Overview papers are difficult to write — this one is exceptionally well done Occasionally, someone is thorough enough to write something that completely does what it is supposed to do. Retired forest pathologist Dr. John T. Kliejunas hit a home run with this effort. His paper can be downloaded as a PDF file. Citation John [...]
Categories: Environment,Science
Tagged: Forest Service, John T. Kliejunas, literature review, Sudden Oak Death and Phytophthora Ramorum
Every once in a while, in our mall culture, someone actually “gets it” True Grit is (at least) a minor masterpiece, treating life’s difficulties on multiple levels. That’s a rarity in a culture obsessed with diverting itself from anything uncomfortable. Interestingly, most of the critics whom I read missed one of the movie’s major points. [...]
Categories: Culture
Tagged: Coen brothers, Eastern spiritual philosophy, grace, karma, Narrative and the Grace of God The New 'True Grit', Stanley Fish, Western spiritual philosophy
Refining accuracy by noting variation Nature reported a change in the way the Periodic Table of Elements will be presented: Periodic-table shift Natural geographic variations in the abundance of a chemical element’s isotopes should be noted on the periodic table, chemistry’s governing body, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, has decided. The decision [...]
Categories: Science
Tagged: Periodic Table of Elements
Stay outta my forest savannah-dude Africa’s forest and savannah elephants are very likely two separate species. Nadin Rohland’s group summarized their study and its conclusions, based on shotgun sequencing the DNA from one individual of each animal: We have used a combination of modern DNA sequencing and targeted PCR amplification to obtain a large data [...]
Categories: Science
Tagged: African elephants, forest elephant, genomic DNA, mammoth, mastodon, mtDNA, Nadin Rohland, nuclear DNA, savannah elephant, shotgun sequencing
Fundamentalism’s rapacious tentacles are everywhere The United Kingdom’s Guardian gives us this bit of U.S. news: Religious fundamentalists – Christians on one side, Hindus on the other – say they’ve had enough of yoga’s impact on their respective faiths – and their adherents’ wallets. Sinners, they reckon, even relatively affluent yoga devotees, have only so [...]
Categories: Culture
Tagged: Deepak Chopra, Stewart J. Lawrence, Yoga's holy wars
“Ya wanna live longer, but sicker?” ScienceDaily reported on the Journal of Gerontology article: [N]ew research . . . shows that average “morbidity,” or, the period of life spend with serious disease or loss of functional mobility, has actually increased in the last few decades. A male 20-year-old in 1998 could expect to live another [...]
Categories: Medicine,Public Health
Tagged: Eileen Crimmins, Medicaid, Medicare, Mortality and Morbidity Trends Is There Compression of Morbidity?, Social Security
Science recently published a synopsis of anti-catastrophic thinking that refutes more dramatically inclined reviews of history and archaeology The emphasis on decline and transformation rather than abrupt fall represents something of a backlash against a recent spate of claims that environmental disasters, both natural and humanmade, are the true culprits behind many ancient societal collapses. [...]
Categories: Science
It’s no wonder that lay people are suspicious of alleged experts I’m frequently disturbed by researchers’ apparent inability to see violent contradictions contained in their own research. That blindness translates into completely unwarranted conclusions. Here’s an example: Connie A. Woodhouse et al., A 1,200-year perspective of 21st century drought in southwestern North America, Proceedings of [...]
Categories: Climate,Climate change,Science
We’re in a debunking era, courtesy of meta-analysis, it seems Not so long ago, all sorts of foods and vitamin supplements were alleged to ward off cancer. For the last few years, I’ve noticed more meta-analyses that debunk the idea. Here’s one more. Meta-analyst T. J. Key wrote that the association of fruit and vegetable [...]
Categories: Medicine,Public Health,Science