clock | February 13, 2010Last night, braving horrible traffic on the way there, and snow on the way back, I made my way to the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences for the Darwin Day shark lecture co-organized by NESCent and the sneak preview of the Megalodon exhibit which officially opens today.
I have to say that the trip was very much worth making - the exhibit is excellent! I like the way the exhibit is making good use of the space - so many exhibits feel cluttered and an all-out assault on all of one's senses. Upon entering the room, it looks quite sparse. Yet, once I started going around I saw how much it actually…
clock | February 13, 2010
Raffle of the 'Denialism' book and Welcome note by Rick Weddle, CEO of RTP
clock | February 12, 2010"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Winston Churchill
clock | February 12, 2010A new forum at World Science is up. As always, listen to the podcast first, then ask questions in the forum:
This week, India rejected what would have been the country's first a genetically modified food crop, a transgenic eggplant.
The company that developed it, an Indian subsidiary of Monsanto, claims the crop would reduce pesticide use and boost yields. But the Indian government has decided to do independent assessments of the crop's potential impacts on consumer health and the environment.
What does this mean for the future of GM crops in India and elsewhere? And does this technology have…
clock | February 12, 2010This afternoon, I'll be driving down to Raleigh to the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences for the special Darwin Day event organized in collaboration with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
The evening will start with the sneak-peak pre-opening of the Megalodon exhibit which opens to the public tomorrow. Megalodon was the largest shark ever discovered in the fossil record and the exhibit will, apart from its massive jaws, showcase the evolution of sharks, modern sharks and the conservation issues facing these magificient fish today:
At 60 feet long, Carcharodon megalodon was the…
clock | February 12, 2010Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything
Saturday, January 16 at 10:15 - 11:20am
E. Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything - Pal MD and Val Jones.
Description: We all know that there are potential pitfalls to having a prominent online presence, but for physicians, the implications affect more than just themselves. How should doctors and similar professionals manage their online life? What are the ethical and legal implications?
Some preliminary reading can be found here.
clock | February 12, 2010Lots of interesting papers got published in various PLoS titles this week. These are my choices - papers I find personally most interesting (as well as most bloggable). As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Is It Easy to Be Urban? Convergent Success in Urban Habitats among Lineages of a…
clock | February 11, 2010An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
- Charles F. Kettering
clock | February 11, 2010Guy in a Faraday Suite getting hit by 500,000 volts ... lightning shooting out of his fingertips.
Via Frank Swain and Johannes Wiebus
clock | February 11, 2010Mason Posner is a professor of Biology at Ashland University in Ohio. He also blogs on A Fish Eye View (though I notice he did not update it in a while). About a year ago, and inspired by some discussions emanating from ScienceOnline'09, he decided to try using blogs in his teaching. He did it last spring. And he is doing it again this spring.
You can check out his Marine Biology Course class blog, where he and the students are all posting in one place.
But also check out his Senior Capstone course in Biology and its class blog - he is the only one blogging there - the students are required…
clock | February 11, 2010Aves 3D is a 'three dimensional database of avian skeletal morphology' and it is awesome!
This is an NSF-funded project led by Leon Claessens, Scott Edwards and Abby Drake. What they are doing is making surface scans of various bones of different bird species and placing the 3D scans on the website for everyone to see and use. With simple use of the mouse or arrow buttons, one can move, zoom and rotate each image any way one wants.
The collection is growing steadily and already contains some very interesting bones from a number of species, both extinct and extant. You can see examples of…
clock | February 11, 2010Four Stone Hearth # 86 - Amazing stories edition - is up on Testimony of the spade
The 130th Skeptics Circle is up on The Lay Scientist
clock | February 11, 2010Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything
Saturday, January 16 at 10:15 - 11:20am
E. Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything - Pal MD and Val Jones.
Description: We all know that there are potential pitfalls to having a prominent online presence, but for physicians, the implications affect more than just themselves. How should doctors and similar professionals manage their online life? What are the ethical and legal implications?
Some preliminary reading can be found here.
clock | February 11, 2010There are 22 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Testing the Hypothesis of Fire Use for Ecosystem Management by Neanderthal and Upper Palaeolithic Modern Human Populations:
It has been proposed that a greater control and more extensive use of fire was…
clock | February 10, 2010Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Hope Leman to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?
Hope: I am 46 and Research Information…
clock | February 10, 2010Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything
Saturday, January 16 at 10:15 - 11:20am
E. Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything - Pal MD and Val Jones.
Description: We all know that there are potential pitfalls to having a prominent online presence, but for physicians, the implications affect more than just themselves. How should doctors and similar professionals manage their online life? What are the ethical and legal implications?
Some preliminary reading can be found here.
clock | February 10, 2010There are 18 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Using Imputation to Provide Location Information for Nongeocoded Addresses:
The importance of geography as a source of variation in health research continues to receive sustained attention in the…