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Federal Judge Asks Environmentalists To Choose Penalty For Gas Company

Federal Judge Asks Environmentalists To Choose Penalty For Gas Company

May 09 2013 | comment(s)

A Federal judge in Rhode Island didn't like that the Supreme Court struck down an $18 million penalty for a Texas natural gas firm so he is trying to get creative in his new penalty. The company, Southern Union Co., stored liquid mercury from old gas regulators they had removed from customers' homes inside a building in Pawtucket in unsafe conditions and without a permit.  

Teenage vandals broke into the building and dumped mercury there and at a nearby apartment complex, which had to be evacuated. Residents later were found to have unacceptably high levels of mercury in their blood and showed other symptoms of mercury exposure, such as hair loss and rashes. 90 of them later settled a lawsuit over the spill for undisclosed terms. All recovered.
Homeopathic Vaccines: Canadian Scientists Do A Giant Face-Palm

Homeopathic Vaccines: Canadian Scientists Do A Giant Face-Palm

May 09 2013 | comment(s)

Vaccines are good.

Infectious diseases are no longer the leading cause of death like they were a century ago. Sure, they are also big business now, as marketing for HPV and Shingles can attest, but that doesn't mean just anything can or should be a vaccine.

Except in Canada. 

Health Canada has licensed 10 products with a homeopathic preparation called “influenzinum” for "preventing the flu and its related symptoms" and even homeopathic preparations to prevent polio, measles and pertussis - despite the fact that they are so diluted they have no active ingredient at all, they are just placebos.
Cheerio, Anti-Science Hippies

Cheerio, Anti-Science Hippies

May 05 2013 | comment(s)

The thousands of clueless hippies who hijacked the Cheerios Facebook page to demand that General Mills get behind putting GMO warning labels on food are disappointed the company isn't convinced any of them buy Cheerios anyway.
Food and Chemical Toxicology Paper Claiming Bt Is Toxic In Mouse Blood Withdrawn - And Reappears Elsewhere

Food and Chemical Toxicology Paper Claiming Bt Is Toxic In Mouse Blood Withdrawn - And Reappears Elsewhere

May 03 2013 | comment(s)

A paper in Food and Chemical Toxicology, published in Elsevier, claiming that Bacillus thuringiensis showed toxic effects in the blood of Swiss albino mice has been withdrawn.

Citation: Mezzomo BP, Miranda-Vilela AL, de Souza Freire I, Barbosa LC, Portilho FA, Lacava ZG, Grisolia CK, 'WITHDRAWN: Effects of oral administration of Bacillus thuringiensis as spore-crystal strains Cry1Aa, Cry1Ab, Cry1Ac or Cry2Aa on hematologic and genotoxic endpoints of Swiss albino mice', Food Chem Toxicol. 2012 Nov 9. pii: S0278-6915(12)00777-6. doi:10.1016/j.fct.2012.10.032

That's good news, right?

Yeah, but here is the weird part. It is now in another (open access) journal.
Who is Fiercer: Yanomamö Indians or Dueling Tribes of Anthropologists?

Who is Fiercer: Yanomamö Indians or Dueling Tribes of Anthropologists?

May 02 2013 | comment(s)

Writing at Slate, Greg Laden gives a terrific overview of anthropology and also the war on Napoleon Chagnon:

Our way of being is certainly tied to our biological heritage, but the differences we see across cultures are the products of lived experience, with cultural norms shaped by our environment and how we are brought up. It also seems true that within academia, there are subfields into which we are enculturated, and which inform and shape our thinking.
Top 10 Science Bloggers - The Real Clear List

Top 10 Science Bloggers - The Real Clear List

Apr 30 2013 | comment(s)

Doing a Top 10 List Of Science Bloggers is going to be subjective - so many people in science media write because so many in the audience prefer different styles and different content - that is why there are 700 TV stations also but blogging is cheap. Just know your stuff and write well and you'll get a million readers a month.
Sea Surface Temperatures - A 150-Year High-Water Mark

Sea Surface Temperatures - A 150-Year High-Water Mark

Apr 27 2013 | comment(s)

The latest Ecosystem Advisory issued by NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center says sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem during 2012 were the highest recorded in 150 years. 

