CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-16 16:23:01 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 20 +1s)

2013-05-15 19:40:08 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Cognitive Chickens and Memorable Sea Slugs - my latest at +Scientific American is on the use of animal models in psychology.

...In her new book Animal Wise, journalist Virginia Morell recounts a conversation with one researcher who pointed out that decades of research were built upon “rats, pigeons, and college sophomores, preferably male.” The college undergrads stood in for all of humanity, the rats served as representatives of all other mammals, and pigeons served as a model for the rest of the animal kingdom.

The silly part isn’t that non-human animals can be used effectively as a means of understanding more about our own species. The idea is simple: understand how a simple system works, and you can make careful inferences about the way that complex systems work. That is (or should be) obvious. In his interview with CNN today, memory research pioneer and Nobel Prizewinne... more »

2013-05-14 20:13:31 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Announcing the Winners of the +ScienceSeeker Awards

After defending my dissertation, I finally had the time I needed to close out the inaugural ScienceSeeker Awards. Organizing hundreds of posts, getting them judged (thanks +Fraser Cain +Maryn McKenna +Maggie Koerth-Baker), and then deriving the finalists and winners from all the data is no small task!

As always, if you want even further evidence that blogs feature some of the best science writing to be found, look no further than the list. Congratulations to all the winners, especially +Virginia Hughes, who took post of the year for her amazing piece, Re-Awakenings: http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2012/11/22/re-awakenings/

2013-05-14 20:09:39 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

*Don't settle for being an unpaid intern. *

We get a lot of requests at Universe Today from starting journalists, grad students and astronomers who'd like to "intern" with us. I've never worked in a traditional media company, so I'm a little unclear on the intern tradition. But from what people are proposing, I don't think it's necessary.

There are so many outlets out there where you can showcase your writing abilities. And the only way to get better at writing is to write. And write and write and write. Start up a blog at Wordpress or Blogger, or even here on Google+ and get reporting in areas that interest you.

There are now dozens of stories a day that we just don't have time or resources to cover, and you do. The more original, underreported story you can find, the more likely you'll go viral, since you're reporting news and... more »

2013-05-14 18:00:00 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Stunning Picture of the Milky Way…Over Los Angeles? by +Philip Plait 

2013-05-13 21:50:53 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Desperately Seeking Cichlid: Fish Species Down to Last 3 Males, No Known Females by +John Platt at +Scientific American

The last three males of an all-but-extinct fish species would really, really, really like to meet a female.

Once upon a time the Mangarahara cichlid (Ptychochromis insolitus) lived in a single habitat: a river in Madagascar from which the species gets its name. That river has now been dammed and the habitat has dried up. Today there are just three Mangarahara cichlids left—all males. Two reside at the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) London Zoo Aquarium; the third lives at the Berlin Zoo.

2013-05-11 18:37:55 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Photographer Captures Stunning Killer Whale Attack on Dolphin by +nadia drake 

2013-05-08 23:17:22 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Doctor.

2013-05-06 22:32:18 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Bats use Blood for Tongue Erections and Better Feeding by +Bec Crew at +Scientific American Blogs

The Pallas’s long-tongued bat uses blood to change the shape of its mop-like tongue as it feeds in mid-air, researchers have discovered. High-speed video footage has revealed that an increased flow of blood to the tip of the bat’s tongue causes scores of tiny hair-like projections to become swollen and erect, allowing the bat to maximise its nectar-gathering potential with each lap.

2013-05-06 19:11:54 (1 comments, 5 reshares, 10 +1s)

Marine scientist Cassandra Brooks strapped a camera to the front of NSF’s icebreaker the Nathaniel B. Palmer as it sailed for two months through the ice-choked Ross Sea off Antartica.

Watch all the way through for penguins at the end! (via #DeepSN : http://deepseanews.com/2013/05/break-through-2-months-of-antarctic-sea-ice-in-5-minutes/)

2013-05-04 17:59:56 (2 comments, 5 reshares, 16 +1s)

Elephants Communicate in Sophisticated Sign Language, Researchers Say - Nat Geo.

2013-05-03 18:59:31 (9 comments, 8 reshares, 9 +1s)

National Institute of Mental Health abandoning the DSM by Vaughan Bell.

This is big news, folks.

In a potentially seismic move, the National Institute of Mental Health – the world’s biggest mental health research funder, has announced only two weeks before the launch of the DSM-5 diagnostic manual that it will be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories”.

In the announcement, NIMH Director Thomas Insel says the DSM lacks validity and that “patients with mental disorders deserve better”.

