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Data breach at climate research center in U.K

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Juliet Eilperin - Nov. 20 (News Report) - Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world's foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

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The Dirt on Worms

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

agweb.com - By Pam Smith - Nov. 18 (News Report) - The earthworm has long been considered the farmer’s friend. Their burrowing has always been thought to aerate the soil while their droppings provide fertilizer. No-till farmers count on these tireless workers to improve soil tilth. And on their worst day, earthworms sacrifice everything to land us a lunch from our favorite fishing hole

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Phthalate exposure linked to less-masculine play by boys

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Science Daily - Nov. 15 (News Report) - A study of 145 preschool children reports, for the first time, that when the concentrations of two common phthalates in mothers' prenatal urine are elevated their sons are less likely to play with male-typical toys and games, such as trucks and play fighting.

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The psychology of healthcare reform

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

CNET News - By Adam Richardson - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - The House has passed the first comprehensive reform package of the health insurance industry in decades, which is now up for debate in the Senate. This is a highly complex issue, but there are some quite basic reasons why it's so difficult to accomplish significant reform, and in part these have to do with psychological responses to change and uncertainty.

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Greenland ice loss 'accelerating'

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Nov. 12 (News Report) - The Greenland ice sheet is losing its mass faster than in previous years and making an increasing contribution to sea level rise, a study has confirmed. Published in the journal Science, it has also given scientists a clearer view of why the sheet is

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Michael Specter Fires Bullets of Data at Cozy Antiscience in ‘Denialism'

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Janet Maslin - Nov. 09 (Review) - The term “denialism,” used by Mr. Specter as an all-purpose, pop-sci buzzword, is defined by him as what happens “when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie.” In this hotly argued yet data-filled diatribe, Mr. Specter skips past some of the easiest realms of science baiting (i.e., evolution) to address more current issues, from the ethical questions raised by genome research to the furiously fought debate over the safety of childhood vaccinations.

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Scientists: Nuke panel owes Utahns an apology

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salt Lake Tribune - By Judy Fahys - Nov. 09 (News Report) - Three scientists say federal nuclear regulators owe Utahns an apology -- and a policy change -- for allowing shallow burial of depleted uranium, including the 49,000 tons already at EnergySolutions Inc.'s landfill in Tooele County.

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Making Health Care Better

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Leonhardt - Nov. 08 (Special Report) - The American health care system is more expensive than any other, without providing better results. The cure, says Brent James, is measurement.

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Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Steven Pinker - Nov. 07 (Opinion) - Have you ever wondered why there are so many kinds of mustard but only one kind of ketchup? Or what Cézanne did before painting his first significant works in his 50s? Have you hungered for the story behind the Veg-O-Matic, star of the frenetic late-night TV ads? Or wanted to know where Led Zeppelin got the riff in “Whole Lotta Love”? Neither had I, until I began this collection by the indefatigably curious journalist Malcolm Gladwell. The familiar jacket design, with its tiny graphic on a spare background, reminds us that Gladwell has become a brand. He is the author of the mega-best sellers “The Tipping Point,” “Blink” and “Outliers”; a popular speaker on the Dilbert circuit; and a prolific contributor to The New Yorker, where the 19 articles in “What the Dog Saw” were originally published. This volume includes prequels to those books and other examples of Gladwell’s stock in trade: counterintuitive findings from little-known experts.

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Happy Days

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Hanna Rosin - Nov. 05 (Review) - I must confess, I have waited my whole life for someone to write a book like “Bright-Sided.” When I was a young child, my family moved to the United States from Israel, where churlishness is a point of pride. As I walked around wearing what I considered a neutral expression, strangers would often shout, “What’s the matter, honey? Smile!” as if visible cheerfulness were some kind of requirement for citizenship. Now, in Barbara Ehrenreich’s deeply satisfying book, I finally have a moral defense for my apparent scowl. All the background noise of America — motivational speakers, positive prayer, the new Journal of Happiness Studies — these are not the markers of happy, well-adjusted psyches uncorrupted by irony, as I have always been led to believe. Instead, Ehrenreich argues convincingly that they are the symptoms of a noxious virus infecting all corners of American life that goes by the name “positive thinking.” What started as a 19th-century response to dour Calvinism has, over the years, turned equally oppressive, Ehrenreich writes. Stacks of best sellers equate corporate success with a positive attitude. Flimsy medical research claims that cheerfulness can improve the immune system. In a growing number of American churches, confessions of poverty or distress amount to heresy. America’s can-do optimism has hardened into a suffocating culture of positivity that bears little relation to genuine hope or happiness.

