It's the supreme medical issue of them all: What is to become of Obamacare? The US Supreme Court heard legal arguments about the Affordable Care Act this week, and one conclusion is that the pre-hearing rosy forecasts may have been legally sound, but now seem daft. Herewith, a selection of facts and opinions about the three days of SCOTUS arguments and the future of US health care.
On science blogs
Huzzah, aspirin prevents cancer and heart disease! Maybe. These American Lies: Department of Climate Change. These American Lies: Department of Apple, Science Journals, and Science Writing.
Synthetic biology: a critique from 111 organizations and a dose of realism from a synthetic biologist. A year later, Fukushima and the future of nuclear power. More synbio: Engineering Homo sap to cope with climate change.
The new iPad! Sorta. Brain Awareness Week! Critiquing brain imaging studies. Can an MRI predict future performance on new tasks? The last ape genome: Gorilla gorilla gorilla. Is an auditory system gene a gene for speech? Genetics of complex traits. The resurrection of the Solutrean Hypothesis; were the First Americans really Europeans? The complexities of ancient human migrations.
How many neurons in the human brain, and where did the traditional number — 100 billion — come from? Ötzi-the-Iceman's genome revealed. Trying to write science for women's magazines and other mass media. New rules for statins. Heartsick about the Heartland climate change email scandal. Open sesame for Open Access. For now.
AAAS meeting blogging. Are the enemies of science growing or just getting louder? A microbe field guide? Primate moral outrage over inequality. Those purloined Heartland climate change documents: the surprising villain, the textual analysis, and the education scheme. The first watery exoplanet, misexplained. FTL neutrinos, not so fast. Download the Universe and the future of science ebooks.
The sad state of SETI and of space exploration. NASA budget dooms planetary expeditions. Bad infographics of bad science. Deceptive docs. A new stolen email scandal besets some climate change folks, and this time deniers are the targets. Darwin's papers online. Dark matter is everywhere. Wall Street loves dopamine. Videos: Flying robot jugglers and the aurora borealis.
Archaic genomes and archaic behavior: The Neandertal within. The Denisovan DNA sequence is made public. Why the Komen-Planned Parenthood mess should cheer you up. Plus contraception, biological anthropology, the connected brain, Steve Jobs' FBI files, clinical trials, social media viewed from 2062, the politics of climate change, Mount Etna eruption video, and — don't miss this one — The Scale of the Universe.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure looks to be on life-support after defunding Planned Parenthood. A new theory-of-everything calls into question the peer-review process and institutional public-information offices. Yet more on #SciO12: the music video, the enemies of science, and making book on e-books.
All about ScienceOnline2012 (#SciO12). The meeting, the people, the blogging, the videos, the commentary, the tweets, the Storifies.