Awaiting the Groundhog

http://www.electronicbeats.net/beyond-fela-a-guide-to-early-african-electronic-music/
From Electronic Beats, an article about early African electronic music

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/44901/title/The-Evolution-of-Cooperation/
The New Scientist has an article about the evolution of biological cooperation and how partners keep their symbiotionts from "cheating".

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/consciousness-may-be-product-carefully-balanced-chaos
The idea here, as reported in Science magazine, is dependent on reaching a critical point between consciousness and unconsciousness, in terms of neural connectedness, the connections between individual neurons. This was a very small study using fMRI.

http://academeblog.org/2016/01/28/not-contractually-obligated/  From the "Academe" blog, Anna Peak writes about how the distinctions between contractual faculty and contingents are not as clear as often stated (mostly by the tenured or tenure-track faculty), making a case for parity.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/more-white-americans-acknowledge-racism-as-a-national-problem/
From PBS Newshour, according to an analysis of recent public polling, more white Americans are describing racism as a problem and that the criminal justice system was biased against blacks compared to 1995.

http://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-researchers-identify-striking-genomic-signature-shared-five-types-cancer  Great study reported in an NIH press release about the DNA methylation "signatures" of 5 types of cancer that have been identified. This may be the basis for a blood test to identify cancer in an individual. The study was reported in the journal Molecular Diagnostics.

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html
How the USAF discovered there is no such thing as an average person. This is about calculations of body sizes in the planning of cockpit design.

http://www.scripps.edu/news/press/2016/20160128patapoutian.html
This is a press release about a Cell paper about to come out about an ion channel recently discovered that prevents a cell from taking in too much water and bursting. It may be implicated in diabetes, brain damage due to stroke and cancer chemotherapy resistance

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45213/title/Illuminating-a-Cancer-s-Origins/
Researchers have developed a new technique to visualize melanoma cancer cells in a zebrafish . This research has been done in Boston Children's Hospital and will be reported in Science.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/smh-bsd020116.php A recent study reported in EurekaAlert to appear in FASEB reports that the amount of basic science research reported in journals has decreased.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/02/03/parcc-scores-lower-on-computer.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1-RM
From Education Week, a report that students who took the PARCC exam, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, got lower scores if they took the exam on computers.

http://www.digitopoly.org/2016/02/03/the-nyt-needs-a-mathematics-editor/

Here is a link to a critique from the blog Digitopoly about a recent NYT opinion piece by Adam Grant of the Wharton School complaining that from 1942 to 1994 only 8 out of 2000 winners of the Westinghouse Talent Search went on to win a Nobel Prize. The blog points out that, contrary to Grant, that is a pretty high number. It is important to teach our students how to examine data and conclusions drawn, both by their teachers and other authorities of note.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/04/butterflies-forty-million-years-before-butterflies/
Kallagrammatid lacewings from 165 million years ago, an example of convergent evolution, as reported in the National Geographic's Science Blog Phenomena

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/destroying-worn-out-cells-makes-mice-live-longer/
Sigma XI Smartbrief reports on a Scientific American article which reports that when senescent cells were removed from mice, they lived 20-30% longer. The actual study is in Nature magazine.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/11_cities_in_jersey_have_more_lead-affected_kids_t.html  From NJ.com, a report that 11cities in NJ have children with higher blood lead levels than does Flint Michigan.  Our governor, Chris Christie just vetoed an appropriation for the lead control assistance fund.

http://edge.org/conversation/john_brockman-about-richard-dawkins
An article in Edge by author John Brockman about Richard Dawkins.