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The Scienceblogging Weekly (July 27th, 2012)

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Blog of the Week:

Science Decoded is a wonderful mix of science, book reviews, and thoughts about the media, written by Erin Podolak, alumna of the University of Wisconsin program for Science Journalism, and now a science writer for The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

 


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Top 10:

A Killer Without Regret by Deborah Blum:

In the summer of 1920, a 29-year-old son of Minnesota farmers docked his boat (acquired with stolen money) at a small island in New York City’s East River. One by one he hired out-of-work sailors to crew for him. And one by one, he shot them in the head with a Colt .45 and dumped their bodies in the water. Before he was executed in 1930, Carl Panzram put the sailor body tally at 10 although he estimated that was only about half his total murder count. “For all these things, I am not in the least sorry,” he wrote in a jail house confessional. “I was so full of hate that there was no room in me for such feelings as love, pity, kindness or honor or decency.”...

The marathon & Olympic movement on Huffington Post by Greg Downey:

Many people think they know the story of the very first ‘marathon.’ Pheidippides, reputedly the fastest man in the Greek army, allegedly ran from the battlefield at Marathon twenty-five miles to Athens in 490 BCE to announce a Greek victory over the invading Persians. Bolting into the Athenian assembly, he shouted, ??????? (nikomen), ‘We have won!’ and promptly keeled over dead....

Galápagos Monday: The People Problem by Virginia Hughes:

...Two-thirds of the jobs on the islands are in the service sector. The tourists come, of course, because of the amazing plants and animals. They contribute money directly to conservation efforts, and their patronage boots the economy and allows the government to set up its own conservation management systems. That’s all great, except — more people also means more: ships, construction, roads, vehicles, hotels, restaurants, water and energy use, garbage, and sewage. All of that threatens the habitats and health of the plants and animals. In other words, the whole thing is unsustainable. The growing economy in the Galápagos is simultaneously supporting more science and conservation efforts and destroying the things that need to be studied and conserved. The economy is eating itself....

Geometry Proves Sheep Are Selfish Jerks by Elizabeth Preston:

Sometimes what looks like friendly behavior is really an attempt to get one's neighbor eaten by a wolf before oneself. Sheep, for instance, seem cozy enough in their flocks. What's a better way to travel than surrounded by 100 percent merino? But the real reason they stick close to their neighbors is to save their own woolly rear ends...

Noisy sex means death for flies if bats are listening by Ed Yong:

Some folks just can’t help being loud in bed, but noisy liaisons can lead to a swift death… at least for a housefly. In a German cowshed, Natterer’s bats eavesdrop on mating flies, homing in on their distinctive sexual buzzes....

Wisconsin frac sand sites double by Kate Prengaman:

Tucked behind a hill in rural Trempealeau County, farmland undergoes an industrial transformation. Outside this city of 1,300, Preferred Sands turns Wisconsin’s sandy soil into a hot commodity. A wall of green trees opens to a vast expanse of sand buzzing with activity. Excavators mine and conveyors carry the sand from towering stockpiles up into the processing plant. Every week, this facility ships 7,500 tons of sand by rail to oil and gas fields in Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania. ...

Language Serves the Group by Edmund Blair Bolles:

Steven Pinker has posted an important essay on group selection. You can gather its thesis from the title, “The False Allure of Group Selection.” Since I am on record saying that group selection (really, multilevel selection) was critical to the evolution of language, I read the essay with strong interest. Let me say right off that I was astonished to find that the essay makes no remarks about the evolution of language. Pinker is a famous proponent of language’s evolutionary origins and biological basis, but he says nothing of group selection and language. Instead he criticizes ideas that group selection explains religion, culture, and nations. I am skeptical of those claims too. Pinker is a fine writer and I got several chuckles out of his examination of various shallow appeals to group selection. Was I laughing at my own doom?...

Ending the AIDS epidemic by John Rennie:

Thirty-one years into the HIV epidemic, health authorities are finally starting to sound hopeful about the prospects for curbing it. If that sentence sounds bitter or sarcastic, it isn’t meant to be. Rather, it’s an honest assessment of how long and frequently depressing the era of HIV and AIDS has been, and of how much misery it has spawned. But it also acknowledges reasons to think that maybe, just maybe that’s beginning to change....

Ending U.S. chimpanzee laboratories will save chimpanzee research by Brian Hare:

...The non-lab research model has now become the dominant research model. In my area of research a collection of just five zoos and African sanctuaries recently published more scientific papers in higher impact journals than all five active U.S. chimpanzee laboratories. These non-lab researchers contributed data relevant to fighting HIV, Malaria, Parkinson’s, Autism, Alzheimer’s, and a myriad of other human ailments. They did this while studying chimpanzees that live life freely in extremely enriched environments. ...

One way to successfully invade a habitat: eat the competition by Jeremy Yoder:

The Asian Harlequin ladybug, Harmonia axyridis, eats aphids like they're Popplers, and it's been repeatedly introduced into the U.S. and Europe to do exactly that. But since it was first introduced, H. axyridis has spread of its own accord, and displaced native ladybugs. This isn't just because the Harlequin ladybug eats more aphids, or breeds faster, than the locals; it looks like part of the Harlequin's success is due to the fact that it eats its native competition....

