• We’re sad to report the passing of the eminent Early Modernist historian, Lisa Jardine.
• A new approach to federal heart research funding: raise the peaks and archive the valleys.
• New digital humanities project allowing you to “explore the early modern social network”–Six Degrees of Francis Bacon.
• Why we have no f***ing idea how to computationally simulate a human brain.
• The galaxy that got too big: why bigger isn’t always better.
• On galaxies and stars, a beautiful article on the most mysterious star in our galaxy.
• Better living through venom?
• Paul Kedrosky’s sociology of engineering explanation of one of our favorite subjects, the VW emissions scandal.
• And finally, we had a wonderful time at the 2015 Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine, and Evan wrote a round-up of his time at this year’s SHOT in the land of Breaking Bad.

I spent last weekend in Albuquerque, at the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) annual meeting. On the way from the airport to my motel, the cab driver took me on an unsolicited “Breaking Bad” tour of the city. We saw the motel where lots of drug deals went down in the show (and, he noted, in real life.) We skirted the parking garage that was the site of a significant plot development. We waved hello to Jesse Pinkman’s house.

Local color, “European hospitality.” Who needs the conference hotel?

In the spirit of my cab ride, here’s an ad hoc excursion through a few things that went on over the weekend. Continue reading →

• Mice (aka Major Tom) as harbingers of human expansion.
• Mars had LAKES!
• On metaphysics and science–why science can’t tell us whether science can tell us everything.
• Announcing Tropy, a Mellon-funded digital tool designed to help researchers organize, share, edit, and search the images they take in the archives.
• New climate change finding: rising sea temperatures (along with climatological events) have been bleaching our coral reefs.
• The money you spent on your calc textbook went to build an incredible house.
• Why did Europe’s weather model get Hurricane Joaquin right, while America’s model got it so wrong?
• A legend passes.
• Scientists test ape memory using some hilarious techniques.
• Did America’s tea trade with China create our first millionaires?
• Just in case you don’t want to win a Nobel Prize.
• “An object lesson in what happens when STEM majors don’t take enough courses in the humanities.”
• “Pharm-bitrage“: buy cheap drug brands without generic competitors, jack up prices, and profit while generics await approval.
• The folly of big science awards.
• And finally, did you catch our new posts on what Reddit can tell us about the future of science and on blood, bones, and a new T. rex for the Smithsonian’s Fossil Hall?

http://paleobiology.si.edu/

On October 1^st, NPR featured a story on the construction of the “nation’s T. rex,” a nearly complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton set to be the crown jewel of the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum’s new Fossil Hall, opening in 2019. The dinosaur, somewhat disappointingly nicknamed the “Wankel T.” (after the Montana rancher who discovered in in 1988), will, indeed, stand out among other dinosaur skeletons for some visible—and not-so-visible—reasons. Maybe most obviously, the Wankel T. is being displayed in a “natural” state of carnivory: rather than standing straight up, small arms waving prostrate in the air, the Wankel will be shown bent down, tearing into the flesh of a dead triceratops. Preparators hope that this life-like scene of consumption, though perhaps a bit disturbing to triceratops lovers, will capture the imagination of young visitors while encouraging a sort of “nature in action” form of display. Even more significant to paleontologists, though, is the fact that the Wankel is constructed with mostly real bones.

Continue reading →