ejohnson | July 27, 2009Around midnight on July 19, an Australian astronomer named Anthony Wesley noticed something new while looking through his telescope at Jupiter: a black spot in the planet's south polar region, similar to one that appeared in 1994 after it was struck by the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet. Wesley rushed to share his observation with other astronomers, who trained their own telescopes on the planet; infrared images captured with both NASA and Keck telescopes confirmed that the spot was, in fact, almost certainly the impact site from a recent asteroid or comet strike.
Jupiter's New Spot from Science in…
ejohnson | July 27, 2009
Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has annually presented the Richard Dawkins Award to "an outstanding atheist whose contributions raise public awareness of the nontheist life stance." Past recipients of the prize have included James Randi, magicians Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller, and comedian Julia Sweeney. When it was recently revealed that the 2009 Richard Dawkins Award winner will be Bill Maher—political satirist, television host, and director of the 2008 documentary Religulous—ScienceBloggers responded with widely varying views. Orac of Respectful Insolence argues that…
ejohnson | July 23, 2009
"One of the difficulties with trying to broaden the usual definition of scientists is that there's not a lot of press for non-academic science," Chad Orzel wrote recently on Uncertain Principles. So he decided to give it some exposure himself. Chad's call for scientists with non-academic careers returned a wealth of responses, from the Chief Scientist of an Army laboratory to a communications specialist for the British government. Each of the participants holds a degree in science, but their interviews reveal broad differences in career paths, work environments, and daily routines. See the…
ejohnson | July 23, 2009
Four decades ago, Neil Armstrong became the first person to step foot on the Moon. His "one giant leap for mankind" is one of the most recognizable achievements in the history of American science. The success of the Apollo 11 mission represented not only the possibilities of space exploration, but of the entire field of science; it drove home to hundreds of millions of viewers the opportunities that investment in science could create. Now, as the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is celebrated, NASA may be ready to turn its attention to a new celestial goal: Mars.
The Moon! on…
ejohnson | July 21, 2009If you've been running into time-outs and submission errors while commenting lately, you're not alone—our system has been suffering some growing pains and it's time for a network-wide rehaul of sorts.
Tonight we'll be transferring over to shiny new servers, and we hope that this will make things run more smoothly for everyone. To make this transition, however, we'll need to shut down the system overnight, and we've asked our bloggers to refrain from posting as well. Starting at 7:00 pm EST, commenting will be disabled. It should be back when the system resumes running tomorrow morning.
We…
ejohnson | July 20, 2009
Like the Marvel Comics villain Mysterio who blocks Spiderman's spider-sense by emitting a special gas, a species of tiger moths can jam the sonar signals emitted by bats in order to escape the grisly fate of becoming a midflight meal. The tiger moths, Bertholdia trigona, possess a unique structure, the tymbal, that produces a clicking noise similar to the one made by bats themselves, but until recently it was uncertain whether the moths were actually emitting ultrasonic signals or whether they were sending a different message, such as "I'm poisonous." Now, researchers at Wake Forest…
ejohnson | July 17, 2009
In 1964, Richard Feynman delivered a series of seven lectures to students at Cornell University on "The Character of Physical Law." Decades later, the video footage of the lectures was purchased by Bill Gates—who has said that Feynman could have inspired him to go into physics rather than software—and on Wednesday, Microsoft Research announced that the lectures will be made available on a specially-created website, along with commentary from other physicists, full transcripts of the lectures, and additional related content. The project, called Tuva after an area in Russia where Feynman hoped…
ejohnson | July 16, 2009
On Wednesday, an article by Amanda Carpenter in the Washington Times riled ScienceBlogger Jessica Palmer and others for its sensational claims and misrepresentation of facts. The article accuses presidential science advisor John Holdren of advocating extreme population control methods like mass sterilization and forced abortions, policies which Holdren discussed in a 1977 ecoscience textbook of which he was third author. But Holdren never expressed an opinion on such practices, and as Jessica explains, "there is a big difference between describing a conclusion made by others, and drawing a…
ejohnson | July 15, 2009
Why do some people lie much more frequently than others? A new study in PNAS indicates that consistently honest people don't have to struggle to overcome temptation—they simply don't feel it. Psychologists at Harvard scanned the brains of 35 volunteers while they predicted the outcome of a computerized coin toss game for money. In one trial, lying about their prediction after seeing the outcome could increase the total earned; in a second trial, all the volunteers were forced to tell the truth by calling the coin before the toss. By studying each person's reported predictions from both…
ejohnson | July 14, 2009
In Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's newly released book, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, they roundly condemn ScienceBlogger PZ Myers and other "New Atheists" for their uncompromising stance against religion. When PZ, in return, posted a scathing review of the book on Pharyngula—calling it a "hypocritical and ignorant paean to mealy-mouthedness" and "utterly useless"—a vehement debate was launched across the blogosphere. PZ and others claimed that the authors misrepresent the doctrines they attack in the book, and that by attributing a public…
