July 18, 2007
Mindy discovered a cool series of videos on YouTube, done by a physics teacher.
The first one is called The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See:
Then, to respond to questions and comments, he added Patching Holes #1, Patching Holes #2 and Patching Holes #3, also well worth watching. This is…
July 18, 2007
There are 21 new papers on PLoS ONE published this week. Here are some titles that got my personal attention:
Climate Change, Genetics or Human Choice: Why Were the Shells of Mankind's Earliest Ornament Larger in the Pleistocene Than in the Holocene? by Peter R. Teske, Isabelle Papadopoulos,…
July 18, 2007
Tangled Bank #84 is up on Voltage Gate.
The Ever-Present Past: Your Nearest Site - a one-time local-archaeology carnival (still accepting entries for a couple of more days) is up on Aardvarchaeology.
The Carnival Of Education #128 is up on The Education Wonks.
Carnival of the Liberals #43 is up on…
July 18, 2007
Curtis, one of the founders of JeffsBench wrote a very interesting article comparing JeffsBench to PLoS ONE in their roles in fostering online scientific discussions. Register, look around and comment....
July 18, 2007
Well, I have the reputation about blogging around the clock, but every year more and more bloggers take that idea literally and they do it for one day for good cause, as a part of Blogathon.
Bill explains:
The mechanics are simple: bloggers sign up to blog for their chosen charity, and sponsors…
July 18, 2007
I can't stay away (a charming spell?) from the series that Anne-Marie is churning out at a supernatural rate (what kind of magic?). Here are the latest three installments, totally enchanting:
Conservation Biology
The Botany of Wands
Kin selection
July 18, 2007
Go say Hello to the Angry Toxicologist
July 18, 2007
The third post in the series on entrainment, first written on April 10, 2005, starts slowly to get into the meat of things...As always, clicking on the spider-clock icon will take you to the site of the original post.
In the previous post, I introduced the concept of entrainment of circadian…
July 17, 2007
I have lived, tomorrow, I shall sleep in glory.
- Georges Jacques Danton (1759-94)
July 17, 2007
Kim of Emergiblog explains nicely why you should support Open Access publishing:
The Public Library of Science:
You are writing a paper. You need to do some research, so you google your topic.
Ah ha! There it is! The perfect article for your paper. The abstract is right in front of you, but you…
July 17, 2007
The Purloined Bibliography:
My training in medieval history had acquainted me with the practice of identifying dependencies among manuscripts by tracing the repetition of errors. By analogy, I thought, if there were additional idiosyncratic errors on my Web site that also appeared in the book, each…
July 17, 2007
My SciBling Rob Knop is leaving the academic circus for a cool job: designing Universes or some such astronomical stuff on Second Life. Just as he is about to leave his University, though, he got a nice parting gift from the academic world for his work on the expansion of the Universe - the Gruber…
July 17, 2007
A very interesting new paper was published today in PLoS Biology:
Flight Speeds among Bird Species: Allometric and Phylogenetic Effects by Thomas Alerstam, Mikael Rosen, Johan Backman, Per G. P. Ericson and Olof Hellgren:
Analysing the variation in flight speed among bird species is important in…
July 17, 2007
The Tripoli 6 had their death sentence commuted to life in prison. Revere has the details.
Update: There is more.
July 17, 2007
Oekologie #7 is up on The Evangelical Ecologist.
Four Stone Hearth #19 is up on Sherd Nerd.
Encephalon #27 is up on Neurocontrarian.
Gene Genie #11 is up on Med Journal Watch.
Grand Rounds, Volume 3, Number 43, are up on Vitum Medicinus.
The 12th Carnival of Mathematics is up on The Vedic Maths…
July 17, 2007
ASIS&T 2008 meeting - Joining Research and Practice: Social Computing and Information Science will be held in Milwaukee on October 19-24, 2007. The Program is now available online and it is very exciting. Especially this session ;-)
July 17, 2007
Jonathan Eisen demonstrates with a personal example.
First he did a keyword search for the topic of his interest and expertise. Then he read a paper that came up in the search. Then he rated the paper and left a brief comment with the rating.
Then he came back to his blog, wrote in more detail…
July 17, 2007
Prompted by the WSJ article about blogs, Scoble, Scott Rosenberg, Duncan Riley, Dave Winer, CrunchNotes and Rex Hammock and others discuss the history of blogging.
July 17, 2007
This is the second in a series of posts on the analysis of entrainment, originally written on April 10, 2005.
The natural, endogenous period of circadian rhythms, as measured in constant conditions, is almost never exactly 24 hours. In the real world, however, the light-dark cycle provided by the…
July 16, 2007
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one has to stay awake all day.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
July 16, 2007
Tim Sullivan demonstrates the proper gear for blogging against Creationism - a banana and a helmet:
July 16, 2007
There is a long and interesting comment thread on this article on The Scientist blog. What do you think?
(Hat-tip: Tanja)
July 16, 2007
Everyone seems to be blogging about sex (and reproduction) these days. Is it something in the air? Water? Anyway, here are some good recent examples:
Bush Administration Censored Talk On Birth Control And Sex Ed:
This administration got away with a trailblazer--using the FDA to decide a drug's (…
July 16, 2007
Russ Williams (Director of NC Zoo Society) reports on his blog that the North Carolina Zoo is experiencing record attendance.
He also notes that San Francisco Zoo is enjoying record numbers as well.
Why do you think zoos are so popular lately?
Finally, he mentions that in the Oakland Zoo, one can…
July 16, 2007
This crept up on me - I was unaware it was so close yet. I just saw it and had to capture this historical moment:
The 500,000th visitor came from Reading, UK.
After all this time, I still wonder why so many people come here so often: is watching compulsive blogging akin to watching a wreck? You…
July 16, 2007
This post from February 03, 2005 covers the basic concepts and terms on entrainment. This is also the only blog post to date that I am aware of that was cited in a scientific paper.
Let's now continue our series of Clock Tutorials with an introduction to some phenomena (and related terms and…
July 15, 2007
Work 'em hard, play 'em hard, feed 'em up to the nines and send 'em to bed so tired that they are asleep before their heads are on the pillow.
- Frank L. Boyden
July 15, 2007
The Wall Street Journal has an article about blogs, written by 10 or so people. Some of it is good, some of it is bland and out-of-date, and you can just skip Tom Wolfe's piece (via Ed Cone).
Also, check out 55 Essential Articles Every Serious Blogger Should Read (which makes it the 56th such…
July 15, 2007
I missed this by weeks, but Dave asked a set of questions that I was pondering on, but found no time and energy to answer until now.
PZ, Janet, Martin, Chad and RPM responded (I am assuming some people outside SB did as well) and their responses (and their commenters') are very interesting.
1. What…
July 15, 2007
Michael Pollan will be on On Point on NPR, talking about the farm bill tomorrow (Monday) morning at 10am EST. This is in advance of some important votes in the House next week.
