I am the Online Community Manager at PLoS-ONE (Public Library of Science). My job is to try to motivate you to comment on the papers there. My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
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Dictionary of Circadian Physiology
Basic Terms and Concepts in Math and Science
April 30, 2008
Category: Science News
There are 49 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. Here are some titles I found interesting: Echolocating Bats Cry Out Loud to Detect Their Prey: Echolocating bats have successfully exploited a broad range of habitats and prey. Much research...
Posted by Coturnix at 8:03 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
Single-celled Bacterium Works 24/7: Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have gained the first detailed insight into the way circadian rhythms govern global gene expression in Cyanothece, a type of cyanobacterium (blue-green algae) known to cycle between photosynthesis...
Posted by Coturnix at 7:54 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock News
As we mentioned just the other day, studying animal behavior is tough as "animals do whatever they darned please". Thus, making sure that everything is controlled for in an experimental setup is of paramount importance. Furthermore, for the studies to...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:52 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Tutorials
Microarrays have been used in the study of circadian expression of mammalian genes since 2002 and the consensus was built from those studies that approximately 15% of all the genes expressed in a cell are expressed in a circadian manner....
Posted by Coturnix at 7:56 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Personal
Just landed in Berlin. Flew with JAT for the first time in decades. The best flight ever. I guess their pilots, after getting some real dogfight combat flying experience find piloting a B-737-300 way too easy......
Posted by Coturnix at 6:16 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Quotes
The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs.' - Roy Blount, Jr....
Posted by Coturnix at 3:57 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 29, 2008
Category: Clock News
Two interesting papers came out last week [from the Archives - click on the clock logo to see the original post], both using transgenic mice to ask important questions about circadian organization in mammals. Interestingly, in both cases the gene...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:50 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
This morning I had to get up early to go and give my interview for Radio Belgrade 1, at the same time when my Radio Belgrade 2 interview was on. This one will be broadcast in ten days or so....
Posted by Coturnix at 10:17 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
After watching the show jumping classes and chatting with my horsey friends, I went back to the city center, explored the place and saw that unlike most other types of stores, the bookstores are still there where I remembered them,...
Posted by Coturnix at 9:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
Yesterday I went to the Belgrade Racecourse and the barns and was happy to meet many of my old friends, including my old trainer (with Professor Steve Steve below) as well as some good new kids, including two sisters who...
Posted by Coturnix at 9:23 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
Birds Can Detect Predators Using Smell: Many animal species detect and avoid predators by smell, but this ability has largely been ignored in the study of birds, since it was traditionally thought that they did not make use of this...
Posted by Coturnix at 8:31 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Carnivals
Encephalon #44 is up on Cognitive Daily Carnival of the Green #125 is up on The Conservation Report...
Posted by Coturnix at 8:16 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogging
Go say Hello to ERV (endogenous retro-virus)!...
Posted by Coturnix at 8:09 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
Why We Sleep: The Temporal Organization of Recovery: "If sleep does not serve an absolutely vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made," Allan Rechtschaffen said. Studies of sleep and sleep deprivation suggest that...
Posted by Coturnix at 8:07 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Tutorials
This is going to be a challenging post to write for several reasons. How do I explain that a paper that does not show too much new stuff is actually a seminal paper? How do I condense a 12-page Cell...
Posted by Coturnix at 7:54 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Quotes
The human body represents to me the same universal innocence, timelessness and purity of all seed pods, suggesting the mother as well as the child, the parental as well as the descendant, conceived according to nature's longings. - Ruth Bernhard...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:56 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 28, 2008
Category: Evolution
(First posted on July 21, 2006) Some plants do not want to get eaten. They may grow in places difficult to approach, they may look unappetizing, or they may evolve vile smells. Some have a fuzzy, hairy or sticky surface,...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:53 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Tutorials
Chad wrote a neat history of (or should we say 'evolution of') clocks, as in "timekeeping instruments". He points out the biological clocks are "...sort of messy application, from the standpoint of physics..." and he is right - for...
