I saw this on twitter and though I would pass it on. A 1 year subscription to Nature print + online for $36. I have a lot of ambivalence about the way that some scientific publishers comport themselves, but this seems like a good deal, and I know many readers of this weblog don’t have academic access…

This is a screenshot of what I saw….

(of course you can keep reading PLoS for free!)

I spent all day yesterday writing a 2000-word article for a print venue to be named later, and the weather outside is sunny and delightful and begging to be biked in, so I am disinclined to write something deep and philosophical today. So instead here is just a simply way-cool picture from Cassini taken in 2009, showing the Saturnian moon Rhea peeking out from behind the much larger Titan:

[Click to eneldergodenate.]

[UPDATE: I messed up here. In the original post I misread Titan's radius when I looked it up, and was comparing it to Rhea's diameter. This changes my numbers enough that I have simply corrected everything below; otherwise it would be too confusing to read. Thanks to the commenters for pointing this out!]

Rhea is a little over 1500 km (900 miles) across, and Titan 5150 km (3100 miles). However, in this shot, Rhea was almost two and a half times farther away than her big sister, so it looks smaller than it really is. Titan has a thick atmosphere, which is pretty obvious in the picture, while Rhea is basically a ginormous iceball.

Still, hmmm. Titan and ...

The total lunar eclipse two weeks ago spurred a lot of astrophotographers to capture the event, and I saw quite a few really pretty shots. But then I saw this one, which is so breath-taking I immediately emailed the photographer to get permission to share it with you:

[Click to enumbranate.]

Wow. What you’re seeing is the totally eclipsed Moon glowing a dull orange-red as it reflects sunlight filtered through Earth’s atmosphere, sitting next to the Lagoon Nebula, itself pinkish-red due to the presence of octillions of tons of warm hydrogen. Just above the Lagoon and much farther away in space lies the blue-and-red Trifid Nebula, itself a star-forming region like the Lagoon. The Moon was in the constellation of Ophiuchus, near Sagittarius; from Earth this direction is looking straight into the galactic center. That’s why you can also see thousands of densely-packed stars in the image.

The photographer, Emil Ivanov, combined five two-minute exposures during the deepest part of the eclipse to create this stunning picture. He took it in a small village (with dark skies!) about 40 km from Varna, Bulgaria. Funny– this same image taken an hour or so ...

It turns out the Los Alamos fires are world news, even making it to the front page of the BBC online (right next to the Duke and Duchess visiting Canada). Who knew? I guess everyone’s really worried that my theory of quantum gravity, which is of course sitting in my desk drawer at work, might go up in flames. My office is just below and to the left of the green glass building in this photo:

Or perhaps the world is genuinely concerned that a lab of historic significance might burn? Or maybe, and I’m going out on a limb here, everyone’s worried that the lab’s nuclear material might catch fire? A quick sanity check is in order. Most of the seriously radioactive material is in “hardened” bunkers at the lab. These are built to repel terrorist attacks and the like. They are surrounded by large buffer zones, and it would be difficult for a forest fire to get close, much less around/over the bunker, since there’s nothing flammable nearby. And, needless to say, massive slurry drops from the air would also discourage the fire from even thinking about approaching. And even if the fire did somehow surround the structure, my understanding is that the facility would survive virtually unscathed. So this material is probably safe.

In addition to the stores of radioactive material, however, there is also waste consisting of items such as gloves and the like with trace amounts of radioactive contamination (much of it left over from the cold war). This stuff is stored in 55-gallon barrels in “Area G“, which is only ~10 km from the lab boundary (which presently constitutes the edge of the fire). The barrels are being systematically transported to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Southern New Mexico. However, there are still thousands of barrels left on lab property, and this stuff isn’t housed in the same bomb-proof bunkers as the high-level radioactive material. So if the fire were to get to this material, and somehow compromise one of the barrels (which are supposed to be fire proof), it could conceivably incinerate some of the contents and generate radioactive smoke. Although highly unlikely and not an unmitigated disaster, this is nonetheless something to be avoided if at all possible. The barrels are stored on pavement surrounded by a large area which has been completely denuded of vegetation (partially because of the previous fire, and partly because of lessons learned from the previous fire). There is very little to burn in the immediate surroundings, and the fire would have to jump some canyons to get to the barrels. And, again, the potential intervention of helicopters and airplane drops of fire retardant material make it even less likely that anything could go amiss. So the general feeling is that Area G is also safe. Over the last few days the lab has been doing a remarkable job of keeping everyone apprised as to what’s happening (e.g., twitter, flicker, website; also see links in my previous post [and comments])

