Sniffing Out ET

Research Blogging / By Dave Munger / September 1, 2010

NASA's Kepler Mission states that its goal is to find habitable Earth-size planets around other stars. It doesn't expect to find planets the right size or distance from their stars for years, but bloggers are already discussing how to identify life if and when such planets are found.

Book Review

Deconstructing Death

In Final Exam, surgeon Pauline Chen takes an incisive look at society's fear of death.

Philosophical Transactions

The Matthew Effect

Decoupling funding and fame in science.

Research Blogging

Dave Munger

Projectile Pooping

When it comes to eliminating wastes, some animals are overachievers.

Week in Review

Ebbs and Flows

Progress and setbacks in realms astronomical, meteorological, economic, and judicial.

Departments

Ideas

Into the Uncanny Valley

A century’s worth of explanations for our peculiar behavior.

World

All Consuming

With population and per-capita consumption both rising, it's hard to believe humanity's impact on the Earth is sustainable.

Culture

Saved by Science

Justine Cooper's photographs document the intersection of science, curation, and human curiosity.

Innovation

Taming Carbon’s Wild Side

A formerly unstable molecule is put to work.

Ideas

Sexy, But Biased

Too often, scientists, scholars, and the media focus only on sensational research results.

Culture

Music of the Spheres

A new album takes listeners on a whimsical tour of the solar system.

Ideas

Tiny Viruses, Big Controversy

Inside the struggle to understand how and why antiviral drugs work.

Ideas

Does Coffee Work?

A closer look at the use and efficacy of one of the world’s most popular drugs, caffeine.

Ideas

Yawning Together

Why is yawning contagious, even across species?

Ideas

From Galileo to Cassini

What did Galileo see when he first observed Saturn through his telescope?

World

Two Wrongs from the Right

Once again, US politicians fail to deliver a meaningful solution for climate change.

Ideas

Are Octopuses Smart?

Questioning the measure and definition of cephalopod intelligence.

Ideas

Life in the Garden

Common gardens reveal the complex interdependence of biodiversity.

Ideas

The Body Politic

Are we organisms or living ecosystems?

Ideas

The Evolution of Cooperation

Insects that survive on plant sap alone give insight for the evolution of multicellular life.

Slideshow

The Hidden World of Ants

Mark Moffett travels around the world taking stunning close-up photographs that capture the fascinating lives of ants.

Books

Books to Read Now

Edit Staff

June releases follow a wizard-bearded scientist on his quest to end aging; mine the essence of pleasure; and explore why being wrong is central to the human experience.

Interactive

Repository of the Cosmos

We visit Neil deGrasse Tyson to talk about his role as “servant to the public appetite of the universe” and all of the odd things that accumulate in his office.

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist

September 2, 2010

  1. 1 Calling for an old-fashioned Green Revolution

    BBC

    Biodiverse farming and sound forestry, moreso than GM crops, will help deliver a sustainable green revolution in Africa, says Tensie Whelan. In this week's Green Room, she warns that failure to protect biodiversity, water supplies and forests could spell disaster for the continent.

  2. 2 Wanted: An IPCC for Biodiversity

    Nature

    Moves are now afoot to establish a body to review the science and anticipated effects of changes in biodiversity, reminiscent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Next week in Busan, South Korea, representatives from governments around the world will decide whether to create such a panel, which currently goes by the unwieldy moniker of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

  3. 3 "National parks" at sea

    The New York Times

    A group of scientists are calling for world leaders to create more marine reserves like the Great Barrier Reef of Australia — national parks at sea, as they put it. In a statement issued Tuesday and signed by nearly 250 scientists from 35 countries, they asked lawmakers around the globe to consider designating vast reserves of the ocean as protected areas.

  4. 4 Crowd science reaches new heights

    The Chronicle of Higher Education

    Today, data sharing in astronomy isn't just among professors. Amateurs are invited into the data sets through friendly Web interfaces, and a schoolteacher in Holland recently made a major discovery, of an unusual gas cloud."Crowd Science," as it might be called, is taking hold in several other disciplines, such as biology, and is rising rapidly in oceanography and a range of environmental sciences.

  5. 5 Opening up science

    Timbuktu Chronicles

    This video looks at scientific knowledge-building using wikis and other web 2.0 tools to pass along agriculture methods at the local level, but it also hints at how one could pass along science at the local level if there was the language to talk about it.

ScienceBlogs.com

Selected Posts for September 2, 2010

  1. The View From Mercury

    Starts with a Bang!

    September 1, 2010

  2. Teacher Evaluation and Test Scores

    Uncertain Principles

    September 1, 2010

  3. Vaccine injury and Compensation

    Respectful Insolence

    September 1, 2010

  4. Lomborg v Lomborg

    Class M

    October 1, 2010

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