Posted by Coturnix at 7:52 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Quotes
Words mean what they're generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral for the first time, he called it "awful, pompous, and artificial." Meaning roughly: Awesome, majestic, and ingenious. - S. M. Stirling...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:56 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Open Science
UNESCO recently published and informative book: Open access to knowledge and information: scholarly literature and digital library initiatives; the South Asian scenario, which, from what I can see, can be easily modified for all other geographic areas as well. Perhaps...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:12 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 27, 2008
Category: Clock News
This post is a relatively recent (May 24, 2006) critique of a PLoS paper....
Posted by Coturnix at 4:54 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
Today is Orthodox Easter. Most everyone here will have lamb for lunch today. We did something different.... First, for breakfast I had snenokle (here is a recipe from a delightful Balkans food blog Palachinka) and I ground some chocolate on...
Posted by Coturnix at 10:24 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
My kum Miroslav (see previous posts just below) has taken a picture of this lizard, which is quite common in Nigeria. This is a male (females are more drab and single-colored) and it is about 0.5 meters long (20 inches)....
Posted by Coturnix at 9:36 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Tutorials
Considering I've been writing textbook-like tutorials on chronobiology for quite a while now, trying always to write as simply and clearly as possible, and even wrote a Basic Concepts And Terms post, I am surprised that I never actually defined...
Posted by Coturnix at 7:51 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
My 'kum' Miroslav (see the previous post) is working in Nigeria right now. A few weeks ago he went to Lagos on business and took this picture from the car:...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:50 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
'Kum', in Serbo-Croatian language, denotes two things - godfather to a child, or the Best Man at the wedding. Well, I was a Best Man at a wedding some 20+ years ago. So, yesterday morning I went to visit them....
Posted by Coturnix at 4:33 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Carnivals
Gene Genie #30 is up on Gene Expression. Friday Ark #188 is up on Modulator...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:24 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Quotes
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often. - Samuel Butler...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:54 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 26, 2008
Category: EuroTrip '08
I walked around town a little bit these days. My feet know the way, even if all the names of streets were changed from WWII National Heroes to saints and medieval princes. It has changed a lot - there are...
Posted by Coturnix at 6:45 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Balkans
After the 1999 Clinton/Clark bombing of Belgrade, almost all of the ruined buildings were quickly torn down and replaced with modern buildings, perhaps out of spite (which is the national character trait). After all these years, the city is unrecognizable...
Posted by Coturnix at 6:30 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Balkans
There were quite a lot of events and actions in Belgrade for the Earth Day last week. I came in on that day so I did not have time to see anything. But I loved the balloon they placed in...
Posted by Coturnix at 6:02 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
I already mentioned my friend Srdjan Milovanovic before. Like his father, he is a psychiatrist now, but we go waaaaay back. We have been friends since we were really small - he was two and I was three years old....
Posted by Coturnix at 5:46 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
It took a century to build the St.Sava Cathedral. I remember playing on its foundations as a kid - a great fortress to play in. But the enterior has just begun to be worked on - I am not sure...
Posted by Coturnix at 5:10 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
Early Human Populations Evolved Separately For 100,000 Years: A team of Genographic researchers and their collaborators have published the most extensive survey to date of African mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Over 600 complete mtDNA genomes from indigenous populations across the continent...
Posted by Coturnix at 5:02 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
Beef soup with cream, eggs and lemon - today's lunch:...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:49 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Tutorials
This is an appropriate time of year for this post (February 05, 2006)......
Posted by Coturnix at 7:57 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Quotes
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals....
Posted by Coturnix at 3:53 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
Last night's dinner - crepes filled with a mix of cheese, eggs and sugar, baked in the oven with some sweet cream:...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:27 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 25, 2008
Category: Chronobiology
Since this is another one of the recurring themes on my blog, I decided to republish all of my old posts on the topic together under the fold. Since my move here to the new blog, I have continued to...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:56 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Housekeeping
The Echinoblog Observe The Banana Ben Off to Iraq Transient Reporter Being the Chronicles of B...
