Extinction of Carribean Monk Seal
June 9th, 2008 ecoliWe mourn the loss of another marine mammal.
via Brian Switek at Laelaps
a science and medicine related weblog from scienceforums.net
Favicon Revisited
June 6th, 2008 ecoliA few months ago, I was one of the first to report on Google’s favicon change. In fact, my blog came up as one of the first when doing a search for “New Google Favicon” on Google’s search engine. Now though, it seems as if I have been delegated to page three, as more powerful blogs have picked up the story.
I still would like to report, however, that pachi, of Arbitness has informed me that Google has published an official response about the change:
“We recognized there was a need for a Google icon that would better work across multiple applications including web, mobile and client applications. We felt the small ‘g’ had many of the characteristics that best represent our brand: it’s simple, playful, and unique. We will be looking to improve and enhance this icon as we move forward.“
Or, as pachi says, Google is trying to rebrand itself, especially now that it seems cell phone and mobile technology is entering the web browsing world for good. Though, I don’t think my original hypothesis, is that far off.
Internet Addiction Test
June 5th, 2008 ecoliAddiction to the internet is a serious problem and becoming worse the more life becomes ‘web-based.’ Apparantly, I’m no exception.
Calculate your own internet addiction score (assusingly) at this site. I scored a 62:
You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life.
I guess I’ll try to do that, right after I play some flash games, stumble upon sites for an hour and check SFN and scienceblogs.com.
As if we need a reason to drink
June 5th, 2008 ecoliBut having one doesn’t hurt.
A case for letting the free market do it’s thing
June 5th, 2008 ecoliThis graph from the NY times, kindly provided by Jake Young, at Pure Pedantry provides a good case for letting the market just do it’s thing, when it comes to alternative energies in regards to transportation.
If you’re an environmentalist, or if you don’t work for big oil, high gas prices is a good thing. When costs are artificially low, there’s little incentive for companies to produce alternative energies or hybrids. But, these charts show that inflated prices do, in fact, bring down the rate of fuel consumption (less driving). Now, corporations can only continue to inflate prices so much, before people start opting out of personal automobile use altogether, travel overseas by steamboat and start biking to work. In order for energy companies to keep selling energies, they’ll have to develop alternative sources.
Oil subsidies, paid for out of our taxes, keeps oil prices artifically low and less responsive to the laws of demand. This is harmful to our economy by preventing the development of alternative energies and harmful to our environment in the same respect.
If the gas tax is repealed for the summer, it will have a similiar effect by making gas prices appear cheaper, increasing demand and delying alternative technologies. The gas tax is needed to keep our public roadways in shape. Hillary’s proposal to add a windfall tax to oil companies and then fine companies millions who jack up prices to compensate for the loss is, at best, ridiculous. You can’t fine companies for trying to maintain their profits, and this would never be approved by a Bush appointed FTC administration anyway. Hillary’s plan would screw federal highways, because there’s no altervative source of income for this tax. And, it would delay the production of badly needed alternative energy by messing with the laws of demand. Leave the free market alone!
Social networking
June 4th, 2008 ecoli…. for farmers. I’d say this is a good way to promote self-initiated sustainability practices. O, internet, dost thou have a solution for everything?
via Science blog’s Worlds Fair
Parasite infections and anemia
June 4th, 2008 ecoli
No, it’s not a sandworm from Dune… (though the resemblance is uncanny):
It’s actually a Hookworm, a multicellular parasite that infects the intestine of humans and other mammals.
A study reported on in Microbiology Bytes explains a finding in which polyparasitic infections are implicated in the worsening of conditions of anemia in children. When hookworm and either Schistosoma japonicum or Trichuris co-infect a host higher levels of anemia are detected. This is despite the fact that these two parasites do not infect the same part of the host.
Interestingly, there is some synergistic affect that is occurring indirectly in the host. This provides some compelling evidence to conduct further epidemiological studies,to help control anemia by its corresponding parasitic pathogens. Further physiological studies are also needed, it appears to determine the synergistic role that these parasites play.
Resturant access vs. Obesity
June 3rd, 2008 ecoliPure Pedantry cites this interesting article, showing that access to restaurants is statistically unrelated to the obesity epidemic.
The whole experiment can pretty much be summed up in these two graphs:
Though it has been suggested in the past, that eating at restaurant promotes a larger calorie intake, this study seems to show that this is unrelated to obesity at large.
Its interesting work, but I think there are too many assumptions that we are expected to take at their word. For example, what type of restaurants are these? Perhaps people who live near the restaurants are mostly eating at a health food vegan sandwhich place, while the other group is eating fast food.
The other issue, is that they assume that living near a restaurant indicates a higher likelyhood of eating out. While, it takes no imaginative leap to assume that, I think a study which claims statistical relavence needs to prove these sort of assumptions. For example, could we also not assume, that people who live near restaurants are sick and tired of seeing them all the time, and therefore would rather eat at home?
ConQuiztador
June 2nd, 2008 ecoliI stumbled on this website and have seemed to have gotten hooked. It’s a game called “ConQuiztador.” A conquest game, where you control territories in the United States and attack territories held by two other players in order to expand your boarders, ala Risk. The catch is, instead of battling or rolling dice, you have to answer a trivia question correctly (and fast).
Good addicting flash game.
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