Category Archives: Uncategorized

Today we again have two posts on the Scientific American Guest Blog.

First, You are what you bleed: In Japan and other east Asian countries, some believe blood type dictates personality is fascinating, by Rachel Nuwer.

Then, Anecdotes from the Archive: Happy 95th anniversary to….Electrical Prosperity Week! byMary Karmelek in her bi-weekly dig through the SciAm 165-year long archives.

This month’s Science Café (description below) will be held on February 15th at The Irregardless Cafe. We will be meeting Dr. Deepak Pasi from Rex Hospital. Dr Pasi will talk with us about our hearts- how they work and what keeps our vascular systems healthy. I hope that many of you can come – it should be an interesting discussion about a very important topic.

Prevention of Heart Disease: Managing Risk Factors

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

6:30-8:30 p.m. with discussion beginning at 7:00 followed by Q&A

Location: The Irregardless Café, 901 W. Morgan Street, Raleigh, 833-8898

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. Why is heart disease different in women versus men? Why are some people more prone to heart disease than others? Is a healthy diet and exercise enough to prevent it? Will statins prevent heart disease in healthy people? What role does second hand smoke really play? Prevention is key to minimizing the impact of heart disease on our bodies, our longevity and our quality of life. We’ll explore the risk factors, the role of genetics and the things we can do to minimize heart disease.

About our Speaker: Deepak Pasi, M.D. is a board certified cardiologist and completed fellowships in both cardiology and interventional cardiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has practiced cardiology for twenty five years and is a member of Rex Heart & Vascular Specialists in Raleigh.

Please RSVP to katey.ahmann@ncdenr.gov

This is, to put it mildly, a hectic time. Today I need to make final changes – before it is sent to the printers – to the Program for ScienceOnline2011 (which is going to be awesome). We are finally finalizing the final finalists for the Open Laboratory (which is going to be awesome). We are getting close to the Scienceblogging.org release of Version 2.0 (which is going to be awesome). And there is a lot of movement at work, building a new network (which is going to be awesome). Oh, and I think we’ll be moving to a new apartment over the next couple of weeks as well. So, stressful time, but also all awesome. And most of it is occurring behind the scenes, so you cannot see, so you’ll have to just wait and, in the meantime, read these great articles:

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A good crop today:
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Just a few more, if you already finished all the yesterday’s ones:
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Happy New Year!!!!

And while you are recovering from the holidays, and before you have to go back to work, here are a few good reads:
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Why am I suddenly so busy?
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Interesting stuff today:
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Snow!
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While you are digesting….
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Have a great long weekend:
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Awesome scientific paper by 8-yr old kids, more on #arseniclife, more on Wikileaks, on science+art, the amazing case of bad journalists aggressively reacting to a piece of good journalism on Lyme Disease, and more:
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My yesterday’s post which got a lot of comments and hundreds of retweets, is now live at Science Progress – the folks who commissioned this article in the first place.

So, if you have missed it yesterday, go now and read it here: The Line Between Science and Journalism is Getting Blurry….Again

Gotta start with my first SciAm post again – The line between science and journalism is getting blurry….again – as there are now comments on it.
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Now that I work at Scientific American, nothing stops me from actually writing and publishing stuff there, right?

So I started today. My very first (and as I tend to do – very long) post is now up: The line between science and journalism is getting blurry….again

I hope you like it, post comments, and share with your friends….

New real blog post tomorrow. Some links till then….
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Back from NYC, busy catching up. Update later. Links for now:
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In NYC, a busy couple of days. But I collected some links during the train-ride here:
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I will be offline tomorrow, in NYC Monday and Tuesday. If you promised me a #scio10 interview or #scienceblogging interview or a post for SciAm Guest Blog, I can process those tonight, tomorrow night, or early next week.

Here – more on arsenic bacteria, WikiLeaks, and more:
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I am collecting all the articles and blogs posts about arsenic and bacteria here. Wikileaks – which is related – gets a lot of links today again, and there is much more below.

