clock | July 31, 2008Broca's Area, 1865:
This doesn't sound too out there to us now, but at the time it caused a lot of controversy. The problems wasn't the localization to the inferior frontal lobe, it was Broca's claim that it was the LEFT inferior frontal lobe. This didn't sit well with a lot of scientists at the time. It was pretty accepted that, when you had two sides or halves of an organ, the both acted in the same way. Both kidneys do the same thing, both sides of your lungs, and both of your ovaries or testes. Your legs and arms will do essentially the same thing, though due to handedness (or…
clock | July 31, 2008Excellent article by Jasmina Tesanovic about the final gasps of the Serbian Radicals (the right-wing nationalists and war-mongers) :
A couple of days ago, journalists from various press groups were beaten up by Radical goons; at that point the new government declared Serbian journalists to be equivalent to Serbian police performing public duties, and severely penalized the street-thugs for attacking free speech.
Imagine that in the USA?! And what about Citizen Journalists? Can I haz my blue uniform now?
clock | July 31, 2008Sometimes people ask me what do I have against Green OA (repositories) as opposed to Gold OA (journals) and I have a couple of stock answers to that, usually including a caveat that I do not really have anything against Green OA per se, but the way it is implemented is not good, yet makes people complacent, which in turn slows the down the progress towards complete OA. Not well implemented? Well, yes, I have seen all of these sins over the past couple of years. Once there is a standard that all builders of repositories adher to, Green OA will be OK (though there are other arguments against…
clock | July 31, 2008Do you remember this study (also see it here, here, here) we did a few years ago?
Well, I just got my hands on some pictures from the time we did it - just individual animals, not pairs as they fought (we had to pay attention to score behaviors, not waste time on taking pictures):
clock | July 30, 2008The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
- Francis Bacon
clock | July 30, 2008Searching For Shut Eye: Possible 'Sleep Gene' Identified:
While scientists and physicians know what happens if you don't get six to eight hours of shut-eye a night, investigators have long been puzzled about what controls the actual need for sleep. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine might have an answer, at least in fruit flies. In a recent study of fruit flies, they identified a gene that controls sleep.
Did Dinosaur Soft Tissues Still Survive? New Research Challenges Notion:
Paleontologists in 2005 hailed research that apparently showed that soft, pliable…
clock | July 30, 2008Best time to appreciate Open Access? When you're really sick and want to learn more about what you have.:
* Complete OA still a long way off. One thing I re-learned during this was that it is incredibly frustrating to see how much of the biomedical literature is still not freely available online. Shame on Elsevier and all the others who are still hoarding this important information.
* Thanks to those providing OA. Related to the above issue, I came to appreciate was the societies and publishers have decided to go the OA route. I spent a lot of time reading material from ASM, BMC, PLoS…
clock | July 30, 2008The NYTimes (also International Herald Tribune which I mentioned before) piece on book-reading, the Web and literacy of the new generation, has provoked quite a lot of interesting responses:
SciCurious:
But this change in internet language has happened very quickly, almost as as fast an an invading force. Is it here to stay? Is I gonna haf 2 strt riteing all my posts liek this? And is this an acceptable change to the language? Are these new grammar and spelling rules that we should teach in the schools as evidence of language evolution?
Samia:
My one issue with printed media is that I…
clock | July 30, 2008PZ just had a book review published in Nature:
Science and evolution have an advocate in Kenneth Miller, one of North America's eminent knights-errant, a scientist who is active in defending evolutionary theory in the conflict between evolution and creationism. He has been at the centre of many recent debates about science education, most prominently testifying against intelligent design creationism in Pennsylvania's Dover trial, which decided that intelligent design was a religious concept that should not be taught in public schools. He is also a popular speaker, offering the public a grass-…
clock | July 30, 2008The 46th edition of the Fourth Stone Hearth is up on Testimony of the spade
The 182nd edition of The Carnival Of Education is up on The Chancellor's New Clothes
Carnival of Mathematics #37 is up on Logic Nest
Carnival of Space #64 is up on Music of the Spheres
The newest edition of Carnival Of The Liberals is up on Cult of Gracie
clock | July 30, 2008Science Communicators of North Carolina:
Tuesday, August 19
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Science Cafe: Monster Storms - Hurricanes in North Carolina
Dr. Ryan Boyles, State Climatologist and Director of the State Climate Office at NC State University with Dr. Anantha Aiyyer, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Marine, Earth, Atmospheric Sciences at NC State.
Tir Na Nog 218 South Blount Street, Raleigh, (919) 833-7795
clock | July 29, 2008We usually see only the things we are looking for - so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.
- Eric Hoffer