Sea surface temperature in the region is based on both contemporary satellite remote-sensing data and long-term ship-board measurements, with historical SST conditions based on ship-board measurements dating back to 1854. The temperature increase in 2012 was the highest jump in temperature seen in the time series and one of only five times temperature has changed by more than 1 C (1.8 F).
SEQanswers: Real-Time Knowledge-Sharing For Genomes

SEQanswers: Real-Time Knowledge-Sharing For Genomes

Apr 27 2013 | comment(s)

Large population-scale studies powered by high-throughput sequencing technologies have generated massive amounts of genomic data, with the potential to revolutionize genetics and medicine.

But the translation of these data to actionable medicine is complicated by the challenges of extracting meaningful information from high-throughput sequencing  data. The challenge is beyond computational, as bioinformatics is bound by the experimental methods employed to produce genomic data. A successful experiment minimizes false positives and depends on the optimization of an entire pipeline, from sample preparation to computational analysis.
Pliocene Redux: Earth Will Have CO2 Levels Not Seen In 5 Million Years

Pliocene Redux: Earth Will Have CO2 Levels Not Seen In 5 Million Years

Apr 25 2013 | comment(s)

What was Earth like 5 million years ago?  

We had camels in North America and got an Arctic ice cap due to the fact that Earth got cooler and drier.  And the atmosphere had 400 parts per million, about what the northern hemisphere could have next month, according to according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab.

Old air preserved as bubbles in the Antarctic ice sheet tell us CO2 levels never exceeded 300 parts per million during the last 800,000 years but they started to rise with the advent of industry. Tuesday of this week the reading was 398.44 ppm as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. It was 316 ppm when Charles Keeling, who the Keeling Curve is named after, began taking measurements there.
Fun Science Outreach Does Not Mean You Rip People Off

Fun Science Outreach Does Not Mean You Rip People Off

Apr 23 2013 | comment(s)

I don't follow "I F*cking Love Science" on Facebook for the most transparent, stodgy old guy reason; I don't like the name.  Sure, it's edgy and in-your-face and therefore cool to a lot of people who think that sort of thing is cool, it is just a turn-off for me.

But being edgy and cool doesn't mean you get to rip people off.  The Ellen Degeneres Show is also cool and edgy and hip and the host comes dancing out to music every day; it's actually quite entertaining. The problem is that part of the program involved music they didn't have rights to use. In 1,000 different cases. 

Maybe they thought they were exempt because they were having fun. Or maybe they thought they were doing the artists a favor and giving them free publicity.
Emotional Freedom Technique - Tapping - Makes Other Psychotherapy Look Positively Scientific

Emotional Freedom Technique - Tapping - Makes Other Psychotherapy Look Positively Scientific

Apr 21 2013 | comment(s)

The Emotional Freedom Technique is a kind of psychotherapy, developed in the 90s, that draws on a variety of pseudoscientific bollocks, including accupressure, our old friend NLP (neurolinguistic programming), various kinds of laying-on-of-hands-type ‘energy’ therapies and a good dose of very confused neurobollocks.

Essentially, what happens in an EFT counselling session is that you discuss your problem, while stimulating the ‘end points of the body’s energy meridians’. This stimulation takes the form of tapping yourself; on the head, the face, wherever.
Great Plains Drought Not Caused By Global Warming

Great Plains Drought Not Caused By Global Warming

Apr 13 2013 | comment(s)

2012 was the year that global warming came roaring back - in science media, anyway. Despite the IPCC asking the media to help a little less when it came to attributing every weather event to climate change, science media insisted global warming created a 'superstorm' named Sandy and that global warming had finally hit the American Mid-West, after peskily not rising in temperatures since the 1930s.
Surveys Show Psychology Undergraduates Who Text A Lot Are More Shallow, Racist

Surveys Show Psychology Undergraduates Who Text A Lot Are More Shallow, Racist

Apr 13 2013 | comment(s)

A study by the University of Winnipeg -   2,300 first-year psychology students were surveyed online for three consecutive years - found that psychology students who do a lot of texting tend to be more shallow and ethnically prejudiced (that's racist, south of the border) and place less importance on moral, aesthetic and spiritual goals and greater importance on wealth and image. The one hour online psychology research survey included self-reported measures of texting frequency, personality traits and life goals.
Free Range Egg Claims Are Like Which Sneetch Has The Most Stars

Free Range Egg Claims Are Like Which Sneetch Has The Most Stars

Apr 12 2013 | comment(s)

Are your eggs free range?  Do you care?