2013-05-02 18:23:39 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Insect-Eye Digital Camera Sees What You Just Did by +Ed Yong

Almost all of our cameras form images by using a single lens to focus light onto a light-sensitive sheet. That’s how our own eyes actually work, but there are many other ways of seeing the world. Arthropods—insects, spiders, and their kin—have compound eyes, which consist of hundreds or thousands of individual units or ommatidia. Each one has its own lens and light detectors. They form separate images, which are then united in the brain. And since arthropods greatly outnumber all other animals, the vast majority of eyes are compound ones.

2013-05-01 23:42:05 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

A Stop-Motion Movie Animated By Moving ATOMS

Right, so. IBM created the "world's smallest movie" - a stop-motion animated video that they created by moving atoms around.

Read that again.

Far cry from Wallace and Grommit.

2013-05-01 19:44:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Just 35 Devils Hole Pupfish Remain—Does Extinction Loom? by +John Platt at +Scientific American

One of the world’s rarest fish species just got a lot rarer. The latest twice-annual count of tiny Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) at their sole habitat in Nevada has revealed just 35 of the critically endangered fish remain, down from 75 this past fall. This is the lowest count since the species was federally protected back in 1967.

2013-04-30 23:29:06 (4 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

Shark Dads Lose Babies to Unborn Cannibal Siblings - awesome, by +Ed Yong 

Inside its mother’s womb, an unborn sand tiger shark is busy devouring its brothers and sisters. It’s just 10 centimetres long but it already has well-developed eyes and a set of sharp teeth, which it turns against its smaller siblings. By the time the pregnant female gives birth, it only has two babies left—one from each of its two wombs. These survivors have already eaten all the others. They’re the bloody victors of a pre-birth battle.

2013-04-30 22:49:52 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Science communication both an opportunity and an obligation - required reading at the +Scientific American guest blog

More essentially, though, isn’t it the responsibility of those of us supported by the public to do science to report back to them when we uncover something they should know about?  And just think about all the media pathways through which this can now happen beyond the traditional news brands.

2013-04-30 18:00:31 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

The Evolution of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse by +Carl Zimmer

Urban evolution is probably one of the most common forms of evolution on Earth today. After all, cities are spreading over so much of the terrestrial surface of the planet. Yet the city is still a lonely frontier for evolutionary biologists. They’ve traditionally searched out “natural” habitats in order to document the workings of evolution. Only recently have some evolutionary biologists made the city into a field site.

2013-04-26 21:04:14 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Super Science Circle - April 2013 Edition

It's time for another sharing of my Super Science Circle. This is a collection of 400+ active people on Google+ who often post about science. If anyone tells you G+ is a ghost town (not that anyone does any more), get them to import this circle. 

PLEASE SHARE THIS CIRCLE... FOR SCIENCE!

I have personally reviewed each and every person on this list, to make sure that they:

1. Are active and engaged on Google+
2. Regularly post science-related stories on Google+

In this list you'll find scientists, journalists, researchers, professors, astronauts and general science enthusiasts. 

Not everyone in this list is going to be to your personal liking. So what you'll want to do is import the list into a temporary circle. Then move people over one by one into more permanentl... more »

2013-04-26 21:00:35 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

It's a crappy phone pic (not because the camera, but because the window). Still, ain't it a beautiful skyline?

2013-04-25 19:08:34 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Hunter Allowed to Import Rhino Trophy into U.S. for First Time in 33 Years
by +John Platt at +Scientific American

An organization called Conservation Force, headed by lawyer John Jackson, spent the past four years arguing that Reinke should be allowed to import the trophy from his hunt back into the U.S. Conservation Force holds the position that “that hunters and anglers are an indispensable and essential force for wildlife conservation,” and has also argued for the right to import hunting trophies from polar bears, Canadian wood bison and straight-horned markhor, among other endangered species.

Uh. wut?

Legal hunting sends a message not about conservation, as the pro-hunting groups argue, but that rhinos are ripe for the taking. And as long as that message exists, the rhinos will continue to suffer.

2013-04-25 19:01:47 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Harvard to close their New England National Primate Research Center by Drugmonkey. Ominous.

Harvard has decided not to seek to renew NIH support for their New England National Primate Research Center, established by Congress in 1962. The Center has operated with a so-called "base grant" from the National Institutes of Health underpinning the not-inconsiderable costs of housing thousands of nonhuman primates and the usual grab bag of investigators' independent sources of funding. The NENPRC site lists an impressive series of accomplishments.

2013-04-25 00:46:34 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Crouching Bird, Hidden Dinosaur by +Ed Yong

Birds evolved from two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs but the earliest of these stood upright, with thigh bones held almost vertically below their hips. At what point did they start to crouch, and why?

2013-04-23 22:04:05 (10 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Animal-rights activists wreak havoc in Milan laboratory - via +Nature News & Comment.

