clock | March 20, 2008I live a day at a time. Each day I look for a kernel of excitement. In the morning I say: What is my exciting thing for today? Then, I do the day. Don't ask me about tomorrow.
- Barbara Charline Jordan
clock | March 20, 2008Plant Classification from Bat-Like Echolocation Signals:
Bats are able to classify plants using echolocation. They emit ultrasonic signals and can recognize the plant according to the echo returning from it. This ability assists them in many of their daily activities, like finding food sources associated with certain plants or using landmarks for navigation or homing. The echoes created by plants are highly complex signals, combining together all the reflections from the many leaves that a plant contains. Classifying plants or other complex objects is therefore considered a troublesome task…
clock | March 20, 2008Here we go again! Who is cooler, Echinoderms or Molluscs? You decide for yourself, but I have decided a long time ago:
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
Sea Cucumber
clock | March 20, 2008Remember this study from last month? Well, apparently NYTimes picked up on it and now all the bloggers are picking it apart - see what Dave Bacon, Jake Young and Mark Hoofnagle have to say. I think this study, started as a joke, is about to be revisited seriously with a huge data-set and various strict controls. As long as someone manages to get NIH to pay for all the beer.
clock | March 20, 2008What Gets A Female's Attention, At Least A Songbird's:
Male songbirds produce a subtly different tune when they are courting a female than when they are singing on their own. Now, new research offers a window into the effect this has on females, showing they have an ear for detail. The finding provides insights not only into the intricacies of songbird attraction and devotion but also into the way in which the brain develops and responds to social cues, in birds -- and humans.
Oldest Cretaceous Period Dinosaur Discovered Represents New Genus Of Prehistoric Aquatic Predator:
One of the oldest…
clock | March 20, 2008WiSE, a network of Women in Science and Engineering at Duke University is hosting a panel Shaping the world, one job at a time: An altruistic/alternative career panel tomorrow, Friday, at noon in Teer 203. If you want to show up, please RSVP online as soon as possible so they know how many boxed lunches to get.
It will be an informal panel: each one of us will get 3-5 minutes to introduce ourselves, followed by a discussion and Q&A. We are also likely to hang around for a few more minutes afterwards. The panelists? Under the fold....
Rochelle Schwartz-Bloom: K-12 education
Dr.…
clock | March 20, 2008I And The Bird #71 is up on The House & other Arctic Musings
Change of Shift, Vol. 2, Number 19 is up on Emergiblog
clock | March 19, 2008Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually, it loiters; but just when one has come to count on its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild, irrational gallop.
- Edith Wharton, 1862 - 1937
clock | March 19, 2008Pre-accountability
Getting Jaked
Space Kimchi (but can they fix sarma on the Space Station?)
Flare Research - Well damn...
When Life Needs Porpoise
Live from Seattle: Fatal intracerebral mass bleeding edition
So my lovely oldest is 16 and a half...
A Few Important Posts (about animal rights)
Ocelot - Salvador Dali's pet
Three levels of spiders
A sustainable culture begins with a healthy, sustainable attitude
Sharks and Condit
More Komodo Dragon Babies!
3/19/2003 - 3/19/2008
Weaver, Roseman and Stringer back at it with Neandertals, Natural Selection and a time of divergence
Cultural…
clock | March 19, 2008Should we have a third culture?:
The present problems with science communication are not only a result of mediocre writing skills or the diminished view of popularization the some scientists take. The public, aptly described as "consumers," have not developed much of a taste for science. As important as science has become, for many people it concerns itself with questions that won't pay their bills or put food on the table, and therefore requires little attention. If it's not interesting, why take an interest in it? Such a view is absolutely dismal, but many people have a somewhat narrowed…
clock | March 19, 2008
Loss Of Egg Yolk Genes In Mammals And The Origin Of Lactation And Placentation:
If you are reading this, you did not start your life by hatching from an egg. This is one of the many traits that you share with our mammalian relatives. A new article explores the genetic changes that led mammals to feed their young via the placenta and with milk, rather then via the egg, and finds that these changes occurred fairly gradually in our evolutionary history. The paper shows that milk-protein genes arose in a common ancestor of all existing mammalian lineages and preceded the loss of the genes that…
clock | March 19, 2008Tangled Bank #101 is up on Tangled Up in Blue Guy
Carnival of Education #163 is up on So You Want To Teach?
clock | March 18, 2008A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
- Charles Robert Darwin, 1809 - 1882
clock | March 18, 2008In one of those "if you like this you may also like this" e-mails from Amazon.com, I got a suggestion I may like a book called Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. So, I took a look. I've been blogging since 2004, so I thought I knew who the top bloggers were and could find it interesting to see what they had to say.
As it turns out, the title is a misnomer. It should be "......American Top TECH Bloggers". I recognize three names (Anderson, Scoble, Rubel).
Perhaps they say interesting things in the interviews, as observers of the blogosphere. But, I am not…
clock | March 18, 2008There are 41 new articles published in PLoS ONE tonight. Look around, rate, comment, and send trackbacks. Here are my picks for this week:
Song Diversity Predicts the Viability of Fragmented Bird Populations:
In the global scenario of increasing habitat fragmentation, finding appropriate indicators of population viability is a priority for conservation. We explored the potential of learned behaviours, specifically acoustic signals, to predict the persistence over time of fragmented bird populations. We found an association between male song diversity and the annual rate of population change…
clock | March 18, 2008Scenes from the science fair
Funerals Make Me Glad to Be an Atheist
Laurie Garrett talks global health at U of Iowa
Small Bodied Humans From Palau
Chinese Water Torture
Wheat and climate change
The Quail and They can hide, but they won't run
Democrats Are Losing Perspective
Let's see, what to call this....OK, how about 'racist bullshit'?
What alien can you make up?
Sunday stroll: frozen puddles
EEA 2008: Butterfly Conservation
Ruby wants to know
Anonymity: A Secret History of English Literature
John Edwards to endorse? Which candidate passes the moral test of our generation?
A Responsible…