Well, chicken farmers care, because marketing success for 'free range' labels has made it a big business. 

There actually is a somewhat fuzzy limit, 1,500 birds a hectare, but a group in Australia says some larger producers are using the "free range" label for their chickens, even if they have 20,000 per hectare. Basically, the farmers claim, the eggs are being laid by caged hens even if they are not in cages. And the public does not know the difference and is paying $1-2 more per dozen.
Mark Bittman's Poisoned Food For Thought

Mark Bittman's Poisoned Food For Thought

Apr 11 2013 | comment(s)

Mark Bittman of the New York Times has never seen a paper about a miracle vegetable he didn't coo over - as long as it's about his friends in the $29 billion organic food industry. And he has never seen a study showing no benefit to organic food where he didn't suddenly put on his skepticism monocle and find all kinds of methodological flaws.  

But he hates biology in that special way only a true left-wing, anti-science crank can hate biology. So much he'd easily fit in at Grist or Mother Jones if he could afford the pay cut. If there is a logical fallacy or a set of blinders he needs to wear to appeal to his base, he will don it. He's Ann Coulter, without the intelligence, humor or nice hair.
Ancient Complex From The Time Of Abraham Uncovered Near Ur

Ancient Complex From The Time Of Abraham Uncovered Near Ur

Apr 06 2013 | comment(s)

British archaeologists have unearthed a sprawling complex - the size of a football field - near the ancient city of Ur in southern Iraq, home of the biblical Abraham.

The structure, thought to be about 4,000 years old, probably served as an administrative center for Ur, around the time Abraham would have lived there before leaving for Canaan, according to the Bible. 
The compound is near the site of the partially reconstructed Ziggurat, or Sumerian temple, said Stuart Campbell of Manchester University's Archaeology Department, who led the dig.
Why You Shouldn't Get That Humanities PhD

Why You Shouldn't Get That Humanities PhD

Apr 06 2013 | comment(s)

Want a job with terrible pay, long hours and in which you’ll never have time to read books, and when you talk about them, you’ll mostly be using made-up words like “deterritorialization” and “Othering”—because, as Ron Rosenbaum pointed out recently, the “dusty seminar rooms” of academia have the chief aim of theorizing every great book to death?

Then become a professor in a literature department.

Don’t get that PhD in literature, just don’t, warns one in Slate.  And she isn't trying to discourage potential competitors, but rather because "my doctorate ruined books and made me obnoxious."

Her thesis was on Kafka so it sounds plausible. I thought Proust was all the rage these days but maybe not.
2011 5.6-Magnitude Oklahoma Quake Wasn't Due To Fracking

2011 5.6-Magnitude Oklahoma Quake Wasn't Due To Fracking

Apr 05 2013 | comment(s)

The 2011 5.6-magnitude quake in Oklahoma was probably caused when oil drilling waste was pushed deep underground, says a team of federally-funded scientists.

That assessment was in contrast to Oklahoma's state seismologists, who said it was natural. The federal group says a slightly smaller quake in an old oil well used to get rid of wastewater triggered the bigger one, and then a third smaller aftershock.

One thing both groups agree on; the waste was from traditional drilling, not hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking. 
Shroud 2.0? The Shroud Of Turin In 2013

Shroud 2.0? The Shroud Of Turin In 2013

Mar 28 2013 | comment(s)

Since it's Easter season, all of Christendom will be awash in articles and television shows about the Shroud of Turin. 

The Shroud, if you are new to the western world, is a cloth imprinted with the face and body of a bearded man; that would be Jesus Christ, according to the theological believers, because the Bible says he was wrapped in cloth and place in the sepulcher.  That this imprinting happened at all is one of those random mysteries that make the natural world so appealing.

It's now kept in a sealed case in Turin, but various analyses have been done over time and they showed the cloth was not old enough to have been used to cover Jesus. 
Don't Sequester Duck Penises

Don't Sequester Duck Penises

Mar 25 2013 | comment(s)

Because most politics is instead political theater, the government has made a show of canceling White House tours and Easter egg hunts and told airline travelers to expect longer lines. The White House calligraphy staff has managed to write along just fine, though.

And science is continuing to move also. Despite claims that sequestration would harm projects, in reality it has little to do with project funding (outside the political theater of writing grant applicants and telling them sequestration hurts their chances - vote Democrat), as this NSF study on duck penises getting approved shows.