clock | April 16, 2008If everyone links to Expelled Exposed by using the term Expelled, perhaps we can move it up to #1 on Google:
clock | April 16, 2008We were too busy to notice, but apparently, PLoS ONE reached a new milestone this week - the 2000th article! Wow! That's a lot!
This week we have a new Journal Club, already getting lively so you should all picth in and add your comments to the discussion. It is on the article on human evolution: Identifying Selected Regions from Heterozygosity and Divergence Using a Light-Coverage Genomic Dataset from Two Human Populations and the commentary can be found here.
And here are some titles from this week's crop that got my attention - the first one listed being the first Taxonomy article ever…
clock | April 16, 2008Antioxidant Users Don't Live Longer, Analysis Of Studies Concludes:
The vitamin industry has long touted antioxidants as a way to improve health by filling in gaps in diet, but a new review of studies found no evidence that the nutrition supplements extend life. Worse, the review authors said that some antioxidants could increase risk for death.
Researchers Mimic Bacteria To Produce Magnetic Nanoparticles:
When it comes to designing something, it's hard to find a better source of inspiration than Mother Nature. Using that principle, a diverse, interdisciplinary group of researchers at the U.…
clock | April 16, 2008The 103rd edition of the Tangled Bank is up on rENNISance woman (I think this is the first time TB has been hosted on the Nature Network - lovely!).
Encephalon #43 is up on GNIF Brain Blogger
Grand Rounds Volume 4, Number 30 is now up on Women's Health News
The 167th edition of The Carnival of Education is up on The C.E.A. Blog
Carnival of the Green #123 is up on Nature Moms
120th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Nerd Family. Pro-Nerd. Pro-Family.
clock | April 16, 2008 This February 06, 2005 post describes the basic elements of the circadian system in mammals.
The principal mammalian circadian pacemaker is located in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus. The general area was first discovered in 1948 by Curt Richter who systematically lesioned a number of endocrine glands and brain areas in rats. The only time he saw an effect on circadian rhythms was when he lesioned a frontal part of hypothalamus (which is at the base of the brain) immediatelly above the optic chiasm (the spot where two optic nerves cross). Later studies in the 1970s…
clock | April 15, 2008Yesterday was my last day in Cambridge, so here are some pictures from the PLoS office - Chief Editor Mark Patterson and the new Managing Editor of PLoS ONE Peter Binfield (and the beer pictures are under the fold):
And I am glad that Andrew Walkinshaw could come and join us as well - we first met at Scifoo last year:
clock | April 15, 2008Opportunity knocks at the strangest times, it's not the time that matters but how you answer the door.
- Steve Gray
clock | April 15, 2008Just arrived in Trieste. It's 1am here so I am about to go to sleep. The hotel is nice, but it charges exorbitant amounts of money for Internet access (50 euro for 5.5 hours)!!!! I complained at the desk - the guy smugly replied "Free market". I said that in the USA free market is driving everyone to provide free wifi - if you don't you get no business as you belong in the 19th century. Ah well...
Tomorrow I will find a place where I can get access cheaper or free...
clock | April 15, 2008This post from February 03, 2005 covers the basic concepts and terms on entrainment. This is also the only blog post to date that I am aware of that was cited in a scientific paper.
Let's now continue our series of Clock Tutorials with an introduction to some phenomena (and related terms and concepts) observed in the laboratory in the course of doing standard circadian experiments. Such experiments usually involve either the study of properties of freerunning rhythms (check the old tutorials, especially CT2 and CT 4 for clarification of basic terms and concepts), or the analysis of…
clock | April 14, 2008
This post, from January 25, 2006, describes part of the Doctoral work of my lab-buddy Chris.
Mammals have only one circadian pacemaker - the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). Apparently all the other cells in the body contain circadian clocks, too, but only the SCN drives all the overt rhythms. Without the SCN, there are no rhythms - the peripheral clocks either get out of phase with each other, or their clocks stop ticking altogether.
If you place various tissues in a dish, the SCN cycles indefinitely. All other tissues are capable of only a few oscillations in the absence of a daily signal…
clock | April 14, 2008
I wrote this post back on February 02, 2005 in order to drive home the point that the circadian clock is not a single organ, but an organ system comprised of all cells in the body linked in a hierarchical manner:
In the earliest days of chronobiology, the notion of circadian organization was quite simple. Somewhere inside the organism there was a clock. It was entrained by light via photoreceptors (e.g., the eye) and it drove the rhythms of various biochemical, physiological and behavioral events in the body:
Very soon this simple notion became difficult to sustain in light of new data.…
clock | April 14, 2008The weekend at La Maison de Girrafes was absolutely brilliant. Henry and I could not stop talking for two straight days. We tried to elicit the End Of The Universe by starting a cycle of infinite regress by repeatedly linking to each other's blog posts, but something went wrong with our plan and, voila, you are all still alive and well, I see.
Every time we walked out, the Sun started shining. As soon as we would go back inside, it would get dark and start storming, raining and hailing. Thus, the opportunities to take pictures of the entire menagerie were rare and brief, and I missed them…
clock | April 14, 2008Insects Evolved Radically Different Strategy To Smell:
Darwin's tree of life represents the path and estimates the time evolution took to get to the current diversity of life. Now, new findings suggest that this tree, an icon of evolution, may need to be redrawn. In research to be published in the April 13 advance online issue of Nature, researchers at Rockefeller University and the University of Tokyo have joined forces to reveal that insects have adopted a strategy to detect odors that is radically different from those of other organisms -- an unexpected and controversial finding that may…
clock | April 13, 2008Since I am not an ecologist, when I teach the ecology lecture I 'go by the book' and trust that the textbook will be reasonably accurate. But now, perhaps I should rethink the way I teach about ecological succession...What do my ecological readers think?
clock | April 13, 2008Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival #1 is up on the skeptical alchemist (they need a catchy name, a homepage, an icon/button, etc....).
Carnival of the Liberals #62 is up on A Revolution Of One
clock | April 13, 2008
Since everyone is posting about spiders this week, I though I'd republish a sweet old post of mine, which ran on April 19, 2006 under the title "Happy Bicycle Day!" I hope you like this little post as much as I enjoyed writing it:
This week's theme for the Tar Heel Tavern is bicycle. I was wondering what to write about. Perhaps about crazy bicycle rides I had as a kid. Or a fun riff on "fish needing a bicycle". Then, I was saved! Because, today is the Bicycle Day! That's just great, because I can go on a scientific tangent with a local flavor.
If you do not know what Bicycle Day is,…
clock | April 13, 2008These two entire days chez Gee, surrounded by many strange animals, I kept looking for the girrafes and they were nowhere to be seen. But now I know why - they are not allowed in here any more, at least not beyond this point: