Being Human and Science : Linkspress

Being Human can be tough. Especially in medieval times. Because of this, we came out for the better and turned out to be most social of animals, anthropologists say.

Now it is time for us to get back at them; the species in our neighborhood. Humans perceive animals, insects as sources of threats or infections. It turns out, we have been making the wildlife sick!

"With emerging infectious diseases of wildlife today there's almost always some human component," say Dr. Lewis, an NSERC-funded mathematical ecologist in the mathematics and statistics department at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

in a landmark paper, he helped document how commercial salmon farms off Canada's British Columbia coast are a breeding ground for sea lice, a parasite that then infects young wild Pacific salmon. The research was the first to document the parasitic impact of commercial salmon farms on wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

When it comes to emerging infectious diseases of wildlife, Dr. Lewis says that public perception and policy needs to move beyond seeing "special cases" to seeing the constant role that people play.

Unlike the research above popular science need not be of good quality as much as having a wring of currentness to it (the be hip mantra!). Perhaps the blame lies with the schools and the science teachers for not being able to convey the pleasure of science. Here is a nice article about that.

Added 2/22:
Ice Ice Baby If you thought you knew why ice is slippery, think again! Even the scientists are not sure what the reason is, says a nicely written NY Time piece.

Science off the tap! To bring the science fervour to the public, Cafe Scientifique started in Leeds and slowly spread to other places including its now popular home in Denver, CO. People gather to disucss about all science topics that affect their life from genetics to cancer research.