clock | June 7, 2008That's me. My Hobbit name. Generated with the The Hobbit Name Generator, provided by Graham Steel in the comments of this poetically frustulous post. And my elvish name is Inglor Tinuviel.
clock | June 6, 2008Sometimes I find that in my happy moments I could not believe that I had ever been miserable.
- Joanna Field
clock | June 6, 2008Keeping Beer Fresher:
Scientists in Venezuela are reporting an advance in the centuries-old effort to preserve the fresh taste that beer drinkers value more than any other characteristic of that popular beverage.
Futuristic Linkage Of Animals And Electronics:
The same Global Positioning System (GPS) technology used to track vehicles is now being used to track cows.
Brown Argus Butterfly Sees Positive Effects Of Climate Change:
Global warming is generally thought to have a negative affect on the habitats of many animals and plants. Not for the Brown Argus butterfly, however. This insect seems…
clock | June 6, 2008As it grew too big, and the functionality was lacking, the PLoS Facebook group has been closed and moved to a PLoS Facebook page instead. Join in.
clock | June 6, 2008....so I never get to the point at which I am driven to behave like this:
One day soon, people will look back at videos like this one and wonder in astonishment that people in the past had to go to a place to work! That there used to be such a thing as the office! And that people wasted time, energy and polluting materials in order to get there! And that there was such a thing as a mental division between 'Work' and 'Life'! And that people traveled short distances every day instead of long trips every now and then, just to see the world... Increased mobility (in physical and cyber space)…
clock | June 6, 2008But what should it be called? In the wake of the great success of the Classic Papers Chellenge, Skulls In The Stars will turn it into a regular carnival. And this is where you come in - suggest a good catchy name for the carnival in the comments of this post (these names are taken, but can give you ideas....).
clock | June 6, 2008If you are looking for a short, easy-to-understand statement that gets absolutely everything about Open Access completely wrong, you can't do much better than this: Hidden cost of open access in Times Higher Education. Luckily, the commenters set it straight. So does Peter Suber, who also adds an important point:
The success of the OA movement means that every day newcomers hear about it for the first time. One of the burdens of that success is that many newcomers pick up and spread old myths about it. If Altbach isn't new to OA issues, then he's inexcusably careless with them, and his…
clock | June 6, 2008Bjoern Brembs alerts me to a cool new paper (OA so you can read the whole thing) - The great opportunity: Evolutionary applications to medicine and public health by Randolph M. Nesse and Stephen C. Stearns:
Evolutionary biology is an essential basic science for medicine, but few doctors and medical researchers are familiar with its most relevant principles. Most medical schools have geneticists who understand evolution, but few have even one evolutionary biologist to suggest other possible applications. The canyon between evolutionary biology and medicine is wide. The question is whether they…
clock | June 6, 2008Linnaeus' Legacy #7 is up on When Pigs Fly Returns
Four Stone Hearth #42 is up on Neuroanthropology
The 88th Skeptic's Circle is up on Jyunri Kankei
Carnival of Space #57 is up on Out of the Cradle
Friday Ark #194 is up on Modulator
clock | June 6, 2008M. LeBlanc: Playing Cards
Melissa McEwan: For the Record
Echidne: Why Vote For Obama? and Well Worth Reading
Neil Sinhababu: TEN GOOD REASONS FOR AN OBAMA/EDWARDS TICKET....
Amanda Marcotte: Feminists: Not really stupid
Pam Spaulding: Mike Signorile tries to bore into the 'if not Hillary, I'm voting McCain' logic
I understand. I followed and supported Edwards for 10 years (his 1998 Senate race, 2004 and 2008 Presidential races). I had plenty of time to come to terms with things I did not like, e.g., votes I disagreed with, etc. I also spent a lot of time and effort on oppo research - I…
clock | June 5, 2008Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
- Laurence J. Peter
clock | June 5, 2008Sciencegeekgirl
The Plummet Onions
Scholarly Communication News@BC
Twisted Physics
Freeresearcher.net
clock | June 5, 2008Recent discussions about potential use of downloads in place of other bibliometric measures (including Impact Factor) made us think. So, we took a look at PLoS ONE stats to see which papers are the most visited to date. The results are here - the most visited ONE paper is Ionizing Radiation Changes the Electronic Properties of Melanin and Enhances the Growth of Melanized Fungi, which got quite a lot of coverage in the media and on blogs (including BoingBoing, Slashdot, Rhosgobel, to point to just a few) when it first came out a year ago.
In second place is Paul Sereno's Structural Extremes…
clock | June 5, 2008Spider Silk Can Be Stretchy Like Springs Or Like Rubber:
Spider silks are incredibly stretchy, but are they stretchy like elastic or springs? The answer lies in their amino acid content. Spider silks are made from proteins, and biologists have just discovered that the secret lies in the silk protein's amino acid content. Spider silks with high proline contents behave like elastic rubber bands, while spider silks with low proline content behave like stretchy springs.
Scientists Uncover How Plant Roots Respond To Physical Forces Such As Gravity, Pressure, Or Touch:
Researchers at Washington…
clock | June 5, 2008The 174th edition of The Carnival of Education is up on The Education Wonks
Carnival of the Liberals #66 is up on The Otherwhirled
clock | June 4, 2008[One sometimes feels] a guest of one's time and not a member of its household.
- George Frost Kennan
clock | June 4, 2008This is funny - I start reading interesting stuff, really stuff that I find catchy regardless of where I work....and it's all from PLoS ONE! We rock! The journal that some people regard as a repository for "boring, incremental stuff" is publishing all the most exciting papers around....just see these:
Transgenic Plants Don't Hurt Beneficial Bugs, Entomologists Find:
Genetically modified (GM) plants that use Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), a common soil bacterium, to kill pests won't harm the pests' natural enemies, according to new research by Cornell entomologists.
Honeybee Dance Breaks Down…
clock | June 3, 2008Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
- Jack London
clock | June 3, 2008There are 56 new articles published in PLoS ONE a few minutes ago. Please comment, rate and send trackbacks. Here are some of my personal favourites of the week:
East Learns from West: Asiatic Honeybees Can Understand Dance Language of European Honeybees:
The honeybee waggle dance, through which foragers advertise the existence and location of a food source to their hive mates, is acknowledged as the only known form of symbolic communication in an invertebrate. However, the suggestion, that different species of honeybee might possess distinct 'dialects' of the waggle dance, remains…
clock | June 3, 2008While the conference site is down and before the new one is built, I need, for myself, a list of blog carnivals I follow, so here I am putting it here for my own reference (let me know if I am missing a delightful and useful carnival - if you manage one of them, make sure I am on your mailing list so I can get updates as the new editions of carnivals get posted):
Tangled Bank
Grand Rounds
Carnival of the Green
Carnival of the Blue
Scientiae
Linnaeus' Legacy
Circus of the Spineless
I And The Bird
Festival of the Trees
Berry Go Round
Encephalon
Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival
Oekologie…