Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
While on the road in Alaska one little project I tripped over was the creation of a virtual zoo of bones or Virtual Zooarchaeology as they called it. Herb Maschner and a team of researchers are busy creating an online database of bones from every known Arctic bird, mammal and fish. So when something interesting is found, … Read more
The Irish Independent ran a story a couple of days ago that makes some rather outrageous claims … A GROUNDBREAKING new Irish technology which could be the greatest breakthrough in agriculture since the plough is set to change the face of modern farming forever. It is talking about a product called Vi-Aqua that has been … Read more
Over at Pharyngula, PZ writes about the brain drain and how bad things are in the US … The brain drain is beginning. Nearly 20% of American scientists would like to get out of this country. New data compiled by a coalition of top scientific and medical research groups show that a large majority of scientists … Read more
As I drive north, one big surprise has been the sight of dead trees … not just the odd one or two, but entire forests, mile after mile after mile … millions. Why … what is going on here? Two words sum it up … “Climate change” … or to be more precise, “spruce beetles”. … Read more
Nature reports a rather scary story. It is an item of news that many have known was coming … bacteria have now become resistant to the powerful carbapenem antibiotics — one of the last drugs left on the shelf. The article starts with a rather stark warning … …it was worrying to hear Thomas Frieden and … Read more
Social media can be quite destructive to those that attempt to utilize it as a weapon and can often have unintended consequences. Wired has a very interesting article that gives a great example of this. It opens by explaining a sequence of events that took place at a conference … Earlier this year, at a … Read more