clock | April 11, 2008The truth, of course, is that a billion falsehoods told a billion times by a billion people are still false.
- Travis Walton
clock | April 11, 2008After the Museum visit, we went to a nearby pub (Queen's Arms) where we could not get a table, but could get beer and stand outside, until we froze. We were joined by several other people, including Joe, MissPrism, my SciBling Nick and a highschool friend of mine Liliana and her husband.
MissPrism and Selva:
Liliana and her husband:
clock | April 11, 2008This post from May 07, 2005, was one of the rare personal posts I have ever written. Under the fold....
It is Derby Weekend! Exciting, isn't it? I had to watch the re-run tonight, but I saw it. Giacomo! Who's that!? I love when underdogs win!
I practically grew up on the Belgrade Racecourse. Horse sports being really small in Yugoslavia, it is an unusual place. The mile-long dirt track is on the outside. Inside is a 1000m long hard track for trotting races. And in the very center, there is a large show-jumping ring. The Sunday racing program would usually start with a jumping class (and you…
clock | April 11, 2008Karen, aka Nunatak from the Beagle Project gave us, the science bloggers (including Professor Steve Steve) a special tour of the Darwin Center, a new wing of the Natural History Museum in London. This is where millions of specimens are deposited, studied, classified, described, etc. There are daily tours for the public (once a day for now), but a person can also contact them and ask to be shown a particular specimen.
Who was there? Mo (with his son), Euan, Ed, Malcolm, Matt, Kara, Alf, Selva, Karen, Professor Steve Steve and me.
Karen and Matt have more details of the tour, and Karen and…
clock | April 11, 2008A rare blogging event that I will miss, but you should come and meet the local political bloggers and candidates.
clock | April 11, 2008
Mo, Ed, Selva, me and Kara in front of the Darwin wing of the Natural History Museum in London.
clock | April 11, 2008Niyaz Ahmed did some stats on the Faculty of 1000 and came up with some interesting data:
I did some analyses involving tools at F1000Biology to know how inclined are the opinion leaders in biological sciences about PLoSONE articles given that the Faculty Members of F1000 have been traditionally 'jumping' to articles from a few top tier journals such as Nature or Cell. Good to say, the trend is reversing, although slow.
Here is how - I was very much pleased to note PLoS ONE's visible impact; 55 of the1241 articles (4%) published in PLoS ONE in 2007 have been evaluated and recommended by the…
clock | April 11, 2008Brian Switek has managed to grab some big blogospheric scoops - he interviewed Robert Bakker and Jack Horner and promises more such interviews in the future.
clock | April 11, 2008
On Thursday morning, Mo and I went to see The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery, an amazing exhibition of old plates of early natural history artists, starting with Leonardo. It was awesome! Here is just one of the many drawings and paintings we saw there:
clock | April 11, 2008This post about the origin, evolution and adaptive fucntion of biological clocks originated as a paper for a class, in 1999 I believe. I reprinted it here in December 2004, as a third part of a four-part post. Later, I reposted it here.
III. Whence Clocks?
Origin, Evolution, and Adaptive Function of Biological Clocks
The old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed. (Heinlein 1973)
Now darkness falls.
Quail chirps.
What use Hawk eyes?
(Basho)
Local/temporary and global/universal environments. In the study of adaptive functions, usually the question…
clock | April 11, 2008Astrogator's Logs
Cranky Sophie's Blog
News from the world of deep-sea whale-falls, polychaete worms and Antarctica
The Masks We Wear
MedGadget
clock | April 11, 2008More Wednesday morning sight-seeing in London, a swan in St.James park and a dramatic rescue!
clock | April 11, 2008Massive Study Of Madagascar Wildlife Leads To New Conservation Roadmap:
An international team of researchers has developed a remarkable new roadmap for finding and protecting the best remaining holdouts for thousands of rare species that live only in Madagascar, considered one of the most significant biodiversity hot spots in the world.
Flowers' Fragrance Diminished By Air Pollution, Study Indicates:
Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new…
clock | April 11, 2008There are 39 new articles in PLoS ONE this week - here are my picks and you go and look around for more:
The Cayman Crab Fly Revisited -- Phylogeny and Biology of Drosophila endobranchia:
The majority of all known drosophilid flies feed on microbes. The wide spread of microorganisms consequently mean that drosophilids also can be found on a broad range of substrates. One of the more peculiar types of habitat is shown by three species of flies that have colonized land crabs. In spite of their intriguing lifestyle, the crab flies have remained poorly studied. Perhaps the least investigated of…
clock | April 11, 2008Carnival of the Blue #11 is up on Zooillogix
Four Stone Hearth, Vol. 38 is up on A Very Remote Period Indeed
The 84th Meeting of the Skeptic's Circle is up on Archaeoporn
The 57th Carnival of the Feminists is up on Pandemian
Grand Rounds - Vol. 4, No. 29 - now up on Dr.Wes
The 166th Carnival of Education is up on The Elementary Educator
Friday Ark #186 is up on Modulator
The 119th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on A Pondering Heart
clock | April 10, 2008When I arrived in London early in the morning on Wednesday, Mo picked me up at Heathrow and we went to his place where I met his lovely wife and beautiful children, then did a little site-seeing close to their home, with Professor Steve Steve, of course - pictures under the fold...
clock | April 10, 2008I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
clock | April 10, 2008Kendall Morgan is the new Communications Director for the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. We first met at the second Science Blogging Conference back in January, but, being neighbors, hope to continue communication and collaboration in the future.
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 scientific background?
Hmmm. Where to start? I'm originally from Wheeling, W. Va. I went to a small Quaker college in Indiana and from there directly to graduate school at the University of Oregon…
clock | April 10, 2008From the Harvard Division of Sleep Medicine:
To honor the distinguished career of Professor Richard Kronauer, we will again award the Richard E Kronauer Prize for Excellence in Biomathematical Modeling. This is presented to a graduate student or post-doctoral fellow who has made significant contributions to Modeling Circadian Rhythmicity, Sleep Regulation or Neurobehavioral Function. If you would like to be considered for this prize or would like to nominate someone, please send a recent abstract or paper as well as a current C.V. to ebklerman@hms.harvard.edu before April 27 2008.
The award…
clock | April 10, 2008Tomorrow at noon, tune into NPR's Science Friday, as you do every week anyway, I know, and you do not need to be told by me, but this time, make sure you hear Harold Varmus being interviewed about the implementation of the new NIH law and the editorial he wrote in PLoS Biology.
If I remember correctly, NPR Science Friday posts podcasts of the shows a few hours after they air live, so if you miss the show in real time you can come back to it and hear it later.