Science & Society

As a mouse vet, my job is to suggest refinements to make cancer studies as easy as possible on the mice. Cancer researchers grow tumor cells for study. They buy them from a catalog, or they get them fresh from the hospital, where patients have donated their tumors to science. They grow them in tissue culture; they grow them under the skin on a mouse’s back. And they grow them right inside the mouse brain, when they want a tumor that’s most like the complicated many-armed invasive brain tumors people get. They grow the tumors inside mouse brains when they need to see how cancer drugs work…

Today's scapegoat for my rant about the place of cephalopods in society is, as I predicted, Squidward Quincy Tentacles, of Spongebob Squarepants fame: What IS that? Six appendages, a misplaced mouth, and a floppy nose? Where'd the nose come from? Where are his fins and tentacles? But oh, it turns out Squidward isn't even meant to be a squid. The Spongebob wiki quotes Squidward's voice actor: He's an octopus, but they call him Squidward. I never understood. I guess Octoward just never worked for a name, though. More support for Josh's theory that naming things after squids is always better…

Energy is fungible and nothing is certain but death and taxes. All energy is like all other energy and interchangeable through one means or another.  But, all energy is not created equal.  Some energy is better than other energy.  Hot energy is higher quality than cold energy.  The more heat that your energy can make with a smaller package of stuff the higher thequality.  Nuclear reactions are really high quality stuff and waves on a pond are really low quality stuff. Now carbon energy is pretty good quality.  You can…

It's hard to make a good cartoon cephalopod, I guess. Yesterday I was disappointed about the Squidbillies. Tomorrow I may despair of Spongebob's pal Squidward. Today, I sigh over Nemo's little octopus friend Pearl. I was profoundly impressed with the combination of scientific accuracy and aesthetic appeal achieved by the writer and animators of Finding Nemo. I mean, that song Mr. Ray sings about naming the zones of the ocean? Total brilliance!It's hard to make a good cartoon cephalopod, I guess. Yesterday I was disappointed about the Squidbillies. Tomorrow I may despair of Spongebob's pal…

After the successful introduction of myspace, facebook, twitter and however many other social networking sites that now exist, researchers at London's Natural History Museum have created a social networking tool called 'Scratchpads' just for natural historians. The platform is designed to get specialists together to share their data and prevent the discipline from being buried under a landslide of painstakingly collected data that isn't always used. Users create a virtual workbench to study aspects of an organism much as Darwin did during his lifetime, and anyone can get involved. To date the…

Fascinating things can be learned from Google Search's drop-down menu. For example, if you type "squid", the suggested search items, in order, are: squidbilliessquidoosquidbillies full episodessquid proxysquidbillies quotes Since three of the top five sound like some kind of tv show (and, as I commented yesterday, my knowledge of pop culture is limited) I figured it was time for some quality wikipedia time. Maybe I was about to discover a fun new marine biology show! Annnnnd . . . nope. Adult Swim is hardly my cup of tea anyway, but can't they at least get the basic squid/octopus distinction…

I have to delay the Sunday Science Book Club and my discussion of Voyage of the Beagle until next week. In the mean time, I'm initiating the first Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Corner. Over the next few months, I'll share my experiences as I work through my list of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, one of my favorite fiction genres. Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi CornerFar North, by Marcel TherouxFarrar, Straus, Giroux, 2009 Makepeace, the narrator and protagonist of Far North, living in post-apocalyptic Siberia in a not-too-future world devastated by what seems to be war and chaos brought on by catastrophic…

In July 1999, Medicare began increasing coverage for people needing a simultaneous kidney/pancreas transplant in hopes of addressing racial and economic disparities that existed. But increased Medicare dollars have not translated into more access for African Americans or Hispanics, and researchers from Georgetown University claim they know why. The team says that racial bias among physicians may prevent black and Hispanic patients from receiving necessary kidney/pancreas transplants at the same rate as similar patients in other racial groups. Their research is published in the November issue…

Interesting article in Tuesday’s New York Times. Apparently, the Iraqi security forces have taken to using divining rods to search for explosives, against the advice of U.S. trainers and advisors. The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod. Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,…

Look what's happening in Britain!  I have just been reading a newspaper article:  Climate change belief given same legal status as religion  which starts: An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs. In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that "a belief in man-made climate change ... is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and…