December 14, 2008
This EurekAlert title got my attention this morning: Immunity stronger at night than during day:
The immune system's battle against invading bacteria reaches its peak activity at night and is lowest during the day.
Experiments with the laboratory model organism, Drosophila melanogaster, reveal that…
December 14, 2008
Perhaps we should buy this: No Limit Texas Dreidel - Jewish Gift Pack Family Entertainment:
Let My People Go All In!! Take Dreidel, combine it with poker, and you've got a new dreidel experience that is truly fun, and a game that is the talk of the Jewish community. You'll check, bet, raise, or…
December 14, 2008
More Than Just Being A Sentimental Fool: The Psychology Of Nostalgia:
In the 17th and 18th centuries, nostalgia was viewed as a medical disease, complete with symptoms including weeping, irregular heartbeat and anorexia. By the 20th century, nostalgia was regarded as a psychiatric disorder, with…
December 13, 2008
Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness…
December 13, 2008
New York Times has compiled a whole slew of essays about the interesting ideas that people have come up with during 2008. And three of them are written by Rebecca Skloot, who is the special speaker at the WiSE event (on Friday night) at ScienceOnline09.
Her three essays are:
Avian Dancing:
If you…
December 13, 2008
While these gifts for geeks don't really excite me, I wouldn't mind putting my giant hamsters into one of these (more cool images, including of stuff one may want to own - here):
December 13, 2008
This is one of ten Best Science Images of 2008 as chosen by National Geographic:
Little Shop of Horrors fans may see a resemblance to the bloodthirsty plant from the 1986 movie in the above electron micrograph image.
Drexel University doctoral student Jessica Schiffman won an honorable mention in…
December 13, 2008
This one is good and thorough - by Colin Purrington, Department of Biology, Swarthmore College. Short excerpt from the beginning:
Why a poster is usually better than a talk
Although you could communicate all of the above via a 15-minute talk at the same meeting, presenting a poster allows you to…
December 13, 2008
Have you written something about the world of/in science since November 15th? Next edition of Praxis will be on Effortless Incitement on December 15th.
Have you written a History of Science post lately? Next edition of The Giant's Shoulders will be on Rigorous Trivialities also on December 15th.
December 13, 2008
And now that everyone is on an elephant-blogging spree, here are clips from two of my favourite childhood movies, both featuring elephants - Elephant Walk and Hatari:
December 13, 2008
A recent survey of Asian elephants in European zoos showed that their lifespan is much, much shorter than for elephants in the wild. Ed and Brian go into details of this survey.
The survey does not look at African elephants, nor at North American zoos - in both cases I feel that the picture looks…
December 13, 2008
So, the zoo nutritionists got together for a 2-day meeting at NCSU to discuss the issue:
Obesity among zoo animals is such a complex problem that zoo nutritionists, scientists and others, from as far away as England, gathered at N.C. State University on Friday for a two-day symposium on such…
December 13, 2008
This is pretty long and not easy to read, but it puts together a lot of thoughts about blogs, wikis and the stability of the Web as a science publishing platform. Post your comments there, or here.
December 13, 2008
As you know, H.M. died last week.
Listen to this brief (9 minutes) NPR Science Friday podcast - you will be able to hear Henry Gustav Molaison's voice. But most importantly, he has donated his brain to further scientific study. His brain will be sliced and stained and studied at The Brain…
December 13, 2008
In The Animal World, Bigger Isn't Necessarily Better:
Shocking new research shows size isn't always an advantage in the animal world, shattering a widely-held belief that bigger is better. Michael Kasumovic, a former University of Toronto Scarborough PhD student, examined Australian Redback male…
December 12, 2008
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
- Paul Ambroise Valery
December 12, 2008
Why is mainstream media obsessively focused, out of all the cool science out there, on silly titillating EvoPsych garbage, presented in a "shocked! shoked!" tone? Here is today's crop - feel free to savage them on your own blogs:
46% Of Women Prefer Internet To Sex, Says Intel Survey
Fertile women…
December 12, 2008
CNN reports: Scientists baffled by mysterious acorn shortage:
Up and down the East Coast, residents and naturalists alike have been scratching their heads this autumn over a simple question: Where are all the acorns? Oak trees have shed their leaves, but the usual carpet of acorns is not crunching…
December 12, 2008
Old-timey-looking pictures are here.
December 12, 2008
In yesterday's New York Times:
Scientists have understood ocean acidification for a long time. But what they are learning now is how quickly it is increasing, in step with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. New studies show that if carbon dioxide emissions continue at current rates, shells…
December 12, 2008
On arXiv, by M. E. J. Newman (Santa Fe Institute):
We investigate the structure of scientific collaboration networks. We consider two scientists to be connected if they have authored a paper together, and construct explicit networks of such connections using data drawn from a number of databases,…
December 12, 2008
Hmmm, I am wondering if this is connected - adult sites are feeling the crunch so....are they now funding scientific consumer research?
December 12, 2008
DOCTOR Eva Amsen!
December 12, 2008
There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one…
December 12, 2008
Remember this?
Now Simon Ovens interviewed several key players in this game - Pulitzers Open to Online-Only Entrants -- But Who Qualifies? It's longish, but worth your attention:
He did, however, confirm that a blog could hypothetically qualify. "If one or two people call their website a text-based…
December 12, 2008
Evolution: Education and Outreach, Volume 1, Number 4, is a thematic issue - 26 articles on the Evolution of the Eye. It's Open Access so you can download and read all the articles.
December 12, 2008
Food for thought:
Bill Farren: Insulat-Ed:
Opening up the institution may seem like a counter-intuitive way of protecting it, but in an era where tremendous value is being created by informal and self-organized groups, sharing becomes the simplest and most powerful way of connecting with external…
December 12, 2008
"In the summer, I will begin an appointment at the Harvard Law School, while directing the Safra Center."
More details here.
