clock | April 13, 2009
As you may be aware, there was a non-review review of OpenLab 2008 in The New Scientist. I thought about fisking it line-by-line, but Passover interfered, and anyway, Brian, SciCurious, Ed and Blake already did it very, very well, so I can just move on...you can also see a discussion here. Any reputable media outlet out there that would be interested in doing a real review? Contact me.
In the meantime, the reaction to the review brought in some new sales of the book (as well as sales of the previous two anthologies), so it worked out fine in the end. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008…
clock | April 13, 2009Ah, it takes me so long these days to actually blog about events I attend! This one was last Thursday! But here it is. I went to the Triangle Blogger Bash in Durham, organized by Ginny of 30THREADS (find them on Twitter as well) and hosted by the Durham Performing Arts Center.
I am bad at estimating crowds, but there were at least 50 local bloggers there, some new to me, some old friends like Lenore, Anton, Will, Sheril, Ayse, Wayne and Ginny. There was a nice spread of food and a cash bar. The hosts gave out nice prizes (I never ever win stuff like that). You can see some blog reports here…
clock | April 13, 2009Periodic Tables and the Museum of Life and Science Present:
April 14, 2009 | 7:00 P.M.
Waves of Ocean Literacy
Speaker: Cynthia Cudaback, NC State University
If the Earth is a body, the ocean is its blood, circulating over most of the surface, moderating temperature and sustaining life. Cynthia Cudaback provides college and high school students with the tools they need to be informed stewards of the ocean, and its importance to the long-term sustainability of our planet. Her talk will focus on the success of marine education efforts, and opportunities for improvement.
Join us tomorrow night…
clock | April 13, 2009Since The Lay Scientist had technical problems with the blog, there was no Praxis last month. Martin will thus post it this month (on or close to the 15th). He still has all the entries from last time around, but please also send some fresh submissions as well.
Next edition of The Giant's Shoulders will be hosted by Stochastic Scribbles on April 16th. So, if you have History Of Science posts (or are just about to write one), please submit.
clock | April 13, 2009Odor Matching: The Scent Of Internet Dating:
Dating websites will soon be able to compare partners in terms of whether the personal body odour of the other party will be pleasant to them. This has a very serious biological background.
Dance Your Way To Successful Aging:
Older people can dance their way towards improved health and happiness, according to a report from the Changing Ageing Partnership (CAP).
Prehistoric Bears Ate Everything And Anything, Just Like Modern Cousins:
By comparing the craniodental morphology of modern bear species to that of two extinct species, researchers from the…
clock | April 12, 2009A good deal happens in a man's life that he isn't responsible for. Fortunate openings occur; but it is safe to remember that such breaks are occurring all the time, and other things being equal, the advantage goes to the man who is ready.
- Lawrence Downs
clock | April 12, 2009He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User by Jay Rosen. And his new podcast with Dave Winer, mostly about the AP fiasco, has been posted here. Worth a read and a listen.
clock | April 12, 2009About a week ago, my brother sent me a couple of interesting papers about funding in science, one in Canada, the other in the UK. I barely had time to skim the abstracts at the time, but thought I would put it up for discussion online and come back to it later. So I posted the link, abstract and brief commentary a few days ago to the article: Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant:
Abstract: Using Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada (NSERC) statistics, we show that the $40,000 (Canadian)…
clock | April 12, 2009Circadian Clock: Scientists Model 3D Structures Of Proteins That Control Human Clock:
Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute say they have taken a leap forward in their quest to understand the proteins that control the human circadian clock -- the 24-hour wake-sleep cycle that, when interrupted, can lead to jet lag and other sleep disturbances. Researchers report that they have been able to determine the molecular structure of a plant photolyase protein that is surprisingly similar to two cryptochrome proteins that control the "master clock" in humans and other mammals. They have also…
clock | April 11, 2009There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends-always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that.
