Chinese use rockets to build the tallest bridge
in the world

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 21 November 2008 09:25:00 AM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From Newlaunches.com: It's astounding to see how much engineering and construction have evolved from the early days of bridge building. However, not all problems have been resolved the same way; the biggest problem in cable bridge building is how do you get a pilot cable from one t

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-bridge-in-the-world?from_rss=1

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Increasing Diversity in the Sciences

post from Urban Science Adventures! © on 21 November 2008 09:20:00 AM. © Urban Science Adventures! ©

?The very large racial Ph.D. gap in the natural sciences is striking when we examine black Ph.D. awards in specific disciplines.? * I am all-too-familiar with this fact. I am the only African-American Ph.D. student in my academic department. That will make me the second African-American to earn a doctorate in Biology from my institution. People spout off statistics all of the time, in fact I heard that on average there are only 10 Black Ph.D.s in Biology a year. That seems low, but the fact is Blacks who obtain doctorate degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is often a single digit percentage point.
* Quote from the article Doctoral Degree Awards to African Americans Reach Another All-Time High in Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

Faced with these numbers I am relieved to discover programs that aim to attract and retain more Black students to study math and science. I recently learned about the Benjamin Banneker Institute for Science and Technology. The Institution spearheads a variety of programs with one goal in mind: increase the participation of young people in science and technology. One of their programs is the Decade of Blacks in Science 2007-2017.

(From the website)
The Decade of Blacks in Science is a campaign to mobilize, co-ordinate and coalesce the human and material resources needed to solve the problem of the low level of participation by African Americans in STEM fields.

However, this lack of representation isn?t just a concern of Black Academics. It is on the agenda of the entire scientific community. Universities and Professional Science Organizations alike have committees that are devoted to this very topic ? increasing diversity ? in the classroom, the laboratory, and the professoriate.

But it all starts with one question. What is going on with the pipeline?
How can we encourage students to major in science in college? How can we encourage them to go to graduate school? Where can we find qualified students to recruit into Ph.D. programs?

First, students of color, and of particular interest to me, Black students need to accept the idea that science is a viable, realistic, and pursuable career and line of study. More and more we realize we need to reach students at younger ages. High school may be too late to cultivate an interest in science ? at least it seems so. Second, recruitment strategies may need change. Most doctorate degrees in STEM are obtained at majority institutions, however historically Black institutions produce more students with bachelor degrees who go on to complete Ph.D.s.** HBCUs are essentially preparatory programs for future Black Scientists and Engineers.
** From the article Who Produces Black PhDs? In Inside Higher Ed

I plan to spend some time discussing pipeline and retention of students of color in the sciences at the ScienceOnline09 Conference this January during the Race in science ? online and offline Workshop. In the meantime, I encourage you to share with me your thoughts and proposed solutions to this diversity issue.

Article originally posted at YBPGuide.com

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ersity-in-sciences.html

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Tiger Wine

post from Observations of a Nerd on 21 November 2008 09:14:08 AM. © Observations of a Nerd

Tigers are the largest of the big cats in the Panthera genus which also includes the Lion, Jaguar, and Leopard. There are six living subspecies, of which all are endangered. They occupy only 7% of their original range, and population estimates are perpetually declining. There are only somewhere around 4,900 tigers left in the wild. One subspecies, the South China Tiger, is almost certain to go extinct in our lifetime with only about 20 individuals left in the wild.

So, normally, you'd be happy to hear that they can be bred in captivity in China, and routinely are. Normally, you'd think 'that's great! Maybe these animal parks can help repopulate the wild.' Normally.

Then you'd find out that the zookeepers at Xiongsen Bear & Tiger Zoo in China were killing the endangered cats, serving the meat as a snack and then dropping the carcasses into vats of wine to create "Tiger Wine," a prized alternative medicine. The Environmental Investigation Agency staff were offered such tiger wine at at another 'animal park' as well.

The idea of this simply makes me sick to my stomach. Clearly I'm an animal lover, and the mere thought of killing such a majestic and powerful animal as a tiger is simply unfathomable.

