Science Feeds

Here it is on film in case you wanted to see it:

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The New York Times has the results from when they posed the question, "is it ethical to eat meat?" The finalists, with one or two exceptions, are quite interesting. Certainly, when it comes to opinions about food, everyone has one, and the judges emphasized the variety of the opinions, and interestingly, the near unanimous belief that CAFOs are unethical (I'm with Pollan on that one). The only other topic at the NYT which seems to generate as much diversity of opinion, and frankly insane commentary, is child-rearing. But what I liked most about these finalists were the three writers who actually participate in making food Stacey Roussel, Justin Green, and the winner Jay Bost. Ethical discussions about food production and the ethics of eating meat never seem to involve enough of the people actually producing food. Here's some snippets about how these farmers who actually grow food think about the role of animals in farming.

From Roussel:

Production of vegetables without the use of animals requires much larger amounts of energy. In small-scale farming, we use animals to clear fields of vegetation instead of relying only on industrial systems like tractors and herbicides. On our farm, we grow rows of vegetables while green cover crops and weeds fill the spaces in between those rows. After the harvest, dairy goats are grazed to get the land back under control, followed by the chickens that eat most of the remaining vegetation, and then finally with one pass of my tractor, I incorporate what is left back into the soil and plant the next crop. The animals clear vegetation and leave free fertilizer. They build biology in the soil rather than destroy it. Working in the natural order reduces our dependence on outside sources of energy, allowing us to harness the energy that is on-farm. The method leads to a better product, one that is more balanced for my customer, my community, my land, and me.

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A farm animal is not a pet or a wild animal fending for itself. The farm animal and the small farmer must cooperate to build a stronger herd or flock; we literally cannot survive without each other. The eating of animals is paramount to the production of food in a system that embraces the whole of reality. This is why eating meat is ethical. To not consume meat means to turn off a whole part of the natural world and to force production of food to move away from regenerative systems and to turn toward a system that creates larger problems for our world.

This brings up a good point. The ethics of farming moves beyond just whether or not killing animals is wrong. After all, you kill tons of animals farming plants. You raze habitat, displace whatever wildlife was living there, you spray pesticides (yes even organic farmers use pesticides), you dump freeze-dried ladybugs all over the place (how organic farmers attack aphids), and when you harvest, clean and transport the food animals, especially insects and small mammals, are going to be killed as a result.

Instead what Roussel is emphasizing is that the costs of not having farm animals participating in the process creates other harms, largely in the form of increased fossil fuel use from farm equipment or fertilizer generated by the Haber process. This is reminiscent of one of Pollan's strongest arguments against CAFOs, that instead of using animals as a component in the cycle of harvesting energy from the sun, CAFOs have broken the cycle. Instead of cows and chickens and pigs serving roles as producers of fertilizer and eaters of waste, they've turned them into producers of waste and eaters of oil. They are fed grain, fertilized by synthetic fertilizer, and their manure, once a beneficial source of nitrogen on the farm, is now an methane-producing environmental catastrophe waiting to happen in some CAFO associated manure lagoon. While economically this appears efficient, this is only if you fail to factor in these other costs, including environmental and work-safety costs of these feeding operations.

These costs I think get factored into many arguments and may be the cause of the rise in vegetarianism. Justin Green's article, about his transformation from a meat eater, to a vegetarian, then back to a meat-eater after he started farming, emphasizes this point:

Merely understanding these relationships does not provide a sound ethical defense of meat-eating, however. Animals play an essential role in our food system, yet it is undeniable that much of our production has fallen out of balance. It's not enough to simply ensure the safety and survival of my animals. As fellow sentient creatures with whom I am engaged in a partnership, I have a responsibility to show both respect and benevolence, in life and in death. I can't think of a moral justification for the industrial-scaled confinement operations that fail to uphold our side of the bargain.

Almost 25 years after deciding it was wrong to eat animals, I now realize that it's not that simple. There is an ethical option -- a responsibility, even -- for eating animals that are raised within a sustainable farm system and slaughtered with the compassion necessitated by our relationship. That, in essence, is the deal.

