I was delighted to see that one of my favorite science bloggers–Scicurious of Neurotic Physiology at Scientopia–has posted a very thoughtful review of The Science of Kissing. The book is divided into three parts and Sci took the time to discuss each one, beginning with a bit of skepticism:

Sci was very excited to get a copy of Sheril’s first solo book effort, “The Science of Kissing: What our lips are telling us”. I’ve always enjoyed Sheril’s writing and her fun take on life in general, and so I was excited to get the book. But I admit I was also a little worried. After all, it’s the science of KISSING. What if it was…well, like a Cosmo article or something? Of course I know Sheril better than that, but there was a deep dark worry in the back of my mind.

(Is this a kissing book?)

Read Sci’s full review here.

(photo source)

This is a guest post by Darlene Cavalier, a writer and senior adviser at Discover Magazine. Darlene holds a Masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader. She founded ScienceCheerleader.com and cofounded ScienceForCitizens.net to make it possible for lay people to contribute to science.

For the first time in its 45 year history, the SuperBowl will be without professional cheerleaders. Have no fear! The Science Cheerleader is here!

Let me introduce you to Erin who’s going to jazz up your SuperBowl Sunday morning with some science!

Hey fans, I’m Erin and I’m psyched to introduce you to the 10th–and final–Science of NFL Football segment, produced by NBC Sports in partnership with the NFL, the National Science Foundation and the Science Cheerleader!

Why me? I’m a Science Cheerleader, one of more than 50 NFL cheerleaders pursuing careers in science and engineering. (Just wait until SciCheer introduces you to the NBA’s science-minded cheerleaders!)

As a St. Louis Rams cheerleader, I earned degrees in biology and psychology. I’m now working towards my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and Masters in Human Sexuality while I help SciCheer bust down stereotypes and inspire more young women to pursue careers in science. We occasionally perform and talk to folks about science and engineering in unexpected places so don’t be surprised to find the “Superheroes of science”* at a venue near you! (*That’s what Science magazine called us; see what CNN, NPR, ESPN and others have to say.) You can learn more about my research and how I balance two seemingly different lives here.

And now, here’s some science for your SuperBowl Sunday!

In this segment, “Torque and Center of Mass,” NBC News’ Lester Holt, the narrator of the series, asks, “who wins the battle of the gridiron goliaths?” Holt adds, “according to the laws of physics, it’s the player who stays the lowest and masters the concept of torque – which is the tendency of a force to make an object rotate around an axis.”

Click here and scroll down to watch the video. Sorry, we weren’t able to embed the code here. It’s worth the click, though. Watch as the infamous Phantom cam is used to help scientists and NFL players break down plays and explain the science behind some pivotal movements.

If you’re an educator, be sure to visit NBC Learn to download free supplemental educators’ guides. Goooo science! And Goooo National Science Foundation for making this possible. Check out the entire Science of NFL Football series.

We’re bringing Energy to the historic Austin City Limits stage and going live worldwide by webcast…

From the gushing geysers of Giant, to the plutonium-powered time machine of Back to the Future, Hollywood has entertained us with unforgettable, often iconic images of energy. Whether intentional or not, films frequently serve as a snapshot of society, capturing sentiments of each time period. Many films have themes or scenes that memorialize collective optimism, fears, and observations about energy. Using film clips as a historical road map, Energy at the Movies is an entertaining lecture that will enlighten audiences about the ways films influence how we think about energy, and in turn, how we influence energy policy.

A central element of human civilization, energy is critical for water, food, mobility, comfort, and industry. In fact, the emergence of the modern energy sector has been a critical enabler for economic development over the last 150 years. However, the path to affluence came at heavy costs; most notably environmental degradation and persistent threats to national security. Today, society continues to grapple with the consequences of how we produce, use and trade energy. Fortunately, history has useful lessons to teach us, and many of those lessons are captured in film.

This two-part event builds on Dr. Michael Webber’s successful university honors course of the same title. By incorporating clips from various films, humorously interspersed with snippets of energy history, technology, policy and observations on current affairs, he shares universal truths and trends about energy. The evening begins with a fun-spirited multi-media lecture, followed by a moderated panel discussion with filmmakers, historians, and commentators. Join us as we navigate through 70 years of energy on the big screen.

This event is being produced by The University of Texas at Austin with support from KLRU-TV, Austin PBS. It is sponsored by the American Clean Skies Foundation.

