Monday Science Links

This week's Science:

• Karen at The Beagle Project blogs on her own research on plant evolution: A third approach, and the one I am going to go with, is to tell the whole story of this project: the blood, sweat and occasional tears, not just the part that appears in the paper itself. This will be by far more interesting than a simple recap of the key findings of the paper itself (which, as I said, you can get elsewhere). Moreover, the whole story illuminates the reality of the scientific process in a way that's intelligible to the non-scientist; well, that's my aim anyways.


• Bee at Back Reaction posts on the meanings of Models and Theories: Words can lead to misunderstandings in the communication of science if their scientific usage has a meaning other than the colloquial one. Examples for this are abundant, like the words 'significant' (see 'Statistical Significance' ), 'optimal' (see 'Optimum'), or 'simple' (see 'Simple Lie Group'). "Model" and "theory" are both words that physicists use frequently, and often with a different meaning than attached to it in the colloquial language. Since we on this blog write about models and theories all the time, I thought it worthwhile to clarify what I mean with that. Disclaimer: This isn't meant to be a definition, just a clarification. As with all language related issues there is a large grayscale to a word's applicability. I am not claiming the following is a standard for usage-of-words.


• Kim at All My Faults Are Stress-Related has been watching the Mississippi basin and what he sees is disturbing: There are at least three things that scare me on this map. 1) All those black triangles represent places where the rivers are above flood stage. Look how many of them there are!


• erv at ERV posts on building a better vaccine: I can't imagine being a physician 60 years ago, with this picture being an every-day reality: Row after row of kids with paralyzed diaphragms, locked in iron lungs. Polio.


• Jan Newton blogs at Zenobia: Empress of the East on the origins of chess: It is popularly believed that after its invention in northern India, chess was introduced into Persia in the mid-6th century CE, from there spreading eastward to China (along the Silk Road) and, after the Islamic Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century CE, spread by the Arabs and trade routes slowly over the ensuing centuries to the rest of Europe, eastern Africa, Scandinavia and Russia...It could be just as likely that chess travelled from Persia to India, not the other way around!