Category Archives: Science

But notably, nothing about cats

Another reason to get a dog: The nation’s largest cardiovascular health organization has a new message for Americans: Owning a dog may protect you from heart disease. The unusual message was contained in a scientific statement published on Thursday by … Continue reading

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Don’t Fence Me In

Depressing: Dr. Packer’s goal is to save lions. Fencing them in, away from people and livestock, is the best way to do that, he believes, both for conservation and economics. He made that argument in a paper this month in … Continue reading

Posted in News and Current Events, Science | 3 Comments

He Knows When You’re Awake

I seem to recall hearing fifteen or twenty years ago the claim that animals like dogs didn’t have consciousness. That struck me as obviously stupid. Happily, science is catching up with my intuition: The team then set up experiments in … Continue reading

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How Comments Sections Influence Readers

Maybe we need to start blocking people, to uphold this blog’s mission of edifying the masses: People who read newspaper and magazine reports on science “may be influenced as much by the comments at the end of the story as … Continue reading

Posted in News and Current Events, Science | 5 Comments

Hot Fun In The Summertime. Also In The Winter, Spring, And Fall

This doesn’t look good: Full article here.

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It’s Real, And It’s Spectacular

nickgb posted on the extreme data of late verifying that climate change is real. Via Andrew Gelman, a chart from a new article on the same topic:

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Albert Einstein On Climate Change

Well, not really– it’s Einstein on polarized politicization of science: “This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.” In real life, … Continue reading

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“Please Be Certain That This Emailed Death Threat Is *Extremely* Well-Considered”

There’s a lot of neat stuff in this Chronicle article about the study of psychology and political opinions– my reservations about the role of genetics notwithstanding– but this anecdote caught my eye: One of the biggest obstacles for university researchers … Continue reading

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The GOP Policy Response To Climate Change

There’s a conception out there that Republicans are too wrapped up in denialism to have any policy response whatsoever to climate change. That’s not entirely fair. In fact, Republicans have moved to illegalize the study of the climate, and to … Continue reading

Posted in 2012, News and Current Events, Politics, Religion, Science | 1 Comment

Greening New York

Ever gone up to the roof of a building on a summer day only to find out that as hot as it was down on the street, it’s way hotter on the roof?  There’s a reason for that, and it’s … Continue reading

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How To Run

More research seems to talk up the benefits of interval training: A just-published paper in the Journal of Applied Physiology outlines a new workout that could become as popular as Yasso 800s, because the “numbers” are just as simple. The new workout … Continue reading

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Ain’t Nobody Happy

“Personal happiness” as reported on surveys always seemed to me to be a rather shallow, short-sighted, self-centered reason to have kids in the first place; but all the surveys tended to show that kids make parents less happy anyway. Or … Continue reading

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This Should be Required Reading for the GOP

If they’d all just put down their copies of Atlas Shrugged and/or Thomas Aquinas for a moment, they might learn something: WHY are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex … Continue reading

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Ain’t Nothing But A Number

It sometimes seems that people can appear to age more quickly if they’ve experienced a rougher set of conditions. A new study lends support to that view: Children who are exposed to violence experience wear and tear to their DNA that is … Continue reading

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The Power Of Positive, Inaccurate Thinking

From NPR: As [Purdue University Professor Jessica Witt] writes in the journal Psychological Science, the result was clear: “When people perceived the hole to be bigger, they also made their putts more successfully.” Witt thinks the change in perception to make a task … Continue reading

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James Cameron Reaches Earth’s Deepest Point, Buries World’s Last Copy of Titanic Film There

Sorry, wishful thinking on my part: James Cameron, the filmmaker whose credits include “Avatar” and “Titanic,” plunged on Sunday in a minisubmarine of his own design to the bottom of the planet’s deepest recess, sinking through the dark waters of … Continue reading

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On Why

We’ve all probably had the experience of trying to explain something to a child and being confronted with repeated protestations of “Why?”.  We dig deeper and deeper into the recesses of our knowledge and life experience to answer the child, … Continue reading

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Mr. Getgood Moved Up To Self-Made Man Row, Though He Swears That He’s The Salt Of The Earth

Harvard scholar Jonathan Haidt, an expert on psychology & morality, writes about recent experiments showing that kids want to share when they feel that the marbles they earn come from joint effort.  He concludes: If there’s a problem with the … Continue reading

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