Science & Society

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) is a global celebration of astronomy and its contribution to society and culture, with strong emphasis on education, public participation, and the involvement of young people, and with events at national, regional, and global levels. Many thousands of individuals in over 135 countries around the world are already involved, forming the world's largest ever astronomy network. IYA2009 portrays astronomy as a peaceful global scientific endeavour that unites astronomers in an international, multicultural family of scientists, working together to…

What is a bubble? As is often the case with language, one word can embody multiple meanings.  I am referring to the type of bubble emergent from large-scale social phenomena. It is generally a self-reinforcing process, where participants come to believe that by buying in or investing in some underlying thing, they will see increased value from that thing in the future.  It is self-reinforcing, because people who are initially on the sidelines will observe others who are participating making gains, and often feel compelled to join the fray lest they loose out.   This kind of…

Evolgen clears up a misconception that drives me nuts: But this really points out flaw in how the general public, including journalists, understand academia. If I were to describe Eric Lander's professional appointment (or nearly any other research professors appointment, for that matter), "teaching" would not be the first item on the list. In fact, a lot of profs don't teach at all. Research comes first, then advising grad students and post-docs (which is a kind of teaching, but not the in classroom variety that I imagine most people picture when they say so-and-so teaches at a university)…

Was anyone else as dismayed about the supposed choice for surgeon general as I was? President-elect Obama approached CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta to be the country's next surgeon general, the cable network said Tuesday. CNN said it has kept Gupta from reporting on health care policy. Perhaps he is a wonderful doctor, although who knows how many patients he sees during his busy schedule full of on-camera appearances and national magazine articles and who knows what else. And perhaps he has learned to temper his recommendations since 2006, when I first started to take issue…

Roystonea, the royal palms, are the most striking palms in the Caribbean, and arguably, in the world (though, granted, a talipot palm in flower comes a close second). The name of the genus was coined by Orator F. Cook, an American botanist, in 1900, in honour of Roy Stone, an American general involved in the capture of Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American war. I've wondered for years why Cook replaced what seemed to be a perfectly good generic name, Oreodoxa, with Roystonea...turns out that there were problems with Oreodoxa that were not easily addressed. Over the course of trying to…

What?  Republicans getting a mention on the eve of a scientific Golden Age due to the presence of Democrats in both Congress and the Oval Office, a time when the heavens themselves shall burst forth with funding to drive out the stench of stem cell restrictions and global warming doubts and heralding in a spirit of tolerance and equality for everyone except oil company employees and vaccination deniers?    Have I lost my senses?   Patience, my friends, as always there is a reason.   And, as always, it will take me 1,000 words to get to it. Back in the early days of…

A new way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and tackle climate change had been unveiled by a group of  economists.   Or an old way, depending on how long you have been around.   Under their proposals, companies would buy what are in effect permits to pollute, but the price of those permits would be controlled because the government would retain enough, at a fixed price, to stop the cost increasing above that level.  Yes, it is price controls all over again.  Welcome to 1972. The economists say it could appeal to supporters of a carbon tax and also to those who favor…

The periodic table goes well with many things, including, apparently, wine. This month's issue of Wired (with plenty of fodder for blogging and articles, so more to come) includes a nugget of glorious information - Washington state vintner Substance has labels inspired by the periodic table. I know. Awesome. The picture in the mag was of the 2007 Syrah (label: Sy), so of course I had to check out the site, winesofsubstance.com (symbol: Su) to see what else these enological wizards offered. Not gonna lie, my eyes were as big as saucers - little tiles of chemical-like symbols pop onto a grid,…

Antibiotics may be overprescribed in kids because of concern by helicopter parents and worries about malpractice lawsuits, but in at least one instance they are saving a lot of lives - as a preventive measure to patients in intensive care units (ICUs). This from a study involving nearly sixthousand Dutch patients in thirteen hospitals. Researchers at University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht have published their findings in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine.  During the study, a team of researchers compared the effect of two kinds of antibiotic treatments with the…

Religious people have more self-control than non-religious counterparts, says a study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough and he says this is why religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals and also might help explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives. In this research project, McCullough evaluated 8 decades worth of research on religion, which has been conducted in diverse samples of people from…