Tiger Wine Bottle

A Bottle of "Tiger Wine"
China has supposedly banned the trade in tiger products since 1993, but that doesn't seem to have deterred the underground slaughterhouse business much. There are an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 captive-bred tigers in farms which are known to kill for profit, and a survey found seventeen instances of tiger wine for sale on Chinese auction websites, one of which was a 5,000-bottle lot. Although both international and domestic trade in tiger bone is banned, some facilities openly market products containing tiger, even in other languages for tourists. They also stockpile tiger carcasses in the hope that legalized tiger trade will be reopened.

Tiger bone steeped in wine is thought to relieve human bone ailments like arthritis, although there is no scientific evidence to support such theories. Wild tigers' bones are particularly prized since they are considered more 'potent' than their domesticated peers.

In my opinion, China's government needs to come down hard on such places and make an example of them. But no, instead it's more likely that they might lift the trade ban due to internal pressures from these slaughterhouses. Such a move would be an unbelievably huge mistake. It costs 250 times as much to raise a tiger for products than it does to find one in the wild and kill it - so where do you think the legal tiger parts will come from?

Of course, we're no saints here in the U.S., either. There are an estimated 12,000 tigers owned as pets in the states - that's 3-4 times the wild population. There are an estimated 4,000 pet tigers in Texas alone. Tigers, while beautiful, make terrible pets because they are powerful, wild animals, and are often abused or killed when they get too 'big' to manage. Sixteen states don't even have regulations against owning them, and only nineteen actually ban the practice.

How anyone can justify the murder and trade of these amazing endangered animals is truly incomprehensible. The mere idea makes me nauseous. I hope that the government in China realizes how precious a gift their native tigers are, and does everything they can to protect them - before it's too late.

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Friday Fun: Penguin Evades Orcas

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 21 November 2008 09:10:00 AM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

video details and more

A penguin takes sanctuary on a boat while killer whales circle.

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Research Inside the National Museum of Natural
History

post from Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) on 21 November 2008 08:59:59 AM. © Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

tags: Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History, research, science, streaming video

This streaming video is part one of a four-part series by the Smithsonian Institute. It features some of the scientists who work behind the scenes at the National Museum of Natural History, aka, the Smithsonian. In this video, you'll catch a glimpse of some of my colleagues from when I was a postdoc [2:32].

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

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nside_the_national_m.php

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The Strength Of A Female Mate Preference
Increases With Predation Risk

post from ZAMP Bionews on 21 November 2008 08:39:34 AM. © ZAMP Bionews

Females often encounter predators as they look for mates. Not surprisingly, as predation risk increases, females usually search less and they less often prefer males that use conspicuous signals.To the contrary, when we experimentally increased predation[...]

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A New Stem Turtle From The Middle Jurassic Of
Scotland: New Insights On The Evolution And Palaeoecology Of Basal Turtles

post from ZAMP Bionews on 21 November 2008 08:39:00 AM. © ZAMP Bionews

The Isle of Skye, Scotland, has yielded the remains of a new species of primitive turtle, Eileanchelys waldmani.Eileanchelys dates from the Middle Jurassic period (164 million years old) and is represented by multiple skulls and shells: it is the most[...]

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Oral Gefitinib As Effective As Injected Docetaxel
For Survival Of Patients With Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer (Interest Study)

Gefitnib is as effective a second-line treatment as docetaxel for patients with non-small cell* lung cancer. The INTEREST study, published in an Article in this week’s edition of The Lancet, thus establishes gefitinib as a valid treatment option[...]

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Appalling Failures Of Uk Government In Health
Care Of Children In Detention Centres

The appalling failures in the health care of children in detention centres, which are the ultimate responsibility of the UK Home Office, are discussed in the lead Editorial in this week’s Lancet.About 2000 children up to the age of 18 years are[...]

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Scientists Discover New Species Of Ebola Virus

Scientists report the discovery of a new species of Ebola virus, provisionally named Bundibugyo ebolavirus, November 21 in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens. The virus, which was responsible for a hemorrhagic fever outbreak in western Uganda in[...]

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