March 20, 2007
I have written about the relationship between circadian clocks and food numerous times (e.g., here, here and here). Feeding times affect the clock. Clock is related to hunger and obesity. Many intestinal peptides affect the clock as well.
There is a lot of research on food-entrainable…
March 20, 2007
No Sex For 40 Million Years? No Problem:
A group of organisms that has never had sex in over 40 million years of existence has nevertheless managed to evolve into distinct species, says new research published today. The study challenges the assumption that sex is necessary for organisms to…
March 20, 2007
A few months ago, Mike defined the Compulsive Centrist Disorder and I have argued something similar a number of times in the past, e.g., here and here. In short - there is no such thing as a political middle. There is no line between "Left" and "Right" that you can put your own dot on. Most…
March 20, 2007
In the back-channels here on Scienceblogs and on Panda's Thumb we were discussing the pros and cons of paying so much attention to one Dr.Michael Egnor, a new creationist shill for the Discovery Institute. Yes, it feels like a tremendous waste of time to debunk incredibly stupid (and incredibly…
March 20, 2007
Grand Rounds: Volume 3, Issue 26 is up on Blog, MD
Carnival of The Green #69 is up on The Goode Life
March 20, 2007
Crows Can Recognize The Calls Of Relatives:
Most of us would know our mother's voice on the phone from the first syllable uttered. A recent Cornell study suggests that crows also can recognize the voices of their relatives. By recording and analyzing the alarm caws of American crows, Jessica…
March 20, 2007
The first four books in the Cherry Ames series are back in print, published by Springer Publishing Company.
Apparently, many people, upon reading them, decided to join the nursing profession. Mind you, that was between 1943 and 1968. when these books first came out.
I bet Kim was the first one…
March 20, 2007
Actually, no, he knows exactly where they went - and for a good reason:
Shooting Marbles At 16,000 Miles Per Hour:
NASA scientist Bill Cooke is shooting marbles and he's playing "keepsies." The prize won't be another player's marbles, but knowledge that will help keep astronauts safe when America…
March 19, 2007
Don't wait. The time will never be just right.
- Napoleon Hill
March 19, 2007
Just in case you have not seen it yet, Bee of Backreaction blog has posted an interesting trio of posts well worth reading (each in the series, IMHO, better than the previous): Science and Democracy, part I, part II and part IIi. They are a little physics-centric (especially part I), but if you…
March 19, 2007
It has been known for quite a while now that bipolar disorder is essentially a circadian clock disorder. However, there was a problem in that there was no known animal model for the bipolar disorder.
Apparently that has changed, if this report is to be believed:
"There's evidence suggesting that…
March 19, 2007
You know how on comment threads on blogposts about evolution you, sooner or later, get a commenter saying something that reveals complete lack of understanding of even the basics of evolutionary biology? It is usually accompanied by some creationist canard as well. What do you do? If you stop to…
March 19, 2007
This is a crosspost to effect a Googlebomb, correcting an injustice against a fellow feminist blogger. Jill Filipovic, who blogs at Feministe and Ms. JD, is a NYU law student who has been the subject of cyber-obsession on a discussion board allegedly populated by law students. The discussions…
March 19, 2007
New Bird Species Found In Idaho, Demonstrates Co-evolutionary Arms Race
One does not expect to discover a bird species new to science while wandering around the continental United States. Nor does one expect that such a species would provide much insight into how coevolutionary arms races promote…
March 19, 2007
Jurassic Crocodile Is Unearthed From Blue Mountains In Eastern Oregon:
An ancient sea-going crocodile has surfaced from the rocks of Crook County in eastern Oregon. Really. It's discovery by the North American Research Group (NARG), whose members were digging for Jurassic-age mollusks known as…
March 19, 2007
Being constantly online and at the same time out of academia skewed my perspective, and I kinda expected that most of my old profs would not be so hot about publishing in online open-sorce journals (and even thinking that Science is still a place to go, oy vey!), but this is quite disheartening,…
March 19, 2007
Go say Hello to Jeremy Bruno over on The Voltage Gate!
March 19, 2007
Every time someone proposes a radical rewriting of science textbooks, one needs to proceed with caution. There is so much evidence for electrical potentials in nerve cells, this sounds really fishy:
Action Of Nerves Is Based On Sound Pulses, Anesthetics Research Shows:
Nerves are 'wrapped' in a…
March 19, 2007
The case is made by an atheist, of course - Amanda - but the important part of the post is the explanation of why is it impossible in the current educational system in the USA and why is the current system inherently conservative.
March 19, 2007
Homing Pigeons Get Their Bearings From Their Beaks:
It has long been recognized that birds possess the ability to use the Earth's magnetic field for their navigation, although just how this is done has not yet been clarified. However, the discovery of iron-containing structures in the beaks of…
March 19, 2007
Brain Fitness Carnival #3 is up on Neurophilosophy blog.
March 19, 2007
Tarheel Tavern #108 is up on The View From The Cheap Seats
Let me know if you want to host next week....
March 18, 2007
Who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side.
- The Talmud
March 18, 2007
I hope you see this on time to tune in.
Hat-tip: The Beagle Project Blog
March 18, 2007
There used to be two big independent papers in the Triangle: Spectator and Independent.
The former was full of information about local events, movies, restaurants. The latter had some of the best political and social writing anywhere.
Then, several years ago, the two papers fused into one and…
March 18, 2007
Carnival of the Godless #62 is up on Black Sun Journal.
March 17, 2007
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
- Theodore Roosevelt
March 17, 2007
Carnival of the Liberals #34: Ides of March Edition is up on Brainshrub.
March 16, 2007
Osvaldo_Cavandoli aka Cava, the author of the amazing and hillarious cartoon La Linea, one of my childhood favourites, has died about two weeks ago. Here is the very first episode:
There are several more available on YouTube (I just watched about a dozen and laughed out loud).
Unlike most of the…
March 16, 2007
Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882 - 1945