The winner, Jay Bost, also emphasizes the proper role animals have as potential harvesters as solar energy and contributors to the farm ecosystem:

I was convinced that if what you are trying to achieve with an "ethical" diet is least destructive impact on life as a whole on this planet, then in some circumstances, like living among dry, scrubby grasslands in Arizona, eating meat, is, in fact, the most ethical thing you can do other than subsist on wild game, tepary beans and pinyon nuts. A well-managed, free-ranged cow is able to turn the sunlight captured by plants into condensed calories and protein with the aid of the microorganisms in its gut. Sun > diverse plants > cow > human. This in a larger ethical view looks much cleaner than the fossil-fuel-soaked scheme of tractor tilled field > irrigated soy monoculture > tractor harvest > processing > tofu > shipping > human.

Every argument I've been in about meat-eating inevitably seems to devolve into attacks on CAFOs, and I agree, they're ethically indefensible. Not for their scale, but for the way they've disrupted the cycle, and in doing so create environmental problems and waste energy. The animals' existence is not only unpleasant, but actively harmful to the ecosystem and to us. Bost emphasizes the ethics of growing plants can be equally problematic as long as it is based on converting fossil fuels into food rather than solar energy into food.

This will be the major obstacle our agricultural system will face in the next century. In the last century, the boom of industrialized farming allowed us to generate more food than has ever been seen in human history. It is economically efficient, and allowed us to feed not only ourselves but to export food all around the world. In the next century we need to address the fact that this boom occurred largely due to cheap fossil-fuel, not improved agriculture. This is ultimately not sustainable or good for the ecosystem. Industrial agriculture separated out the constituent elements of a farm and amplified them on a massive scale. But without co-ordination between the parts of a farm you lose energy efficiency for the sake of economic efficiency. Instead of having animals provide nitrogen, we use fossil fuels. Their waste then, instead of being reintegrated into the farm, is now a problem, for both the ecosystem and for the humans working and living there. The need to separate out the component parts of agriculture for industrial scaling has generated new problems we have to address if we're going to continue to feed ourselves.

Ethical farming and ethical eating therefore shouldn't be an argument about meat, or worse accepting Newkirk's profoundly ignorant article suggesting energy-inefficient in vitro meat as a replacement (how will it harvest energy from the sun?) but rather a return to some of the lessons that humans learned through thousands of years of trial and error in agriculture. That of a cycle, with the sun as the predominant source of energy, and animals reintegrated into our production system as a beneficial source of nitrogen and a source of farming efficiency. We will not be able to return to a pre-industrial state of agriculture, but instead we will innovate some hybrid of the two. Agriculture on a scale to feed the world, but with a design that recognizes the ideally cyclical nature of carbon and nitrogen fixation that we need to harvest energy efficiently from the sun, and not from oil.

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Discussed: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality, which I've got my copy of and am now reading, and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion which I'm probably never going to get to.

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SUMMARY: This fascinating caturday morning video smile shows the birth of a giraffe Here’s an interesting and well-made video for the Caturday morning video smile: a birth. In this video, we see a female Somali giraffe, Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata, which is commonly known in zoos as the reticulated giraffe, giving birth at the Memphis Zoo.This video captures the giraffe, Marilyn, giving birth to a baby on 29 August 2008. The father’s name is Kenya. Even though it is interesting, the entire birth scene is recorded on this video and thus, may be disturbing to some people.

So…. as I prepare for finals week in my Mass Comm graduate program here at LSU, my ‘serious’ blogging has lagged a bit, but ‘procrastination’ Tweets are abounding! Here are a few ‘Twitter Treasures’ I leave you with tonight, as I continue my tradition of late-night studying!Tweet[View the story “Twitter Treasures May 2012” on Storify]

You know that Heartland is a non-profit "Think" tank dedicated to ruining science and science education, which became famous for supporting the Tobacco Industry's position that smoking is not harmful. More recently, Heartland has been involved with science denialism of the anti-climate science variety, opposing the widely held position that global warming is real, human caused, and important.

You also probably know of Heartland's recent billboard campaign showing pictures of people like The Unibomber (who killed mathematicians by mailing them bombs) and Osama bin Laden (no relation), and indicating that only crazy mass murderers like these "still believed" in global warming.