But, perhaps most importantly, it seems like fire fighters have gotten the upper hand over the last day or two, and the area around the laboratory and town seems to be relatively secure. Extensive fire breaks have been built, with back burns helping to clear out potential underbrush and ensure an appropriate buffer. And, in the latest positive development, this evening we had some fairly spectacular thunderstorms and rain. One side effect is that the smoke has completely dissipated, and from my living room (in Santa Fe) we now have a clear view across the Rio Grande valley to the Jemez mountains above Los Alamos. After two weeks of hearing about the fires, and seeing the smoke, now for the first time we can actually see the flames themselves. This came as quite a shock. It is a scary but strangely beautiful sight (from ~30 miles away).

Artists and storytellers devote much time to showing the wondrous powers of love. And it seems that scientists are also attuned to studying love, and through such studies they’ve made an interesting discovery: love may shield you—at least partially—against pain because of the feelings of safety it provides.

In the new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, psychologist Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California, Los Angeles and her research team investigated how women in long-term relationships respond to pain while viewing pictures of their partners. The researchers scanned the women’s brains with an fMRI while jolting them with stinging shocks. As they were zapped, the women looked at photographs of their partners, strangers, or unrelated objects (like chairs). The researchers put a 20-point pain scale on the different images, and asked the 17 women to rate their pain after each shock.

As the researchers expected from their previous research, the women claimed less pain when they looked at pictures of their partners (their pain ratings for strangers and objects were roughly the same). The team checked these ratings against the fMRI scans, and saw that they correlated ...

This is a guest post by Jamie L. Vernon, Ph.D., a research scientist and policy wonk, who encourages the scientific community to get engaged in the policy-making process

On Wednesday, President Obama gave a fiery press conference performance during which he ridiculed Republicans for their handling of the deficit reductions talks. As I listened to the President, I was reminded of previous legislative negotiations, such as the Health Care debate, where he similarly made it known that Congress was failing to meet their obligations to the American people. On each of those previous occasions, the President came out victorious, by achieving the legislation for which he was advocating.

The language used by the President this week suggests that he’s willing to fight to prevent a default on America’s debt. However, there were some comments that left me wondering if the U.S. scientific research community should brace for deeper cuts in the process.

At one point in the conference, President Obama explained that reaching the spending cut goals would be difficult and they would need to be distributed throughout the government. He said,

We can’t get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can’t just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare. So we’re going to need to look at the whole budget…

The word “just” implies to me that he has conceded that cuts must be made to the portion of the budget that includes medical research.

OK. So, we’ve already made those cuts, right? We shouldn’t expect additional cuts, should we? Later in the conference, the President says,

before we ask our seniors to pay more for health care, before we cut our children’s education, before we sacrifice our commitment to the research and innovation that will help create more jobs in the economy, I think it’s only fair to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that has done so well to give up a tax break that no other business enjoys.

To me, this suggests that additional cuts in the research and innovation sectors are still on the table. I have to ask, can we afford more cuts? The FY 2011 Budget included more than $300 million in cuts from the National Institutes of Health budget. Francis Collins, Director of the Institute, has said that these cuts will reduce grant funding rates to an all time low.

Here’s my final question. At what point do we admit that we have “sacrifice[d] our commitment to the research and innovation that will help create more jobs?”

Follow Jamie Vernon on Twitter or read occasional posts at his personal blog, “American SciCo.”

A couple of days ago I posted an amazing satellite image of Nabro, an erupting volcano in Eritrea. Today, NASA released follow-up images from the Earth Observing-1 satellite, and they’re also very, very cool.

This first one is false color, and is a combination of far infrared, near infrared, and visible light. The warm, recently deposited lava is fairly obvious. You can also see the ash plume and some clouds. Note the scale bar in the lower left.

The second image is in visible light, and is a more natural color:

Nifty! Since we don’t see in infrared, the lava is not glowing, and appears brownish. Interestingly, the active vent is easier to spot in this shot because the lava is not as distracting.

You can read my earlier post for more info on the volcano. These images are just about the only data scientists are getting on it since it’s located in a difficult-to-reach region. But then, what’s difficult when you have satellites designed to look down at exactly these sorts of things?