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The iconoclastic wisdom of David Nutt

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dorothy Rowe - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - In the late 19th century the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin described depression as a long-term illness that returned frequently and would become chronic – a definition that was accepted by British psychiatrists. And when the first antidepressants were created in the 60s, psychiatrists were delighted that they now had what seemed to be a cure for depression. However, it soon became clear to depressed people – and to many of us working in the psychiatric system – that antidepressants did not prevent recurrence and chronicity. Psychiatrists did not wish to admit this, because the only other treatment that we had for depression was ECT (electroconvulsive therapy). The pharmaceutical companies then advised psychiatrists to prescribe antidepressants as prophylactics that would stop the person getting depressed again. The DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Revision Fourth Edition) contains the diagnosis "Major Depressive Disorder in Full Remission". Once depressed, always depressed, no matter how well you feel.

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Climate Change Deniers Are Not Skeptics - They're Suckers

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - My fiercest opponents on global warming tend to be in their 60s and 70s. This offers a fascinating, if chilling, insight into human psychology There is no point in denying it: we're losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed. A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre suggests that the proportion of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world has been warming over the last few decades has fallen from 71% to 57% in just 18 months.

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Judge OKs Challenge to Human Gene Patents

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - Nov. 03 (News Report) - A federal judge ruled Monday that a lawsuit can move forward against the Patent and Trademark Office and a research company awarded exclusive rights to human genes known to detect early signs of breast or ovarian cancer. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit

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Michael Specter’s new book ‘Denialism’ misses its targets

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Tom Philpott - Oct. 31 (Review) - Like the great institutions of European Christianity, modern science has amassed tremendous power—and not always lived up to its founding creeds. Science needs a Gibbon—someone who appreciates its intellectual grandeur and potential, but who also can train a cold eye on the “inevitable mixture of error and corruption” that has accompanied its tenure since the Enlightenment. That Gibbon is not Michael Specter, a New Yorker staff writer and author of the new book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. His book purports to defend science from its philistine critics—people who, in Specter’s view, reflexively deny the validity of the scientific process. In his intro, Specter sets up the defining focus of the book. He contrasts the “rigorous and open-minded skepticism of science” with “the inflexible certainty of ideological commitment” (i.e., “denialism”). Already, we’re on thin intellectual ice; Specter evidently believes in a pure science, one that exists completely apart from ideology. In Gibbon’s phrasing, he’s defending a science as “she descended from Heaven [read: the Enlightenment], arrayed in her native purity.”

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Googling Fights Dementia, Study Suggests

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Ker Than - Oct. 20 (Special Report) - Using search engines may help stave off dementia and memory loss, a new brain-scan study suggests. Scientists found that middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience showed increased activity in key brain regions after surfing the Web

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The Big Business of Swine Flu

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - By Dalia Fahmy - Oct. 14 (News) - Americans are still debating whether to roll up their sleeves for a swine flu shot, but companies have already figured it out: vaccines are good for business. Drug companies have sold $1.5 billion worth of swine flu shots, in addition to the $1 billion for seasonal flu they booked earlier this year. These inoculations are part of a much wider and rapidly growing $20 billion global vaccine market.

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Author’s Personal Forecast: Not Always Sunny, but Pleasantly Skeptical

