Judith Shulevitz on how she reconciles her faith in science with her religious faith:

What we’re discovering is that we’re enormously malleable. We’re really responsive to our environment in a physical sense, but also in a psychological sense, in the sense that stress is one of the really big forces in epigenetic changes. So the malleability of the human body seems to me an argument for creating a better community, a better society, and that’s what I love about religion: is that it’s a place where you can turn for ideas about the good society. I recognize — as many people go around arguing — that religion can be used as a force for bad — but it can also be used as a source of ideas that drive us to the greater good. So I turn to science to tell us how to live and I turn to religion to tell us how to live and I follow neither of them slavishly.

steroge:

2012: The Year in Volcanic Activity

latimes:

This cute animal photo just made you a better worker: Study says looking at adorable little ones can make you more concentrated and productive.

Tests showed that an image of fluffy little critters “not only improves fine motor skills but also increases perceptual carefulness.” They could be used “to induce careful behavioral tendencies in specific situations, such as driving and office work,” according to the report.

Justification to sneak an occasional peek at the CorgiCam or I Can Has Cheezburger? We think yes.

What’s your experience?

YES. YES. YES. Good news for all of us.

Scientists are just like novelists in a way. We’re all trying to tell a good story that explains how the world works and we’re interested in understanding how it works in exactly the same way that perhaps the early philosophers were. But we have much better tools with which to dissect it and understand it today. And the thing about science is it’s always based on the facts. So if facts change and you discover new ones or many more new facts don’t fit the old ones, then you have to change the story. That’s how major scientific revolutions happen, as, for example, when people suddenly realized that the earth goes around the sun. So science is indeed a theory. But I really like what the very famous American physicist [Richard] Feynman said. He said, ‘Science is imagination in a strait jacket’. We are constrained by all the things which we already know, so you can’t simply conjure a story out of the air. It has to explain all the current facts and the new ones that have just been discovered. And it has to make predictions that can then be tested to see whether in fact that story continues to hold when we know even more information.

Frances Ashcroft on how science and scientists work

Trace amounts of pesticides, dioxin and a jet fuel ingredient – as well as high-to-average levels of flame retardants.

— 

When science journalist Florence Williams was nursing her second child, she read a research study about toxins found in human breast milk. She decided to test her own breast milk and shipped a sample to a lab in Germany.

What came back surprised her.

Breasts: Bigger And More Vulnerable To Toxins

Today’s show: why breasts are getting bigger, why breast milk isn’t as pure as you think it is, why breast cancer rates are increasing…[show link here]

3/6/10 (by kristiniscool - 365Project)

Tomorrow: Breasts are getting bigger and arriving earlier. And breast milk might not be as pure as you think it is. We’ll talk to science writer Florence Williams about her new book, Breasts.

Sprinkler Alarms (by spronkey)

Tomorrow: a social history of breasts with science writer Florence Williams

My Peaks are Stiff ~ Cliché Saturday (by Bunny Spice)

On today’s show: the science of exercise with tips for both experienced marathoners and couch to 5k’ers.

Spray and Pray (by Fadzly @ Shutterhack)

historical-nonfiction:

The fifties, ladies and gentlemen

Literally two days later, she started feeling better and a couple weeks later, when they went to sample the bacteria that was there, they couldn’t find the C. difficile anymore. It was just gone. The only thing they had done was essentially restore her ecology, essentially like restoring a wetland.

— Carl Zimmer wrote about a patient infected with the Clostridium difficile bacteria, which causes severe diarrhea and can frequently return, even when treated with antibiotics. The patient was treated with a transfusion of gut microbials from a healthy individual’s fecal material to restore the bacterial flora in her intestinal tract.

radiomint:

HIV Virus

Tomorrow: Science writer Carl Zimmer talks about the hunt for a ‘penicillin-like’ anti-viral medication.

Tomorrow: Carl Zimmer on anti-viral drugs, fecal transplants and curating scientific tattoos.  [Aren’t you glad this is a picture of a scientific tattoo and not you-know-what?]

We’re back after a short break, and decided to start the New Year off with something light. You know, black holes, Hawking radiation, the theory of everything, the Hadron Collider. The typical post-holiday chitchat.

The topic today? Stephen Hawking and his contributions to science. Guest: science writer Kitty Ferguson. She’s worked extensively with Hawking and just published a new biography about him.