This breaks my heart, and not just because of the years of lost work and effort at understanding psychiatric conditions and disorders like autism and schizophrenia, but because the animals that the "activists" stole are likely to suffer and die outside of their laboratories. Nude mice, for example, which were among those stolen, have disrupted immune systems. They have perhaps just days to live in the "wild." Some of these mice and rabbits have their own versions of rhett syndrome, or schizophrenia. Imagine "releasing" a human with those disorders into the "wild" without proper care.

What these animal rights extremists do not understand (or purposely ignore) is that the scientists who are working so hard with these animals do care about the critters... more »

2013-04-23 18:47:59 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Facebook's "I F*cking Love Science" does not f*cking love artists by +Alex Wild 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/compound-eye/2013/04/23/facebooks-i-fcking-love-science-does-not-fcking-love-artists/

A great post from Alex. I've learned so much from him about copyright attribution! Very important stuff.

2013-04-23 18:28:29 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

Happy goats: How animal rehab works - nice video featuring Alan McElligott's research. How do you assess a goat's mood?

2013-04-23 17:24:16 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Men dominate the energy sector, yet women are the primary household energy decision makers in the developed and developing world. How do we become more efficient and less wasteful? Engage and educate women in energy.

2013-04-22 23:53:37 (3 comments, 10 reshares, 31 +1s)

Bruno Mars trolls every pop star, ever. This is awesome.

2013-04-22 21:20:02 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Playing for All Kinds of Possibilities - great +David Dobbs piece in the New York Times

The idea that play contributes to human success goes back at least a century. But in the last 25 years or so, researchers like Elizabeth S. Spelke, Brian Sutton-Smith, Jaak Panksepp and Alison Gopnik have developed this notion more richly and tied it more closely to both neuroscience and human evolution. They see play as essential not just to individual development, but to humanity’s unusual ability to inhabit, exploit and change the environment.

After you're done, go read my story on animal play at BBC Future http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130109-why-do-animals-like-to-play

2013-04-22 19:37:31 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

When Did the Barbary Lion Really Go Extinct? by +John Platt at +Scientific American

History books tell us that the last wild Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) was probably killed in 1922 by a French colonial hunter in Morocco. But in repeating the tale of this well-documented death, the history books may have left a chapter or two out of the story.

2013-04-20 23:30:53 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

Supernova left its mark in ancient bacteria by +Alexandra Witze in +Nature News & Comment 

Okay, this is really cool. Mind=blown cool.

Here on Earth, there are certain species of bacteria that collect iron from their environments - they use it to orient themselves and navigate using Earth's magnetic field. An isotope of iron called iron-60 doesn't naturally occur on Earth, but is uniquely associated with supernovae. About 10 years ago, scientists discovered some iron-60 in a deep sea sediment core.

So 2.2 million years ago, a star went supernova. Eventually, the material from the explosion made its way to Earth.

Now, scientists have found iron-eating bacteria that ate the iron-60 from that explosion. Witze explains: The levels of iron-60 are minuscule, but the only place they seem to appear is in layers dated to around 2.2 million years ago.... more »

2013-04-19 22:35:17 (2 comments, 4 reshares, 17 +1s)

Polar bear is as tired of this week as I am. (Photographed March 2013 at San Diego Zoo)

2013-04-19 00:26:57 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

The Canadian 10th-graders who suggested the "experiment" came up with the right answer even before +Chris Hadfield did the demonstration. Would you have figured it out?

2013-04-18 22:13:23 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Social Insect Photography Tip: Emphasize the Individual - by +Alex Wild at +Scientific American

An effective strategy to photograph sociality is to emphasize the individuality of the constituents.

2013-04-18 18:31:36 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Ronan Fights Back! Scrappy Sea Lion Might Reclaim the Title of First Non-Human Mammal Dancer - my latest at +Scientific American.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a new study by Peter Cook and colleagues from the Pinniped Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In their study, Cook claimed that Ronan the California sea lion was the first non-human mammal to show evidence of “rhythmic entrainment,” or the ability to synchronize the movements of his body with an external rhythm. In other words, Ronan could dance. I pointed out that one study found evidence of dancing in Asian elephants. More substantively, I pointed out that many think of spontaneous rhythmic entrainment as the real mystery to be solved. Ronan, on the other hand, had to be trained to dance. Cook got in touch with me, and we debated a few of these points over email. I invited him to write a guest post in response tomy ... more »

2013-04-17 20:34:48 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

About Ricin - by (who else?) +Deborah Blum 

2013-04-17 18:45:31 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

The Mosaic of Human Origins -  killer essay by +Eric Michael Johnson at +Scientific American

The science of human paleontology is the modern secular equivalent of memento mori, for in no other field is the contemplation of life through the origin of species tied so explicitly to the ravages of death. The first time I walked into a paleoanthropology laboratory that contained drawers and cabinets filled with ancestral remains I felt the same kind of visceral response I experienced while touring the Capuchin Crypt years earlier.

