Science online, inhospitable conditions edition

Precarious, yes, but he’s protecting his sperm count. Photo by Ed Yourdon.
  • Don’t roast your junk, dude. Scicurious takes on the recent study showing that laptop computers can raise dudes’ scrotal temperatures, putting their sperm at risk. (Neurotic Physiology)
  • In case you needed another reason to hate them. A grad student specializing in mutation repair mechanisms considers the risk of the TSA’s new X-ray backscatter body scanners. (My Helical Tryst)
  • Too late to change the name to Phoenix? The neuroscience blog carnival Encephalon is back, in spades. (A Blog Around the Clock)
  • It’s that time of year again. Bora kicks off the lead-up to ScienceOnline 2011 with a series of posts introducing registered participants. (A Blog Around the Clock)
  • More than cat videos. Jonathan Eisen lists the ways blogging and microblogging have contributed to his scientific career. (The Tree of Life)
  • Actually, it’s just an eternal dissertation defense. Neuroskeptic imagines what scientific Hell would be like. (Neuroskeptic)
  • Waterproof sunscreen, anyone? Depletion of the ozone layer may mean whales are at greater risk of sunburn—and skin cancer. (Mental Floss, original article in Proc. Royal Soc. B)
  • Preadaptation for the win. One of the few Australian predators that can tolerate invasive cane toads is a snake that may have evolved the tolerance in response to selection from toxic prey in its ancestral range. (Oh, For the Love of Science)
  • NASA has not found extraterrestrial life. But it has found bacteria that use arsenic in place of phosphorous, which means there’s one more form extraterrestrial life could take. (Nature News, NY Times, Not Exactly Rocket Science; original article in Science [$a])

Regarding that last item, I’ll give the final word to good ol’ xkcd.

Comic by xkcd.

One thought on “Science online, inhospitable conditions edition

  1. I would have thought that a finding like the arsenic-based DNA could not possibly be oversold, AND YET.

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