Posted by Coturnix at 12:11 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
I was kicking myself all day yesterday because I forgot to take my camera with me for most of the day. First, my mother and I went to the bank to do some business which, of course, made us hungry...
Posted by Coturnix at 10:52 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Tutorials
This post (written on August 13, 2005) describes the basic theory behind photoperiodism and some experimental protocols developed to test the theory....
Posted by Coturnix at 7:54 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogging
Last week in Trieste, immediately after the scienceblogging session at FEST, I helped start a new blog - Via Ginnastica. It will be run by nine room-mates (in an apartment in the Gymnastic Street), all nine graduates of the Science...
Posted by Coturnix at 7:09 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Fun
I wish I could have this clock: See a series of images and the sped-up animation to see how it works....
Posted by Coturnix at 5:09 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Quotes
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of workers in the world, the people who do all the work, and the people who think they do all the work. The latter class is generally the busiest, the former never have time...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:52 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 24, 2008
Category: Science News
Nurture Over Nature: Certain Genes Are Turned On Or Off By Geography And Lifestyle, Study Suggests: Score one for the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate, as North Carolina State University geneticists have shown that environmental factors such...
Posted by Coturnix at 6:33 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Carnivals
Skeptic's Circle #85 is up on Andrea's Buzzing About Carnival of Space #51 is up on Astro Engine...
Posted by Coturnix at 5:57 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Tutorials
This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior....
Posted by Coturnix at 7:51 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
OK, I posted a lot of pictures of Belgrade and my Mom's food so far, but the real business was on Tuesday, when I gave two talks about Open Access, PLoS, Science 2.0, the future of the scientific paper, Open...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:07 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Quotes
The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English. Then I'd be able to charge you an upgrade fee every time I add new letters like N and T. - Scott McNealy...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:51 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 23, 2008
Category: EuroTrip '08
Museum of Natural History in Belgrade is 113 years old. Tomorrow, I will go to the main building to talk to people and perhaps check the library and some specimens - there is no real exhibit there. But today I...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:58 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
There are 41 new articles published this week in PLoS ONE. A always, make comments and ratings while browsing and reading the articles. Here are just a few picks - titles I found interesting - but you should go and...
Posted by Coturnix at 4:40 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Chronobiology
From January 20, 2006, on the need to check the model-derived findings in non-model organisms....
Posted by Coturnix at 4:20 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
Food is probably the most nostalgia-inducing facet of life.......
Posted by Coturnix at 3:52 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Carnivals
The Tar Heel Tavern was the first blog carnival that focused on a geographical region instead of a topic. It was going strong for about two years, but I could not find enough time to manage it any more, so...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:42 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
Cathedral of Saint Sava: Kalemegdan:...
Posted by Coturnix at 2:57 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
Life Expectancy Worsening Or Stagnating For Large Segment Of U.S. Population: One of the major aims of the U.S. health system is improving the health of all people, particularly those segments of the population at greater risk of health disparities....
Posted by Coturnix at 1:28 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Open Science
Sheril Kirshenbaum will be on a panel on Science and the New Media at the AAAS Forum On Science And Technology Policy on May 9th and, as bloggers tend to do, she is asking for questions, comments and ideas from...
Posted by Coturnix at 1:10 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Carnivals
Grand Rounds 4.31, the medical blog carnival, is up on Dr. Val and The Voice of Reason The newest edition of Gene Genie, the human genetics blog carnival, is up on My Biotech Life. The Boneyard - Edition #18 -...
Posted by Coturnix at 12:48 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: EuroTrip '08
Nothing better than coming back home after a long time (13 years since my last visit), seeing my family and eating Mom's food:...
Posted by Coturnix at 11:49 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Tutorials
This is the sixth post in a series about mechanism of entrainment, running all day today on this blog. In order to understand the content of this post, you need to read the previous five installments. The original of this...
Posted by Coturnix at 8:00 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Clock Quotes
A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water. - Sidney Goff...
Posted by Coturnix at 3:58 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks