clock | June 11, 2008Today, Wednesday, June 11 at 6 to 8 pm, SCONC, the Science Communicators of North Carolina, meets NESCent, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center:
Science communicators are invited to meet some NESCent researchers at the frontiers of evolutionary biology and hear from guest speaker Rob Pennock of Michigan State (who has appointments in evolutionary biology, computer science and ... philosophy?! Whoa.) talking about how evolution can be demonstrated in fast-forward by "digital organisms," a stroke he hopes will put creationism in retreat. Munchies and bevvies, of course. RSVP Kristin…
clock | June 11, 2008Tangled Bank #107 is up on Syaffolee
Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival #3 is up on ScienceRoll
The 175th edition of the Carnival of Education is up on Learn Me Good
clock | June 10, 2008Wanted: Young, skinny, wirey fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week.
- Pony Express Advertisement
clock | June 10, 200860 new articles just got published in PLoS ONE a few minutes ago. Here are some of the greatest hits (IMHO):
Enhanced Temporal but Not Attentional Processing in Expert Tennis Players:
In tennis, as in many disciplines of sport, fine spatio-temporal resolution is required to reach optimal performance. While many studies on tennis have focused on anticipatory skills or decision making, fewer have investigated the underlying visual perception abilities. In this study, we used a battery of seven visual tests that allowed us to assess which kind of visual information processing is performed…
clock | June 10, 2008Grand Rounds (4) 38 are up on NHS Blog Doctor
The latest Homeschooling Carnival is up in The Common Room.
clock | June 10, 2008If you are an astute watcher of the PLoS ONE homepage (or the PLoS Blog, or my blog for that matter), you may have noticed that PLoS ONE now has something like a 'theme of the month', i.e., a single, broad topic that we highlight in several different ways on the homepage, blog, in e-mails, etc. We check out the most viewed and downloaded papers on the topic and interview the authors and Academic Editors of those papers, etc. Last month, in May, the theme was Cell Signaling. This month, June '08, the overarching theme is The Birds!
If you search PLoS ONE for bird + avian (keep clicking '…
clock | June 10, 2008Circadian Math: 1 Plus 1 Doesn't Always Equal 2:
Like a wristwatch that needs to be wound daily for accurate time-telling, the human circadian system -- the biological cycles that repeat approximately every 24 hours -- requires daily light exposure to the eye's retina to remain synchronized with the solar day. In a new study published in the June issue of Neuroscience Letters, researchers have demonstrated that when it comes to the circadian system, not all light exposure is created equal.
Morningness Is A Predictor Of Better Grades In College:
Morningness is a predictor of better grades in…
clock | June 9, 2008Change is no modern invention. It is as old as time and as unlikely to disappear. It has always to be counted on as of the essence of human experience.
- James Rowland Angell
clock | June 9, 2008Remember Chez Sapienza? The guy who was fired from CNN for having the gall to write a blog?
Well, a lot of people with brains got upset about this. And Simon Owens decided to investigate further, to see what is the general attitude about blogging among the Corporate Media control freaks. So he did a survey, and has just posted the results. Check them out.
clock | June 9, 2008For the same reason snakes have no legs. Or perhaps not. It is difficult to find out.
clock | June 9, 2008Some teens pulled a nasty prank and posted a video of it on YouTube. As a part of their sentence, the judge ordered them to make another video, with the apology and to post that on YouTube. There are several similar prank videos on YouTube so I do not know which one is this one, but the apology video is here.
clock | June 9, 2008Earlier today, here in Raleigh (and yes, he will contest North Carolina, and perhaps all 50 states!) at an "invitation-only" event (so no liveblogging from me, sorry), Obama killed at least three birds with one stone. In one sentence, at the very end, he got himself endeared to the three key groups of voters who are still suspicious of him: women/Hillary fans, Edwards fans, and people who do not like Obama's health-care plan (which is obviously going to change now....).
clock | June 9, 2008A Roadmap for Migrating Neurons:
Politicians, pundits, and even your best friends occasionally do things that make you wonder how their brains are wired. The next time you have that thought, consider consulting a developmental neuroscientist: they work every day to understand the processes that wire up everyone'sbrains. It's a mind-boggling job, because as an embryo develops, the connections within its brain ramify, becoming ever more complex. For example, consider the neural connections in the mammalian cerebellum. This distinctive structure is responsible for coordinating sensory and motor…
clock | June 9, 2008Sheep's Sex Determined By Diet Prior To Pregnancy:
Maternal diet influences the chances of having male or female offspring. New research has demonstrated that ewes fed a diet enriched with polyunsaturated fats for one month prior to conception have a significantly higher chance of giving birth to male offspring.
Fossilized Burrows 245 Million Years Old Suggest Lizard-like Creatures In Antarctica:
For the first time paleontologists have found fossilized burrows of tetrapods -- any land vertebrates with four legs or leglike appendages -- in Antarctica dating from the Early Triassic epoch, about…
clock | June 9, 2008Gene Genie #33 is up on Neurophilosophy
Encephalon #47 is up on Channel N
Carnival of the green #131 is up on Blogfish
clock | June 8, 2008The perils of ambulatory reading. If you have never said Excuse me to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time.
- Sherri Chasin Calvo
clock | June 8, 2008After reading this thread I was really nervous about going to see Kung Fu Panda, but my daughter insisted (ever since the first posters and trailers came out months ago), so we went last night. And.....
...the movie is really not what Melissa expected. If anything, it is the opposite - in one moment it uses a fat joke to make you laugh (which sometimes you manage to supress, sometimes not), but then in the next moment it shames you for laughing at the previous joke. What the movie parodies the best are old martial arts movie, from Bruce Lee movies, through Karate Kid, to Crouching tiger...,…
clock | June 7, 2008The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself - always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.
- James Earl Carter, Jr
clock | June 7, 2008June edition of Scientiae is up on Thus Spake Zuska
The 21st edition of The Boneyard is up on The Flying Trilobite