Posts for January, 2010
Dr Shock MD PhD
Did you know there is a sense of humor questionnaire? It’s called the Humor Styles Questionnaire and distinguishes between four styles of humor.
Affiliative, use of humor to amuse others and facilitate relationships
Self enhancing, use of humor to cope with stress and maintain a humorous outlook during times of difficulty
Aggressive, use of sarcastic, [...]
Mystery Rays from Outer Space
I didn’t post anything about the recent study1 showing that handwashing + face masks reduces influenza spread, because other blogs covered it fairly extensively (for example, here’s Avian Flu Diary’s commentary). Here’s another study giving a common-sense check:
… in a household setting, simple, readily available products such as 1% bleach, [...]
Scienceroll
I would like to share my favourite and ongoing projects with you so I can give you a proper introduction to Scienceroll.com. You can also find me on Twitter or on Friendfeed.
For news and articles about the impact of web 2.0 on medicine and healthcare, please follow the Medicine 2.0 Friendfood room.
For news and articles [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Meet Mrs Sanaa Abdul Wahab Al-Sheikh. She used to work at the old Iraqi national genebank at Abu Ghraib. That genebank was looted and destroyed in the aftermath of the invasion. But Mrs Sanaa says she saved about a thousand accessions by hiding them underground and in her fridge. She now works at [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
ICARDA and partners have organized an international conference on Food Security and Climate Change in Dry Areas. Plenty of agrobiodiversity on its menu, no doubt. It starts tomorrow, and you’ll be able to get a blow-by-blow account on the CGIAR’s climate change blog, Rural Climate Exchange. And possibly here too, but we’ll see.
Go [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Whether or not organic food brings nutritional benefits over conventional food has been a matter of considerable inquiry and debate. The issue came to a head last month when a study commissioned by the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) concluded that there is no evidence of nutritional superiority.
Now, however, a review published in [...]
Silliman University Physics Blog
The Physics 25 students – headed by Sir Anatoly Karpov Buss had a stargazing session last Jan 29, a day before the Blue moon. The Blue moon is the second full moon of the month, the 1st being January 1 (Partial Lunar Eclipse). Also the full moon of Jan 30 is what [...]
Daniel Lemire
Earlier this month, Michael Mitzenmacher told us about the record number of students attending his Harvard class online-only. Yesterday, Dick Lipton predicted that online learning will replace campus learning : “I see no reason that On [Online Universities] could not do as good a job as Un [Campus Universities] with this basic goal [Educate Students].” [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Has a more joyous culinary celebration of agrobiodiversity ever been devised than the Levantine مَزة (meze)? Answers on a postcard, please.
Go to Publisher to continue reading
Scienceroll
You may have heard about Andrew Wakefield who tried to find a link between MMR vaccines and autism. He has published several papers. Now it turns out he acted unethically in carrying out his research according to a medical regulator.
Doctor Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study, published in the Lancet medical journal, said there might be a [...]
Against Monopoly
In Authors: Beware of Copyright, Jeff Tucker warns authors to be careful with their publication agreements not to alienate their books and other works. A good illustration of this peril is found in the case of Buddy Holly and his recording contract with Decca. As reported in Buddy Holly’s secretly recorded contract negotiation [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Another contribution from Michael Kubisch.
Ever wondered why your rat terrier looks so different from your neighbor’s mastiff? Well, eons of selective breeding, of course, which have resulted in genetic differences between these two and other dog breeds. Man’s best friend was undoubtedly among the very first animals to be domesticated, although the huge [...]
Science Commons
Puneet Kishor is a Science Commons Fellow, specializing in geospatial issues and open data, and a guest blogger here at Science Commons.
Starting Jan 28, 2010, MichiganView is making available all of its more than 93 Gigabytes of Landsat 5 and 7, and NAIP imagery data in the public domain using the new CC0 [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Richard Black, a BBC environment correspondent, has stirred up the most remarkable hornet’s nest with a post yesterday predicting that the conservation of biodiversity would become as controversial as climate change — at least to a rabid few — because both require people to change the way they live. He analyses US objections [...]
Scienceroll
Search engine optimization (SEO) has a golden age in this internet era, but to use it in academic research, it sounds quite strange for me. After reading this publication (pdf) focusing on this issue, my opinion changed. Actually I think many researchers have been structuring their papers based on this concept for years.
This article introduces [...]