clock | March 6, 2008...the intertubes. Busy week. Here are some good links:
Leaving your literary estate to the public domain:
This page has been circulating around the Web in recent days (apparently since February 26 or later). It depicts a sticker which an individual can apply to her ID card, in the manner of an organ donor sticker, indicating the individual wishes her copyrights to be released to the public domain upon her death.
The cloning of the bulls:
The story adds to last year's discussion about horse cloning (horserace horse cloning?). But here the main theme is the affection that owners have for…
clock | March 6, 2008'Power Napping' In Pigeons:
In humans, as in all mammals, sleep consists of two phases: deep, dreamless slow-wave-sleep (SWS) alternates with dream phases, called Rapid Eye Movement (REM)-sleep. Although several studies suggest that information is processed and memories are consolidated during sleep, this remains a hotly debated topic in neurobiology. Comparative studies in birds may help to clarify the function of sleep by revealing overriding principles that would otherwise remain obscure if we only studied mammals. This is because birds are the only taxonomic group other than mammals to…
clock | March 6, 2008Suzanne Franks, better known online as Zuska is a SciBling you do not want to make mad with mysogynist sentiments! At the second Science Blogging Conference in January she co-moderated a panel on Gender and Race in Science: online and offline.
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? What is your Real World job?
Well, right now I have no Real World Job because chronic migraines make it impossible for me to hold down a job. My education includes a PhD in biomedical engineering and…
clock | March 6, 2008I and the Bird #68 is up on Biological Ramblings
Change of Shift: Vol. 2, Number 18 is up on Emergiblog
clock | March 6, 2008Regular readers must be familiar by now with the ZooSchool in Asheboro, NC. Today's news from the school - their students have put up the first issue of their online newspaper, the ZSX-Press. Go check it out!
In related news, and also at the Asheboro Zoo and related to education, The NC Zoo and NC Zoo Society will be hosting the No Child Left Inside Conference Thursday (today), March 6th, which will be held in the MPR [multi-purpose room] of the Stedman Education Building. I wish I could go. Perhaps someone there will write about it and post something online.
clock | March 6, 2008News from SCONC:
The NC Museum of Natural Sciences presents Reptile & Amphibian Day on Saturday, March 15 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dozens of displays, activities and presentations highlight reptiles and amphibians from North Carolina and around the world. Here's your chance to get up-close and personal with hundreds of live animals, from giant pythons to bearded dragons. Meet reptile expert Dr. Brady Barr, the first person to capture and study all 23 crocodilian species in the wild.
clock | March 5, 2008It ever has been since time began, And ever will be, till time lose breath, That love is a mood - no more - to a man, And love to a woman is life or death.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
clock | March 5, 2008
Or, perhaps, the truth is more complicated, as revealed in the comments of that post.
clock | March 5, 2008The second issue is now available online. Open Access. Most articles are highly 'bloggable'.
clock | March 5, 2008It has been almost three years since I promised to write a post detailing the photoperiodic response in mammals. (Birds are more complicated).
Now Shelley gives a good example - the snowshoe hare which changes color annually: it is dark in summer and white in winter. It is pretty easy to remember - it's all the Mel-something molecules involved. So, here is a very simplified, but essentially correct description of how this happens:
Light is detected by the photo-pigment melanopsin in the retinal ganglion cells of the eye. The cells send a signal to the clock (in the suprachiasmatic nucleus…
clock | March 5, 2008Trilobite Blog
Evolucija
Raw Dawg Buffalo
Znanost
Elle, phd
Diary of a PhD student
Education and Class
The field negro
See Jane in the Academy
clock | March 5, 2008In 1986, 22-year-old Boston Celtics forward Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. This week, DrugMonkey argued that Bias' death--as opposed to educational programs like DARE--was the major reason why self-reported rates of cocaine use by 20-year-olds dropped from 20% in the mid-1980s to 7% in the early 1990s.
Now go and do the survey and check back in a week for the results.
clock | March 5, 2008Warming Climate May Cause Arctic Tundra To Burn:
Research from ancient sediment cores indicates that a warming climate could make the world's arctic tundra far more susceptible to fires than previously thought. The findings are important given the potential for tundra fires to release organic carbon -- which could add significantly to the amount of greenhouse gases already blamed for global warming.
Stop-And-Go Traffic: An Accident? Construction Work? No, Just Too Much Traffic:
A new study from a Japanese research group explains why we're occasionally caught in traffic jams for no visible…
clock | March 5, 2008Tangled Bank #100 is up on Archaeoporn
The Carnival Of Education: Week 161 is up on Education Wonks
The 114th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on PalmTree Pundit
clock | March 5, 2008Xan Gregg has also attended both the first Science Blogging Conference and the second one in January, where he co-moderated a session on Public Scientific Data. He blogs on FORTH GO.
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? What is your Real Life job?
I'm a software engineer working at SAS Institute on a desktop "statistical discovery" application called JMP. (Yes, we have a blog, and I sometimes post to it.) My primary interest is data visualization, and in 2006 I won a data…
clock | March 5, 2008Common-sense environmentalism
I like to consider myself an environmentalist, but I almost never call myself one. Mainly because I really don't want to be associated with a lot of the people who do.
Because environmentalists are usually right about the facts of the issues they attempt to confront: global warming is a reality, the rape of the world's forests is a disaster in the making, corporate pollution is poisoning us, and the extinction of animal species is both an ecological and a human disaster. On the science and on most policy issues, the environmentalists are right.
But on the human…
clock | March 4, 2008We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.
- Elizabeth II