commonground

Same Blog New Digs

Seed Media group  has offered to host my blog commonground .  So I will resume posting under  the same name but at a posh  a new address.   For those of you  frequented the blog over the past year  thanks for the kind words and encouragement.  ( Seed Media)

ID vs. The Ego

The vast majority of scientists feel nothing but distress that the teaching of Intelligent Design has been promoted by several faith-based schools.  Apparently,  fundamentalists of Islamic and Christian persuasion have this in common, they both  deplore Darwin and all his works.  ( Telegraph)

 Scopes Trial                                                                                          ID vs. Darwin

Follow the Carbon Trail

In the quest to unravel the puzzles of a rapidly warming planet – and perhaps find the best ways to apply the brakes – carbon turns out to be as good as money in the bank. ( OC Register)

UCI                                                                                                   Carbon 14

Rethinking Scientifc Journals

Two new scientific publications, both available only online, may signal what's ahead for scientic journals. PLoS ONE (plosone.org), a journal begun by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) last month, aims to put as many new scientific articles as possible on the Internet to be read by anyone, free of charge. The Journal of Visualized Experiments, or JoVE (myjove.com), is a kind of YouTube for researchers. It operates on the theory that a short video showing how an experiment is done is better than thousands of words that attempt to describe it. ( CS Monitor)

eScience

Bio Plastics Show Promise

Corn, one of America's oldest crops, is now being used for everything from antifreeze to fibers to forks.  Replacing items once made from fossil fuels.  In research  labs around the US, scientists are testing a new  crop of resins and  polymers  derived from corn.  ( Philly Inquirer)

Bio Plastics                                                                                                       Earth Policy Institute

Surfing with the Alien

Scanning  the night sky for flying saucers might be futile.  But planet earth could  have been colonzied by meteor free- riding  space microbes billions of years ago. Experiments by an international team of researchers back a controversial theory that life flourished on Earth after primitive organisms arrived aboard a meteorite, itself gouged from Mars by a giant impact. ( Guardian Unlimited)

Charles Cockell                                                                                                      Astrobiology

Creationists Inconvieneced with Gore Film

When did tolerance of a person's religous beliefs become a means to silence debate. Are Creationsts so fragile they can't be exposed opposing viewpoints.The Al Gore documentary An Inconveniant Truth was pulled from a Seattle school district after a  parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained. ( Seattle  PI)

Creationism                                                Evolution in Public Schools

Google's Great Science Gambit

Just in case there's a pizza  joint on planet Neptune that needs  a Web presence.  Google today will announce its partnership with the University of Washington, the University of Arizona and others to create the world's largest database -- a moving picture of the universe. ( Seattle P-I)

LSST                                                                                                               

The Bear that Came Home for Christmas

Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world. ( Independent Online)

Brown Bear Foundation                                                                                               Cantabrian Mountians

Brain Teazers Ease Memory Loss

Ten sessions of exercises to boost reasoning skills, memory and mental processing speed staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same way that physical exercise protects and strengthens the body. ( Washington Post)

Joystick                                                                                                        TechDirt