Tapped into the Earth (.com) » University

A medical classic gets a 21st century makeover, going online and low-cost

Scientific American — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:20:00 +0000

The Oxford University Press has launched an online version of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine, complete with all the text, figures and illustrations that make up the three-volume, 6,000-page, 25-pound print behemoth. The book is a classic among generations of doctors and medical students, and it is considered the ultimate medical reference book by other professionals including lawyers and journalists. [More]

Oxford University Press – Oxford University – Medicine – Education – England

Doing Science in the Past

Scientific American — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:00:00 +0000

History is not often thought of as a science, but it can be if it uses the “comparative method.” Jared Diamond, professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and James A. Robinson, professor of government at Harvard University, employ the method effectively in the new book they have co-edited, Natural Experiments of History (Harvard University Press, 2010). In a timely study comparing Haiti with the Dominican Republic, for example, Diamond demonstrates that although both countries inhabit the same island, Hispaniola, because of geopolitical differences one ended up dirt poor while the other flourished.

Christopher Columbus’s brother Bartolomeo colonized Hispaniola in 1496 for Spain, establishing the capital at Santo Domingo on the eastern side of the island. Two centuries later, during tensions between France and Spain, the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 granted France dominion over the western half of the island. Because France was richer than Spain at this time and slavery was an integral part of its economy, it turned western Hispaniola into a center of slave trade with staggering differences in population: about 500,000 slaves in the western side of the island as compared with only 15,000 to 30,000 slaves in the eastern side.

[More]

Hispaniola – Dominican Republic – Haiti – Jared Diamond – France

Building a Better Biofuel: A New Carbon-Neutral Approach Turns Carbohydrates into Hydrocarbons

Scientific American — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0000

When Randy Cortright of the University of Wisconsin found an aromatic fluid floating in his beaker that smelled just like gasoline, he thought he had a problem. After all, the chemical engineer wanted to make fuel from plants for the hydrogen economy that was supposed to boom about now. Instead, when he put the fluid in a chromatograph, he found it had all the hydrocarbon components of a high-octane gasoline . [More]

To sleep, perchance to dream–and learn

Scientific American — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:55:00 +0000

Dreams might be helping your brain do more than express Freudian fixations or practice escapes from prehistoric predators. They are there, in part, to help you learn, according to a new study from Harvard University. [More]

Human Uniqueness and the Future

Scientific American — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:00:00 +0000

What is human uniqueness, and how did it contribute to what we could now call behavioral modernity? How did it develop? And what implications does it have for understanding our present and future? This past February the Origins Project that I direct at Arizona State University helped to convene an interesting meeting of paleontologists, anthropologists, primatologists, evolutionary biologists, geneticists, archaeologists and psychologists to attempt to address such questions, among others.

I began the meeting by pointing out that when some people heard about its subject, they had asked me what was so unique about humans? Surely all animals are unique in their own way, and although we have special traits, so do bees and giraffes. But as my A.S.U. colleague Kim Hill has put it, “Even before the invention of agriculture, human communities may have eventually numbered around 70 million individuals … as Homo sapiens spread over the planet more broadly than any other large vertebrate. No creature on earth lives in cohesive social units that rival this complexity or biomass.”

[More]

Air Travel More Environmentally Harmful than Volcanic Ash (Redorbit.com)

Pollution and Warming - Revue de presse Earth-stream.com — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:58:26 +0000

The greenhouse gas delivered by Iceland’s erupting volcano does not compare to that spewed by Europe’s grounded aircraft. According to Durham University, carbon dioxide emissions t …

Rattlesnakes Sound Warning On Biodiversity, Habitat Fragmentation (Redorbit.com)

Pollution and Warming - Revue de presse Earth-stream.com — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:24:08 +0000

Like the canary in the coal mine, the timber rattlesnake may be telling us something about the environment we share.Cornell University researchers – using cutting-edge tools incl …

Al Gore Spoke At University Of Oklahoma Before 7000 People On Global Warming – Utube Live

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:08:41 +0000

Al Gore Spoke At University Of Oklahoma Before 7000 People On Global Warming – Utube Live
http://noolmusic.com/utube_live/al_gore_spoke_at_university_of_oklahoma_before_7000_people_on_global_warming.php

The Great Coal Debate (Itsgettinghotinhere.org)

Pollution and Warming - Revue de presse Earth-stream.com — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:54:06 +0000

Written by Will Fischer, student at Washington University
St. Louis is a good place to talk about coal. According to the US Energy Information Administration, 83.5% of the state’ …

How Volcanic Ash Plumes End Up In The Jet Stream (Redorbit.com)

Pollution and Warming - Revue de presse Earth-stream.com — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:46:17 +0000

New techniques under development could provide better tracking of volcanic plumesA University at Buffalo volcanologist, an expert in volcanic ash cloud transport, published a paper …