Day: Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Time: 600 pm
Where: KLRU-TV, Austin PBS, Studio 6A
Schedule: 600-730 pm Dr. Webbers’ Energy lecture with film clips
730-800 pm Reception
800-930 pm Moderated panel discussion
(with interactive global Q&A)

Panelists:
• Sheril Kirshenbaum (co-author of Unscientific America)
• Turk Pipkin (producer of Nobelity Project & One Peace at a Time)
• Matthew Chapman (great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, screenwriter and director for such films as Runaway Jury and 2011’s The Ledge)
• Charles Ramirez Berg (film historian and distinguished UT professor)

This will be a terrific event! The website will be live soon, and you can Follow & Friend E@TM for updates:
Twitter
Facebook

Please help spread the word.

My latest DeSmogBlog post is up: It’s about the increasingly unavoidable linkage between these two science education controversies:

In Louisiana, a 2008 bill demanded that students learn about “the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught”;”biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning” were once again singled out. In other words, it was precisely the same thing that’s now being attempted in Oklahoma—and in Louisiana, it succeeded.

In Texas, meanwhile, recent revisions to state textbook standards now require books to “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming.”

Why this strategy from science foes? It’s simple: Courts have said you can’t teach creationism because it’s thinly veiled religion, and if you only single out evolution for “scientific” criticism then your motives are similarly suspect from a legal perspective.

But if you rope in some issues where there’s nothing obviously religious at stake—like climate science—you may be in better shape in court.

You can read the full post here.

I have a guest post up at Wonders and Marvels:

Classicists and anthropologists have traced kissing history over millennium. The earliest and best literary evidence we have dates to around 1500 B.C. from India’s Vedic Sanskrit texts. While there were no words for “kissing,” there are intriguing lines such as the “young lord of the house repeatedly licks the young woman.” Later, the Vatsyayana Kamasutra (better known as the “Kama Sutra”) composed sometime around the third century A.D. includes an entire chapter devoted to kissing a lover.

Clearly, people in India were kissing thousands of years ago, but it’s doubtful they were the only ones doing so… Read on

Guest Post by Darlene Cavalier

As record levels of snow blanket much of the United States this year, ScienceForCitizens.net is collaborating with an important climate research project at the University of Waterloo called Snow Tweets.  We’re pleased that this is the first of many scientific projects that you’ll be able to do on ScienceforCitizens.net.

To help researchers track climate change, we’re requesting that you find a ruler, put on a warm coat, go outside, and measure the depth of snow wherever you happen to be.  And then report the depth to us right here. That’s all there is to it!  You’re simple action will help the planet. Your data will advance climate science, and you’ll get to see your depth report appear on our world map of snow tweets.

This project is part of the Changing Planet series on NBC: a collaboration between the National Science Foundation, NBC News, Discover Magazine and ScienceforCitizens.net.

Learn more about Changing Planet!

In the age of austerity measures, research programs studying biodiversity have become an object of scrutiny.  Why, you may ask, should taxpayers pay to send a graduate student to the tropics to survey reef life?  What could we possibly gain from this?

The classic argument is that it is important to understand as much of the world around us as possible (a common statistic passed around is that 95% of the world’s oceans remain unexplored). We are losing biodiversity as fast as we can catalogue it.  Imagine every species as a book. (more…)

That’s the question I pose in my latest post at DeSmogBlog:

Essentially, President Obama wants us to recreate the same sense of urgency, and the same national unity, but without the same fear of another competitor country, unless that country is supposed to be China—which, the President noted, recently “became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.” Okay, that’s something of a spur…but it is not, historically speaking, a Sputnik. (And, making China into the enemy is a very problematic notion.)

Obama wasn’t even speaking in a national security frame last night when he invoked Sputnik. He was speaking in an economic one. The sense of shared threat was displaced from an external other to our own economic problems—joblessness and deficits.

And that’s the real trick: Is the yearning for national unity, in the wake of Tucson, enough to overcome this chief non-parallel in Obama’s Sputnik analogy? Because undoubtedly, investing in more clean energy research, and more research in general, will spur jobs and innovation. But will we remember to forget our differences in the meantime? Is there some glue that will hold us together? Given the way politics now operate in the U.S., it’s hard to be so optimistic.

You can read the full post here.

This just in from the White House press secretary, as part of the president’s prepared remarks:

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik¸ we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist.

But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation’s Sputnik moment.

This is potentially very powerful stuff. He’s used the analogy before, but using it the SOTU means a lot more. I’ll be saying more about this tomorrow morning….

If you haven’t already caught Bad Project by Zheng Lab, watch this and compare to the original fabulous video Bad Romance by Lady Gaga (produced by my brilliant cousin Nicole Ehrlich).