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Patricia Cohen - Oct. 10 (Review) - Barbara Ehrenreich wants to make clear that she is not a spoilsport. “No one can call me a sourpuss,” she declared. “I have a big foot in the joy camp.” She is the author of “Dancing in the Streets,” a history of “collective joy,” she notes, and a lot of fun at parties. So her new book, “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America,” should not be mistaken for a curmudgeonly rant. It is serious social history. Many of the 17 books that Ms. Ehrenreich has written during the past three and half decades have taken her into alien worlds. In her fantastically successful 2001 book, “Nickel and Dimed,” for example, she details her experience of trying to get by on the salary of an unskilled, minimum-wage worker. By contrast, this newest volume is based on her stay in a world that she became intimately familiar with: the smiley-faced, pink-ribboned, positive-thinking culture that surrounds breast cancer patients. Ms. Ehrenreich found out she had the disease in 2000, and the news left her dazed, fearful and, most of all, angry. What she found when she sought information and support, however, was cheerfulness, and that shocked her. “There were exhortations to be positive,” Ms. Ehrenreich said. She had stopped for lunch recently in Manhattan’s theater district after meeting with her publisher at Metropolitan Books, and before returning to Alexandria, Va., where she moved two years ago to be close to her daughter and grandchildren. Smartly dressed in pants and a sweater with black rectangular glasses that frame her blue eyes, Ms. Ehrenreich, 68, looks like someone who is content to be fashionable rather than fashion forward. The unrelenting message was “that you had to be cheerful and accepting and that you would not recover unless you were,” said Ms. Ehrenreich, who also writes frequently for The New York Times. Most infuriating, she added, was the advice to “consider your cancer a gift.”

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For First Time, AIDS Vaccine Shows Some Success in Trials

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. - Sep. 25 (News Report) - A new AIDS vaccine tested in Thailand has protected a significant minority against infection, the first time any vaccine against the disease has even partly succeeded in a clinical trial.

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A world first: Vaccine helps prevent HIV infection

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Marilynn Marchione, Michael Casey - Sep. 24 (News Report) - For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible. The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results "instilled new hope" in the field of HIV vaccine research, although researchers say it likely is many years before a vaccine might be available.

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Darwin's complex loss of faith

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Nick Spencer - Sep. 17 (Special Report) - It is easier to make a film about a man who allegedly "killed God" than one who studied barnacles for eight year years. The new film about Charles Darwin, Creation, does the former and although it has been criticised for historical inaccuracy, it remains a beautiful, moving and eminently watchable movie. Darwin himself never thought his theory killed God, writing towards the end of this life "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist." It didn't even kill his own religious faith. But it did wound it severely. Up until his return from the Beagle in 1836, Darwin considered himself an "orthodox" Christian. There is no reason to doubt this although it is important to recognise that his orthodoxy was a specific early 19th century, rational, demonstrable, civilised, gentlemanly kind of orthodoxy. In particular, it was heavily influenced by William Paley whose Natural Theology confidently argued that nature contains "every manifestation of design… [that] design must have had a designer … That designer must have been a person [and] that person is God." Christianity for Darwin was primarily a proof to be established and Paley did that admirably. When his emerging theory began to undermine these ideas, it also undermined the Christianity that was built on them. It didn't happen immediately. Darwin's notebooks show him trying to accommodate an intellectually credible idea of God and his new theory – in many ways successfully.

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Bob McChesney interviews Chris Mooney, blogger for Discover Magazine and author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

will.illinois.edu - By Bob McChesney, Chris Mooney - Sep. 13 (Interview) - Chris Mooney is a visiting associate in the Center for Collaborative History at Princeton University and the author of The Republican War on Science, Storm World and, with Sheril Kirshenbaum, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Chris's blog can be found at blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection

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Spacecraft 'could surf gravitational tubes' to make solar travel more efficient

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Andy Bloxham - Sep. 12 (News Report) - Scientists in the US are trying to map the twisting "tubes" so they can be used to cut the cost of space travel. Each one acts like a gravitational version of the Gulf Stream, created from the complex interplay of forces between planets and moons.

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The Benefits of Vacation

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Jonah Lehrer - Sep. 05 (Opinion) - When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas we’d previously suppressed. Furthermore, this more relaxed sort of cognition comes with practical advantages, especially when we’re trying to solve difficult problems.

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Colony Collapse and Ruptured Ribosomes; Minding Darwin's Bees Wax: Scientific American Podcast

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

scientificamerican.com - By Steve Mirsky - Aug. 25 (News Analysis) - John Williams, the beekeeper at Down House in England, talks about Darwin's bees. And May Berenbaum, entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, talks about the latest publication related to colony collapse disorder and ribosome damage in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Websites related to this episode include www.bee-craft.com

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Methane seeps from Arctic sea bed

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Aug. 18 (News Report) - Methane bubbles observed by sonar, escape from sea bed as temperatures rise Scientists say they have evidence that the powerful greenhouse gas methane is escaping from the Arctic sea bed. Researchers say this could be evidence of a predicted positive

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