I love all the parallels between #wikileaks and #arseniclife, especially in how the power-structure position influences views of critics and supporters… When comparing #wikileaks and #arseniclife it is important to compare the attitudes of the MSM – does it align with the rock (state, government, institutions, traditional hierarchy and power-structure, top-down control) or the hard-place (people formerly known as audience, including people with greater expertise on the topic than journalists, bottom-up control, democratization of information, freedom of information)? I am irked by the media focus on Assange – he is irrelevant, #wikileaks is about something bigger: clash of worldviews regarding freedom of information.
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Just so I can have all of them in one place:

Mono Lake bacteria build their DNA using arsenic (and no, this isn’t about aliens) and Science gets it (mostly) wrong again: My take on the NASA astrobiology paper and Lots of Ink for a few extremophiles: We’ve been invaded by aliens, Monolakians, from the Duncecap Galaxy and When life gives you arsenic, make arsenate-backboned DNA, non-alien Halomonadaceae!

The Real Scoop on Aliens Oops Arsenic in Old Lakes and Bacteria Use Arsenic As Basic Building Block In A Pinch and Poison Nil: Mono Lake Bacterium Exhibits Exotic Arsenic-Driven Biological Activity and Arsenic and Odd Lace and It’s not an arsenic-based life form.

Arsenic and Old Lakes: NASA Finds Life NOT As We Know It and Arsenic-Eating Bacteria Expands Definition of Life and It Came From Mono Lake and Complete heresy: life based on arsenic instead of phosphorus and Bacteria eat arsenic – and survive!

Arsenic-associated bacteria (NASA’s claims) and Arsenic-permissive bacteria – implications for arsenical cancer chemotherapy and Are there viruses of arsenic-utilizing bacteria? and The ‘Give Me a Job’ Microbe

Of Arsenic and Aliens and NASA’s real news: bacterium on Earth that lives off arsenic! and Close Encounters of the Media Kind and A Life Less Ordinary and Life With Arsenic: Who’d Have Thought? and Medicine! Poison! Arsenic! Life itself!

Why “alien” life, aka arsenic-loving bacteria, embargo fiasco was deja vu for Sun Spaceman Paul Sutherland and Did you know you could have bet on the NASA arsenic-based bacteria find? and On science blogs this week: Alien abductions and Nasa dismisses criticism of ‘arsenic bacteria’ research

Arsenic-Eating Bacteria May Not Redefine Life, But Could They Be Useful in Oil Spill Cleanup? and A new life form? Not so fast and Arsenic and Old Lace and Arsenic-Based Life

The Wrong Stuff: NASA Dismisses Arsenic Critique Because Critical Priest Not Standing on Altar and NASA: science shouldn’t be debated in media and blogs?! and Not getting it and “This Paper Should Not Have Been Published”: Scientists see fatal flaws in the NASA study of arsenic-based life.

Unquestioning dogma: the gatekeepers of science and Death for “Arsenic-Based Life”? and My summary of NASA’s arsenic-thriving bacteria story and Arsenic and Bacteria: “nothing in that paper is going into my biochemistry textbook” and Why was #PLoS ONE blamed for the media hype about the Darwinius and Red Sea papers, but when it comes to the latest overblown #Science paper, it is #NASA that’s blamed for the hype? (same applies to Venter’s synthetic life: Venter gets the blame not Science) and Heavy Metal

And the skeptics keep chiming in…George Cody on arsenic life and NASA discovers life on Earth and Extraordinary claims attract extraordinary blogging and The Value of Blogs and Ordinary evidence would do

[guest post: Alex Bradley, PhD] Arsenate-based DNA: a big idea with big holes and On how science happens – Case Study: NASA, Arsenic, and Controversy and Is That Arsenic-Loving Bug — Formerly an Alien — a Dog?

Hat die NASA Aliens gefunden? (natürlich nicht) and Die Arsen-Bakterien: Doch ein lohnendes Forschungsobjekt? and Science Is Sexy: Why Do NASA’s New Arsenic Bacteria Matter? and NASA’s arsenic microbe science slammed and Inside scoop from the NASA man who was way ahead of the rest of NASA on those Mono microbes with arsenic in their genes.

NASA’s new life form: Underwhelming? and Did NASA really find new life? and NASA’s Arsenic-Eating “Alien” Bacteria Is More Like Science-Fiction and Was NASA’s big announcement a big mistake? and NASA’s Arsenic-Loving Bacteria Don’t Love Arsenic After All, Critics Say.

An arsenic bacteria postmortem: NASA responds, tries to pit blogs vs. “credible media organizations” and The Right Place for Scientific Debate?: Scientists snub media as controversy over arsenic-eating microbes rolls on and Hey, NASA: this is what peer review actually looks like.