That billboard campaign was pretty typical of Heartland's thinking and way of doing things, but packaged up in such a way as to make it obvious even to people who were otherwise not paying much attention. There was outrage. They were forced by this outrage to take the billboards down only hours after they went up (electronically).

Many corporations support Heartland. Much of this support has probably been tricked out of these corporations, perhaps like the Discovery Institute tricked major corporations out of money to use promoting creationism in school classrooms; by lying about what the money was for. Other corporations are acting in their own self interest giving Heartland money, because they will get something out of Congress and the American People becoming stupified in relation to climate science. Still others have given money to Heartland entirely by accident.

Some companies have pulled their support of Heartland, others are currently under pressure to do so. But the case of Microsoft is interesting, and possibly unique among the donors to Heartland.

Here's the story:

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This just in:

Diageo announces it is to end funding of Heartland Institute Diageo, one the world's largest drinks companies, has announced it will no longer fund the Heartland Institute, a rightwing US thinktank which briefly ran a billboard campaign this week comparing people concerned about climate change to mass murderers and terrorists, such as Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski.

On Thursday, a billboard appeared over the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois showing a picture of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who in 1996 was convicted of a 17-year mail bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens. The caption read: "I still believe in global warming. Do you?" A day later it was withdrawn.

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Inspired by the Yale Climate Communications national polling results this week, I’ve decided to ask my readers how they think of global climate change in the light of the upcoming elections. Will global warming be an important issue during the campaign season? Will the public hold candidates to task on environmental issues, pollution, and climate change policies?We shall see!TweetPlease take the time to answer this quick poll, your answers are always appreciated!<!--BEGIN QUALTRICS POLL--><!--DO NOT REMOVE-CONTENTS PLACED HERE-->View Qualtrics Poll
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.... comparing holocaust survivors to Hitler? Hmong refugees to Pol Pot? Well, maybe not exactly but there is a structural similarity.

People at the Heartland Institute have very little to do with science and very little experience in that area of academics. Otherwise they would remember the Unibomber days, when everyone was worried about the packages they were receiving in the mail, but especially those in mathematics. Now, the Heartland Institute has a billboard campaign with a picture of the Unibomber on it, making the claim that only very fringe people, such as the Unibomber, still "believe in global warming." This couldn't be farther from the truth. Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, it is recognized as real by science, and those who deny its reality are, in fact, the ones on the fringe.

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As is the case with most things that are important, we as a society have done a very bad job of developing an effective conversation about Global Warming. The vast majority of electronic and real ink that I see spent on the discussion of Global Warming (outside of the peer reviewed literature) is not even about climate or climate change. Rather, it is about talking about climate change, the politics of climate change, critique of the rhetoric about climate change, clarification, obfuscation, complaining, accusing, yelling or belly-aching, and the occasional threat of violence. And today, dear reader, I'd like to give you some more of that! (Well, some of it. There will be no threats!)

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Denialism. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The story might be apocryphal, and it might not even be true, but it's often used as a metaphor. I'm referring to the "boiling frog" story. Basically, the idea is supposedly based on an observation that a frog, when placed in a pot of hot water, will immediately jump out. However, or so the story goes, if the frog is placed in room temperature water and the water is heated gradually enough, the frog won't notice and will eventually boil to death without trying to escape. The metaphor, of course, is designed to illustrate how people will almost always notice rapid change, but, if the change is sufficiently slow, might not notice it at all and will readily acclimate themselves to the new situation if given sufficient time. Of course, the phenomenon underlying this metaphor might very well not even be real, but it's still probably a useful metaphor.

Being in the skeptic movement and having been very active over the last seven years blogging about skepticism, promoting science-based medicine, and combatting the antivaccine movement, this metaphor might be the reason why I didn't notice a particular tactic being increasingly used by denialists of all stripes until relatively recently, which is also relatively late. It took Mark Hoofnagle, who had disappeared from the skeptical blogging front for a couple of years pursuing his general surgery residency, to be slapped in the face with it and comment to me that he had been noticing this phenomenon upon returning to blogging about science denialism on his very own denialism blog. He was right, but in fact denialists had been doing this for a long time, and it was only a shock to Mark because he had stopped paying attention for a while and then was, like the proverbial frog, thrown back into the water.

