If you haven't seen the email stream that Sara Ackerman, an NYU student, has been circulating about her professor's assignment on OWS, you've got to see it.  Not passing judgment on the girl, but all I can say is wow.

A pretty nice article by Dean Obeidallah over at CNN. Check it out.

From time to time, scientists end up bucking the commonly established and deeply entrenched beliefs of the scientific community, sometimes to their own peril.  And a fair amount of the time, they may just end up being wrong, but in some instances, it really is that they got it right and the rest of us dopes were just wrong.  Reaching back into the annuls of time we can find a textbook example of this when you study the history of the human chromosome number.  Of course all our textbooks tell us that the diploid number in man, woman, and child is 46 chromosomes.  However this was not always the agreed upon number.

The original agreed upon number was 48 chromosomes set forth by eminent zoologist Theophilus Painter, when he observed 24 meiotic chromosomes on a metaphase spread of spermatocytes way back in 1923.  This number would remain in hearts and minds of budding cytologists for 33 years.  Until another cytologist, T. C. Hsu, the "father of mammalian cytogenetics" improved the metaphase spread method by incorporating hypotonic buffers and cell fixation techniques.  Further refining the process were Joe Hin Tjio and Albert Levan, who used colchicine to arrest the cell in metaphase increasing the number of spreads for analysis.  Upon analyzing over 20 different fetal lung cell cultures, they came to a consensus that the chromosome number was 46, not the long believed 48.

The kicker to all of this was that for years other scientists were making metaphase spreads from cells of different tissues and coming up with 46 chromosomes, but sat on the data or refused to believe it was true because it deviated from Painter's gospel of 48.  Later other scientists including Hsu would revise their number but others held steadfast until the final consensus came in the late 50s.

I don't make New Year's resolutions because that would imply imperfections that well, that's just crazy.  I do want to try and be better about science blogging and will work to post on a paper a week.  So dear Scientopia readership, is there anything that we can do improve Scientopia?  Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

As a person of the peanut butter color, who is prone to wearing facial hair, and who wasn't recently able to start checking in for flights online until 2007 or so, I know my junk is gonna get a rubdown by the TSA and maybe a little extra.  Now I don't look at this in a negative light, unlike all you pale bastards, I get a free rubdown, some interesting conversation, and the chance to ask (if I ever get the balls to) "will you make banana cry?" every time I fly.

Nothing to do but take it for what it is.

a holiday for the rest of us.

Whether folks agreed with your views or not, you always gave one hell of a debate. You will be missed man.
Link to CNN story.

I forgot how good this was...

Finally JadeBio reasserts her dominance over the pack.  I forgot my picks again this week, I'll have to get better about this.  As far as the top 3 overall its JadeBio (113), PLS (107), and Odyssey (102).

#1.  JadeBio

#2.  Odyssey

#3.  Namnezia

#4.  SugarScientist

#5.  Alyssa

#6.  GertyZ

#7.  PLS

#8.  Hermie

#9.  Chall

#10.  Dr. O