- J. Donald Adams
clock | April 11, 2009
Ants Can Learn To Forage On One-way Trails:
Ant trails fascinate children and scientists alike. With so many ants traveling in both directions, meeting and contacting one another, carrying their loads and giving the impression that they have a sense of urgency and duty, they pose the following question: how do they organize themselves? A new study may have some answers.
Bone Deformities Linked To Inbreeding In Isle Royale Wolves:
The wolves on Isle Royale are suffering from genetically deformed bones. Scientists from Michigan Technological University blame the extreme inbreeding of the small…
clock | April 11, 2009How You Feel The World Impacts How You See It:
In the classic waterfall illusion, if you stare at the downward motion of a waterfall for some period of time, stationary objects -- such as rocks -- appear to drift upward. MIT neuroscientists have found that this phenomenon, called motion aftereffect, occurs not only in our visual perception but also in our tactile perception, and that these senses actually influence one another. Put another way, how you feel the world can actually change how you see it -- and vice versa.
Dogs And 2-year-olds Share A Limited Ability To Understand Adult Pointing…
clock | April 10, 2009I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the time I found out that M&Ms really do melt in your hand ...
- Peter Oakley
clock | April 10, 2009We have recently covered interesting reproductive adaptations in mammals, birds, insects, flatworms, plants and protists. For the time being (until I lose inspiration) I'll try to leave cephalopod sex to the experts and the pretty flower sex to the chimp crew.
In the meantime, I want to cover another Kingdom - the mysterious world of Fungi. And what follows is not just a cute example of a wonderfully evolved reproductive strategy, and not just a way to couple together my two passions - clocks and sex - but also (at the very end), an opportunity to post some of my own hypotheses online.…
clock | April 10, 2009 (First posted on February 5, 2007) Last week I asked if you would be interested in my take on this paper, since it is in Serbian (and one commenter said Yes, so here it is - I am easy to persuade):
Stankovic Miodrag, Zdravkovic Jezdimir A., and Trajanovic Ljiljana,
Comparative analysis of sexual dreams of male and female students (PDF). Psihijatrija danas 2000, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 227-242
Here is the English-language Abstract:
The subject of research is analysis of connection between sexuality as instinctive function and dreams with sexual content as cognitive function. The sample consisted…
clock | April 10, 2009[First posted here] Since I already posted, earlier in the week, the weirdest and most disgusting animal sex post ever, instead of writing a new one, I'll just send you to see some cute ladybug sex (scroll down to the middle of the post), which also reminded me of these pictures I discovered a few months ago. Or another one, picked up randomly on the web:
clock | April 10, 2009{First posted here]. Well, this Friday Weird Sex Blogging is not going to be so unique. After all, Janet and Zuzu have already blogged about it, but who can resist a phallic-looking, rotten-meat smelling, fly-attracting flower! And it is not a B-grade movie on the sci-fi channel. This is real! The Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum), in all its 3m tall glory is about to start stinking up the greenhouse at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (follow the flowering on the blog or watch the flowering web-cam here) :
clock | April 10, 2009As always, animal porn is under the fold (first posted here):
You have probably heard that a female praying mantis eats her mate's head during the mating process. You may imagine the process to go something like this:
Actually, there are many species of praying mantises and in most of them sexual cannibalism is quite rare. It occurs much more often in the laboratory than out in the field. Apparently, the lights and sounds of a laboratory are stressful to the female so she acts aggressively in response.
The praying mantises are very aggressive predators and they can eat quite a lot of…
clock | April 10, 2009Some flatworms, for instance these pretty Pseudobiceros hancockanus, engage in penis fencing. Both individuals are hermaphrodites, i.e., have both male and female organs. The penis is white, pointed and two-headed. Both individuals are trying to inseminate the other. The one who is inseminated has to bear and lay eggs - a more expensive proposition. The one who "won" the fencing bout and did the insemination can move on and fence some other guys and on and on, "fathering" many progeny until happenning onto a better fencer, getting inseminated, and spending the rest of the life as "…