Part of what led me to think about this phenomenon was a doozy of a post published on--where else?--that wretched hive of scum and quackery (no, not The Huffington Post--I mean that other wretched hive of scum and quackery), the antivaccine crank blog extraordinaire, Age of Autism. The post is by someone whose name is not familiar to me as one of the regulars, Cathy Nevison, and entitled Autism and the Antarctic Ozone Hole. Yes, in this post, Nevison does exactly what the title implies and tries to liken "autism epidemic denialists" to anthropogenic global warming denialists. Before I delve into the numerous deficiencies in Nevision's crank arguments, I do have to pause to express amusement about a passage right in the first paragraph:

A recent Associated Press report that 1 in 88 American children has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) asserts that, "Better diagnosis is largely responsible for the new estimate..." Another AP report, on a study finding that 1 in 38 South Korean children has an ASD, quotes the lead author as saying, "It doesn't mean all of a sudden there are more new children with ASDs. They've been there all along, but were not counted in previous prevalence studies." These are extraordinary claims and examples of autism epidemic denial. Equally remarkable is that the AP presents them as unquestioned truth, making no effort to counter them with dissenting viewpoints. In contrast, the media has been diligent about "balancing" articles on the threat of climate change with opposing views from "climate skeptics," which has contributed to climate change denial. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

SUMMARY: A new scientific paper uses a unique methodology to addresses this timeless questionParasaurolophus walkeri, a hadrosauroid.
Image: Steveoc 86 (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.) I ran across an interesting little video by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) describing a newly-published piece of research into the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. This paper reports on their findings whether the non-avian dinosaurs were experiencing a long-term population decline before the asteroid strike at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago. The answer? Yes — and no.

