Research generally shows some important health benefits related to fetal uptake of maternal dietary DHA, but increased IQ no longer appears to be one of them. At least increasing one’s intake of fish oil has few if any downsides for either mother or fetus.
Science
The 2010 Ig Nobel Prizes
This year’s Ig Nobel Prizes have been announced.
From the Fine to the Ridiculous
No, I’m not dead, and no, the Grog’s Gamut fiasco hasn’t made me give up blogging about the patriarchy and the rest of the kyriarchy in favour of talking about shoes. Life has thrown more work at me lately than… Read More ›
Firefox Bookmarklet to help with Down Under Feminists Carnival submissions
I’ve developed a Firefox bookmarklet that pre-fills most of the submission fields for the Down Under Feminists Carnival. Submit today!
Femmostroppo Science Reader – September 24, 2010
Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed.What did I miss? Please share what you’ve been reading (and writing!) in the comments.
Twitter’s ch-ch-ch-ch-changing
Wired.com takes a peek at the new look/new features that will be rolled out across the network over the next day or so. If you can see the changes on your homepage already, what do you think?
This seems like a good general opportunity for readers to let other readers know that they tweet and where they can find each other. So drop a link to your tweetstream, or go forth and follow!
Wednesday Wow: Starry Night
All those stars reminded me – it’s nearly September equinox time (it’s becoming more common to no longer refer to vernal/autumnal equinoxes or summer/winter solstices because it gives the wrong impression that it’s the same season simultaneously around the world). The equinox falls on tomorrow, September 23rd at 1:09 pm Sydney time.
Sexting and Slut-Shaming
Announcing the release of this particular video, he commented “The launch of this new video comes on White Balloon Day – a time to break the silence on child sexual assault and raise awareness that child safety is everyone’s responsibility.”
Everyone’s responsibility. Everyone’s. Shall we take a quick peek at the video in question?
Quicklink: OKCupid’s ‘statistical distinctness’ analysis
“We selected 526,000 OkCupid users at random and divided them into groups by their (self-stated) race. We then took all these people’s profile essays (280 million words in total!) and isolated the words and phrases that made each racial group’s essays statistically distinct from the others’.”
Endangered Sunday: North American Bumble Bee
I’ve never seen a Bumble Bee in nature. I’ve seen plenty of imported European honey bees (some of them in the wild), and plenty of Australian native bees (which are mostly solitary, so no hives for them – our few social species are stingless, which is nice).
But we don’t have Bumble Bees here, so I’ve missed out…
Hoyden About Town 