I've got your missing links right here (15 September 2012)

 Top picks Er, d’oh? Curiosity could be carrying Earth bacteria, and won’t be allowed near any water it finds These images of SINGLE MOLECULES totally blow my mind “ONE day soon, mankind will achieve the most amazing feat of all time, and you won't even notice... We'll soon have "gone 11.2 billion miles from home using computers not very different to a ZX Spectrum." An amazing piece on prion diseases by Maggie Koerth-Baker, that doubles as an op/ed on live-tweeting conferences. In which Jonathan Eisen learns of an almost-all-male conference and pens an EPIC and hilarious response, which gets results! UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you let your children read this blog post by Dean Burnett. It will rewire their brains. “THREAT OR MENACE?” asks the Guardian. Will 3D printing be the next copyright battleground? Excellent Economist piece. This post has tapeworms, brains, and graphic surgery pictures. You have been warned. Or recommended, depending on your inclination. A volcano on one of Saturn's moons is shooting geysers of water into space. With pics! Deaf Mexican police officers tasked w/ monitoring security cameras; not recruiting disabled ppl, but "super-able". Great Vaughan Bell piece. Tiger tiger burning bright, avoiding humans in the night. Very cool study, covered by Bora Zivkovic. This is a really sensible way of looking at whether electronics on flights are dangerous. Kudos to Dan Simons and Chris Chabris Wow. Fruit salad trees are real. Ferris Jabr on how to make trees that bear lots of different kinds of fruit Here's a pic of a MASSIVE solar flare that the Sun chucked out last month, w/ the Earth for scale comparison "A Sept 11th Catastrophe You've Probably Never Heard About" - Kristen Iversen on our "narrowly averted nuclear meltdown" Alexis Madrigal’s opus on what mobile communication will be like in 2022 There’s been an earthquake. You’re trapped in rubble. And then, a cyborg cockroach scuttles towards you. Wonderful: Are spiders afraid of conkers? A rather hilarious and charming experiment with kids and nuts These stem cells go up to 11: Human embryonic stem cells restore gerbil hearing. Also, this is the "1st proof that stem cells can reconnect inner ear to brain.” An ear-brain connection would be really useful for some people I know. The American Diabetes Association approved a script saying 75% of funds raised would go to research. 15% did. Other charities are also to blame. Michael Lewis' Vanity Fair piece on Obama is journalism porn. It’s amazing scene after amazing scene. Everyone needs a friend like Jupiter, to take asteroids in the face for them. Look, you can actually SEE IT. HAPPEN Jesus H Christ in a viper basket! Virgin birth among wild viper litters. By Brian Switek Wonderful/terrifying Quora: "What aspects of daily life in 2012 would be unbelievable to somebody in 2000?" News/science/writing The Royal Society named humanity's top 20 food innovations from the dawn of time to now. Brain implant improves thinking in monkeys Traces of memory in a dish Childhood neglect wrecks the insulation of the developing brain Emily Willingham unpicks yet another bad NYT op/ed on autism & epigenetics Desperate times call for an awesome batcave: US conservationists hope bunker can halt deadly fungus A breathtakingly ambitious randomised trial of an aid project in DR Congo Alok Jha on the false positives, fraud and misconduct that are threatening scientific research. Meanwhile, Chris Chambers calls for more replication to root out scientific fraud "If you are at high school now, there will be plenty to do when you graduate." – Ewan Birney in Science’s chat on ENCODEThe Gamify Your PhD project announces its winners. I’m not convinced this is "engaging people with science”. I think it’s engaging people with games, which have tenuous links to science. Naomi McAuliffe dissects some bad science about disgust, sex, and mayonnaise. Wait, not mayonnaise. Has a new paper added a fourth domain to life? Probably not. Jonathan Eisen dissects it, and engages with the author in the comments. New from PLOS Bearssh*tinwoods: newspapers sometimes report on studies that are later overturnedWhen you get