Yesterday an article in the Daily Mail was brought to my attention by Ben Goldacre, and Transform Drug Policy Foundation. There have been a few articles along a similar line to this one, questioning tobacco control research and policy. This one seemed particularly one-sided, so it’s made me decide to go through the arguments, and discuss.The very first sentence of this article riled me, I have to say:There are few industries to have come under such sustained attack as big tobacco.It’s almost too ridiculous to know where to start. I may be arguing semantics here, but I would say it’s not the tobacco industry under attack so much as the disease and death caused by smoking cigarettes. Other industries that sell harmful products (alcohol, pharma) are regulated. This is such a strange way to frame this article, the ‘poor’ tobacco companies are getting picked on by the ‘mean old’ government. Tobacco is the only product, legal at present, which, if used as intended, kills half of its users. Poor tobacco industry indeed.So on to the meat. One thing that immediately leaps out to me about this article is that nowhere does it state that tobacco KILLS PEOPLE. OK, we all know this, but it’s fundamental as to why there is this legislation in the first place. It’s not there as some ‘Nanny state’ agenda, it’s put in place primarily because there is evidence that most (8 out of 10 according to a cancer research document on the subject) people start smoking before the age of 19. In a dataset of thousands of teenagers in Bristol, just under half the 16 year olds class themselves as smokers. Nicotine (when smoked in a tobacco cigarette) is one of the most addictive substances known to man, so if you expose yourself to it before you fully understand the risks, you can be addicted before you realise, and quitting smoking is HARD. Tobacco control has a two-armed approach: preventing children from starting smoking before they’re in a position to appreciate the risks, and helping those who want to quit but struggle. To me, this is not a Nanny state, but a state with a social conscience. One might want to add a third arm to tobacco control, namely preventing damage to the health of those people who come in to contact with smokers. Passive smoking is dangerous. If you went out and someone else inflicted harm upon you, you would be outraged. This is passive smoking.Let’s consider some of the arguments against tobacco control.…since the UK Government annually reaps £12billion in levies from the likes of industry giants British American Tobacco, Imperial and Gallaher-owner Japan Tobacco, is it shooting itself in the foot? Aha! Of course, never mind the health of our citizens, we’re in a financial crisis, let’s not lose money here. A fallacy for a couple of reasons. Firstly, figures from 2010 suggest that smoking is a net cost to the economy – with every cigarette costing the country 6.5 pence. And secondly if money isn’t getting spent on tobacco, it will get spent elsewhere, it won’t simply disappear, so it will still be being taxed; alcohol, petrol, all sorts of things are highly taxed. The money will remain in the economy.Next:‘You hardly need research from anti-tobacco campaigners to tell you that people may prefer elegant and attractive packaging to grim, uniform, dour packs designed by politicians and health lobbyists,’ says Mark Littlewood, director general (of the Institute of Economic Affairs). ‘But this proves absolutely nothing at all. The idea that youngsters take up smoking because they find it impossible to resist the colour scheme on a cigarette pack is risible.’Erm…the scientific evidence does seem to suggest otherwise. The shocking video by Cancer Research (see below) shows children spontaneously commenting on cigarette packets. Suddenly it all looks a little less risible. And this is before we get to the evidence. Experiments conducted on teenagers have found they falsely believe packs of certain colours to be more healthy (gold and silver for example), and more importantly that they would pick these packs to try. Studies investigating how people look at cigarette packets have found that daily smokers look at the new plain packages in a different way to people who smoke less regularly, or not at all. Less regular smokers and non smokers look mostly at the health warning, which with its bright and striking design is now by far the most salient thing on a plain package (to dispel the myth, plain packaging doesn’t just mean a brown box – see the image at the top). But daily smokers look more equally at the warning and the brand information, now presented in uniform text. This suggests that plain packaging won’t necessarily put off those people who already smoke, but might be one cue to stop curious kids from considering lighting up. Why, if it won’t work, is the tobacco industry both here and in Australia where plain packaging has already been approved by the Government, fighting so hard to stop it? Something doesn’t quite add up.Plain packaging brings us to our next argument (again a quote from Mark Littlewood):‘If the health campaigners are listened to in this policy area, they can expect the lasting gratitude of organised crime networks, whose task of counterfeiting will be made much easier and who have no qualms at all about peddling their products to kids.’Another straw man. Counterfeiters are hardly having problems making near perfect copies of current cigarette package designs, it is trivially easy to counterfeit current cigarette packages, so plain packaging makes NO difference. In fact counterfeiting is already such a problem that all authentic packs have hidden markings put on them by the manufacturers, so that enforcement officers such as Customs trading standards officers can determine whether packs are genuine or counterfeit. Such markings would work just as well on plain standardised packs. The final argument in this article is that the Government is being ‘inconsistent’, by bringing in shutters to hide cigarettes from view, AND consultation on plain packaging. To me, this seems entirely consistent with trying to protect young people from marketing that is potentially targeted at them (according to this Cancer Research document). Both these screens and the plain packaging hide branding from impressionable children. But the big tobacco displays have the additional impact of making it seem like everyone smokes, and it doesn’t matter whether the displays are of the current colourful packs or of plain standardised packs, so both measures are needed. Last but not least the argument is that this is the thin end of the wedge. Hardly, as advertising on TV was first banned in the 1960s nearly 50 years ago. What’s truly shocking is how long it took from when the link between smoking and lung cancer was scientifically accepted in the UK in 1954 for any government to take meaningful action. Regulation of tobacco is done to try and save lives, and improve the lives of people who may get chronic illness from smoking. What’s not to like?Thanks to the members of TARG who fact checked this for me.