[UPDATE: Vulcanologist Erik Klemetti has written an article for The Big Think about this eruption with ...

Naturalistic studies of aggressive behavior: aggressive stimuli, victim visibility, and horn honking.

“Three studies extended laboratory research on aggression to a naturalistic setting which involved horn honking from drivers as a measure of aggression… The results from a survey (Study 1) of 59 drivers suggested that they were frequently irritated by and aggressive toward other drivers. A second study (using a 3×2 factorial design with 92 male drivers) indicated that manipulations of a rifle in an aggressive context and victim visibility (dehumanization) both significantly influenced horn honking rates subsequent to obstruction at a signal light. A third study with 137 male drivers and 63 female drivers examined the interactive effects of a rifle, an aggressively connotated bumper sticker, and individual subject characteristics (sex and an exploratory index of self-perceived status) on horn honking. The results for three studies in naturalistic settings offer possible extensions of laboratory based findings on aggression. The role of inhibitions in modifying the pattern of results was also discussed.”

Image: Cafe Press

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Study proves driving like an old person is contagious.
Discoblog: ...

Scanning electron micrograph images of the nut (A,B)
and screw (C, D) in the leg joint of a Papuan weevil

What’s the News: Biologists spend lots of time poring over nature’s nuts and bolts. Now, for the first time, they’ve found a biological screw and nut—previously thought to be an exclusively human invention. The legs of beetles called Papuan weevils, researchers report today in Science, have a joint that screws together much like something you’d find in the hardware store.

How the Heck:

The researchers took x-ray microtomography scans of museum specimens of the beetle.
One part of the joint (called the coxa) resembled a nut, with a thread along its inner surface covering 345°. The other part (the trocanter) resembled a screw, with an external thread spiraling around it for 410°—more than a full turn.
The beetles’ muscles pull on the leg to turn the screw. The beetles don’t turn their legs a full 345°, however; they can rotate their front legs by 90°, and their hind legs by 130°.
When the scientists expanded their search, they found the same mechanism in the legs of several other species. “The screw-and-nut system appears to be widespread among ...

Here’s a good use for augmented reality: directing clubgoers to the bars that have the best odds for meeting persons of their preferred gender. And how do you figure that out? Well, a start-up company called SceneTap is doing it with facial recognition.

Mounted at the doors of clubs, cameras will survey the crowd and, using facial recognition software, report the ratio of men to women to a free smartphone app. Forbes reports that 200 clubs, more than fifty of them in SceneTap’s home base of Chicago, have signed up to be included in the service, which will debut next month. The software is not sensitive enough to recognize individuals, stresses CEO Cole Harper—just sensitive enough to see whether that face coming in the door is male or female. The company plans to generate revenue from Groupon-like deals and advertising.

Now, when you get down to the privacy issues, it still seems a little problematic—a little Google Streetview Car—to us. Does the software store those images someplace? Could someone’s whereabouts be ascertained by a human looking at those files? But maybe we’re just paranoid. (If the kind of ladies you look for are on ...

This is a guest post by Jamie L. Vernon, Ph.D., a research scientist and policy wonk, who encourages the scientific community to get engaged in the policy-making process

I know I’m getting into controversial territory with this post, but for the sake of the safety of my fellow scientists, I feel compelled to comment.

Animal-rights group PETA is kicking off a new campaign to generate opposition to animal research. The organization has created a series of billboards targeting researchers at the University of Washington. The signs will feature compelling images of animals accompanied by the statement, “If you call it “medical research,” you can get away with murder.”

Now, I understand PETA’s position on this issue. Really, I do. The practice of using animals for experimental research is a controversy with a long history. However, I believe PETA has gone too far with their campaign tactics. To those people at PETA, whom I consider to be members of the progressive family, I would like to say, this is a misleading and dangerous campaign. The implication of the tag line is that scientists are using animal research in order to justify the unspeakable crime of murder. To say, “If you call it medical research,” this campaign implies that researchers condone murderous behavior. By falsely implicating scientists in this way, PETA is providing justification for moral relativist reactions. This is no different than the message used by anti-abortionists to rationalize the murder of medical practitioners. I believe this is risky language to use in this context. By continuing this exercise, PETA is putting the lives of scientists at risk.

The organization should be well aware of groups like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front who are willing and capable of carrying out crimes that threaten the lives of scientists. This campaign might be misconstrued as support for those types of actions.

