Yet another biased meeting from Oxford Global - their meetings should be shunned #YAMMM #GenderBias
Well, Oxford Global has done it again. They have found a way to be one of the most extremely gender biased conferences around. Their2016 Genome Editing Congress Speakers. Their web site lists 20 speakers, 19 of which are men. (One of the men is listed twice - I am not sure if that is due to giving two talks or a mistake. So this may be 19 speakers~ 95, 18 of which are men). Regardless that comes to ~ 95% male speakers.Andre Choulika, CEO CellectisGuna Rajagopal, VP – Global Head, Computational Sciences, Discovery Sciences JanssenLorenz Mayr, VP& Global Head, Reagents& Assay Deve...
Source: The Tree of Life - October 1, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Is Language Possible?
Chris Knight is an anthropologist with an interest in language origins. Along with his new book,Decoding Chomsky, (reviewedhere), in which he does a great job of pointing out this particular emperor ’s nudity, he has published an intriguing paper inLanguage and Communication, titled “Puzzles and mysteries in the origin of language” (abstracthere). He gets straight to his point: “Language evolved in no species other than humans, suggesting a deep-going obstacle to its evolution.” The point is critical. It is not enough to propose a reason for language’s presence among humans. You also have to explain its absence...
Source: Babel's Dawn - October 1, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Protected: Six-string cabinets
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Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 29, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Six-string cabinets
My friend Rob is a cabinet maker by trade. He knows a thing or two about different woods, varnishes and finishes, how to physically bind two different pieces indelibly and perhaps even a few things about lamination when it’s needed.
Rob also plays guitar.
It was no surprise therefore to learn that he was fine tuning his woodworking skills as a wannabe luthier. First efforts involved some wonderful reclaimed materials and the creation with CAD assistance of some novel bracing in carved archtop guitars. His most recent design is a more traditional six-string acoustic with a conventional soundboard and a delightful ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 29, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Bull stiff
There’s a brand of coffee apparently being touted as more than your usual pick-me-up…and aimed especially at men, it seems. It’s got herbal extracts (tongkat ali, maca root and guarana) that are meant to boost libido and health and are all-natural (whatever that means, isn’t everything natural?). However, one news site points out that the herbal coffee also contains desmethyl carbodenafil, which is, as you might guess from the name, an analogue of sildenafil, which is commonly prescribed as Viagra (as the orally available citrate salt).
Undeclared active pharmaceuticals in food and drink pr...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 29, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Three-parent babies
Okay…so the news is full of the first baby to have allegedly been born with DNA from three people (sperm and egg from a man and a woman and mitochondrial DNA from a second woman). The baby is five months old, according to New Scientist. So, how come earlier this year (June, to be precise), the likes of Fergus Walsh were talking about the procedure being safe and others suggesting that a 3p baby might be born within a year? This conception was presumably being kept secret until the New Sci exclusive revealed all today, but there must have been plenty of people who knew about it.
Anyway, in saying it’s a first...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 27, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Alma mater tempus fugit
Spiral Nebula, by Geoffrey Clarke RA, is an iconic piece of sculpture that stands in front of the Herschel Building at Newcastle University, site of many a failed physics practical and slept-through early morning lecture (no wonder I took 4 years to get my chemistry degree!). I snapped it a couple of times while daughter was registering for her biomedical science course at the weekend…
What a bitter-sweet day, to deliver offspring to one’s alma mater, pride (in her achievements so far, fingers crossed for a Noble Prize in 2028, say), relief (that’s she’s opted for biomed and not, ahem, another fi...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 26, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Wrap up from Gender Bias Under the Microscope Symposium #RFUSymposium #GenderBias
Had an amazing time at Rosalind Franklin University for their Gender Bias Under the Microscope Symposium. I made a Storify about it here:[View the story "Gender Bias Under the Microscope #rfusymposium " on Storify]
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This is from the "Tree of Life Blog"
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.
-------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - September 23, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
The Yahoo hack FAQ
Was my account hacked?
Well, there were 500 million users affected of 1 billion active users, so chances are 1 in 2 that it was.
What should I do now?
Login with your current details, change your password to a strong, unique one and enable two-factor/multi-step authentication so that you have to receive a text or email (SMS) to login next time.
What data was stolen by the hackers?
Users’ personal data, birthdays, phone numbers, including unencrypted answers to secret account recovery questions (change those too and don’t use your actual pets’ nor mother’s maiden name, they’re easy for hacke...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 23, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
The smart vibe “ cha cha cha ”
Earlier, I issued a warning about slipping a USB stick into your slot for fear of infection or physical damage. But, it’s not just USB devices you have to worry about. According to Naked Security today, which quotes Gizmodo, the “We-Vibe 4 Plus” smart vibrator and accompanying phone app, manufactured by Standard Innovation Corp, sends heat and vibration intensity data back to the manufacturer in realtime when the app is in use. They can therefore tell how many of their connected “Internet of Things” devices are in pulse, wave, echo, peak or “cha cha cha” mode at any given time. ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 22, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Practice safe USB
There is, unfortunately, no insulated digital condom for USB sticks. Infections can be transmitted both ways as soon as you slide the stick into the slot, whether it’s a laptop, TV, copy machine or any other USB device. But, it’s not just the risk of catching and transmitting viruses USB users have to worry about, you’re infection might turn the machine into a zombie and add it to a criminal botnet or worse…
A couple of years ago, there was a demonstration of something far more lethal than a USB stick infected with malware. Some clever sod came up with a tiny circuit that would take a current...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 22, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Language-Came-Late Theory In Deep Trouble
Carl Zimmer's weekly science report in theNew York Times today (here) discusses 3 articles that appear in this week'sNature. Each of the papers studies human DNA amongst ethnic peoples around the world and together they reinforce a standard narrative: While Africans have been leading separate lives for as much as 200,000 years, the peoples of all the other continents trace to a single exodus from Africa 50 to 80 thousand years ago. Some of the people from that departure eventually encountered other Homo groups whose ancestors left Africa much earlier and mixed with them, but in every case the newcomers replaced the loc...
Source: Babel's Dawn - September 21, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
How Language Got to Be This Way
The first [question lying behind my work] is, why is language as it is? Mankind could have evolved an enormous number of different semiotic systems; why did they evolve a system which has these particular properties that language has?– M.A.K. HallidayI have been reading a series of interviews with the Australian linguistHalliday and I ran across the above passage.Derek Bickerton asks this question as well. So it crossed my mind to see how far along I have come on this blog to answering it.New functions, of course, do not evolve out of nothing. They take what they have and build on it. In language ’s case it is plain th...
Source: Babel's Dawn - September 14, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Storify of talk by @CameronNeylon at #UCDavis on "Excellence is Bullshit"
Made a Storify[View the story "Excellence is Bullshit: talk by @CameronNeylon at #UCDavis" on Storify]
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This is from the "Tree of Life Blog"
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.
-------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - September 14, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Water cannot dehydrate you
Here’s a thing, we’re endlessly told we should be drinking more water…well, that’s not strictly true, you get water from food and lots of different types of drinks and unless you have particular needs because of age or disease or are in a particularly desiccating environment it’s actually quite hard to become clinically dehydrated. Another bit of deceived wisdom often bandied about is that certain drinks, particularly those containing caffeine and/or alcohol make you dehydrated too. But, an interesting paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition earlier this year has attempted to stand...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 13, 2016 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