After seeing this on the TV news yesterday, I was this morning forwarded the following e-mail, which I reproduce here (appropriately edited) as self-explanatory. Alternatively, you can go direct to the Sense About Science site for more information. -——- Original Message -——-Subject: Please support plant scientists facing destruction of their researchDate: Wed, 02 May 2012 07:04:59 +0100From: Tabitha Innocent <senseaboutscie…inboxsystems.com>Reply-To: tinnoc...senseaboutscience.org***To get in touch with me use Reply-To Address:tinnoc…senseaboutscience.org<mailto:tinnoc...senseaboutscience.org>***Dear Friends**Please support plant scientists facing destruction of theirresearch.You may have seen in today’s press that protesters areplanning to destroy John Pickett’s team’s chemical ecologyresearch at Rothamsted on 27^th May because it usesgenetically modified wheat. The researchers are appealingfor them to call off the destruction and discuss the work:“Growing wheat has an environmental toll of extensiveinsecticide use to control aphid pests. The research, whichis non-commercial, is investigating how to reduce that bygetting the plants to repel aphids with a naturalpheromone… As scientists we know only too well that wedon’t have all the answers. But if the work is destroyed,we’ll lose years of work and we will never know whether itcould reduce the environmental impact of wheat growing.”Sense About Science stands up for people whose researchfaces intimidation or suppression. We know that you will doall you can to make it clear that destroying scientificresearch is not acceptable.Please read their "_letter**_":http://www.warpmailbox.com/li.aspx?cu=2163845&link=55570,watch their video add your support to their appeal. (click underline to follow links or visitwww.senseaboutscience.org/pages/defend-science.html<http://www.warpmailbox.com/li.aspx?cu=2163845&link=55571>).Other things you can do to help: * Send the message far and wide: forward the link to friends and colleagues * Share the support form using Twitter hashtag #defendscience and share the link on FacebookYours in hasteTabithaDr Tabitha InnocentScientific LiaisonSense About Science14A Clerkenwell GreenLondon EC1R 0DPRegistered Charity No. 1101114Company No. 6771027Tel: +44 (0) 20 7490 9590http://www.senseaboutscience.org/<http://www.warpmailbox.com/li.aspx?cu=2163845&link=55573> Sense About Science is a small charity that equips people tomake sense of science and evidence. We depend on donations,large and small, from people who support our work.You can donate, or find out more, atwww.senseaboutscience.org/donate<http://www.warpmailbox.com/li.aspx?cu=2163845&link=55574>

SUMMARY: Shortly after the internet popped up and created a new niche, popular culture has been undergoing a vast and increasingly rapid transformation Evolution is happening every day. Evolution is occurring in plain sight. Every time a new niche appears or an existing niche opens up, evolution has the opportunity to go wild. Take human culture for example. Shortly after the internet popped up and created a new niche, popular culture has been undergoing a vast and increasingly rapid transformation. Instead of merely being consumers of other people’s idea of what “pop culture” should look like — a very few people — individuals now are beginning to define and set the trends. Thanks to the internet, regular people like you and I are now creating popular culture. In this insightful and entertaining video, we meet Kevin Allocca, the trends manager at YouTube, who shares his observations about what makes a video into a phenomenon.