ejohnson | July 9, 2009View image
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, is used by psychiatrists to accurately diagnose patients along five different axes of disorders. Four versions have been produced since the first publication in 1952, and a specially appointed task force began revisions on a fifth, DSM-V, in 2007, for publication in 2012. But critics of DSM-V say that the manual's introduction of dimensional, rather than categorical, diagnoses is a paradigm shift that the field is not ready for. Secrecy surrounding its development has…
ejohnson | July 7, 2009
Human nature is often cited as an explanation for behavior—not a result. But as Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries explains, human nature is as much a product of individual actions as it is a driving force. And knowing how social structures arise out of individual patterns of behavior may help us adapt to changing environments, particularly in the face of climate change. Eric is hopeful that evidence of resource-sharing behavior in other species can provide insight and direction to our own: "It's somewhat reassuring to know that, while our individual actions will continue to be…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009
In a recent New York Times article, Grant System Leads Cancer Researchers to Play It Safe, the National Cancer Institute and parent institution NIH were taken to task for their biased funding of low-risk studies, which lead to what the article claims are few breakthroughs in effective treatment. The article critiques the funding of research that produces only "incremental progress," or that focuses on prevention through diet and health. But, as ScienceBlogger Orac points out, it fails to provide evidence that granting funds to riskier projects--with the potential for higher impact--would in…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009
Last Tuesday, West Virginia State Police arrested NASA climate scientist James Hansen for trespassing on a Massey Energy-owned coal plant near the state's Coal River Valley. Thirty-one demonstrators--also including actress Daryl Hannah and former West Virginia Representative Ken Hechler--were apprehended while protesting the company's practice of mountaintop removal mining, which both perpetuates the use of coal as a source of fuel and devastates surrounding natural habitats. Hansen has long advocated against mountaintop removal, and criticized the Obama administration's recent pledge to…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009This book review was originally posted by GrrlScientist on Living the Scientific Life.
tags: book review, Sleeping Naked is Green, green living, environment, Vanessa Farquharson
Carbon footprints, global warming, green living -- are these phrases an inconvenient truth that keep you awake at night, wondering how you can live in a more environmentally friendly way? For many people, merely contemplating these things is enough to make them give up trying to help the earth before they even start! But before you allow yourself to become discouraged, there is a book out there that will inspire you…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009This book review was originally posted by Greg Laden on Greg Laden's Blog.
previously reviewed
Birds: Nature's Magnificent Flying Machines is a book by Caroline Arnold and illustrated by Patricia Wynne for, I'd say, Pre-Elementary School kids and first/second grade. This is a good book to read to a pre-literate kid. Then put it away for later when the first grade academic report on birds is due ... it will be an excellent reference.
This is a well done and highly recommended book.
Birds... is highly specialized. It deals with only one topic: Bird flight. I like that. Who needs just…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009This book review was originally posted by GrrlScientist on Living the Scientific Life.
tags: book review, Unholy Business, religious antiquities, biblical antiquities, fraud, Christianity, Judaism, Nina Burleigh
There are two different types
of people in the world,
those who want to know,
and those who want to believe.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
In November 2002, an ancient carved limestone burial box designed to hold the disarticulated skeleton of a dead person was put on public display in Canada's Royal Ontario Museum. Although common throughout Israel, this particular box, known as an…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009This review was originally posted by Brian Switek on Laelaps
Since the early 20th century, at least, young earth creationists have attempted to blame Charles Darwin for genocide, world wars, and whatever political movements seemed most threatening at one time or another (i.e. communism). What Darwin is faulted with changes with the times, but most recently young earth creationists have focused on hot topics from Darwin's own era: racism and slavery. From the Answers in Genesis tract Darwin's Plantation to the upcoming (and unethically produced) documentary The Voyage That Shook the World,…
ejohnson | June 24, 2009
In the course of anthropological history, several developments served to set humans apart from other mammals: Tools, language, and domestication all played an instrumental role in shaping our evolution. Now, Razib of Gene Expression reviews a recently published book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, that argues that the ability to extract maximum energy from food through cooking was the crucial factor in making Homo sapiens the planet's dominant species. In addition to releasing a greater number of calories per unit consumed, cooking also helped free up time and energy. "Instead of…