Now let’s talk about the issue. According to the ads, the desired outcome is to have scientists, “Switch to a better way.” This brings up a longstanding debate over alternatives to animal research. It is one that I will not argue using my own words. Instead, I will use the words of others who have said it much more eloquently than I ever could.

First, in regards to “finding another way,” according to the Dr. Hadwan Trust for Human Research, the UK’s leading non-animal medical research charity,

“There is a range of different methods that can be used to replace animal experiments. These include cell and tissue cultures, analytical technology, molecular research, post mortem studies, computer modeling, epidemiology (population studies), ethical clinical research with volunteer patients and healthy subjects, and the use of microbes such as bacteria.”

Although this may be true and has been implemented for a great deal of medical research, it does not solve one major problem for animal researchers. Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty makes the following point,

“There is no alternative to the use of animals for analyzing the complexity of immunity.”

Another Nobel Prize winning scientist, Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of the National Cancer Institute has stated,

“Now, more than ever, research with laboratory animals is required to bring the benefits’ of advances in molecular genetics, neuroscience, and other highly productive fields to clinical application through the study of intact organisms.”

As much as we would like for scientists to be able to end the practice of animal research, PETA and other animal rights activists must understand that to end this work would significantly impair advances in medical research. In many cases, there are no alternatives to animal research. This is especially true for HIV/AIDS research. According to Dr. C. Everett Koop, Former U.S. Surgeon General, “We would be in absolute, utter darkness about AIDS if we hadn’t done decades’ of basic research into animal retroviruses.” For these reasons, scientists and activists must continue to strive to find an agreeable solution to this ethical dilemma without resorting to threats.

At least one aspect of this dilemma involves the question of whether animals have rights. According to Tibor Macan, a Hungarian-American philosopher,

“Only those capable of deliberation and choice can have rights, since a right by definition designates an area in which someone has free jurisdiction. Unless you have the capacity to reason, how can anything be up to you to decide? The most fundamental objection to the notion that animals have rights is that only human beings have the requisite moral nature for ascribing to them basic rights. However closely humans and lower animals resemble each other, human beings alone possess the capacity for free choice and the responsibility to act ethically.”

You might be surprised to find that I disagree with Machan. I believe animals do have rights. In response to Machan’s position, I cite the words of Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau,

“in some measure of our nature, in consequence of the sensibility with which they are endowed, they [animals] ought to partake of natural right; so that mankind is subjected to a kind of obligation even toward the brutes. It appears, in fact, that if I am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less because they are rational than because they are sentient beings: and this quality, being common both to men and beasts, ought to entitle the latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-treated by the former.”

Here I find my justification for animal research. As you can see, while making the case for granting “rights” to animals, Rousseau uses the term “wantonly” which in my mind provides an opportunity for assessing actions that might be considered “ill-treatment.” I believe that scientific research can by no means be considered “wanton” or malicious.

Federally-funded scientists must go through a complex deliberative process in order to justify research involving animals. The research must be necessary to answer a specific scientific question and alternatives to animal research must be considered. A protocol must be submitted and approved by a highly-knowledgeable oversight committee and proper facilities must be guaranteed in order to humanely house the animals. Once the decision is made to use animals, researchers must conform to the laws, regulations and policies that govern the practice. These constraints are rigorous and thorough. The NIH Office of Animal Care and Use Regulations and Standards provides the documents, standards and links to resources about appropriate laboratory animal procedures. If a researcher is found to violate these regulations, I believe that individual should be stripped of their right to use animals for research and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

As someone who has been through the process of writing animal research protocols for everything from bacteria to mice, I can tell you that it is both grueling and expensive. By no means, do scientists “wantonly” choose to conduct animal research. Given the choice between animal research and a cheaper, less labor-intensive and less controversial process, I’m confident scientists would choose the latter. Therefore, animal research is morally consistent with ascribing rights to animals.

Based on the fact that I agree that animals deserve certain rights, you might wonder how I can justify my support for animal research. I rationalize animal research by considering a device that Chris Mooney often uses to explain human rationalization. It is the classic psychological tool known as the “trolley problem.” In this psychological test, you are given certain scenarios and asked what you would do. The scenarios usually involve an out-of-control trolley car hurtling down a track toward a group of five unsuspecting people. You are told that by activating a switch, you can save their lives. However, by flipping the switch, the trolley will hit one other person. What do you do?

