Now on ScienceBlogs: Happy Earth Day, 2011 Edition!
Happy Earth Day, 2011 Edition! "We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." -Bill Anders, Apollo 8 Astronaut This Earth Day, I think -- for anyone interested in space, astronomy, or the Universe...
What It is Like to Live in a Developed Nation Struggling with Food Issues One of the things I like about this article is that it is very clear about the issues that arise from both perception and actual contamination and shortfall. Those things are sometimes separable with various strategies, but more often they are deeply intertwined.
More Fun With Fracking I intended to do a big book-sales post today, but our DSL modem may be dead, so there was no Internet in Chateau Steelypips this morning, and I forgot to copy the relevant files onto a thumb drive, so it...
Open Farm Days!!! Ok, have you always wanted to come to see the farm? Here's your chance. On Sunday, May 22, we're having an open farm day from 10am to 4pm at our place at 43 Crow Hill Road Delanson, NY 12053. We're...
Nicole Foss Overview of the Fukushima Situation I've been very grateful for my colleague Greg Laden's regular updates of the raw discussions on the Fukushima situation, but it is nice to have a coherent, visual overview, and Nicole Foss has provided another wonderful analysis at The Automatic...
A future for vesper bats? (vesper bats part XX - last in series) Over the course of the previous 19 - yes, 19 - articles we've looked at the full diversity of vesper bat species (see links below if there are any parts you've missed). If you've been following the series on...
Japan nuke news 20: Tokyo Electric: "fuel may have melted" Tokyo Electric officials have noted that they can not rule out the possibility that fuel rods in the Fukushima reactors have melted, at least to some extent. No one else, as far as I can tell, thinks that fuel rods have not melted. A Question...
Bird predation, sexual segregation and fission-fusion societies: the amazing noctules (vesper bats part XIX) I find myself astonished by the fact that I've done it. With the publication of this article I've succeeded in providing a semi/non-technical overview of all the vesper bats of the world... or, of all the major lineages, anyway....
Pipistrelles proper: little bats that glide, sing, swarm and lek (vesper bats part XVIII) Among the best known, most widespread and most familiar of vesper bats are the pipistrelles. All bats conventionally regarded as pipistrelles are small (ranging from 3-20 g and 35-62 mm in head-body length), typically with proportionally short, broad-based ears...
Staph in Food: Reservoirs of Resistance and the Need to Embiggen Research To understand reservoirs of resistance, let's settle the issue and really fund this thing.
BP Oil Disaster One Year Later: Sputnik II? Like many New Jersey families, my children and I spent several sunny, fun-filled days on the Shore last summer, enjoying mini-golf, water parks and beautiful, pristine beaches. The BP oil spill disaster loomed over our brief vacation like an ominous dark cloud. One year later, can this disaster offer opportunities?
My Feelings on Fracking The New York Times had another article on the environmental impacts of shale gas drilling, which reminded me that I had intended to write something else on the subject after February's post on the fracking panel at AAAS, but never...
Tsunami footage View from Shizugawa high school as the tsunami comes in. Very powerful and disturbing footage....
Lobed bats, butterfly bats, particoloured bats, thick-thumbed bats, Dormer's bats, bats, bats, BATS... did I mention the bats? (vesper bats part XVII) Here we are, so close to the very end. I am pleased and surprised to find that we're now looking at the vesper bats within Vespertilionini - the clade that (in the topology I'm using here: that of Roehrs...
Japan nuke news 19: Robots and reactors Ana's Feeed starting Sunday mid day through last night: TEPCO press conf. (NHK): Since the accident, we have caused a huge amount of trouble and inconvenience to residents and anxiety to the greater population in general ... Residents have been asked to evacuate and they...
How To Avoid Tornado Deaths Buy a weather radio and know how to use it. Upgrade the shelter infrastructure if needed. Reject the culture of bravado and willful ignorance. Then, get to work on wealth disparity and global warming.
Another week of GW News, April 17, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup...
On the Subject of the Previous Post: More Reasons to Stay Together in Tough Times 3. Lowered economic expectations mean that even if you are no longer motivated by staying at home for the sake of the children, you still need to stick it out for the sake of the pets - kibble is getting pricey.
Japan nuke news 18: Reactor facilities smoke, sputter. Fission continues? Claims are being made that the situation at Fukushima is starting to improve, but there is no actual evidence of this. We probably (but not certainly) passed the point where nuclear fuel is likely to accumulate in such a way as to cause a major...
Jessie's Girls I debate whether to bring her back to Mom or just keep her in the house with me. If I bring her back to Mom, the shock of being in the cold again might kill her, even if Jessie accepts her. She's still not really sucking. She might die anyway, but she's more likely to die in the barn if she gets cold and stressed again. Maybe I should just keep her. On the other hand, her Mom is what she needs most - and maybe what can get her sucking. And it may not matter.
Removing Urban Highways: Thank the Big Dig Boston's Big Dig, which I would argue is the singular example of urban renewal through highway removal, appears to have disappeared down the memory hole.
Reinventing the Medieval Home for the Post-Carbon Era d houses have a lot to teach us. Think about the merits of small spaces when the big ones are cold. We've seen a drastic rise in per-person space over the last 70 years - in 1950 the average person had 250 square feet per person in their home (and that was a lot compared to much of the past), now we have more than 850.
A list of enigmas: bamboo bats, frogs-head flyers, Rohu's bat and the false serotines (vesper bats part XVI) By now (if, that is, you've been following this thrilling, roller-coaster ride of a series) we've gotten through the better part of vesper bat phylogeny: we've climbed 'up' the vesper bat cladogram and are now within the youngest major...
The natural gas question: A best-case scenario How much methane can we afford to vent directly in to the air before the benefits of burning nature gas are no longer significant?
Hypsugines: an assemblage of 'pipistrelle-like non-pipistrelles' (vesper bats part XV) As we've seen throughout this series (see links below for previous parts), recent phylogenetic studies have found a number of 'pipistrelle-like non-pipistrelles' to form a novel clade previously unsuspected from morphological studies [composite above shows - l to r...
“This is not the realm of speculation. It's hard-core interdisciplinary research topic: glacier mass-balance temporal trends and crustal deformation geophysics that may influence multiple processes underlying volcanic activity and earthquake rupture periodicity and return periods.” Passerby on A quick note on thawing ice caps and volcanism
PZ Myers 04.22.2011
PZ Myers 04.22.2011
Ed Brayton 04.22.2011
Ed Brayton 04.22.2011
Ed Brayton 04.22.2011
Latest science stories | More at nytimes.com
Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
The Loom January 31, 2008
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006