From a news story in today's issue of Science:

A new study finds little evidence for leaks in the U.S. pipeline for producing native-born scientists except for a steep drop in the percentage of the highest performing students taking science and engineering jobs. The findings suggest that the United States risks losing its economic competitiveness not because of a work force inadequately trained in science, as conventional wisdom holds, but because of a lack of social and economic incentives to pursue careers in science and technology.

I need to call my broker and get in on some Arm&Hammer stock, because, according to Steve Levitt, we're going to need a lot of base:

Of course, ocean acidification is an import issue. Now, there are ways to deal with ocean acidification, right, it's actually, that's actually, we know exactly how to un-acidifiy the oceans, is to pour a bunch of base into it, so, so if that turns out to be an incredibly big problem, then we can deal with that.

Get your submissions in for a special, 150th Origin of Species anniversary edition of the Carnival of Evolution, going online November first. I've already received a whole slew of outstanding contributions; submit your writing and it will be in good company.

You can submit via the online submission form. If you have any problems with submission, email me via my contact form.

Read the feed:

Everyone's got a book idea kicking around somewhere in their heads, even though most of us won't admit it. For some time now I've been working on an idea for what I call an inverse post-apocalyptic book, that is, a book that falls squarely in the post-apocalyptic genre in terms of themes and style, but it takes place in humanity's deep past. To put it another way, since post-holocaust novels often feature reversions to a primitive lifestyle, why not view the primitive life of the deep human past (we're talking 20,000+ years ago) as equivalent to a post-apocalyptic setting?