Science & Society

Let's be honest; Nature and AAAS, non-profit or not, have employees and those employees would like to remain so. That requires money and a lot of it. Non-profit has never meant 'free', it just means they can't give money to shareholders - it certainly does not mean charity. So it goes with PLoS. I am not the fan of all of PLoS One most here are (and that is not any kind of official position of this site - I am in the minority and not a researcher) because I think that it is difficult separating the wheat from the chaff.   Some PLoS publications do not really do that well. I have seen any…

In a familiar world of solids, liquids and gases, we find the fourth state of matter, the plasmas of lightning to the aurora borealis and fluorescent tubes at the office. Further out, minor phenomena becomes the big event in space, our shining stars are plasma being fused producing light. Not until 1924 was a fifth state of matter considered possible. Intrigued by quantum statistics, invented by the Bengali physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose from observations of light, Einstein applied Bose’s work to matter. The Bose-Einstein Condensate(BEC) was born. Was there any truth to the theory, Einstein…

I'm back from the UCSD workshop on New Communication Channels for Biology held June 27-28, 2008. The talks were recorded and are now available here. The first day mainly consisted of talks while the second was very heavy on breakout sessions (see agenda). Probably the most beneficial part for me was seeing old friends or meeting in person several people I had only interacted with online previously. For example was nice to finally meet Dan Gezelter from the OpenScience project and Hilary Spencer from Nature Precedings. I also had a blast over enchiladas on Friday night with Mike Nieslen…

Dr. Berend Stoel from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), in collaboration with renowned luthier Terry Borman, has put classical violins in a CT scanner and discovered that the homogeneity in the densities of the wood from which the classical violins were made may explain their superior sound production. Experts are fascinated by the fact that classical Cremonese violins from the famous masters such as Stradivari (1644 – 1737) and Guarneri del Gesu (1698 – 1744) are still unparalleled in their abilities of tonal expressiveness and projection. 300 years of technological advancement…

Recipe to recover more quickly from exercise: Finish workout, eat pasta, and wash down with five or six cups of strong coffee. Glycogen, the muscle's primary fuel source during exercise, is replenished more rapidly when athletes ingest both carbohydrate and caffeine following exhaustive exercise, new research from the online edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology shows. Athletes who ingested caffeine with carbohydrate had 66% more glycogen in their muscles four hours after finishing intense, glycogen-depleting exercise, compared to when they consumed carbohydrate alone, according to the…

Homosexual behavior is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors, according to findings from the world's largest study of twins. Researchers from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm report in the Archives of Sexual Behavior that genetics and environmental factors (which are specific to an individual, and may include biological processes such as different hormone exposure in the womb), are important determinants of homosexual behavior. The team led by Dr Niklas Långström at Karolinska Institutet conducted the first…

OK, I am getting worried. As I wrote a few weeks ago, there is a new movie coming out supposedly next year called "The Tree of Life" starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and others. Well, the movie sounds like it could be good. But though this may sound like a cool thing to those of you out there who study the Tree of Life in some way, we are at risk here. There will soon be 100s of blogs, web pages, news stories, etc. writing about the Tree of Life movie. And uses of the Tree of Life by evolutionary biologists will lose their google rankings. The term "The Tree of Life" is at risk of a form of…

There are more men involved in high-profile international business deals than women, and that may be hurting companies, according to the results of a new Tel Aviv University study on the role of gender in management, which found that women may be more skilled at business negotiations than their masculine counterparts. Dr. Yael Itzhaki, an adjunct lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Management, carried out simulations of business negotiations among 554 Israeli and American management students at Ohio State University, in New York City, and in Israel. She is also the founder of Netta…

NEW YORK, June 24 /PRNewswire/ -- - First Rotating Skyscraper to be Self Powered and Completely Prefabricated Visionary Italian architect Dr. David Fisher today announced the launch of the revolutionary Dynamic Tower, the world's first building in motion, to be constructed in Dubai and Moscow with other locations planned worldwide. Rotating Tower Technology Company, headed by the Dynamic Architecture Group, announced the opening on June 24 of the reservations list for the first Dynamic Tower in Dubai. The company has also revealed the design and master plan of the rotating building, which…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that, in the U.S. alone, foodborne pathogens are responsible for 76 million illnesses every year. Of the people affected by those illnesses, 300,000 are hospitalized and more than 5,000 die. These widespread outbreaks of food-borne illnesses are attributed, in part, to the fast-paced distribution of foods across the nation. Recently, raw tomatoes caused an outbreak of salmonellosis that sickened more than 300 people in at least 28 states and Canada. University of Georgia researchers have developed an effective technology for reducing…