2013-04-17 18:37:01 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

“It’s the STEM jobs, stupid” - important (and spot-on) by +Zen Faulkes

Last week, I saw a recruiter for graduate program from University of Texas San Antonio. What did she emphasize as a reason why someone should go to graduate school? Increased lifetime earnings was number one. I think low unemployment was second.

Let’s say that again. Recruiters are telling prospective students that you should go into grad school not for the intellectual joy of problem solving, not helping society, not creating the future. They’re telling people to do it for the money.

2013-04-17 01:46:47 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 16 +1s)

It's already been a really long week, and it's only Tuesday. That said, here's a duck. (Shot at the San Diego Zoo.)

2013-04-17 01:24:40 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Homing Pigeons Never Stop Learning Ways to Get Home by +Elizabeth Preston

A young homing pigeon must learn quickly how to find its way home from the strange neighborhoods where humans insist on leaving it. At first the bird does this by relying on its crudest instincts, returning to its roost along a route full of youthful zigzags. Over time, though, it refines its methods. A mature pigeon takes a much simpler route, because it has drawn itself a more complex map.

2013-04-16 20:11:32 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Chlamydia Is Killing Koalas—Will Genetics Find a Cure? - by +John Platt at +Scientific American

Why do some koalas die from chlamydia and an AIDS-like retrovirus while others manage to avoid contracting the sexually transmitted diseases? The answer, it seems, may be in the genes. Scientists in Australia announced last week that they have sequenced the koala interferon gamma (IFN-g) gene, a discovery that they call the “holy grail” for understanding the koala immune system. A similar gene in humans helps to combat viruses and regulate the immune system

2013-04-15 19:34:04 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

This month's +Scientific American Best of the Blogs video roundup by +Carin Bondar featuring, among others, me!

2013-04-15 19:22:30 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

On meteors, TNT, swallows, and the end of the world by +Yonatan Zunger at +Scientific American Guest Blog

A car travelling at highway speed has an energy density of about 360 Joules per kilogram (J/kg). A fully-loaded Toyota Corolla weighs about 1,700 kilograms, so it has a total energy of about 612,000 Joules, which is the energy it would deliver to you if it hit you and came to a complete stop in the process. That’s enough to cause a lot of damage, but that’s not enough to really be exciting. (Physicists have an interesting notion of excitement.)

2013-04-15 19:12:28 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Brontosaurus Not Real? +Cara Santa Maria chats with +Brian Switek  about sauropods and fuzzy theropods and more.

2013-04-12 20:22:23 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Is Meat-Eating A Conservation Tactic? - my latest at +Scientific American intentionally asks a very provocative question, inspired by +Michael Ruhlman.

But Ruhlman goes on to make another argument: “If spit-roasted dodo bird had been delicious to eat, I’d wager the dodo bird would still exist.” And, further down in his post, “…provided the animals are treated with care, our eating them ensures their survival, life’s ultimate impulse, no matter the form.”

2013-04-11 20:49:18 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Dogs in pantyhose - you read that right. By +Julie Hecht at +Scientific American Blogs

Until recently, the only association I made between dogs and pantyhose would have involved an unfortunate trip to the vet. Of the inanimate objects pulled from pets’ gastrointestinal tracts — from drywall and hearing aids to corn cobs and toy cars — pantyhose, and their cousins, socks and underwear, top the list.

2013-04-10 18:51:26 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Starfish or Sea Star? I think we should just call them Asteroids, because, obviously cooler.

The real question is: jellyfish or sea jellies?

2013-04-10 18:28:36 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The 6 Most Endangered Feline Species by +John Platt at +Scientific American 

As pressures increase, more felines will suffer. And as time progresses, we will probably have a few extinctions to report, because for too many of these species their nine lives are drawing to a close.

2013-04-09 22:11:28 (8 comments, 3 reshares, 15 +1s)

Why the mantis shrimp is my new favorite animal by The Oatmeal. A fantastic example of effective science communication.

2013-04-08 23:51:21 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Anonymity in science - compelling arguments made by Neuroskeptic in Trends in Cognitive Sciences - the paper is open access for at least the next couple months.

Anonymity has been an important part of the history of science and many landmark publications originally appeared in this form. These include:
Nicolaus Copernicus, who first put forward his theory of heliocentrism anonymously, in the form of a manuscript now known as the Commentariolus (1514). Only later, after seeing that this work had been favourably received, did he publish a more detailed exposition of the heliocentric model under his own name.