Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• ERV at her self-named blog (or is she the eponymous ERV?) blogs on unbalanced bird ovaries and RNA: Weird science fact of the day Girl birds only have a left ovary. The right one kinda develops, and then regresses. Left ovary is the only one that works. All birds. Wait... what? What the hell? What kind of evolutionary weirdness led to this absurdity? I bet you guessed an ERV is involved :D


• Frank at The Sciencepunk Blog posts a video telling us that the world won't end in 2012: I quite like this science smackdown from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse. The world needs more robust, funny, scientists on TV.


• Over at Skulls in the Stars is a defense of 'dull' scientists: The article suggests that modern scientists are appreciably less intelligent — “dull” — than their predecessors, producing only mediocre and “incremental” science. The reason for this, Charlton suggests, is that the lengthy educational process required to become a research scientist deters smart and creative people from pursuing the career and instead encourages people who are not easily deterred (”conscientious”) and who tend not to make waves (”agreeable”). Since, the argument goes, creative people is opposed to agreeableness, the educational system churns out people who just want to get along and don’t want to do good science. Chad already did a nice job pointing out that, in physics at least, there are plenty of genius scientists who were also very easy to get along with. I thought I’d start by taking a stab at criticizing the central thesis of the article: modern scientists are “dull”. (And don't miss Chad's post at Uncertain Principles, mentioned above, either.)


• Revere at Effect Measure wonders what killed people in the 1918 flu epidemic: A curious paper on the 1918 flu pandemic appeared this month in CDC's journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. It seemed provocative, at least on the surface. It claimed that the conventional wisdom underlying pandemic flu preparations was wrong. It's not the flu virus we should be defending ourselves against but the common bugs of the upper respiratory tract that take advantage of new fertile ground to grow in after the flu virus invades.


• Phil at Bad Astronomy dissects a photo from the ISS: Oh how I love this picture.Of course I love shots of the Moon, but this speaks volumes. Note the Earth just below the Moon; the ISS was seeing the Moon through the top of Earth’s atmosphere. As you may know, light bends when it passes from one medium to another, like from water to air, which is why a spoon in a glass looks bent. The same is true when light passes from a vacuum through air; it bends. In fact, the amount the light bends depends on the angle it intercepts the boundary; so that light coming in from one direction may get bent more than if it comes in from another.

Enjoy!