The dubious arsenic bacterium and Life on Arsenic? and NASA arsenic story – let’s lay off the personal attacks on all sides and Scientific dissention: shouldn’t we all be nice? and Arsenic about face and My Letter to Science and DNA, Phosphorus, and Arsenic and NASA can’t have it both ways.

Wolfe-Simon et al Comment: 08 December 2010 and Scientists: NASA’s claim of microbe that can live on arsenic is ‘flawed’ and Did NASA follow its own code of conduct in announcing the arsenic bacteria study? (Hint: No) and Post-publication peer review in public: poison or progress?

Of arsenic and aliens: What the critics said and Falsehoods associated with the arsenic-thriving bacteria story: What it is and what it isn’t and Critics raise doubts on NASA’s arsenic bacteria and Three Tales of Arsenic Tolerant Bacteria

Robert Sheldon, ID proponent, defending the arsenic bacteria paper? Oh dear God. and Arsenic Bacteria Breed Backlash and Don’t Like Arsenic Bacteria? Put Your Experiment Where Your Mouth Is! and GFAJ-1: Get Fighting And Jousting! and Albert Eschenmoser and I Had Arsenic for Lunch

Arsenic bacteria – a post-mortem, a review, and some navel-gazing and Of Arsenic, Slime Molds, and Life on Other Worlds and On science blogs this week: Arsenic bugging and Science Weekly: The arsenic bacterium that could help find life in outer space

Aliens, arsenic and alternative peer-review: Has science publishing become too conservative? and Arsenic up for Review and Arsenate redux and No-one cuts deeper than a Science Blogger. and Your daily dose of arsenic: On the Madeleine Brand Show on KPCC

The Agency That Cried “Awesome!” and Arsenic and Primordial Ooze: A History Lesson and Poisoned Debate Encircles a Microbe Study’s Result and How to harness distributed discussion of research papers and Molecular evolution of an arsenate detoxification pathway by DNA shuffling

If a Microbe Can Do It…: Finding Happiness Even Amid Toxicity (this one is total crap, but what do you expect from HuffPo)

Science Weekly: The great arsenic bacteria backlash and Good Science or good publicity? and Arsenic And Peer Review and Communication – it’s not just for cells and MEDIA ADVISORY: M10-167 and Ambitions of an Early Career Scientist? and Scientific knowledge – getting closer to the right answer

Where can we find arsenic in a DNA structure? and Not Exactly Rocket Science etc -The Great Monolakian Arsenic Issue and its quick rise to fame and flame and The Arsenic Chronicles and In Search of Life: SETI has come a long way over the years, but is the search really important? and Just to be clear: Ed Yong does read the primary literature

Calling Dr. Kane and A new kind of life? and Response required and More on Arsenic Bugs – Nature responds to the blogosphere

The arsenic post I never wrote and What Alien Bacteria Can Teach Us About Health PR and Response to Questions Concerning the Science Article, A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorous (PDF) and Real science – warts and all

Arsenic bacteria study authors respond to critics and Using the ‘arsenic bacteria’ story as a teaching moment for undergraduates

A Funny Arsenic Smell Upstream — What questions is it fair to ask about squishy science? and Comments on Dr. Wolfe-Simon’s Response and Yet another reason why the Wolfe-Simon conclusion is so improbable and Arsenic and Old Wounds

Scientists and the News Media: Arsenic-Based Life Forms a Case Study? and Arsenic Bacteria 4: The Quest for Peace and Confused about Arsenic

Exclusive Interview: Discoverer of Arsenic Bacteria, in the Eye of the Storm and #ArsenicLife #Fail: A teachable moment and Response to the critics.

Phosphorus beats arsenic…by a factor of seventeen powers of ten and An arsenic-laced bad-news letter: Who is the audience for online post-publication peer review?

Added four months later:
Arsenic life, four months later: pay no attention to the internet and Arsenic life, four months (and a bit) later: Reviewers with shovels and Comment posted on Rosen paper and Response from Drs. McDermott and Rosen about their arsenic paper and Arsenic Author Dumps Peer Review, Takes Case to TED and Felisa Wolfe-Simon (of arsenic infamy) is no more convincing in person than in print

And another couple of months later:

Science Publishes “Arsenic is Life” Critiques. Game On., Arsenic, RNA, and the unpleasant aftertaste of hype, The Discovery of Arsenic-Based Twitter, “The Center of Gravity Has Shifted.” Carl Zimmer on the Arsenic Paper, Critics weigh in on arsenic life.