murdered, rest assured that beetles might scavenge upon your rotting corpse before blowflies. “Jonah Lehrer says yes. Science says… maybe.” Zing! The Ill Effects of Urban Living An excellent read on science, femininity & fashion by Holly Bik. The lesula, a new species of monkey, was recently identified in Africa. And recently lost to Andy Murray in the US Open. Why has the Yangtze river turned red? Other than the apocalypse, obviously. New Cochrane review of chiropractic for back pain deals devastating blow - no more effective than “inert intervention” Yeah, this study? They basically fluffed some rats with spider venom. Awesomeness: How to boil water without bubbles This Ewen Callaway piece on the genetics of tasting coriander features anti-coriander haikus and a recipe. "If you only think of “junk DNA” as a problem, [you] are lacking a touch of poetry in your bleak soul." – Josh Witten. You cannot fall through a black hole. Pics or it didn't not happen. The saddest thing: there is a Rabbit Grimace Scale for measuring how much pain a bunny is feeling Brendan Maher summed up this story well: “So we can drill more, so we can use more oil, so we can melt more ice, so we can drill more...” “Tranquilizing a wild large carnivore is always stressful.” How to deal with suburban lions. Thomas Jefferson, science enthusiast: The disappointing sequel to Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter GET IN! Science wins over creationism in S.Korean textbook battle. The Korean creationists are called the "Society for Textbook Revise". I thought that's what journalists are... Three major seed producers are working on drought-resistant GM cropsTHE SEA WILL KILL YOU Part 716: The most terrifying creature in the ocean is a flesh-eating bacterium John Timmer explains how ENCODE's press releases rewrote scientific history The Higgs boson has survived peer-review. There are around 3,000 authors, of whom 21 are dead. DNA chip based on autoimmune disease uses ENCODE data to uncover three new regions linked to primary biliary cirrhosis Appeals court upholds exclusion of "no lie fMRI" in criminal conviction. Blow for pseudo-lie-“detection” Stem cell scammers plead guilty, while scientist who helped them goes to trial. On the trail of a weird and wonderful mammal, the Pyrenean desman Eagle regains ability to preen & drink w/ 3D-printed prosthesis. 10-meter-iong fossil trackway records horseshoe crab's death march made 150 million years ago. Ananyo Bhattcharya launches a passionate volley of the limits of science as “the only way of knowing”, and Chris Chamber retailiates. Heh/wow/huhJumping spider turns assassin bug into assassinated bug Odd Things Happen When You Chop Up Cities And Stack Them Sideways Mars Curiosity takes a self-portrait. (My parody.) Control telescopes from your iPad? There's an app for that A million metastasising hermit crabs swarm a beach Great monkey pics (that colobus!) from Alex Wild. Winners of the 2012 British Wildlife Photography Award. Those GANNETS! Mmmm... natural fractals as seen through Google Earth Ask Mars Curiosity: "Relationship advice from a doomed machine on a… (probably) lifeless planet" Internet/journalism/society Dan Engber of Slate has won a National Academies Keck Award for his awesome three-part story on lab mice. I picked it as one of my top longreads from last year. If you haven’t read it already... Scientists play a large role in bad medical reporting, but that’s NOT an excuse for bad journalism. We’re meant to root out the spin. I like this. A bunch of very grumpy tech people bitch over the godawful tech jargon used at TechCrunch Despair Three editors advise on a question freelancers stew over: How long can my draft REALLY be? Amy Wallace updates her legendary Wired story on Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama professor who has just pleaded guilty yesterday for the murders of several colleagues The Daily Mail’s fight to get online porn blocked is a bit rich coming from the people behind Mail Online The Great Geek Sexism Debate Amazing review of Naomi Wolf’s book by Zoe Heller – an intelligent evisceration Oh god. The French version of "Internet for Dummies" is specifically aimed at women. And has a pink, flowery border