- Putting Candidates’ Religion to the Test – Not in real life, unfortunately – but here are twelve questions about religion the candidates should answer.
- Building Blocks of Life Detected in Distant Galaxy – “The discovery of an amino acid precursor in a far-flung galaxy is fresh evidence that life has potential to form throughout the universe, scientists say.”
- Hand Gel Sanitizers Not Much Help in Hospitals – Meanwhile, hand sanitizers manufacturers scramble to conduct their own study.
- Don’t Be Put off by Skepticism – I’m sure this particular piece is preaching to the choir, but it’s still a nice, succinct ode to skepticism.
I've been skeptical of hand sanitizers ever since one experiment in my college microbio class. We used several common anti-bacterial products on a gel and then saw if a common skin bacteria (can't remember which one) would have its growth inhibited by the products. The bacteria took one look at the hand gel, laughed, and ate it for breakfast.
That was a low-alcohol content hand sanitizer, not the high-alcohol type used in hospitals, though. It still gave me a lot of evil glee to explain the experiment to germophobes who used the low-alcohol kind in front of me.
Awesome Stories. I Agree with most of the last story but I don't think I would mind sleeping with some of the skeptical leaders.
Thanks for pointing out the story about amino acid precursors in Arp 220. I missed it in the flood of AAS related news that Phil, Pamela, and the herd of science reporters at the conference last month were churning out. It's a cool story, and I've thrown together some commentary on it.