Science & Society

Shape is the most important factor affecting Christmas tree selection, followed by needle retention, species, and price, according to M. Elizabeth Rutledge, a graduate student in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. How many of you out there remember your father negotiating over tree shape? None of us either. But Rutledge says that is the case so we'll let it go and assume everyone picks the best tree and then looks at the price tag, rather than the other way around. Traditionally, Americans have also preferred dense trees, she writes,…

In the fall of 2006, a strange design mysteriously appeared amongst the rows of crops in a farmer’s field. And this time, there was some serious product placement. The large Firefox logo appeared in a farmer’s oat field outside of Amity, Oregon. But far from being a mysterious extraterrestrial communication, the design was carefully planned and executed by a group of Oregon State University students. Two Mozilla video interns came up with the idea. Supported by the enthusiasm of fellow Mozilla staff members, things really started to take shape when the idea was presented to members of the…

Men's World Record Times - 2007 to 2010 Sep 28, 2008 - Men's World Record Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) - 2:03:59 Berlin Marathon, Berlin, Germany Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) clocked 2:03:59 to win his third straight Berlin Marathon, beating the mark of 2:04:26 he set last year over the same flat course. He also became the first runner to win the race three times.(1) How he beat the world record last year is remembered below. Men's World Record Times - 2004 to 2010 Sep 30, 2007 - Men's World Record Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) - 2:04:26 Berlin Marathon, Berlin, Germany Haile Gebrselassie…

In marking the passing of its founder, Paul Newman, the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps has issued the following statement: While greatly saddened by Paul's passing, the family of Hole in the Wall Camps celebrates the life of Paul Newman and the legacy he has left us and the world. Paul's commitment to the welfare of children suffering from serious illnesses and life-threatening diseases was never-ending. His infinite passion to provide kids who are sick with a place "to kick back and raise a little hell" has touched the lives of children everywhere. Paul founded the first Hole in the…

Nature columnist David Goldston love to bash the supposed political naivete of science community leaders, and this week is no different (subscription required): Can anyone cite any decision that has been different because the current head of the OSTP, John Marburger, was not called 'Assistant to the President'? The prominence given to the recommendation about a title speaks volumes about the scientific community's hypersensitivity to perceived slights and its excessive insecurity about its stature, but it says almost nothing about governance... The science community is blind to all this…

Climate change, stem cells, drug research and regulation, nuclear proliferation, biological terrorism agents, alternative energy technology, nanotechnology, personalized genetics, new computing technologies, nuclear waste storage, perchlorate in our drinking water, space exploration .... all reasons why the next US President needs competent people in key science and technology positions. To do this, the next President needs to make it a priority to appoint his chief science adviser ASAP, according to a new report released by the National Academies. That science adviser should play a critical…

Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health since 2002, is resigning his position at the end of October. Zerhouni has led the NIH through an interesting period, and my take is that he handled the challenges well. He leaves the NIH with more funding focused on young scientists and unconventional/high-risk/high payoff science. He has, during an era of big team genome science, emphasized the need for also funding the traditional smaller groups of creative individuals doing basic science. He has repeatedly emphasized the need for basic science, while also looking at more…

The fatter the world gets, the more extreme thinness is popular on the internet, according to an analysis of nearly three million random URLs. The study revealed that websites promoting anorexia and bulimia have jumped in number since 2007. Optenet, a global IT security company and provider of content filtering solutions, announced the results creating using their traffic analysis and classification engine for dynamic traffic, which combines artificial intelligence with traditional content filtering technology to categorize Web site and Web 2.0 content. The report tracks Internet content…

You've probably heard that saying, 'if your only tool is a hammer you tend to see every problem as a nail.' So it goes with culture too. People who have an agenda jump on every opportunity to advance it in every exploitative way - they are culture vultures. Obviously it's easy to be jaded because I live in California and California is home to cultural fundamentalists in a way that people in actual religious areas of the US can only dream about - because they aren't pushed off to the fringes, they have center stage. John W. Kindt is a University of Illinois professor in Business…

Emerson looked forward to the day when America would be self-reliant and not second rate in its scholarship. In science, the U.S. has fulfilled Emerson's ambition, but at what cost to religion? Physicist Steven Weinberg muses on religion's fate in the West as science has come to dominate our culture: Let's grant that science and religion are not incompatible—there are after all some (though not many) excellent scientists, like Charles Townes and Francis Collins, who have strong religious beliefs. Still, I think that between science and religion there is, if not an incompatibility, at least…