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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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Living in California now, I follow my third 'home' team in my life.   Growing up in Vero Beach, FL I was (and remain) a Dodgers fan because they held spring training there for 60 years.   As an adult living in Pittsburgh I was (and remain) a Pirates fan because they were the new home team.  
We've had any number of discussions about the changing face of academic research given the fact that we keep being told America doesn't do enough science education but there aren't enough jobs in research to go around.

With success in an ever-more competitive post-doctoral environment requiring more excellent science than ever to achieve the next step, it's not a surprise some will boost their standing by holding others back.
Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick shared a lab from 1956 to 1977 and in boxes of papers donated to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library, some choice bits of biology history were discovered and Nature was first with the story.   Crick thought his earlier personal papers had been thrown out by a secretary, but it turns out some still existed and had been mixed with Brenner's.
"So did you watch "Big Trouble In Little China?"  I asked Patrick.   He did, he replied, while coding away.

"So you saw what I mean.  Chinese people got a lot of Hells, which is bad, but at least they're apparently easy to find.   Western religion has just one, but good luck locating it.   In that movie they just go under some old guy's house and there it is and they get to fight Raiden(1) and stuff and save the world.   If I want to find Hell, I am stuck going into "Revelations" and that isn't much help at all."
We are a water planet but 10% of Earth is covered in ice - ice that is melting in ways that have to be a concern.   

To get a handy view of what is happening in the big areas, Greenland, the Arctic and the Antarctic, NASA have put together a Global Ice Viewer.

You can zoom in on Ilulissat Glacier, which is is depositing icebergs in cubic kilometer denominations equivalent to 9.3 trillion gallons per year - if that sounds like 14 million Olympic-sized swimming pools every 365 days, it is.  Or Antarctica, where ice shelves the size of small U.S. states have collapsed in recent years.