clock | February 21, 2008Women's Bioethics Blog
InnoBlogger
Bench Marks
Synthesis
Urban Science Adventures!
Diary of a phd student
clock | February 21, 2008I discovered Pondering Pikaia less than a year ago and it has immediately become one of my favourite daily reads. Thus, I was very happy that Anne-Marie Hodge could come to the Science Blogging Conference last month so she could meet with all the other science bloggers in person.
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?
Thanks, Bora, I feel really honored to be an interviewee! Let's see, who am I...I grew up in a military family, so I moved around quite a bit…
clock | February 21, 2008World Health Organization announced a $350 million initiative as a five-year plan to control seven major tropical diseases in Africa:
Statement by WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan
I warmly welcome the initiative, announced today by United States President George W. Bush, to vastly increase funding for the integrated treatment of seven of the most important neglected tropical diseases: lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, blinding trachoma, onchocerciasis, and three soil-transmitted helminthiases. These are blinding, deforming, and debilitating diseases that affect the poorest of the…
clock | February 21, 2008Are you confused with the new NIH Policy and unsure as to what you need to do? If so, Association of Research Libraries has assembled a very useful website that explains the process step by step. But the easiest thing to do is to publish with a journal that does the depositing for you free of charge and here is the list of such journals. Of course, PLoS automatically does that for you as well.
clock | February 20, 2008If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
- Charles R. Darwin
Support The Beagle Project
Read the Beagle Project Blog
Buy the Beagle Project swag
Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial
Read Darwin for yourself.
clock | February 20, 2008Tangled Bank #99 is up on Greg Laden's blog
Cabinet of Curiosities #4, The Choose Your Own Adventure Edition, is up on Archaeoporn.
clock | February 20, 2008Do Animals Think Like Autistic Savants?:
When Temple Grandin argued that animals and autistic savants share cognitive similarities in her best-selling book Animals in Translation (2005), the idea gained steam outside the community of cognitive neuroscientists. Grandin, a professor of animal science whose best-selling books have provided an unprecedented look at the autistic mind, says her autism gives her special insight into the inner workings of the animal mind. She based her proposal on the observation that animals, like autistic humans, sense and respond to stimuli that nonautistic humans…
clock | February 20, 2008Kevin Zelnio celebrates invertebrates on his blog The Other 95% and, at the second Science Blogging Conference four weeks ago, it was announced that he has joined the Deep Sea News blog and thus officially became a SciBling (with all the associated hazing rituals involving beer).
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 PhD student at Penn State hopefully in my final year. My scientific training is in invertebrate zoology and marine ecology. I…
clock | February 20, 2008The word 'ONE' in PLoS ONE indicates that the journal publishes articles in all areas of science. This is not as easy as it sounds, of course. The majority of papers published so far have some kind of biomedical connection to them, which is not a surprise as the biomedical community was the first to embrace PLoS and as the other six PLoS journals are either specifically targeting this community (PLoS Medicine, Pathogens and Neglected Tropical Diseases) or are welcoming to such papers (PLoS Biology, Genetics and Computational Biology).
The support of patient advocate groups, PLoS openness and…
clock | February 20, 2008Brendan Bohannan, Richard W. Castenholz, Jessica Green and their students and postdcos at the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Oregon are currently doing a Journal Club on the PLoS ONE article The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Metagenomic Characterization of Viruses within Aquatic Microbial Samples, which is part of the PLoS Global Ocean Sampling Collection. Please join in the discussion.
clock | February 19, 2008Without speculation there is no good and original observation.
- Charles R. Darwin
Support The Beagle Project
Read the Beagle Project Blog
Buy the Beagle Project swag
Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial
Read Darwin for yourself.
clock | February 19, 2008There are 50 new articles in PLoS ONE this week - here are some of my picks for you to check out (and post comments, ratings, etc.):
Clocking the Lyme Spirochete:
In order to clear the body of infecting spirochetes, phagocytic cells must be able to get hold of them. In real-time phase-contrast videomicroscopy we were able to measure the speed of Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the Lyme spirochete, moving back and forth across a platelet to which it was tethered. Its mean crossing speed was 1,636 µm/min (N = 28), maximum, 2800 µm/min (N = 3). This is the fastest speed recorded for a spirochete,…
clock | February 19, 2008There is a lot of stuff one hears about food, sustainability, environment, etc., and it is sometimes hard to figure out what is true and what is not, what is based on science and what is emotion-based mythology.
For instance, some things I have heard over the years and have no means to evaluate if they are even close to plausible:
Claim #1: if we used every square inch of arable or potentially arable land, clearing the rainforest, turning deserts into fields, removing cities, malls and highways, killing all the animals, destroying all natural ecosystems, moving all humans to the Moon and…
clock | February 19, 2008...from different points of view:
Anne-Marie: Culinary revelation
Mark Powell: Saving the ocean with guilt or desire? and Does the sustainable seafood movement rely on guilt? (blogfish poll)
Miriam Goldstein: Guilty as charged
Amanda Marcotte: Save your soul with recycling
clock | February 19, 2008Identical Twins Not As Identical As Believed:
Contrary to our previous beliefs, identical twins are not genetically identical. This surprising finding may be of great significance for research on hereditary diseases and for the development of new diagnostic methods. How can it be that one identical twin might develop Parkinson's disease, for instance, but not the other? Until now, the reasons have been sought in environmental factors. The current study complicates the picture.
Genome Of Marine Organism Tells Of Humans' Unicellular Ancestors:
The newly sequenced genome of a one-celled,…
clock | February 19, 2008Sue and Ed are starting to plan the fourth ConvergeSouth and are asking the community to help with the planning.
clock | February 19, 2008Are Animals Autistic Savants:
Do animals have privileged access to lower level sensory information before it is packaged into concepts, as Temple Grandin has argued for autistic savants? Giorgio Vallortigara and colleagues critique this perspective, and Grandin responds.
see also.
Maternal Death, Autopsy Studies, and Lessons from Pathology:
Clara Menendez and colleagues analyze 139 complete autopsies following maternal deaths in Maputo, Mozambique and find a predominance of infectious and preventable causes. Sebastian Lucas discusses the study in a related perspective.
clock | February 19, 2008SES: Science, Education & Society
The Natural Patriot
Patently silly
Evolved and Rational
A Fat Question
Stuff White People Like
Running the Numbers
clock | February 19, 2008Congratulations to Josh Marshall for winning the George Polk Award!
(Hat-tip)
clock | February 19, 2008In my daily interviews I always ask: what new blogs did you discover at the Conference? If anyone asked me that question - and you know it's hard to surprise me! - one I'd pick would be the INFO Project blog run by Rose Reis, now my daily read.
Now, Anna (where did she get the idea, I wonder?) interviews Rose over on the JoVE Blog and the interview is worth your time. And yes, sooner or later, Rose Reis will be interviewed here as well - stay tuned.