clock | June 25, 2008Believe it or not, this appears to have something to do with their circadian rhythms!
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was quite a lot of research published on the circadian rhythms in earthworms, mostly by Miriam Bennett. As far as I can tell, nobody's followed up on that work since. I know, from a trusted source, that earthworms will not run in running-wheels, believe it or not! The wheels were modified to contain a groove down the middle (so that the worm can go only in one direction and not off the wheel), the groove was covered with filter paper (to prevent the worm from…
clock | June 25, 2008ResearchBlogging.org is getting ready for a big upgrade, or so I hear. You can be a part of the process by helping shape up the new categories and subcategories - all you need to do is go to this blog post, see what is already there and post your suggestions in the comments.
clock | June 25, 2008Extreme Weather Events Can Unleash A 'Perfect Storm' Of Infectious Diseases, Research Study Says:
An international research team, including University of Minnesota researcher Craig Packer, has found the first clear example of how climate extremes, such as the increased frequency of droughts and floods expected with global warming, can create conditions in which diseases that are tolerated individually may converge and cause mass die-offs of livestock or wildlife.
Our Genome Changes Over Lifetime, And May Explain Many 'Late-onset' Diseases:
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that…
clock | June 25, 2008The Tangled Bank #108 is up on Wheat-dogg's world
Carnival of Feminists No 59 is up on Philobiblon
The latest Grand Rounds are up on Shrink Rap
The 177th Carnival of Education is up on Where's the Sun?
The 130th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Dewey's Treehouse
And don't forget to submit your entries to the inaugural edition of The Giant's Shoulders.
clock | June 24, 2008Youth is not the age of pleasure; we then expect too much, and we are therefore exposed to daily disappointments and mortifications. When we are a little older, and have brought down our wishes to our experience, then we become calm and begin to enjoy ourselves.
- Lord Liverpool
clock | June 24, 2008As part of the monthly focus on birds, there is a new Journal Club in PLoS ONE this week.
Dr.Elizabeth Adkins Regan from Cornell and her postdoc Dr Joanna Rutkowska from Jagiellonian University have already posted their first comments on the paper by Keith Sockman (here at UNC): Ovulation Order Mediates a Trade-Off between Pre-Hatching and Post-Hatching Viability in an Altricial Bird.
You should all join in the discussion!
clock | June 24, 2008There are 54 new articlespublished in PLoS ONE today. Here are my picks:
Climate Extremes Promote Fatal Co-Infections during Canine Distemper Epidemics in African Lions:
Extreme climatic conditions may alter historic host-pathogen relationships and synchronize the temporal and spatial convergence of multiple infectious agents, triggering epidemics with far greater mortality than those due to single pathogens. Here we present the first data to clearly illustrate how climate extremes can promote a complex interplay between epidemic and endemic pathogens that are normally tolerated in isolation…
clock | June 24, 2008Single Insecticide Application Can Kill Three Cockroach Generations:
One dose of an insecticide can kill three generations of cockroaches as they feed off of each other and transfer the poison, according to Purdue University entomologists who tested the effectiveness of a specific gel bait.
To Find Out What's Eating Bats, Biologist Takes To Barn Rooftops:
Bloodsucking pests like bat fleas and bat flies may not sound very appealing to the rest of us, but to University at Buffalo biologist Katharina Dittmar de la Cruz, Ph.D., they are among the most successful creatures evolution has ever…
clock | June 24, 2008Ptak Science Books
What is 'Life'?
Susan's Zoo
Sports are 80 Percent Mental...
The Science of Sport
Global Sensemaking
clock | June 23, 2008That family glaze of common references, jokes, events, calamities - that sense of a family being like a kitchen midden: layer upon layer of the things daily life is made of. The edifice that lovers build is by comparison delicate and one-dimensional.
- Laurie E. Colwin
clock | June 23, 2008It's Monday night - time for new articles in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine:
On the Emergence and Awareness of Auditory Objects:
Anyone who has walked into a crowded reverberant nightclub, with a hubbub of multiple conversations amidst blaring music, will recall the initial impression of the sound as loud and undifferentiated noise. In short order, however, different sound streams begin to emerge as one attends to individual speakers, listens to the melody from the band, or even hears one instrument in it. Humans perform this remarkable feat effortlessly. Our extraordinary abilities to…
clock | June 23, 2008Britain's Last Neanderthals Were More Sophisticated Than We Thought:
An archaeological excavation at a site near Pulborough, West Sussex, has thrown remarkable new light on the life of northern Europe's last Neanderthals. It provides a snapshot of a thriving, developing population - rather than communities on the verge of extinction.
Microscopic 'Clutch' Puts Flagellum In Neutral:
A tiny but powerful engine that propels the bacterium Bacillus subtilis through liquids is disengaged from the corkscrew-like flagellum by a protein clutch, Indiana University Bloomington and Harvard University…
clock | June 23, 2008The long awaited game Spore is coming out soon. The Creature Creator is now available, but a bunch of us got it in advance (see PZ, Brian, erv, Chad, Brian....) and got to play a little bit.
I can't wait for the game itself, although, as others have pointed out, the game is not really about evolution. It is, like Pokemon, using the term 'evolution' to describe 'metamorphosis'. All the changes happen to a single individual during an enormously long lifetime. This is one of the basic misunderstandings of evolution by creationists - they missed the memo that evolution operates at the level…
clock | June 23, 2008Encephalon #48 is up on Neuroanthropology
Carnival of the Green #133 is up on How Ethical!
clock | June 22, 2008There is a way in which the collective knowledge of mankind expresses itself, for the finite individual, through mere daily living... a way in which life itself is sheer knowing.
- Laurens van der Post
clock | June 22, 2008
I grew up listening to her songs.
Back in the winter of 1984/1985 she decided to break her long leave away from the concert scene and did an European tour. Nervous about the come-back, how she'll perform, how she'll be received, she decided to start the tour at an unimportant place, somewhere where she can fix the last glitches, warm up her voice, etc. - she started the tour in Belgrade.
The hall in Sava Centar houses about 4000 people in the audience. It was packed every night. She had to extend the visit.
She was supposed to make us cry. Instead, we made her cry. Every song she sang,…
clock | June 22, 2008Mad Hatter suggests an Alternative Careers blog. I like the idea a lot!
I've been spending some time on FriendFeed, especially in the Life Scientists room. Cameron explains how it works.
Dave Winer (who brought us blogging software, RSS and the concept of Unconference) has another good post about organization of conference sessions. He quips about the abuse of the term "unconference" - I wonder what he means by it?
I am excited that the Carrboro Coworking project is moving along - I will be a part of it.
There is another dinosaur journalist using precious newspaper column real-estate to show…
clock | June 22, 2008This should be interesting to all of us, be it people who study capabilities of online education or people who study teen online behavior. It also appears to be a part of gradual shift from media scares about "online predators" to a more serious look at what the Web is bringing to the new generations and how it changed the world:
Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered:
In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income…
clock | June 21, 2008Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.
- John J. Miller
clock | June 21, 2008Are you writing your history-of-science posts yet? Let's make the inaugural edition of The Giants' Shoulders big and good!