clock | May 14, 2008The origin and early evolution of circadian clocks are far from clear. It is now widely believed that the clocks in cyanobacteria and the clocks in Eukarya evolved independently from each other. It is also possible that some Archaea possess clock - at least they have clock genes, thought to have arived there by lateral transfer from cyanobacteria.[continued under the fold]
It is not well known, though, if the clocks in major groups of Eukarya - Protista, Plants, Fungi and Animals - originated independently or out of a common ancestral clock. On one hand, the internal logic of the clock…
clock | May 13, 2008I feel so agitated all the time, like a hamster in search of a wheel
- Carrie Fisher
clock | May 13, 2008There are 57 articles this week in PLoS ONE - look around for yourself, these are my own picks:
The Secret World of Shrimps: Polarisation Vision at Its Best:
Animal vision spans a great range of complexity, with systems evolving to detect variations in light intensity, distribution, colour, and polarisation. Polarisation vision systems studied to date detect one to four channels of linear polarisation, combining them in opponent pairs to provide intensity-independent operation. Circular polarisation vision has never been seen, and is widely believed to play no part in animal vision.…
clock | May 13, 2008This one is for Rob, one of those strange-metered (7/8, or 1-2-3;1-2;1-2/1-2-3;1-2;1-2/...) Macedonian songs of old:
There are many more like this in the menu there on YouTube....
clock | May 13, 2008College Student Sleep Patterns Could Be Detrimental:
A Central Michigan University study has determined that many college students have sleep patterns that could have detrimental effects on their daily performance.
When Following The Leader Can Lead Into The Jaws Of Death:
For animals that live in social groups, and that includes humans, blindly following a leader could place them in danger. To avoid this, animals have developed simple but effective behaviour to follow where at least a few of them dare to tread -- rather than follow a single group member. This pattern of behaviour reduces the…
clock | May 13, 2008Grand Rounds 4:34 are up on Health Business Blog
The 124th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Mom Is Teaching
clock | May 13, 2008Peter Binfield, the new Managing Editor of PLoS ONE, did some analysis of the content of the journal so far, and realized that the single most frequent Category our authors use is 'Cell Signaling'. And, as he writes in his blog post, those are some impressive papers....and we want more of them!
clock | May 13, 2008One of the latest additions (just two days ago, I think) to the Directory of Open Access Journals is a journal that will be of interest to some of my readers - The Open Sleep Journal. The first volume has been published and contains several interesting articles. One that drew my attention is The Phylogeny of Sleep Database: A New Resource for Sleep Scientists (PDF download) by Patrick McNamara, Isabella Capellini, Erica Harris, Charles L. Nunn, Robert A. Barton and Brian Preston. It describes how they built a database that contains information about sleep patterns in 127 mammalian species…
clock | May 13, 2008
Much of the biological research is done in a handful of model organisms. Important studies in organisms that can help us better understand the evolutionary relationships on a large scale tend to be hidden far away from the limelight of press releases and big journals. Here's one example (March 30, 2006):
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Short answer: nobody knows. Nobody has looked yet. Most of the research in biology is, quite rightfully, performed in just a handful of standard models. A sponge is not a standard animal lab model.
Should one expect sponges to have…
clock | May 12, 2008Encephalon #45 is up on PodBlack Blog
Carnival of the Green #127 is up on The Evangelical Ecologist
clock | May 12, 2008Female Concave-eared Frogs Draw Mates With Ultrasonic Calls:
Most female frogs don't call; most lack or have only rudimentary vocal cords. A typical female selects a mate from a chorus of males and then --silently -- signals her beau. But the female concave-eared torrent frog, Odorrana tormota, has a more direct method of declaring her interest: She emits a high-pitched chirp that to the human ear sounds like that of a bird.
Math Plus 'Geeky' Images Equals Deterred Students:
Images of maths 'geeks' stop people from studying mathematics or using it in later life, shows new research.
Kids Think…
clock | May 12, 2008Diabola in Musica
Hoxful Monsters
StevenBerlinJohnson
An American Businesswoman's New Life in Serbia & Abroad
RoBlog
Speaking Serbia - Rob's Blog
clock | May 12, 2008The Case of Deborah Rice: Who Is the Environmental Protection Agency Protecting?:
For researchers who operate at the intersection of basic biology and toxicology, following the data where they take you--as any good scientist would--carries the risk that you will be publicly attacked as a crank, charged with scientific misconduct, or removed from a government scientific review panel. Such a fate may seem unthinkable to those involved in primary research, but it has increasingly become the norm for toxicologists and environmental investigators. If you find evidence that a compound worth…
clock | May 12, 2008Open Access to Scholarly Publications (Updated May 10, 2008) from Sean Kass on Vimeo.
by Sean Kass (Via).
clock | May 12, 2008David Warlick is a local blogger and educator. We first met at the Podcastercon a couple of years ago, then at several blogger meetups, and finally last January at the second Science Blogging Conference where David moderated a session on Science Education.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background? What is your Real Life job?
I've been an educator for more than 30 years, starting as a middle school social studies, science, and math teacher. Every once in a while, I have to remind myself that…
clock | May 12, 2008According to the referrers pages of my Sitemeter, a lot of you are excited by strange penises, strange penises, strange penises and strange penises (or something like it). So, today we have to move to a different topic, traffic-be-damned, for those without phallic fixations. So, read on (first posted on July 21, 2006)....
If science is all you care for you can skip to the bottom of the post because the main character of today's story will be introduced with a poem (also found here):
The Conjugation of the Paramecium
by Muriel Rukeyser
This has nothing
to do with
propagating
The species
is…
clock | May 11, 2008I will be going to a scientific conference next week. Believe it or not, this will be the first purely scientific meeting I'll attend since I quit grad school and started blogging (all the others had to do with science communication, blogging, technology, journalism, Internet, publishing...). So, I am thinking....
I remember going to scientific meetings meant going to a nice little Florida resort and spending a couple of days with one's friends and colleagues, isolated from the rest of the world, talking about science 24/7. It is an opportunity to share your latest work and ideas with an…