I would flip the switch.

For me, the trolley car represents any number of tragic diseases, cancer, AIDS, cystic fibrosis, you name it. The five people in the scenario represent the American population. The one person who takes the hit symbolizes the animals used in animal research. It is an unpleasant choice, but one that must be made. In this case, flipping the switch has saved and will continue to save millions of peoples’ lives.

We can only hope that no one loses their life because of PETA’s campaign.

Follow Jamie Vernon on Twitter or read occasional posts at his personal blog, “American SciCo.”

It’s been very gratifying to listen to the conversation that’s been triggered by my essay in this Sunday’s New York Times on scientific self-correction. Here, for example, is an essay on the nature of errors in science by physicist Marcelo Gleiser at National Public Radio. Cognitive scientist Jon Brock muses on how to get null results published.

I also got an email from Eliot Smith, the editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology who accepted the controversial clairvoyance paper I described in my essay. I wrote that three teams of scientists failed to replicate the results and that all three studies were rejected by the journal because they don’t accept simple replication studies.

Mr. Zimmer

Your recent Times column stated the following:

Three teams of scientists promptly tried to replicate his [Bem's] results. All three teams failed. All three teams wrote up their results and submitted them to The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And all three teams were rejected — but not because their results were flawed. As the journal’s editor, Eliot Smith, explained to The Psychologist, a British publication, the journal has a longstanding policy of not publishing replication studies. “This policy is not new ...

An amusing article, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman, first Pakistani to have genome mapped:

Prof Dr M Iqbal Choudhary, Director International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), Karachi University (KU), disclosed on Thursday that former Chairman, Higher Education Commission (HEC) Prof Dr Atta-ur-Rehman is the first Pakistani whose genome has been mapped by Pakistani scientists at a cost of $40,000 in just 10 months.

China has contributed $20,000 in the total cost of the genome project. Pakistani and Indian genomes have similarities compared to others, he said, while speaking at a press conference, held on Thursday at Dr Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine & Drug Research (PCMD), Karachi University (KU).

…

“Dr Atta has become the first Muslim man with this distinction, while he is the third one among a list of renowned people in the world whose genomes have been mapped by scientists. The names of the first two persons are Prof Watson and Dr Ventor (2007), while others are unnamed.

First, yes, it’s not accurate that Dr. Choudhary is the third person with a full sequence done. In fact poking around it looks like that the total is high enough, > 100, that it isn’t easy to find a nearly-comprehensive list anymore. ...

“Advertising for monkeys” is just too good a phrase to pass up.

Even since ads created for a study investigating whether monkeys respond to billboards debuted at the Cannes Lions ad conference, the headlines have been flowing freely. We learn Yale primatologist Laurie Santos and two ad executives came up with the idea at last year’s TED, after Santos gave a talk on her experiments showing that monkeys that learn to use money are as irrational about it as we are.

Ad firm Proton has now developed two billboards to hang outside capuchin monkeys’ enclosures, and the researchers plan to see whether they will prefer one kind of food, or “brand,” over another when it is shown in close proximity to some titillating photos, including a “graphic shot” of a female monkey exposing her genitals and a shot of the troop’s alpha male with the food.

Once the monkeys have been exposed to the ads for brand A, scientists will see whether they show a preference for it over brand B, which won’t be supported with a campaign. In essence, they’ll investigate whether sex sells for monkeys. Brand A will be ...

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter takes amazing pictures of the Moon; I’ve posted dozens over the past couple of years. One of my favorite things is when the spacecraft snaps features I know: craters, mountains, winding valleys that I’ve seen myself behind the eyepiece. When I was younger I spent countless hours scouring the lunar surface with my telescope, and it’s still a fun target when I haul my ‘scope out to the end of the driveway.

And among the best of the best is the crater Tycho. You probably know it already; when the Moon is full the crater is bright, and the rays extending from it — plumes of material ejected radially during the impact that formed the crater — are extremely obvious. At 86 km (50 miles) across, it’s a decent-sized hole in the surface, with a beautifully-defined system of central mountain peaks 15 km (8 miles) across. So when LRO sets its sights on Tycho’s peaks, well… you get a gorgeous panorama like this:

You must click that to enlunenate it and see it in incredible detail. It’s truly spectacular!

That peak rises about 2 km (1.2 miles) about the ...

