clock | November 10, 2007...from Boston. Exhausted. Dog happy to see me. Cats, too. Wife, too. Pictorial report tomorrow.
clock | November 10, 2007How Well Do Dogs See At Night?:
A lot better than we do, says Paul Miller, clinical professor of comparative ophthalmology at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Why Quitting Smoking Is So Difficult:
New findings clarify the brain mechanisms that explain many aspects of dependency on nicotine, the addictive substance in tobacco. Among them: Individual differences in brain chemistry can have a profound effect on a person's susceptibility to addiction, and smoking may predispose adolescents to mental disorders in adolescence and adulthood. In addition, researchers have identified a potential…
clock | November 10, 2007There are 71 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 119 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time.
Kim Gainer teaches Literature at Radford University in Virginia. She also writes fantasy fan fiction. Her daughter Patty Gainer…
clock | November 9, 2007I loathe the expression 'What makes him tick' ... A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
- James Thurber
clock | November 9, 2007There are 71 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 121 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time.
Karl Leif Bates is the Manager of Research Communications at the Office of News and Communications at Duke University. Last summer…
clock | November 8, 2007Landed safely in Boston. Anna picked me up at the airport and took me to a tour of Harvard (after a breakfast/lunch of crepes), and now I wish I did read the descriptions of Harvard Square under various weather conditions.
I marked the Wideman library (by going to the bathroom of course) and nobody can take that accomplishment away from me ever!
Now off to meet Alex and others.
clock | November 8, 2007
Just right. Easier than Chris R, apparently. But just you wait for the next time I use the BPR3 icon and NOT put anything under the fold!
BTW, copy the image - do not use the embed code provided by the site....
clock | November 8, 2007There are 72 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 119 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time.
Vanessa Woods is the author of It's every monkey for themselves and a researcher with the Hominoid Psychology Research Group. She…
clock | November 7, 2007Try not to have a good time, this is supposed to be educational.
- Charles Monroe Schulz
clock | November 7, 2007Why Dinosaurs Had 'Fowl' Breath:
Scientists have discovered how dinosaurs used to breathe in what provides clues to how they evolved and how they might have lived.
Sexist Humor No Laughing Matter, Psychologist Says:
A research project led by a Western Carolina University psychology professor indicates that jokes about blondes and women drivers are not just harmless fun and games; instead, exposure to sexist humor can lead to toleration of hostile feelings and discrimination against women.
Recreational Cocaine Use May Impair Inhibitory Control:
The recreational use of cocaine has rapidly…
clock | November 7, 2007I know, it's the name of a bar. In Boston. I'll be there tomorrow night around 8pm. Warming up for Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences. Alex will be there. Anna will be there. Some others. You, too, if you can.
clock | November 7, 2007Four Stone Hearth, vol. 27 is up on Sorting Out Science
Tangled Bank #92 is up on _Paddy K_
Carnival of the Liberals #51 is up on Pollyticks.com
The 97th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Principled Discovery
clock | November 7, 2007There are 73 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 119 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time.
Careful long-time readers of my blog may have noticed that I sometimes mention and link to my friend David Warlick. I first met…
clock | November 6, 2007Men in earnest have no time to waste in patching fig leaves for the naked truth.
- Hubert H. Humphrey
clock | November 6, 2007As always on Tuesdays late in the evening, there is a bunch of new papers published in PLoS ONE and here are my personal favourites of the week:
Oxytocin Increases Generosity in Humans:
Human beings routinely help strangers at costs to themselves. Sometimes the help offered is generous--offering more than the other expects. The proximate mechanisms supporting generosity are not well-understood, but several lines of research suggest a role for empathy. In this study, participants were infused with 40 IU oxytocin (OT) or placebo and engaged in a blinded, one-shot decision on how to split a sum…
clock | November 6, 2007Cannot. Resist. Funny. Titles. Sorry.
But seriously now, the question of authorship on scientific papers is an important question. For centuries, every paper was a single-author paper. Moreover, each was thousands of pages long and leather-bound. But now, when science has become such a collaborative enterprise and single-author papers are becoming a rarity, when a 12-author paper turns no heads and 100-author papers are showing up more and more, it has become necessary to put some order in the question of authorship.
Different scientific areas have different traditions. In one discipline…
clock | November 6, 2007There's a new carnival in town! Christopher Taylor of Catalogue of Organisms has just started Linnaeus' Legacy, a monthly blog carnival dedicated to biological diversity, taxonomy and systematics.
The first edition is now published and the size and quality of posts gives me optimism that this carnival is off to a roaring start and will have a long healthy life.
Contact Chris if you want to host a future edition and don't forget to submit your entries for the December issue.
clock | November 6, 2007There are 74 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 118 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time.
Eric Roston is an author and a freelance journalist in Washington DC. He blogs on Carbon Nation.
David Brooks is a columnist for…