Tags
art, bees, electric field, Erin Brockovich, gender, intersex, israel, Palestine, photography, plasma, Popular science, rape, science, science and society, Science in Society, sexism
It’s certainly been too long since my last Found while foraging! Since I haven’t been posting as frequently as I’d like, I’ve preferred to post about scientific topics when I had a chance to post. In the meantime, I’ve let my collection of links grow…so I decided to start the week with a Found while foraging and hopefully end it with a “proper” post. Anyway, here’s what I’ve come across in the last couple of months — hopefully it’s not an overwhelming collection! As always, feel free to add more links in the comments.
Science
- Khalil Cassimally writes about research showing that couples seem to sync their hearts to beat at the same rate.
- The most abundant creature on the planet is a virus that preys on a bacteria which lives in the ocean.
- An amazing video of plasma raining down on the sun in looping lines many time larger than our entire planet.
- Ice crawlers are tiny insects that live and thrive on ice. Really. The warmth of your hand might be enough to kill them.
- Bees use more than just sight and smell to find flowers; they can also sense a flower’s electric field — which, it turns out, the flower can manipulate. The bees can also sense one another’s electric field and might use it for communication.
- My review article about crosstalk between cytokinin and other plant hormones has been published. Unfortunately, it’s not open access (Sorry — it was an invited review!), but some of you may be able to access it through your institute. I’m toying with the idea of writing a post about it.
Science and society
- Deborah Blum writes about a collaboration between PBS and the Center for Public Integrity to follow up on the groundwater contamination case in Hinkley, California (of Erin Brockovich fame) and the issue of regulatory capture.
- On the same theme, George Johnson’s “Cancer Cluster or Chance” makes the point that there was no clear link between contamination and cancer in Hinkley and explains the difficulty of knowing when “hazardous” effects of an exposure are actually just random.
- Whitney Campbell reminds us to never throw away electronic devices. Pass them along (to a friend/thrift shop or by freecycling) if they still work; if not, recycle them.
- Plant Village is a free, online resource where you can ask and answer plant-related questions.
- A piece on Double X Science about the variability of human vaginas, a fact we’ve taken surprisingly long to discover.
Sex, sexism and gender
- Suzi Gage responds with outrage to the idea that a different approach should be used to teach science to women (vs. men).
- Claudia is intersex and wrote about what that means.
- Two op-eds from AJE about rape: A rape a minute, a thousand corpses a year and Rewriting our rape laws in light of Steubenville. I’m not yet sure how I feel about the idea of “affirmative consent”. I think the motivation is good, but I’m concerned that it shifts the burden of proof onto the accused. If you’re interested, let’s discuss it!
Politics
- Earlier this year, Chuck Hagel was confirmed as the US Secretary of Defense. Have a look at this graph showing how many times he was asked about Afghanistan (the USA’s longest war) or Israel during his Senate confirmation hearing
- On Israel/Palestine:
- An op-ed on AJE highlights the absurdly biased meaning of “period of calm” in reports about the Occupied Territories.
- The Visualizing Palestine project created a poster about the birth and death of Palestinian babies at Israeli checkpoints.
- A picture of three Palestinian children camping at a peaceful protest near Jerusalem was posted on a Facebook page entitled “We are all in favour of death to terrorists”. The resulting racist outpouring calling for them to be killed is no less sickening for having been predictable.
- There’s a petition at change.org asking UEFA not to let Israel host the 2013 European Under-21 Championship. I signed it; I hope you will, too.
Visual arts
- Amy Swartz combines body parts from toys and insects in her strange, fantastic creations.
- French artist Hubert Duprat collaborated with caddis fly larvae by giving them bits of gold and semi-precious stones to produce unique works of art.
- A powerfully moving photo-essay about domestic violence by Sara Naomi Lewkowicz.
- Alex Wild’s gallery of amazing ant mimics.
- Hasan Kale paints incredibly small pictures of Istanbul on butterfly wings and cactus spines.
Other
- Alex Brown launched his new blog by writing about false friends in a post that generated plenty of discussion. You should check it out if you enjoy languages — in fact, you should probably follow Alex’s blog.
- I learned quite a lot from this excellent article about lip-reading and signing by Rachel Kolb, who has been deaf since birth.
- I’ve made a Facebook page for Inspiring Science. If you like the blog, “like” the page and you can get updates directly in your timeline!
Just for fun
- I loved Mary Roach’s TED talk “10 things you didn’t know about orgasm” so much that I bought her book, Bonk. I’m planning to post a review once I’ve read it — and then maybe buy more of her books. (Yes, OK, it’s not hard to get me to buy books. In case any publishers out there are reading this: it’s also not hard to get me to review books — just get in touch!)
- Does your cat walk on your keyboard? They’ve been doing that for nearly 600 years….
- A horror story about smartphones by Joseph Scrimshaw.
That’s all from me!
Inspiring Science 
Congrats on your published paper!! I recently submitted the first paper from my lab that related pharmacology and planarian regeneration… Fingers crossed!
Thanks! Good luck with your submission — hopefully they won’t keep you waiting too long. 🙂
Intersex? Now there’s something completely new to me. I didn’t know it was biologically feasibly to have genitals of one sex, but chromosomes of another O.o
In that case, I’m really glad I included that link! I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a post about intersex & sex development — maybe I should do it.