Arseniclife: The formal critiques and the authors’ responses, Wolfe-Simon et al.’s responses to my comments, How to test the arsenic-DNA claims, How might a bacterium evolve to use arsenic in place of phosphorus?.

Arsenic-based bacteria: Fact or fiction?, Critics take aim at NASA ‘arsenic life’ study, Debate over arsenic-based life enters a new chapter, Science Publishes Multiple Critiques of Arsenic Bacterium Paper

#arseniclife, peer review, and the scientific process, High Impact Science in a Hyperactive Media Environment, Arsenic life – more criticism, formally published, Post publication peer review – a new way of doing science?.

Were my original #arseniclife criticisms overly personal?, Examples of good astrobiology please, Further panning of the arsenic life claims, Minding the As and P: Can Arsenic Substitute for Phosphorus or Not?.

What the Coburn report has in common with arsenic life, Finding the truth is a waste of time, scientists say, Does Arsenic Really Exist in the DNA from GFAJ-1?, The Arsenic Paper is out, along with eight critiques.

Return of the Arsenic Bacterium, Felisa Wolfe-Simon Does NOT Get It, Arsenic-based life debate continues, Follow arsenic life science “live”.

From the shadows to the spotlight to the dustbin – the rise and fall of GFAJ-1, Arsenic bacteria have changed science…science education that is.

Just in case I do decide to test the #arseniclife …, Working safely with arsenic (what I’d need to know), Guest post about #arseniclife, Starting to work with GFAJ-1!, They’re here!, Counting the GFAJ-1 cells, Vitamins are for wusses (#arseniclife), Why would GFAJ-1 grow much better on agar than in liquid?, Maybe it’s the water? Or the tubes?

It’s not the water, nor the tubes, nor the parafilm…, No excuses… , More detailed plans, GFAJ-1 (no real progress to report), Life and death of GFAJ-1.

New post for the SciAm Guest Blog – will have something later (or in the morning) – still in the editing/formatting stage….

Below, lots more on the Arsenic-gate and WikiLeaks-gate and other gates:
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Much more on WikiLeaks, arsenic-using bacteria etc. – if you missed the older articles on these topics, previous QuickLinks posts have more.
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Apparently I did not pay for my online access, hope to have that resolved over the next few days, will get online for a few hours per day at La Vita Dolce cafe, will be offline at nights. Ugh – that will hurt! Bu I may get caught up on book reading….

I spent the day yesterday at the W.M.Keck Center for Behavioral Biology Alumni Symposium at NCSU. It was great to see again my colleagues from grad school days, see what they are up to these days. Many are now postdocs or faculty, doing interesting research. Others are doing other science-related activities, from science education experts to pharma sales-representatives to NIH grant officers. They all love Open Access and PLoS but most need a Big Update on the Web and blogging and social networking etc., and perhaps I can help them in the future in some way as I am local. I may also ask some of them to write something up for the SciAm Guest Post soon.

Out and offline all day, but I still have an hour to do this. I usually nominate a whole bunch of blogs in various categories for the annual and prestigious Edublog Awards. This time, especially as I am doing this under the wire, I will nominate only one – in the category of the best class blog. Who? Of course: Stacy Baker’s Extreme Biology. That is how the classroom blogging is done!

I’ll be offline all day tomorrow. I hope that stuff I scheduled for automatic posting tomorrow turns out OK, both here and on SciAm Guest Blog….
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Lots of VERY good stuff today:
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Open Lab deadline – at 3am EDT!
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ScienceOnline2011 in the final stretch of organization, Open Laboratory in the final stretch of submissions, four SciAm guest-blog posts lined up for this week, a Q&A to respond to, ‘Encephalon’ to prepare for tomorrow at noon, lots of e-mails to answer….let’s say that this was a busy Sunday.
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Took a couple of days off, relaxing. After the magnificent Heritage Turkey meal on Thursday at the Zuiker’s house, we had lunch at Neil’s Deli in Carrboro yesterday and at Weaver Street Market in Carrboro today. Yesterday we saw “Inside Job” about the way sociopaths in the financial industry systematically screwed up the national and world economies over the past 30 years. Today we saw “Fair Game” about the way sociopaths in the government act when exposed to be liars – the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame outing episode. Don’t believe me they are sociopaths? Watch both movies – they are excellent.

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Yesterday was the day for giving Thanks. Today is the day for Listening.

