Here’s a new occasional segment that I’m going to run on Henry: The Stupid Science Terminology Award. This week, the award goes to the National Geographic News, for inflicting upon us the nausea-inducing term “brainbow”:
In their effort to tease out the details of connections in the nervous system, Lichtman and his colleagues [...]
2007′s been a bad year for animal research. First, Alex the parrot dies, and now Washoe, the first sign language chimp has brachiated off this mortal coil:
Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central Washington University’s Ellensburg campus since [...]
Catriona J. MacCallum ponders when Open Access is not Open Access:
Does the distinction between free and open access really matter if anyone can read the article for free? Isn’t open access just about making the literature available? Well, yes and no. Free access is certainly important, but it’s only the starting point. At [...]
Hmm… modelling the novelty of news stories on Digg?
The subject of collective attention is central to an information age where millions of people are inundated with daily messages. It is thus of interest to understand how attention to novel items propagates and eventually fades among large populations. We have analyzed the dynamics of [...]
CBSNews has an interesting story on the Amish and genetic disorders:
It doesn’t get much more peaceful than the simple life among the Amish in rural Ohio. They have no cars, no electricity, no televisions.
But their children have medical conditions so rare, doctors don’t have names for them yet…
Eric over at Primate Diaries has the latest Four Stone Hearth (aka “the Net’s best anthropology blog carnival”). It’s full of all sorts of fun links, so don’t miss it!
Robert Samuelson in Newsweek laments the endangered comma:
But the comma’s sad fate is, I think, a metaphor for something larger: how we deal with the frantic, can’t-wait-a-minute nature of modern life. The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes PAUSE. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and then [...]
Assorted interesting posts for nice lazy Sunday:
John Hawks provides the best discussion of the recent identification of the FoxP2 gene in Neanderthals without any of the stupid journalistic hype that others have succumbed to (although he does use the term “neandercooties”). Go read his The amazing talking Neandertals. Creek Running North has identified [...]
Following James Watson’s unfortunate choice of words the other day, he’s apologised publicly:
I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said (…) I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways that they have.(…)
To all those who have drawn the [...]
