- David Biello says A Common Herbicide Turns Some Male Frogs into Females:
The bountiful fields of the U.S. are awash in atrazine. Some 36 million kilograms of the odorless, white powder are applied on farms to control grassy weeds. Some 225,000 kilograms of the herbicide fall with the rain each year, sometimes up to 1,000 kilometers from the source. All that atrazine may be having another effect: turning male frogs female.
- Dr. Sue Penckofer at Loyola University Health System thinks we northerners need some more vitamin D:
A daily dose of vitamin D may just be what Chicagoans need to get through the long winter, according to researchers at Loyola University Chicago Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing (MNSON). This nutrient lifts mood during cold weather months when days are short and more time is spent indoors.
“Vitamin D deficiency continues to be a problem despite the nutrient’s widely reported health benefits,” said Sue Penckofer, PhD, RN, professor, MNSON. “Chicago winters compound this issue when more people spend time away from sunlight, which is a natural source of vitamin D.”
- The American Historical Association claims:
Before the present economic crisis, history departments were hiring more tenure-track faculty than they were losing by attrition, and they were conferring tenure on their faculty at a much higher rate than counterparts in other humanities fields.
- Dr. Ann Little’s Adjuncting: for fun and profit? nevertheless finds plenty of adjunct baloney in the media:
Since the job is so fun and rewarding, and anyone can do it, you won’t mind the low pay now, will you? Think about the children! Plus, anyone can do it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to mix up a Harvey Wallbanger and warm up the TV set-Laugh-in is on tonight. In my mind it’s 1971, which is apparently when The New York Times wrote this article. According to the paper of record, we don’t live in a world or teach in universities where adjuncts faculty are the majority or near-majority of faculty already. And there’s always room for more!
This article captures all of the contradictory beliefs about education that we were discussing in the previous thread: 1) There’s no special training required-anyone can do it, 2) For money!, 3) Except, most of us do it for love. So there’s no need to pay teachers or professors well, since they have so much fun on the job, and since-well, anyone can do it, right?
- Paul Krugman offers us his notes on a debate within climate change policy on the timing of market action:
I’m trying to do a popular writeup of debates over climate change policy, which meant that I had to get a grip on the big dispute over the timing of action – Nordhaus and other modelers calling for a “climate policy ramp” in which carbon prices start fairly low and rise only gradually, Stern and others calling for a quick rise in prices. I found the discussion hard to follow, so I did what I usually do in such cases – tried to write down a toy model that hopefully clarifies the issues. This note describes this toy model
- Andrew Jakabovics on how to create green rental houses from federally owned foreclosures with pretty pictures too:
The rolling home foreclosure crisis continues to haunt homeowners facing foreclosure, their neighbors due to falling home prices, and of course the broader U.S. economy. Relief programs initiated by the Obama administration and Congress are making a difference, but we at the Center for American Progress believe policymakers need one more arrow in their quiver—a targeted program to convert already foreclosed homes owned directly by the federal government into thoroughly energy efficient, affordable rental homes that can be resold as portfolios of rental properties to private investors.
Reading List 4 March 2010 Edition
– March 4, 2010Posted in: Readings of the Day
