Sad Sacks
Week in Review / By / November 6, 2009
Our take on the week: As a UK adviser is fired over politically unpalatable advice, and an English teacher is suspended over an article about animal sexuality, the fate of facts is on the line.
Slideshow
A Miniature Miscellany
Felice Frankel and George Whitesides’ new book probes the barely visible.
Research Blogging
Dave Munger
Saturn’s Strange Children
New findings reveal we still have much to learn about Saturn's moons.
Departments
Ideas
Up the Cosmic Distance Ladder
How do we measure the distances to planets, stars, and galaxies?
Ideas
Evolved for Extinction?
The more adapted a species is, the greater its risk of extinction may be.
Slideshow
Traveling Through Time and Stars
In Far Out, stunning astronomical images and lyrical essays on the nature of light and space explore the universe’s past.
Books
Books to Read Now
November releases feature the mysteries of Grigori Perelman, the evolutionary origins of reading, and strategies for containing strains of flu.
Interactive
Our Shifting Urban Landscape
Urban ecologist James Danoff-Burg takes us into the field to demonstrate the tools of analyzing the biodiversity of human-altered ecosystems.
Seed's Daily Zeitgeist
November 7, 2009
- 1
The ultimate experiment in financial forecasting
The Arxiv Blog
Swiss econophysicist Didier Sornette has had some surprising success predicting market bubbles--but now, to test if his forecasts are truly bona fide, he's sealing them in an electronic envelope and entrusting them to the arXiv, to be opened next May.
- 2
Threatened by fault lines, Iranian capital to be moved
Highly Allochthonous
When geology meets policy, the results can be radical. Iran has rubber-stamped plans to move the nation's capital to a brand new or existing city in an area less threatened by deadly quakes, as Tehran, the current capital, sits at a nexus of faults: Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous lays out the tectonic map for readers and muses on whether a stringent quake code might be more effective.
- 3
Brain disease stopped in its tracks
ScienceNow
Experts say a landmark study is the most promising stride in years for gene therapy, the practice of treating genetic disease with biotechnology. Scientists have halted the progress of a degenerative brain disease in two seven-year-old boys, adding genes for missing proteins into their cells with a modified virus.
- 4
Why smart people get a simple question wrong
Via Cosmic Variance
Anne is looking at George, but Jack is looking at Anne. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? The latest Scientific American logic puzzle is harder than you think.
- 5
'How a bunch of nobodies created the world's greatest encyclopedia'
Boston Review
Andrew Lih, who joined Wikipedia in its infancy, has written the first popular history of the internet phenomenon. But, says one reviewer, he may be as in the dark as everyone else as to why Wikipedia, a mysterious synergy of nerdiness and philosophy, works.
ScienceBlogs.com
Selected Posts for November 7, 2009
- The rifting of Africa
Eruptions
November 5, 2009
- This Is Depressing
Corpus Callosum
November 5, 2009
- Earthquake hazard mitigation the Iranian way
Highly Allochthonous
November 5, 2009
- Dark Energy: Hard to Kill (Part 1)
Starts With a Bang
November 4, 2009
Read more from ScienceBlogs.com »