Last night, we had the most wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Anton and his lovely family. Today, we should all sit down with someone and listen to their story. Perhaps write it down or record it for posterity.

So today, I would like to re-listen to my Mother’s story. For those of you who may have missed it the first time around, here it is, in five parts:

Memories of War, Part I
Memories of War, Part II
Memories of War, Part III
Memories of War, Part IV
Memories of War, Part V

Happy Thanksgiving!
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I skipped a day – so you get twice as many links today, but it is a holiday so you have plenty of time and there is some great stuff there:
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We are starting this week’s posts on the Scientific American Guest Blog with Eric Michael Johnson. Go and read Stressing Motherhood: A primatologist discovers the social factors responsible for maternal infanticide. Login and comment (registration is really just putting in a name/nym and e-mail, and you can comment without waiting for confirmation e-mail, so it’s really more like a login than a registration proper).

Not that many today, but they are good:
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Nights are getting cold, but days are still beautiful. Why sit inside?
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Have a great weekend!
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Another day with lots of amazing stuff:
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Lots of great stuff today:
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Busy day behind, busy day ahead – good night!
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The weather is too nice to sit inside too much. And there is ScienceOnline2011 program to finalize. But you can read these links if you want.

This is an experiment – a cross-post between SciAm Guest Blog and ScienceInTheTriangle blog: Science Cafe spreads understanding of bacteria over beers and Science Cafe spreads understanding of bacteria over beers

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Well, registration for ScienceOnline2011 filled up in 45 minutes. Now the details need to be all hammered – Program is almost ready and we are adding information to the wiki as it becomes available. Until then, read these:

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After 6 planes, 2 trains, 6 NYC Metro trains, three cabs and one bus, I am finally back from the whirlwind tour of Greenville, South Carolina (for the The 2010 Conference on Communicating Science), New York City (a few hours each on Friday and Monday at the SciAm office) and New Haven, CT (for the ScienceWriters2010 NASW/CASW meeting). Nice to be home for a while!

ScienceWriters2010 was a fantastic experience – there were about 600 people there and I have met many people who I only knew online before (or even only from their bylines). I blogged and tweeted very little, as people who I hope are my audience were mostly there so I thought it would be much nicer to just talk kface-to-face for a change. But other people did much more – check out #sciwri10 hashtag on Twitter, and the official conference blog. Most NASW sessions were recorded so you can watch videos (including of my panel – Rebooting the News) and slide-casts of them here.

The Scientific American Guest Blog is busy – today saw a new post by Jennifer Jacquet – Ecologists: Wading from nature to networks. More to come tomorrow, and pretty much every work-day between now and ScienceOnline2011 (and probably beyond). Pitch me a topic for a guest-post if interested at Bora@sciam.com.

Tomorrow will be a busy day – trying to turn this busy page into an actual ScienceOnline2011 program, so we can open for registration on Wednesday at 12noon EST.

Also, don’t forget to submit your (and other people’s) blog posts (essays, stories, art, poetry, cartoons, comic strips, etc) for the Open Laboratory anthology as there are only three weeks left.

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Kevin Zelnio’s first contribution just went live – To Catch a Fallen Sea Angel: a mighty mollusk detects ocean acidification. Check it out, post comments!

And if you did not do it yet, you have the entire weekend to catch up with our (now daily) serving of sciency bloggy goodness on the Guest Blog – six posts this week already:

Apple, meet Orange: Why are we approaching biodiversity conservation from such different points of view? by Carin Bondar.

We all need (a little bit of) sex by Lucas Brouwers.

Bacteria, the anti-cancer soldier by James Byrne.

Hold that door, please! Observations on elevator etiquette by Krystal D’Costa.

Glia: The new frontier in brain science by R. Douglas Fields.

More posts are already lined up for next week – we’ll take the weekend off and see you back on Monday.

Just came back from The 2010 Conference on Communicating Science in Greenville SC which was awesome. Getting up before dawn tomorrow to get myself first to NYC to SciAm offices, then to ScienceWriters2010 at Yale in New Haven CT. Here are some examles of good science writing for you:

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What a day – essentially 12 hours of continuous work (with a short break to go and vote), mainly trying to keep the incoming e-mails instantly dealt with (answered, deleted, forwarded, etc.) as I will be on the road over the next few days and will have very little time to do anything!

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Wow! What a day! I did not even get to finish ‘Written In Stone’ review! Tomorrow, I guess. Then travel for the rest of the week….
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