The Royal Wedding, Kate and William, William and Kate, and the genetics of inbreeding. Also wed: National Geographic and Scienceblogs.com. Or maybe they're just living together. Temporarily. Autism and childhood vaccines remain wedded in the minds of some. Sigh.
On science blogs
Gary Taubes takes on another dietary foe: Sugar, he declares, is not just empty calories, it causes most of what ails us, even (maybe) cancer. The BP Gulf oil spill a year later: Still an oily residue. New guidelines on early diagnosis for Alzheimer's disease: What's the point, since there's no therapy?
The Allen Human Brain Atlas at last, accentuating the similarities between Homo saps. Language may be Out of Africa too. The US science budget survives, mostly. But wait 'til next year, when it will be the liberal brain vs. the conservative brain.
As Japan suffers through a big aftershock, there are more questions about radiation and other kinds of environmental damage, and online media experiment with telling Japan's story digitally. Another kind of aftershock follows this week's big paper on hormone therapy for symptoms of menopause. It showed that HT appears to reduce the risk of heart disease and even breast cancer in some women. That should have been good news, but it mostly added to the confusion.
Homo erectus moved to India with tools about 1.5 million years ago. Homo sap moved to the New World with tools more than 15,000 years ago. Energy policy gets annotated and greenhouse gases get live-blogged. Is this the online future for science writing? The New York Times hits the wall. The pay wall. What to do about it?
After Japan's earthquake and tsunami, it's all about nuclear power plants and radiation. But how much of this stuff is reliable? Stanley Miller's origin-of-life experiments are reanalyzed. Portrait of Otzi, the Iceman.
All earthquake all the time in Japan and elsewhere. Tsunami too. Also nuclear reactor accidents and radiation. Plus free videos to help you blog your best from the New England Science Writers and ScienceOnline2011 (SciO11)
How the human brain got big. And, oh yes, how the human penis lost its spines. Microbes in meteorites vs science journalism. Jonathan Eisen vs Nature Part 2, Involuntary entrepreneurship = reluctant freelancing. Tom Lehrer sings the Periodic Table of the Elements, redacted.
Open access at Nature. Not, UPDATED: Still Not. UPDATED AGAIN: OK now. Journalism as Churnalism. The Sixth Extinction is coming, so take that, creationists!. Tag-team blogging about premenstrual dysphoric disorder
Are science writers responsible for public skepticism about climate change? Is it OK to say extreme weather can be due to global warming? Should you trust health care web sites? Can cell phones cause brain damage?