Now on ScienceBlogs: Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day?
Church of Sweden Church Sold As Housing In England and other countries, churches have long been deconsecrated and used as shops and for housing. In Sweden, this has previously only happened to nonconformist chapels - quite frequently, actually. But now, the first Church of Sweden church...
Why Should There Be Dark Matter? "And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask." -Donald Johanson You can learn an awful lot about...
Forty Eight Hours of Interesting Discussions for YOU! Staring tomorrow morning, if you are in the Twin Cities, there is Lynn Fellman's talk at the Hennepin County Library downtown. Lynn Fellman creates art that combines genetic data with creative imagery. Fellman will discuss basic genetic concepts, how art can uniquely express science concepts,...
RP Sr is a tosser I haven't had a tosser for a while, but I think its time for a new one. The evidence is all at Open Mind, that increasingly valuable resource who has done such a good job of shredding so many...
The Canadian War on Science: Environmental rules should be better, not easier David Suzuki is a icon for the Canadian environmental movement. He's like our Al Gore and Rachel Carson all rolled up into one. I read and reviewed his memoirs a while back and they are terrific. When he talks, sensible...
The Pander Games: Obama Administration Sells Out Kids Doing Dangerous Agricultural Work, Breaks Pledge to Ensure Welfare of Youngest Workers The Obama administration abruptly withdraws a rule on child labor on farms.
Bad Reporting About Women in STEM This is apparently my day to be annoyed at the reporting of pieces about gender differences in STEM, because a bunch of people are linking to this PBS NewsHour article about women in engineering, which is linked to an interview...
Tomorrow: Join us for the Woodstock of Science! The excitement is filling the air at Sneak Peek Friday today as we are gearing up for an amazing weekend! The Festival takes place Saturday from 10-6 and Sunday from 10-4 at the Walter E Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Please visit our "Plan Your Day" section on our website for important information regarding attending this FREE event. Those attending the Festival will be in for quite a treat with over 3,000 hands-on science and engineering activities and over 150 stage shows!
Friday Fun: How much of a Klouchebag are you? Klout is kind of evil. Basically, it's the impact factor for the Web, where this random company uses a mysterious algorithm to quantify and rank people's standing on social media -- Twitter, Facebook, etc. There's been some interesting commentary about...
Friday Cephalopod: Onward! Upward! (via Oceanwide Images) (Also on FtB)...
Americans United for Separation of Church & State OKC: Spring Dialogue Event If you are in/around the OKC area, you arent going to want to miss the FREE event the OK chapter of Americans United is throwing this Saturday!Oklahoma City Chapter Americans United for Separation of Church & State Spring Dialogue Saturday,...
Another creationist list of lies It's always amusing to see creationists try to explain why Charles Darwin was wrong, especially when they make up lists of reasons "Darwin's theory of evolution does not hold up to scientific scrutiny." These are always people who wouldn't...
"Eat the Sun": Sun-worshiping fantasy versus reality Almost exactly a year ago, I came across a bit of woo so incredible, so spectacularly stupid and unbelievable, that I dedicated one of the last segments I've done in a long time of Your Friday Dose of Woo to...
The Writing Process 9:30am Thursday, Starbucks Work steadily on the work-in-progress, researching a few points here and there, adding a bunch of words, making various line edits. 11:15am Thursday, Starbucks Realize that the stuff I added would work better if split off into...
Santa Clause vs Alan Alda -- Religion vs Evolution There are limits to what you can safely show students in High School, but are they appropriate?
Baffling Demographic Math: Women in Computing Somebody on Twitter linked this article about "brogrammers", which is pretty much exactly as horrible as that godawful neologism suggests. In between descriptions of some fairly appalling behavior, though, they throw some stats at you, and that's where it gets...
Are you worried about spider bites? Have you been getting bitten by a lot of spiders lately? Are you concerned about Brown Recluse Spiders?...
Links for 2012-04-27 Animals Disappointed in your College Performance This ostrich begs to differ with you. Grammar does matter. Boston Review -- Claude S. Fischer: The Loneliness Scare Social scientists have more precisely tracked Americans' isolation and reports of loneliness over the...
1970s Concretist Sculpture It's taller than I am, a sturdy climbable aluminium structure as was en vogue in the 70s.
USDA gives us 30 more days to tell it why 175 birds-per-minute line speeds will take a toll on poultry workers The USDA published a proposed rule earlier this year to "modernize" the inspection system in poultry plants. The problem is, by pulling inspectors from the line, poultry companies will be able to increase assembly line speeds to 175 birds-per-minute. USDA and their bedfellows in the industry conveniently forgot to consider how increased line speeds cause even more disabling injuries to the poultry workers.
Study points to role for both organic and conventional agriculture in sustainable food production The study points to the need to drop the ideologically charged "organic vs. conventional" debate and instead focus on what matters: the need to reduce the use of the most toxic insecticides, produce food more efficiently using less land and water and to enhance food security in the poorest regions of the world.
Book Roundup: People Talking About Dog Physics I've been falling down on the shameless self-promotion front, lately, but that doesn't mean I'm not tracking How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog obsessively, just that I'm too busy to talk about it. Happily, other people have been nice...
How to live trap mice and squirrels Before reading any further, you need to know that the transport and release of trapped animals, such as mice or squirrels, is regulated and may be illegal in your community. Having said that, there are times when people want to live trap a mouse or...
Turn off the bloody Bat-Signal! Bats huge reservoirs of viral disease Know what sounds like fun? Testing almost 5,000 bats and over 4,000 rodents, from all over the world, for a cadre of viral infections ;) Im not kidding!Bats host major mammalian paramyxovirusesThink about this: Where did, say, measles, come from?...
What's With the No-Knead Bread Thing? I do hope, however, that kneadless breads will lead others to experiment with kneaded breads which can produce different textures and flavors. There are a lot of kinds of bread out there.
Orac 04.13.2012
PZ Myers 06.17.2009
Orac 04.30.2012
Tim Lambert 09.12.2011
ERV 11.26.2011
Casaubon's Book 04.30.2012
Thoughts from Kansas 04.29.2012
Starts With a Bang! 04.27.2012
Pharyngula 04.27.2012
Greg Laden's Blog 04.27.2012
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