match for the title. As it happens, the US has two representatives: Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura. Going strictly by ratings, they are…
In the U.S., just a tiny fraction of the chemicals used in consumer products have been tested for human health effects. And with the current climate in Congress, it feels unlikely that we’ll see any true reform of the nation’s terribly outdated chemical safety rules anytime soon. In the meantime, scientist Thomas Hartung may have created the next best thing.
On 2 February 2006 I took delivery of my first smartphone, or handdator as I called it in my diary – “hand computer”. On the following day I got the machine on-line. It was a Qtek 9100, with a slide-out mechanical keyboard that I still really miss, a tiny screen, a stylus and a crappy…
Information Science
Confessions of a Science Librarian
My new project launching today: The Quisling Qourner: A group blog on the library/publisher relationship
It’s been really gratifying over the last year to see how my DSCaM scholarly communications empire has grown. From it’s small beginnings, Dupuis Science Computing & Medicine has craved out a small but important niche in the discount APC publishing community. And I really appreciate how the scholarly communications community has encouraged my career progression…
The Pump Handle
Public health ROI: Foodborne illness network is saving thousands of lives and millions of dollars
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.
Jobs
It’s time to get passed thinking that workplace fatalities are “just accidents.” A new toolkit by the Center for Progressive Reform will help worker- and community-coalitions encourage prosecutors to review on-the-job fatalities for possible criminal charges.
A peek inside the life of Miami’s hotel housekeepers during spring break; a tie vote at the Supreme Court is a win for labor unions; California on track to adopt statewide minimum wage of $15; and Los Angeles nurses go on strike for safer working conditions.
Here are some of my favorite quotes in response to OSHA publishing a final rule on silica dust.