The conjunction of three events must be noted. The confluence — or syzygy — for me this week is my noting the fiftieth anniversary of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (1962), Bruce Alberts’ recent editorial on ‘Creativity at the Interface" in Science, and my reading of Jonah Lehrer’s recent book Imagine (2012). Most would be ecstatic to be a Kuhnian paradigm shifter, to be considered a creative thinker and researcher by their peers, or to be an innovator, the Steve Jobs of a given field. After the daydreams drift away, what can we carry back to our laboratories or desks from these three publications?In his editorial, Alberts, the Editor of Science, sees, in addition to the integration of different expertise into biological endeavors, the ability to choose the most important questions (quoting from Poincaré: “invention is discernment, choice”) and getting beyond data to (quoting Alberts) “deep understanding . . . that benefit[s] humanity”. This is reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s claim that knowledge, used properly, is “for the benefit and use of life”. Alberts stresses the importance of increasing the breadth of knowledge in the life sciences by recruiting engineers and those with strong quantitative backgrounds as essential for continued progress.To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Kuhn’s seminal publication, his analysis of progress in science will be reviewed, as commented upon by David Kaiser in Nature . Kuhn suggested that anomalies arise during the maturation of a science that challenge the order of a discipline; these anomalies are not resolved by assimilation into the science but by a revolutionary change, and the “paradigm shift” that occurs when new theories develop. Once there is a new way of perceiving the world, there is less emphasis on the old. I will reread Kuhn this year, but I’m afraid I don’t know how he will influence my work today, other than that I’m adding more items to my list of unanswered questions and underlining the “anomalies”. From our commenters I anticipate learning how Kuhnian analysis influences their research. Much longer than these very brief essays is the book by Lehrer, number three on the 29 April New York Times non-fiction best seller list. Lehrer’s examples are drawn from popular culture, new products in business (e.g., “post-its”), and science. It makes for a good read and is most provocative when the reader can extrapolate from Bob Dylan or WH Auden to their own creative conundrums. Auden was an extensive user of intranasal amphetamines (Benzadrine). I can’t recommend that; while insights from dreams and psychedelic drugs might be useful, the latter may be dangerous and illegal, while dreams are not predictable in providing creative answers. Although it is difficult to have your laboratory group-sniffing the mind-expanding drug of the moment while remaining fit for work, two examples emphasize group efforts in creativity and can be applied to the scientific endeavor.1. BROADWAY MUSICALSBroadway musicals require a large number of highly talented, high-maintenance, creative artists and their financial backers. Many financially and artistically successful shows have arisen from collaborations that have been successful previously, with the addition of some key new people: not too many and not too few (the Goldilocks effect, or looking for the “sweet spot”). Consider laboratories, where post-docs and junior faculty leave, and new personnel simultaneously arrive: a successful and useful model in the sciences, which may be a model for bringing people with new scientific expertise into the biological sciences. One might say this is a no-brainer, and many in Science know how to do this.2. PIXARPIXAR requires a large number of people with highly specialized skills to work together to create new, technically-driven films (e.g., “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo”). Its leaders established a PIXAR university, where potential employees learn the highly technical skills and diverse expertise required to make their product. (Some at NIH will remember institution-wide courses, not for credit but for knowledge.) PIXAR organized the physical environment of their university to drive individuals together: all the bathrooms, food, and libation are located at a central core. Random (and planned) meetings are encouraged. I remember, in Walter Bodmer’s lab at Oxford from 1978-9, tea time in the morning and the afternoon were close-to-command performances. Everyone was there, and instant messaging (face-to-face) was perfected before email.PIXAR holds frequent meetings, with frank, public discussion of work in progress. These are not typical “brainstorming sessions”, with everything ending up on the whiteboard. There are techniques to decrease brutality and hurt egos, and we should be thinking about how our working groups are handled and whether we are getting the maximum input from and education for those involved. Different group leaders employ different styles, and one size may not fit every group of individuals. Think about your group and all the possible models.Lehrer presents some models that can help groups to be more creative — but what about the individual? For the creative individual, Lehrer suggests keeping a problem churning around all the time in the intuitive and analytical portions of one’s mind while seeking lots of random input, walking the streets, talking with everyone about everything, allowing cerebral interconnections to percolate, and waiting for the “moment”. Our scientific societies and their leadership should consider how to integrate those with primary mathematical and engineering expertise as full-fledged members of our meetings and journals, scientifically, socially, and administratively. We have a model in the interactions of epidemiologists and their European Dermato-Epidemiology Network (EDEN) — no doubt there are others. I’m sure our creative readers have numerous suggestions for increasing innovation and creativity; all your comments are appreciated.References:Alberts, B. Creativity at the Interface. Science 336: 131, 2012Kaiser, D. In retrospect: “The structure of scientific revolutions”. Nature 484:164-6, 2012Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1st. ed., Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1962, Chicago.Lehrer, J. Imagine: How creativity works.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, New York.Image:Image by sjorsvb (via Flickr) used under the Creative Commons License, can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjorsvb/4660677164/.

I will be presenting my Science Communications/Public Opinion research project next Thursday, 10am in the Curet Room of Hodges Hall, LSU Campus! If you are in Louisiana, come by! TweetBy Paige Brown_**Research Abstract**:Despite scientific consensus that recent rises in global temperature are attributable to human activity, previous research points to doubt, confusion and complacency among the public on the reality, causes and severity of impacts of global climate change. Whether environmental scientists and activists could better frame their messages to improve public appreciation of climate change risks is a subject of active research. This study sought to investigate a new question in science communications: Do messages on local climate change impacts and action framed in personal and societal ‘values’ vs. framed in rigid scientific ‘facts’ impact attitudes differentially among audiences of varying scientific knowledge and initial concern about climate change? Results from an experimental, randomized Internet survey of LSU undergraduate students reveal an overall superior performance of ‘value’ over ‘fact’ framing and the role of baseline concern and general scientific knowledge in moderating and even reversing the direction of these framing effects.c/2012/04/CO2 Albert Bridge-thumb-640×420-4621.jpg" width=“540” height=“320” class=“mt-image-center” style=“text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;” />