I’ve had a cable modem for quite some time, but for many years before that I had to get onto the internet using a dial-up modem (and I remember having to bite the bullet to buy a second phone line so we could get calls while online). And I also remember how slllloooooowwwwww the bitrate was.

The connection itself didn’t take long, and made that weird wheeeecccchhhh woooooccchhhhhh noise. But what if the connection had been as slow as your downloads? What would those weird noises sound like slowed by a factor of 7?

Why, they’d sound like this:

I have no reason to post this other than I thought it was cool. As it happens I just watched "Quatermass and the Pit" (for about the hundredth time) the other day, and was reminiscing about old scifi movies. Doesn’t this sound like it could be in one of those old soundtracks?

Tip o’ the modulator to reddit.

What’s the News: A few years ago scientists learned that American crows can recognize and remember human faces, particularly faces they associate with bad experiences. Now, new research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that the birds can share that knowledge of dangerous humans with other crows.

How the Heck:

Five years ago, zoologist John Marzluff and his research team at the University of Washington trapped, banded, and released 7–15 American crows at five different sites near Seattle. Before trapping the birds, the researchers donned different rubber masks specific to each site (a caveman face, for example). While the birds were caged, nearby crows circled the site and sounded alarm calls.
The team then tested the crows’ reactions to the masks. Over the first two weeks, about 26 percent of the crows that the researchers encountered scolded—with a harsh, repeated kaw, accompanied by wing and ...

Yesterday Dienekes had a post up, Homo erectus soloensis fades into the past…. In it he states:

Every year or so there seems to be a redating of a key fossil in human evolution. It’s nice to see scientific self-correction in action, and soon after Neandertals got a little older, casting doubt on their supposedly long co-existence with modern humans, we now have a redating of Homo erectus soloensis from Java to about 150-550 thousand years ago, but certainly long before there were any anatomically modern humans in the area.

I think Dienekes is jumping the gun a bit in terms of the solidity of any given finding in knocking down prior consensus. That being said, the very young ages for Southeast Asian H. erectus, on the order of ~30-50,000 years B.P., always seemed strange to me. The paper Dienekes is referring to, The Age of the 20 Meter Solo River Terrace, Java, Indonesia and the Survival of Homo erectus in Asia, is rather technical in the earth science, as it involves dating and interpreting confounds in the stratigraphy. But this section of the discussion gets to the gist of the matter if you can’t follow the ...

On the perception of religious group membership from faces.

“BACKROUND:
The study of social categorization has largely been confined to examining groups distinguished by perceptually obvious cues. Yet many ecologically important group distinctions are less clear, permitting insights into the general processes involved in person perception. Although religious group membership is thought to be perceptually ambiguous, folk beliefs suggest that Mormons and non-Mormons can be categorized from their appearance. We tested whether Mormons could be distinguished from non-Mormons and investigated the basis for this effect to gain insight to how subtle perceptual cues can support complex social categorizations.

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:
Participants categorized Mormons’ and non-Mormons’ faces or facial features according to their group membership. Individuals could distinguish between the two groups significantly better than chance guessing from their full faces and faces without hair, with eyes and mouth covered, without outer face shape, and inverted 180°; but not from isolated features (i.e., eyes, nose, or mouth). Perceivers’ estimations of their accuracy did not match their actual accuracy. Exploration of the remaining features showed that Mormons and non-Mormons significantly differed in perceived health and that these perceptions were related to perceptions ...

That’s what Ann Patchett is claiming. More specifically, there are no bricks & mortar institutions which specialize in selling new books. There are places you can get used books in the city of Nashville. To remedy the situation Patchett is opening up a bookstore herself. She asserts that “…we’ve got to get back to a 3000-square-foot store and not 30,000. Amazon is always going to have everything – you can’t compete with that. But there is, I believe, still a place for a store where people read books.”

I recall going to a Barnes & Noble when I was in Nashville in the summer of 2004. Here’s some demographic data: “As of the 2010 census, the balance population was 601,222. The 2000 population was 545,524.” The details here are a bit muddy because parts of Davidson county are included with the Nashville total, but you get a general sense of how substantial the population of this city is. As a point of comparison Eugene, OR, has a population of 156,185, and 29 Yelp hits for bookstores. Nashville has 46 results.

Back to Patchett’s claim, I think there is something there. I don’t know how it’s ...