 

Special topic: Sally Ride

American Astronaut Sally Ride Dies at 61 by John Matson

Remembering Sally Ride by Nadia Drake

Sally Ride's Astronaut Class Completely Changed NASA's Demographics by Amy Shira Teitel

What Sally Ride Did For STEM Education by Austin Carr

Sally Ride’s Space Flight Was Not Exactly A Great Moment for Feminism by Laura Helmuth

The Women Who Would Have Been Sally Ride by Alexis Madrigal

Rest in peace, Sally Ride by Matthew Francis

First Female U.S. Astronaut, Sally Ride, Comes Out In Obituary by Chris Geidner

Sally Ride by The AstroDyke

Why Aren't There Any Openly Gay Astronauts? by Natalie Wolchover

Thank you, Sally Ride by Meg Urry

 

Best Images:

Sketching at the American Museum of Natural History by Marissa Fessenden

Manatees by Jen Richards

Sunday Morning Anole Cartoon by Rich Glor

Anole Photo Of The Day by Jonathan Losos

Sharks, Art, and Conservation by Heather Goldstone

Dapper Days in China by peacay

 

Best Videos:

MIT video models airports most likely to spread diseases by Kathleen Raven

Leprosy Facts: Ancient Disease Still In Our Midst by Cara Santa Maria

The Art of Hatching by Allison DeVan

Bear Cam: Watch Brown Bears Catch Salmon in Alaska by Tanya Lewis

Why Whales are Weird by Joy Reidenberg

Ask Jay Rosen Anything: What Does Political Journalism Get Wrong? Get Right? by Andrew Sullivan

Olympicene - Periodic Table of Videos by periodicvideos

 

Science:

Science on crack: the chemistry of illegal drugs, 1 by Puff the Mutant Dragon

The International AIDS Conference Returns: So Much Still To Do by Maryn McKenna

“We took a rat apart and rebuilt it as a jellyfish.” and Aging termites put on suicide backpacks full of chemical weapons by Ed Yong

How Do You Choke Away the British Open? The Science of the Tight Collar by David Dobbs

A Brief History of the Eustachian Tube and The Catheter by Jaipreet Virdi

The Secret Life of Western Corn Rootworm Beetles by James Hamblin

Soccer's Big Data Revolution by Khalil A. Cassimally

FDA advisory panel looks positively on new eye drug by Kathleen Raven

Autism Outreach on Wheels: Students Design Mobile Clinic for A.J. Drexel Autism Institute by Rachel Ewing

Batman Movies Don’t Kill. But They’re Friendly to the Concept. and Batman Returns: How Culture Shapes Muddle Into Madness by David Dobbs

Inside the Minds of Mass Killers by Daniel Lende

How Urban Parks Enhance Your Brain by Eric Jaffe

World’s Coolest Animal Bridges and Should Dolphins and Whales Have Human Rights? by Rachel Nuwer

How Aldous Huxley, 118 Today, Predicted the Present Far More Accurately than George Orwell and Mapping Afghanistan’s Geology from Really, Really Far Away by Rose Eveleth

There is no greenhouse effect by Robert Grumbine

And Finally the Hounding Duck Can Rest by Carl Zimmer

What's next for scientific teaching? by Zen Faulkes

Speciation in Bears by Larry Moran

Scientists make curing HIV a priority by Erin Loury

New Study Suggests Humans, Not Climate, Killed Off Neanderthals by Colin Schultz

When Bad Theories Happen to Good Scientists by Matt Ridley

Lemurs Most Threatened Mammals on the Planet by Karl Leif Bates

A year of anarchy in science by Michael Brooks

The Secrets of Geek Mating Rituals by Annalee Newitz

On Leaving Academia by Terran Lane

How Not to Counsel Smokers by Lucy E. Hornstein

The Colorado shooting suspect: how “smart?” by David Kroll

Why don’t we consume dairy products from mammals that aren’t cows? by Benjamin Phelan

Can Sleep Deprivation Cause Psychotic Behaviour? by Romeo Vitelli

Is Mythology Like Facebook? by John Bohannon

Crossing valleys in fitness landscapes by Bjørn Østman

How NFL and NBA cheerleaders and citizen scientists came together. by Darlene Cavalier

Unraveling the left brain/right brain theory by Amanda Mascarelli

The Aurora Shootings and The Mean World Syndrome by David Ropeik

What is this “Mass Spectrometer”? by Penny Higgins

Shark Teeth Have Built-In Toothpaste by Jennifer Viegas

Meet the Skeptics: Why Some Doubt Biomedical Models - and What it Takes to Win Them Over by Kristin Sainani

The Stoneflies: Old or New? by Christopher Taylor

Wrong for the Right Reasons by Matthew Martyniuk

Search Trends Reveal Sexual Seasons and A Case Study in Voodoo Genetics by Neuroskeptic