SUMMARY: That old book smell brings back so many memories, but what creates that smell?Old books.
Image: William Hoiles from Basking Ridge, NJ, USA (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.) Every time I catch a whiff of that special old books smell, I am transported through time and space to the cool welcoming basement of The Strand Bookstore in New York City, where I spent many hot humid summer afternoons, searching for some used book I’ve never seen nor even heard of, or sitting on the cold concrete floor, reading. The smell of old books isn’t pleasant, exactly, but it is unmistakable — and powerfully evocative.“A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness,” writes an international team of chemists from University College London (UCL) and the University of Ljubljana (UL) in Slovenia in their scientific paper (doi:10.1021/ac9016049). “[T]his unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents.”But what is the source of that smell?

by Ned RozellOn a late summer evening a few years ago, a scrap of birch bark caught William Manley’s eye as he walked along the edge of an ice field in the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains. The geologist yelled to nearby archaeologist Jim Dixon and Ruth Ann Warden of the Ahtna Heritage Foundation.The remains of a 650-year old birch bark basket complete with stitching holes, found at the base of an ice patch in the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains. Photo by William Manley.“When I pointed it out to Jim and Ruth Ann, they immediately saw that it was something special,” said Manley, who works for the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder.Dixon and Warden noticed stitching holes in the bark fragment that lay among recently exposed rocks and moss. After later dating the birch-bark basket, they found an Alaskan had left it at the site about 650 years ago.The basket is one of many artifacts scientists are finding on ice patches—dying fields of snow and ice that are too small to flow like glaciers. These ice patches, located in the mountains of Alaska and Canada, are shrinking to reveal at their edges arrow shafts, barbed antler points, and other items that usually decompose before archaeologists can find them.In a five-year project in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, researchers are following the lead of colleagues in the Yukon by traveling to high-country ice patches to search for old tools, clothing, and other organic materials exposed by retreating ice and snow. Dixon, an anthropology professor at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has made several trips to the Wrangells during the project.“We can take a very small amount of organic material—like the amount you’d get from drilling a tooth—and do radio-carbon dating and isotope analysis,” Dixon said. “We can find out the age of the material and environmental conditions at the time. We’re getting new insights into the technology people used in Alaska thousands of years ago.”Members of the team found several arrow shafts, dated at 370 to 850 years old, made of spruce wood split from the trunk of the tree rather than the branches.“The shafts are made from split staves of white spruce—long, straight slivers that are rounded and tapered,” Dixon said.A recently exposed arrow shaft at the base of a melting ice patch in the Wrangells. Photo by William Manley.The Wrangells research team is concentrating on six ice patches in the largest national park in the United States. Dixon described the ice patches as “oasis-like features that attract caribou, sheep, and other animals that seek relief from heat and insects.”After a two-year GIS modeling project, the researchers chose the six ice patches they are studying after two years of flying around in late summer and looking for large bodies of ice and snow ringed with dark colors—often the pellets caribou dropped centuries ago. The ice patches are melting to reveal ground that hasn’t seen the sun in hundreds, or thousands of years.“As climate change continues, (the exposure of artifacts from melting ice patches) will go on for some time,” Dixon said.In addition to arrow shafts, a copper arrowhead, the birch basket, and an old caribou hide, the scientists and Park Service personnel also saw more modern things during their travels in the Wrangells, including the remains of a roadhouse built on a glacier on one of the gold rush routes from McCarthy to Chisana.“It’s a whole roadhouse that’s flowing down the glacier,” Dixon said.Manley, the geologist who found the birch-bark basket, said looking for artifacts on the edge of ice patches is not only interesting science, it’s great fun. The scientists usually have only a short window of time to search the base of an ice patch while a helicopter waits for them.“Finding such a well-preserved artifact melting out of a glacier is something like winning when you’re gambling,” Manley said. “After going hours, or days without finding another one, you develop an urge to find more.”.Originally published in the Alaska Science Forum July 25, 2007 Article #1865 Tools of ancient Alaskans emerge from ice by Ned Rozell http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF18/1865.html“This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.”More on Arctic Archaeology at FrontierScientists.comTime Travel in the Alaskan Arctic<iframe width=“560″ height=”315″ src=“http://www.youtube.com/embed/m2fVKAosNFg” frameborder="0″ allowfullscreen>

Real Climate has done two posts recently that I thought would be served well by their juxtaposition. The first one highlights an early projection of global mean temperatures made by Jim Hansen in 1981.

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