November 19, 2007
As we are trying to help gather some funding to help the Tasmanian Devil from extinction due to the nasty infectious cancer, I thought it would be of interest to you to read more about it in this article: To Lose Both Would Look Like Carelessness: Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease to which I…
November 19, 2007
Monday night is the time when new articles on PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology get published. My picks for this week:
Who Needs Cause-of-Death Data:
More than half of the world's deaths pass by undocumented as to cause. Whilst the appropriate focus of health services may well be the care of the…
November 19, 2007
Position Description: Communications Assistant
Chicago-area communications firm seeks communications/journalism/PR undergrad or grad student for part-time position, 10-15 hours per week at $20/hour.
This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a team that is building a cutting-edge new-media…
November 19, 2007
There are 61 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. The anthology should be published in time for the event. There are already 138 registered participants and if you do…
November 18, 2007
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging urge to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
- Mark Twain
November 18, 2007
Tasmanian Devils are suffering from a strange form of cancer, one that is infectious, i.e., it can be transmitted from one animal to another through contact.
The disease is devastating the population of this already endangered species and if some cure is not found quickly, the species will go…
November 18, 2007
Hormone Of Darkness: Melatonin Could Hurt Memory Formation At Night:
What do you do when a naturally occurring hormone in your body turns against you? What do you do when that same hormone - melatonin - is a popular supplement you take to help you sleep? A University of Houston professor and his…
November 18, 2007
Last Wednesday I went to Wine Authorities, the new wine store in Durham, for our monthly Durham Blogger Meetup.
Afterwards, I could not help it but go home with three new bottles of wine. The best is the one I tried from the Enomatic machine at the back of the store - 2005 Fleurie, Granits des…
November 18, 2007
There are 62 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. The anthology should be published in time for the event. There are already 138 registered participants and if you do…
November 17, 2007
From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
- W. Somerset Maugham
November 17, 2007
Tetrapod Zoology
With all the media circus surrounding Nigersaurus, not enough publicity was given to another cool sauropod described on Thursday - the Xenoposeidon. It is quite amazing what a few years of painstaking study, comparative anatomy and head-scratching can do - reconstruct a large…
November 17, 2007
There are 64 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. The anthology should be published in time for the event. There are already 138 registered participants and if you do…
November 16, 2007
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
- Alan Alexander Milne
November 16, 2007
Cyclone Sidr has hit Bangladesh. The number of casualties, though not as large as predicted, is still large and growing. More importantly, millions of people are displaced and have lost the sources of their livelihoods. The best way to help is to send money.
Red Cross/Red Crescent is probably…
November 16, 2007
There are 65 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. The anthology should be published in time for the event. There are already 136 registered participants and if you do…
November 15, 2007
Oekologie #11 is up on 10000 birds.
I and the Bird # 62 is up on Greg Laden.
Accretionary Wedge #3 is up on The Other 95%.
Change of Shift: Vol. 2, Number 11 is up on Emergiblog.
Friday Ark #165 is up on Modulator.
November 15, 2007
From here about this.
November 15, 2007
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
- Crowfoot
November 15, 2007
Today is a super-exciting day for me and I hope you will find it exciting as well. Why?
Because today PLoS ONE published a paper I am very hyped about - Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur by Sereno PC, Wilson JA, Witmer LM, Whitlock JA, Maga A, et al.
Simultaneously with the publication…
November 15, 2007
There are 66 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. The anthology should be published in time for the event. There are already 132 registered participants and if you do…
November 14, 2007
The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped make,…
November 14, 2007
The cyclone Sidr looks ominous and scary. It will make landfall tomorrow. More than ten million people live in the river delta of Bangladesh where Sidr is headed. Shelters have a capacity for about half a million. Others are, I guess, evacuating on foot, if there even is a place to go and hide…
November 14, 2007
If scientific papers can be publicly reviewed either pre-publication or post-publication, and if one day soon the public can have a voice on the patents, then why not also grant proposals? Now, Michael does not go that far - he only proposes a more direct communication between the researcher and…
November 14, 2007
Grand Rounds - Volume 4 number 8 are up on Doctor Anonymous
Carnival of Education #145 is up on Edspresso
Homeschooling Carnival: I am Thankful Edition is up on Nerd Family. Pro-Nerd. Pro-Family.
November 14, 2007
From California Tech:
Although some radical solutions might lead to growing pains, the present state of the industry is rather like the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" animation in Fantasia: the tools designed to support science have developed a life of their own, and are now draining the system that they…
November 14, 2007
Perhaps you can win one of the Sparky Awards:
SPARC Discovery Awards
SPARC Announces Mind Mashup - A Video Contest to Showcase Student Views on Information Sharing:
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced the first SPARC Discovery Awards, a contest that…
November 14, 2007
How Poisonous Mushrooms Cook Up Toxins:
Alpha-amanitin is the poison of the death cap mushroom, Amanita phalloides. The Michigan State University plant biology research associate was looking for a big gene that makes a big enzyme that produces alpha-amanitin, since that's how other fungi produce…
November 14, 2007
There are 67 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. The anthology should be published in time for the event. There are already 127 registered participants and if you do…
November 13, 2007
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for…
November 13, 2007
There are 27 brand-new articles, just uploaded on PLoS ONE. Here are a couple of titles that drew my immediate attention:
Maternal Enrichment during Pregnancy Accelerates Retinal Development of the Fetus:
Although much is known about the harmful effects parental stress has on offspring, little is…