The brewer's yoke, the domestication of microbes by A Schooner of Science

The horrible truth about Spiderman’s Anatomy by Bug Girl

Nixon's Contingency Plan for a Failed Apollo 11 by Amy Shira Teitel

Once an Archaeologist…? Plan B Careers in Archaeology by Becky Wragg Sykes

Diagnosing the Killer in Colorado by Deborah Blum

Olympic Physics: Tennis and Olympic Physics: Diving by Matt Shipman

It Takes an 8-Year-Old to Outsmart a Crow by Elizabeth Preston

Why You Can’t Fake A Good Horn by Carl Zimmer

“The Redder the Better” . . . Sometimes by Anne-Marie Hodge

Exploring the Mind of the Mountain Gorilla by Kimberly Gerson

Cuts loom for US science by Ivan Semeniuk & Helen Thompson

Skepticism And The Second Enlightenment by Kyle Hill

Greenland Melt Was Predicted In Advance By Paper Awaiting Publication by Dan Satterfield

Drought hurts shipping industry, raises prices by Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato

Olympic Pseudoscience by Steven Novella

Velcro Hairs Allow Ants to Hang Their Larvae by Alex Wild

Circadian Rhythms: Our Eyes, Our Rhythms by Anita Slomski

Scientists in North Carolina will take close look at ants from Chicago by Jessica M. Morrison

DIYBio: Placenta Stem Cells for Research and More by Ada Ao

Beginnings – three simple words by Pete Etchells

Why climate change doesn’t spark moral outrage, and how it could by David Roberts

TGIPF: The Bed Bug and His Violent Penis by Brooke Borel

 

Media, Publishing, Technology and Society:

The Making of PeerJ and Open Science, SciBarCamp and Les Horribles Cernettes by Graham Steel

Thomas Friedman’s Lessons for Anthropologists by Daniel Lende and Greg Downey

ABC News: armchair psychologist: The network offers irresponsible speculation about the Colorado shooter by Curtis Brainard

How We Play Today by Jamie Rosenberg and George Myers

Anatomy of a Zombie Lie… by Tom Levenson

Grief in the Age of Social Media by Callie Schweitzer

A Self-Made Man Looks At How He Made It by John Scalzi

Another science startup that’s changing how research is done. An interview with Elizabeth Iorns of Science Exchange. by William Gunn

If you email it, they will comment and No Comment? by Ethan Perlstein

Blogging expertise by Zen Faulkes

Explaining the news through song: A personal case study by David Holmes

Taming the Impact Factor by Iddo Friedberg

The dark side of data by Mike Loukides

The Death Of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR, And Real Content by Ken Krogue

Blogging, Tweeting, and Other Digital Activities: A Beginner's Guide to the Internet for Early-career Scholars by Melinda Baldwin

Enduring lessons from being fired 20 years ago by Steve Buttry

Social Media and the Science Classroom, a Twitter Discussion by Michele Arduengo

What Users do with PLOS ONE Papers by Martin Fenner

The Great Sieve: This Is What Browsing Scientific Research Looks Like by Rebecca J. Rosen

Content Factor: A Measure of a Journal’s Contribution to Knowledge by Joseph Bernstein and Chancellor F. Gray

Meet Lena Groeger: @ProPublica’s newest news app developer by Elizabeth R. Miller

Who should see what when? Three principles for personalized news by Jonathan Stray

Predicting the growth of PLoS ONE by Najko Jahn

UK government will enforce open access to development research by Alok Jha

Who’s Talking About ScienceOnline? Interactive Map Of 1000 #Scio13 Twitterers by Mary Canady

An open Twitter-like ecosystem by Dave Winer

A new era for the Nature Network blogs by Lou Woodley

Why a high Google rank is becoming 'worthless' by Brad Shorr

BuzzFeed’s strategy by Chris Dixon

ScienceOnline Project Postcard by Karyn Traphagen

Bunch of Fives – Why Blogging is Great, and Tips for Starting by Suzi Gage

How BuzzFeed wants to reinvent wire stories for social media by Justin Ellis

The State of Educational Blogging in 2012 by Sue Waters

How journalists can do a better job of correcting errors on social media by Craig Silverman

Sharing stories with sources before publication is risky, but can improve accuracy and To show or not to show? by Steve Buttry

Quantifying impact: A better metric for measuring journalism by Greg Linch

Going paperless: eliminate stacks of paper by converting paper magazine subscriptions to digital subscriptions by Jamie Todd Rubin

Are You Reading These 17 Science Blogs? You Should by Julio Peironcely

No credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees by Charles Cooper

They Didn’t Build That by Paul Krugman

So, who really did invent the Internet? by Michael Hiltzik

WSJ mangles history to argue government didn't launch the Internet by Timothy B. Lee

 

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Blogs of the Week so far:

May 11, 2012: Academic Panhandling

May 18, 2012: Anole Annals

May 25th, 2012: Better Posters

June 1st, 2012: Vintage Space

June 8th, 2012: Tanya Khovanova’s Math Blog

June 15th, 2012: Russlings

June 22nd, 2012: Parasite of the Day

June 29th, 2012: March of the Fossil Penguins

July 6th, 2012: Musings of a Dinosaur

July 13th, 2012: Contagions

July 21th, 2012: Life is short, but snakes are long