Rotundus.com

Ethnic minority turn to Jesus as more 'affordable' option

To quote a villager cited in the article "We believe in Christianity because we are poor; we don’t have money to buy buffaloes, chickens and pigs to pray for the spirits of the god of land or the god of water when those gods make us get sick." I'm not quite sure what to say about this one (HT: MR)

Global warming's evil twin threatens West Coast fishing grounds

The byline: "Within the next few decades, ocean acidification – an effect of global warming – could leave sea creatures along the West Coast unable to maintain their protective shells, according to a new study." On the selection of the region they studied: "they also selected it because the waters are naturally more acidic than waters in many other parts of the Pacific."

Maternal Gatekeeping: Do mothers limit fathers' involvement with their kids?

A 2008 "study finds that mothers do play an important role both in encouraging and curtailing fathers' involvement. And this maternal gatekeeping is a powerful force: Even fathers who wanted to be involved with their kids often drifted away in the face of persistent maternal criticism." It also notes that "encouragement had a more powerful effect on fathers than criticism. 'Mothers can close the gate, but they can also open the gate'"

WHO's cancer agency: Diesel fumes cause cancer

Per one professor cited in the article: "For the man on the street, nothing has changed ... It's a known risk but a low one for the average person, so people should go about their business as normal"

Restaurant delivers food and dirty pans to your door

How to tell you're too concerned about your image...

Fish follow robot imposter

Coming soon to a fish farm near you? (Of course the purposes researchers list as objectives are somewhat more benign.)

Salt, We Misjudged You

"this eat-less-salt argument has been surprisingly controversial — and difficult to defend. Not because the food industry opposes it, but because the actual evidence to support it has always been so weak."

Why cockroaches need their friends

"The much maligned cockroach is more sophisticated, and social, than we thought, according to new research."

Raising Crane: How do cranes get to the top of skyscrapers?

3 possible ways it seems. I was amused by the video of the crane being used to build itself - but that probably just means I'm a nerd.

Given the list of complaints you find people making about biased studies on subjects, it doesn't seem that conservatives necessarily do better. Yesterday I came across an article entitled Study suggests risks from same-sex parenting.

The first question raised in my mind was whether the article's basis for comparison was reasonable, as their list of negative outcomes includes more children "currently cohabiting" and fewer "currently married" vs. those raised by married, biological parents. My immediate thought: how would that change if they compared the kids in those categories vs. those raised by cohabiting, divorced, or single parents. (If you were to look for the phrase "same-sex marriage" in the news in the past while you might find a reference or two... or 59,100 [Google News] - most of which has to do with its legality or lack thereof).

That was the first red flag, but if the LA Times is correct, the study is far more dubious:

his study does not actually compare children raised by same-sex couples with those raised by different-sex couples. The criterion it uses is whether a parent 'ever ha[d] a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex.' In fact, only a small proportion of its sample spent more than a few years living in a household headed by a same-sex couple. Indeed, the study acknowledges that what it's really comparing with heterosexual families is not families headed by a same-sex couple but households in which parents broke up. 'A failed heterosexual union,' Regnerus writes in the study, 'is clearly the modal method' — the most common characteristic for the group that he lumps in with same-sex-headed households.

The LA Times article then goes on to say the following:

The trouble is that no scholarly research, including the Regnerus paper, has ever compared children of stable same-sex couples to children of stable different-sex couples, in part because an adequate sample size is hard to come by.

Based on such a claim it would seem that there's also inadequate research to substantiate the claim ("the 20-year 'consensus'") made in the LA Times article that "two parents are better than one, not that parents have to be different genders." If the lack of scholarly research in support of a hypothesis applies to the Regnerus case, it would also seem to apply to such a claim.

DNA Blueprint for Fetus Built Using Tests of Parents

No invasive testing required. "For the first time, researchers have determined virtually the entire genome of a fetus using only a blood sample from the pregnant woman and a saliva specimen from the father." (They estimate accuracy at about 98%). Via Russ Douthat.

Sounds of the Netherlands – day one: a history of Dutch pop in 10 songs

As the article notes that "with most of the Netherlands able to speak English at least as well as the English can, the temptation has always existed for artists with one eye on the export market to perform in pop's primary lingua franca," a bunch of the songs here are in English.

Digging Into New York City’s Trashy History

New York City in the first half of the 19th century: "Imagine, on your own block, that you can’t cross the street, even at the corner, without paying a street kid with a broom to clear a path for you, because the streets were layered in this sludge of manure, rotting vegetables, ash, broken up furniture, debris of all kind. It was called “corporation pudding” after the city government. And it was deep -- in some cases knee-deep."

Suicide Rate Greater Among Divorced Men, Research Finds

”suicide rates are higher among divorced men, and lowest among those still married. Single men fall somewhere in between. … Among women, differences in suicide risk among those who were married, divorced or widowed were statistically insignificant.“