Monday (okay, Tuesday) Science Links

The week's science links (late due to travel):

• Starting out with something not directly science, here are two related posts by Female Science Professor on attending a workshop: At the international workshop I have been attending, I am the only American person, and as usual, I am somewhat exotic in other respects as well. When I was introduced to a senior scientist I had not met before, we talked about scientific topics of mutual interest at first (I seem to have reviewed two of his papers, apparently positively, because he thanked me and seemed pleased to talk to me). Then he told me: “I once worked with a Female Scientist.” In fact, I think she may even have been his advisor, or at least on his Ph.D. committee. It’s kind of hard to know how to respond to that. He was trying to make friendly conversation, and perhaps he feared that I had preconceptions about him based on stereotypes of male scientists from his country. But what can I say?


• Bee at Back Reaction is also at a conference, with several posts: I seriously hate conferences. Surprisingly, I find myself enjoying SciFoo. The atmosphere is very relaxed, people are indeed interested in being here and talking to each other. At conferences I usually go, people deliver their talk, chat with the same group of friends, and leave as soon as possible. After some years then, you know all the talks, you know all the jokes, you know who is going to ask which question or make which comment. Inevitably, you end up drinking too much coffee, eating to many cookies, and I have to remind myself constantly to socialize more while wondering why I'm even spending money on that nonsense. In contrast to that, most of the talks here at SciFoo are semi-prepared.... Here, the sessions are all one hour, and there's either one or a few people who give a brief talk (with or without slides) followed by an extended discussion. It works very well - I haven't witnesses a single instant of somebody trying to show off with some unrelated explanation nobody was interested in. A lot of people add experiences from other fields. There is a substantial amount of science meta-talk here, i.e. questions of how science works, or how its relation is to the public.


• Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science blogs on some research showing athletes in colors have an advantage - with the refs: For a sportsman, sometimes pay to have the referee seeing red. In some sports, a simple red garment can give an athlete a competitive advantage because the striking hues draws the focus of the referee. With a delightfully simple but beautifully crafted experiment, Norbert Hagemann at the University of Munster found that refs have a tendency to award more points to red-garbed competitiors.


• Stephen at Quintessence of Dust explains why he's not a fan of Michael Behe, despite being a Christian himself: Michael Behe's name has come up around here a lot lately. During the lovefest over on Uncommon Descent, they mentioned him both as a scientist and as a Martyr, and here on QoD, a regular commenter named Bilbo has mentioned Behe a few times, noting that he finds Behe's argument in The Edge of Evolution compelling. Michael Behe is a Christian who accepts common ancestry and an ancient cosmos, so you'd think I would be excited about the work of a fellow "theistic evolutionist." But I'm not.
  


• And finally, a post that's technically from last week, but still cool: at Clastic Detritus not much posting is going on because he's been in Patagonia doing field research: A paper for a component of my PhD work is finally in press (woo hoo!). I will put together a post about it once it’s uploaded to Sedimentology’s website. Before that though, I wanted to describe the general setting and show some photographs of my field area. The paper is about a detailed outcrop study of deep-marine stratigraphy at a mountain called Cerro Divisadero in southern Chile. First, I will take you through a series of maps zooming in on the area.

Enjoy!