Glacier Sticks Out Tongue - Scientists Say Aaaah!


Ice tongues are a fascinating area of study.
They have much to teach us about the life cycles of glaciers.

The CDF collaboration has recently released new results from a search for what is probably the clearest signature of Higgs boson decay: pairs of high-mass photon candidates. I am very glad to see this new analysis out for publication, since so far only DZERO, CDF's competitor at the Tevatron, had produced results on this particular final state.
“Is religion a science?” This may seem an odd question with which to start, but this is the very first question Aquinas asks in his monumental Summa Theologica. “Among the philosophical sciences one is speculative the other practical [natural philosophy], nevertheless sacred doctrine [Roman Catholicism] includes both; as God, by one and the same science, knows both Himself and His works.” For Aquinas, not only is theology both a speculative and natural philosophy but it is also superior to both, in as much as it is guided by divine knowledge, which cannot be misled, and has as its end ultimate bliss, towards which all other sciences strive too.
Let's Start Using Our (Si) Brains


scientists have sequenced the human genome -- the blueprint for all of the proteins in biology -- but how can we understand what these proteins do and how they work?

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Here are the top ten science headlines ripped, raw and bleeding, from this month's huge AAAS uber-science meeting. The National Association of Science Writers sponsored 10 undergraduate science journalists. Here is their coverage, arranged using my own arbitrary ranking from harder science down through the squishier marshes of policy and ending at the meta-topic of science education.  (Or follow this this link for the full stories.)

Comp Sci
Simulations make earthquake hazards less shaky ELIZABETH STOREY

Migraine sufferers have long complained about how their headaches worsen with bright light, and in case you ever doubted their complaints, Rami Burstein and other researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah recently made a giant step in understanding the light-to-headache mechanism in Nature Neuroscience. They found neurons in the rat thalamus sensitive to both light and to the dura (the membrane surrounding the brain).
CRACICE Team's Cracked Ice Study Goes Crack!

A team of scientists has been studying two cracks in an ice tongue to see if they would meet.  During that study the tongue was rammed by a giant iceberg. 

The team studying the development of two major cracks in the Mertz Glacier Tongue has captured a sequence of satellite images showing how a giant iceberg, B-9B, rammed the tongue they were studying and broke it off.
Pitfalls Of Science Journalism

How do we fix it so that journalists can again be the 'trusted guides' they used to be?

If you are going to write about science and want the public to trust what you are saying to them then you need to understand three simple facts.  


fact #1 Many scientists lack basic language skills

A possible new solution to a 163-year-old biology puzzle - why animals grow bigger in cold climates - may have been found, according to researchers who say ecological factors can now be added to physiological ones.

The results were published in The American Naturalist and they say it offers new insight into 'Bergmann’s rule', an ecogeographic notion that correlates latitude with body mass in animals - animals grow larger at high, cold latitudes than their counterparts closer to