KQED Quest ran a great piece tonight detailing the rapid decline in frog population, especially here in the Bay Area. Frog population declines have been happening for over 10 years. Our March speaker, Dr. Tyrone Hayes, detailed the rising data indicating severe stress on frogs, from climate change to pesticides. The resulting immuno-suppression is scientists’ best guess at the decline.
Check out the piece below. It also indicates how a newly discovered fungus is playing a role in the decline.

And here’s an additional web only piece featuring Tyrone Hayes.

One of the goals of my science cafe and blog is to humanize the science and the scientist. But I often get asked about all these studies I often quote. Who are these people? How do the researchers find these subjects?
It was probably a touch simpler to just interview some past study participants, but where’s the fun in that? So I took part in a meditation/anxiety study in February.
The study focused on emotion processing & anxiety and how these might change with mindfulness based stress reduction or cognitive-behavioral …

Dear beloved Albert Hoffman passed away on Tuesday at the ripe old age of 102.
Who’s Albert Hoffman? He’s responsible for the little marvel: LSD.

From the NY Times obit:
?hrough my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom,?Dr. Hofmann told the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in 1984. ? became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.”

Years after his initial accidental ingestion of …