In the prior post I gave a general definition and overview of peak oil for those that have yet to track this development.  Until recently, the brightest minds unencumbered by vested oil interests have strongly suggested, and with good documentation, that the world could well run out of extractable petroleum sometime around the mid twenty-first century.

Scientists using NASA satellite data have found strong evidence that a major earthquake can lead to a nearly immediate increase in regional volcanic activity.

The intensity of two ongoing volcanic eruptions on Indonesia’s Java Island increased sharply three days following a powerful, 6.4-magnitude earthquake on the island in May 2006. The increased volcanic activity persisted for about nine days.

The 11,000 members of three scientific societies with its roots in agriculture have been closely watching the reports coming out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It is the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report released on April 6, "Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis" that points to the direct consequences of climate change. Leading scientists from all over the world contributed to the latest installment of this report that attributes ecosystem changes to human-induced global warming. Following the release of the report, the presidents of the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) issued this statement today:

Got milk? Weightlifters will want to raise a glass after a new study found that milk protein is significantly better than soy at building muscle mass.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers at McMaster University’s Department of Kinesiology, was recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It compared how much muscle protein young men gained after completing a heavy weight workout followed by consumption of equivalent amounts of protein as either fluid skim milk or a soy drink.

In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of suicide in the U.S., researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that suicide rates among children, women and men of all ages are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the April 2007 issue of The Journal of Trauma.

"We found that where there are more guns, there are more suicides," said Matthew Miller, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at HSPH and lead author of the study.

Society’s disapproval of alcohol, tobacco and gambling means that some investors -- mostly public institutions -- lose out while other investors gain on these undervalued “sin stocks,” according to a study conducted by the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

Sauder Prof. Marcin Kacperczyk and co-author Prof. Harrison Hong of Princeton University analyzed stock markets and the impact they feel from society’s framework of morals, traditions and laws.

The blogosphere is all lit up with views and commentary on the "Framing Science" article by Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney. Interesting discussion can be found at Sandwalk, A Blog Aroung The Clock (and links within), Pharyngula, as well as Matthew Nisbet's site. Essentially, the article argues that scientists are losing the battle of popular opinion because they don't frame science in a way that normal folk can relate to. People glaze over when someone start to talk science. Unless scientists and science writers get better at communicating with the public, so the argument goes, we will lose valuable mind-space to interests that are better "framers", such as Conservative politicians and the Intelligent Design movement. If only scientists could choose better words, use friendlier concepts, and be more inclusive, surely everyone would see things our way, and society would be ruled by the concepts of pure science and reason.

As far as I can tell (and I'm not the first to say it), "framing" is little more than a neo-term for rhetoric, a.k.a. "spin". Nisbet and Mooney have framed rhetoric in a new way to make it new and exciting for scientists again.

Planting and protecting trees—which trap and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow—can help to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study suggests that, as a way to fight global warming, the effectiveness of this strategy depends heavily on where these trees are planted. In particular, tropical forests are very efficient at keeping the Earth at a happy, healthy temperature.

The researchers, including Ken Caldeira of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology and Govindasamy Bala at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, found that because tropical forests store large amounts of carbon and produce reflective clouds, they are especially good at cooling the planet.

Female stem cells derived from muscle have a greater ability to regenerate skeletal muscle tissue than male cells, according to a study at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

The study, which is being published in the April 9 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology, is the first ever to report a difference in regenerative capabilities of muscle stem cells based on sex.