May 3, 2008
Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head.
- James E. Shapiro
May 3, 2008
Dog happy to see me. And others, of course. After 25.5 days, 4 countries, 5 airports, 8 flights by 5 airline companies, 2 panels, 2 lectures, 4 radio interviews, 2 newspaper interviews, 2 blogger meetups, and many good meals, I am mentally exhausted. Need to spend some time with the family.…
May 3, 2008
Believe me, I love the word "circadian". It is a really cool word, invented by Franz Halberg in the late 1950s, out of 'circa' (Latin - "about") and diem ("a day"), to denote daily rhythms in biochemistry, physiology and behavior generated by the internal, endogenous biological clocks within…
May 3, 2008
This April 09, 2006 post places another paper of ours (Reference #17) within a broader context of physiology, behavior, ecology and evolution.
The paper was a result of a "communal" experiment in the lab, i.e., it was not included in anyone's Thesis. My advisor designed it and started the…
May 2, 2008
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Times is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
- Robert Herrick
May 2, 2008
You and I, as well as all of our mammalian brethren, have just a few photopigments, i.e., colored molecules that change shape when exposed to light and subsequently trigger cascades of biochemical reactions leading to changes in electrical properties of sensory neurons, which lead to modulation of…
May 2, 2008
Hypotheses leading to more hypotheses (from March 19, 2006 - the Malaria Day):
I have written a little bit about malaria before, e.g, here and here, but this is my special Malaria Action Day post, inspired by a paper [1] that Tara sent me some weeks ago and I never got to write about it till now…
May 1, 2008
See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.
- Robin Williams
May 1, 2008
If you really read this blog 'for the articles', you know some of my recurrent themes, e.g., that almost every biological function exhibits cycles and that almost every cell in every organism contains a more-or-less functioning clock. Here is a new paper that combines both of those themes very…
May 1, 2008
Tangled Bank #104 is up on Dammit Jim!
Grand Rounds Vol. 4 No. 32 are up on Doc Gurley
I and the Bird #74 is up on Consworld
Change of Shift: Volume 2, Number 22 is up on Life in the NHS
The Carnival of Space - the anniversary edition - is up on Why Homeschool
Carnival of Education #169 is up on…
May 1, 2008
Antimonite
Palachinka
Because I said so
The Skeptical Adaptationist
Dammit Jim!
May 1, 2008
You probably realize by now that my expertise is in clocks and calendars of birds, but blogging audience forces me to occasionally look into human clocks from a medical perspective. Reprinted below the fold are three old Circadiana posts about the connection between circadian clocks and the…
April 30, 2008
I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.
- Ronald Wilson Reagan
April 30, 2008
For dinner, we went up high, really high - 230 meters, to a rotating restaurant, perhaps the highest blogger meetup to date?! There I met Cornelius Puschmann, Martin Fenner and his lovely wife, Catriona McCallum, Randolf Nesse, Bjoern Brembs and his girlfriend, and Mark who had to run early to…
April 30, 2008
After lunch, Catriona McCallum and Randolf Nesse (who, yes, writes a blog) met and discussed evolution and medicine and blogging and Facebook and Open Access and PLoS, etc.:
April 30, 2008
After a lovely flight, Catriona met me at the airport. We went to the Institute where I checked in my room, set up my wifi, then went down to meet the people and have lunch: various cold cuts, true Coca Cola, and a cream puff:
April 30, 2008
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 has demonstrated how time-frequency structure of…
April 30, 2008
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 during the day…
April 30, 2008
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 be replicable in other labs, it is always a…
April 30, 2008
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. I always felt it was more, much more.
I am no molecular…
April 30, 2008
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...
April 29, 2008
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.
April 29, 2008
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 inserted into the mouse was a human gene, though…
April 29, 2008
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. All the radio interviews will be recorded and placed on the web so I can link to it later. Afterwards, my…
April 29, 2008
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, not replaced by new boutiques and cafes, surviving the decades of…
April 29, 2008
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 used to own and ride my old horse. There were two small show jumping classes…
April 29, 2008
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 sense. However, it has now been discovered that birds are not only…
April 29, 2008
Encephalon #44 is up on Cognitive Daily
Carnival of the Green #125 is up on The Conservation Report
April 29, 2008
Go say Hello to ERV (endogenous retro-virus)!
April 29, 2008
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 the functions of sleep include recovery…
