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Friday Nite Videos -- September 4, 2015

Portside
Judy Collins -- Bread and Roses. How Wolves Change Rivers. Man With Arms Raised Killed by San Antonio Police. I Didn't Come From Your Rib (You Came From My Vagina). Police Recruitment Video Features Military-style Tactics.

How Wolves Change Rivers

What happened when wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 -- a cascade that embraced animals, plants, birds and even the earth itself.

Why People Keep Seeing Aliens in the Pictures from the Mars Rover

Skinny Friedman VICE
Some people have a tendency to believe more; if you have tons of experience with pictures of the Virgin Mary, there's a greater likelihood that those higher parts of your visual system are going to match up the arbitrary stuff you're seeing to the template of the Virgin Mary you have in your brain.

Can We Trust Crime Forensics?

Michael Shermer Scientific American
No one knows how many innocent people have been convicted based on junk forensic science, but the National Research Council report recommends substantial funding increases to enable labs to conduct experiments to improve the validity and reliability of the many forensic subfields.

In Science, Failure Sometimes Marks Progress

Alison McCook retractionwatch.com
A huge study -- of 100 scientific papers in psychology, published in high-quality journals -- has failed to confirm the results claimed by about two thirds of the papers. Is this a colossal failure of science? No, say the authors of the study. It's an example of the value of skepticism and the step-by-step, sometimes indirect, process by which uncertainty is reduced.

On World Dog Day, How Dogs Saved Humankind

Caren Cooper Plos Blogs
August 26 is World Dog Day, a good time to reflect on the very reasonable possibility that dogs enabled modern humans to outcompete Neanderthals, and also on the fact that dogs are smarter, more empathetic and more devious than you knew. These days, both ordinary dogs and their ordinary humans can participate in Citizen Science, advancing our understanding of this oldest human coevolution.

Friday Nite Videos -- August 21, 2015

Portside
Meet the Undocumented Immigrant Who Works in a Trump Hotel. Damsel in Distress: Tropes vs Women in Video Games. John Oliver: Sex Education. Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Brief History of Everything. Bad Lip Reading of the Republican Debate.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Brief History of Everything

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote and narrates this video, covering an amazing range of topics in straightforward language. The accompanying music is The Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky.

Obesity Breakthrough: Genetic Alchemy Can Turn Bad Fat Cells to Good

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Obesity is one of the biggest public health challenges of the 21st century, affecting more than 500 million people worldwide and costing at least $200 billion each year in the United States alone. It contributes to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. Scientists have now uncovered a genetic circuit that controls whether our bodies burn or store fat. Manipulating that genetic circuit may offer a new approach for obesity treatments.

food

Coke Funds Scientists for Diet Advice

Susanna Pilny World Einnews
Coca-Cola is indirectly spreading a controversial message that to lose weight, the food and beverages you consume don’t matter so much as long as you exercise.
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