Editor’s selections: placebos, climate change, and charge-shift bonds
October 19th, 2009 Editor's Selections No Comments
“Dr. SkySkull” selects several notable posts each week from a miscellany of ResearchBlogging.org categories. He blogs at Skulls in the Stars.
This week’s posts all got me thinking about familiar ideas in a whole new light:
- Deconstructing the placebo. The placebo effect is so well-known that it is almost taken for granted at times. However, it is known that placebos have become more effective in recent years. At Neuroskeptic, blogger neuroskeptic talks about research that suggests we must look at the idea of placebos in a new light.
- Food and climate change – save or doom the world while eating. Here’s another thing to worry about with respect to climate change! Benno Hansen at Think About It describes how the food choices we make can contribute to the greenhouse effect.
- Climate Change – what’s worse than the heat? Speaking of climate change, Christie at Observations of a Nerd talks about a problem worse than global warming: the acidification of the oceans that will come with it.
- An Unrecognized Type of Chemical Bonding. How have I missed this before? Most of us have heard of ionic and covalent bonding in chemistry, but Michael at Phased describes a third, relatively unknown form of chemical bonding: charge-shift bonding.
Check back next Monday for more “miscellaneous” highlights!
