Pictures of the day - 9 April











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Conflicts of Interests in Science

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(Image : Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher, mathematician and poet from the 16th century. He was burned in 1600 by the Roman inquisition, for saying that universe was infinite, that stars were distant suns, and other things he probably should have kept for later. Image from an animated segment of the movie “Cosmos : A Spacetime Odyssey ”. Most of people whom ever read a scientific article, be it by choice or obligation, should have noticed this sentence, most likely before kicking off the festivities: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This sentence, which appears as an automatic formula, deserves a short discussion, as in these few words lies a huge deal of questions on ethics and scientific conduct, especially in our mad modern world. In its enterprise to understand the natural world, Science has knowledge and discovery for sole purposes. Science is foreign to the logic of benefit, cost and maximum profit that rules currently our modern, ...
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A Story of Skulls and Bias

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Facing a problem, a questioning or uncertainty, men always found great teaching in history. Hence, this interesting and controversial episode in the history of Science this article wishes to narrate. The first character of today’s tale is called Samuel George Morton. This natural scientist, issued from a 18th century Pennsylvanian colony of quakers, wrote between 1839 and 1849 his three volumes of Crania Americana. As this title suggests, its work focused on measuring size of skulls from people of America. It earned him a grim reputation, as it remained in memories as an attempt to prove that Caucasian having larger skulls, they were intellectually superior to other humans. A first shade of truth manipulation could be noted here, as a slight further investigation on Crania Americana reveals the objective of Morton was in reality to prove there were several different human species, and not just one. Just as wrong as the previous assumption, but carrying a different type of message. ...
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A future for filter feeders

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Hi there! Welcome to our blog on the EMBC+ spring school 2017! We are enthusiastic marine biology students. For the following days, we’ll keep you up to date with our daily activities on the lovely island of Tjärnö in Sweden. Please meet the team! From left to right: (Top) Maria Santos, Jessica Petereit, Elise Vissenaekens, Aleksandra Juszkiewicz, Heather Cyr, (Bottom) Ee Zin Ong (supervisor) and Dumas Deconcinck. Together we are going to study the effect future global warming trends might have on commercial filter feeders, like mussels and oysters. More specifically, we’ll study how higher temperatures and less salty water influence their feeding and breathing. If the mussels and oysters are stressed, they are expected to eat less. Today, we had a challenge setting up the experiment. First, we had to go to the island of Saltö for “musselhunting”. Like you can see in the group picture above, no spear- or archery-skills were needed. We took buckets, wading suits, spades, and k...
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