clock | July 24, 2007I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
- Jack London
clock | July 24, 2007Just came back home from a very pleasant dinner with Matt Nisbet. What luck that our trips to San Francisco coincided so well! Oh, and of course, Profesor Steve Steve was there as well...
clock | July 24, 2007The US Anti-Prostitution Pledge: First Amendment Challenges and Public Health Priorities by Nicole Franck Masenior and Chris Beyrer:
In order for an HIV organization to receive funding from the United States, grantees must explicitly oppose prostitution.
Male Circumcision for Prevention of HIV Transmission: What the New Data Mean for HIV Prevention in the United States by Patrick S. Sullivan, Peter H. Kilmarx, Thomas A. Peterman, Allan W. Taylor, Allyn K. Nakashima, Mary L. Kamb, Lee Warner and Timothy D. Mastro:
Recent clinical trials in Africa found that male circumcision reduces the risk…
clock | July 24, 2007This April 09, 2006 post places another paper of ours (Reference #17) within a broader context of physiology, behavior, ecology and evolution.
The paper was a result of a "communal" experiment in the lab, i.e., it was not included in anyone's Thesis. My advisor designed it and started the experiment with the first couple of birds. When I joined the lab, I did the experiment in an additional number of animals. When Chris joined the lab, he took over the project and did the rest of the lab work, including bringin in the idea for an additional experiment that was included, and some of the…
clock | July 24, 2007People have been cooking in Belgrade, Serbia, for weeks now. Last time I am aware of that the temperature was this high was when I was in pre-school. Today's pictures:
clock | July 24, 2007Did Pterosaurs Feed by Skimming? Physical Modelling and Anatomical Evaluation of an Unusual Feeding Method by Stuart Humphries, Richard H. C. Bonser, Mark P. Witton and David M. Martill:
Just because a component of an extinct animal resembles that of a living one does not necessarily imply that both were used for the same task. The lifestyles of pterosaurs, long-extinct flying reptiles that soared ancient skies above the dinosaurs, have long been the subject of debate among palaeontologists. Similarities between the skulls of living birds (black skimmers) that feed by skimming the water…
clock | July 24, 2007Paleontologists Study A Remarkably Well-preserved Baby Siberian Mammoth:
University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher just returned from Siberia where he spent a week as part of a six-member international team that examined the frozen, nearly intact remains of a 4-month-old female woolly mammoth.
Steroids, Not Songs, Spur Growth Of Brain Regions In Sparrows:
Neuroscientists are attempting to understand if structural changes in the brain are related to sensory experience or the performance of learned behavior, and now University of Washington researchers have found evidence that one…
clock | July 24, 2007Tripoli Six are free, at home in Bulgaria! Revere has the whole scoop. This is, in no small way, the result of tenacious efforts by Declan Butler of Nature and the hundreds (thousands) of bloggers who kept the story alive and urged the readers to contact the relevant people. A good day indeed!
clock | July 24, 2007One more book is off my amazon.com wish list, thanks to one of my readers - Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. Thank you so much! It is going straight up to the top of my "to read" stack, as soon as I finish Harry Potter.
clock | July 24, 2007Yesterday, I extricated myself from PLoS for lunch, because I really wanted to go and meet one of my most regular readers and commenters, who goes around here as Michelle. We had a most delightful conversation over lunch at Jack Falstaff and pictures (which, of course, include Professor Steve Steve) are under the fold:
clock | July 24, 2007This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior.
So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year.
Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…
clock | July 23, 2007A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.
- Irish proverb
clock | July 23, 2007This is the sixth post in a series about mechanism of entrainment, running all day today on this blog. In order to understand the content of this post, you need to read the previous five installments. The original of this post was first written on April 12, 2005.
A Phase Response Curve (PRC) can be made in three ways:
One can construct a PRC for a single individual. If you have a reasonably long-lived organism, you can apply a number of light pulses over a period of time. The advantage is that you will always know the freerunning period of your organism, and you will know with absolute…
clock | July 22, 2007I guess I am the cheapest of all my sciblings - better get me while I am still alive, as I appear to be pretty worthless as a corpse:
$3540.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating
clock | July 22, 2007Well, if one stays in San Francisco for a month, it is bound to happen one day...
On Friday early morning (just before 5am) I woke up to an earthquake.
I've been through a bunch of earthquakes before - Balkans are on some kind of fault, I understand. I slept through a pretty strong one (7 Richter, I believe) while staying at a hotel on top of the mountain that was right above the epicenter. Not just that the quake did not wake me up, but even banging on the door by my friends was ineffective - hard work and mountain air conspired.
But what woke me up on Friday, I think, was not so much the…
clock | July 22, 2007This is an appropriate time of year for this post (February 05, 2006)...
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So, why do I say that it is not surprising the exposure to bright light alleviates both seasonal depression and other kinds of depression, and that different mechanisms may be involved?
In mammals, apart from visual photoreception (that is, image formation), there is also non-visual photoreception. The receptors of the former are the rods and cones that you all learned about in middle school. The receptors for the latter are a couple of thousand Retinal Ganglion…
clock | July 22, 2007Then, after all this walking, I finally went to Borders and got myself the seventh book of Harry Potter. But, lo and behold, when I got home, Steve Steve decided he was going to read it first, so all I could do is post pictures on the blog instead:
clock | July 22, 2007Sea lions are a big draw at Pier 39. I have seen them in zoos many times, but this is the first time I see them in their normal geographical setting, as 'un-natural' it may seem. Unfortunately, only a dozen or so young, non-breeders are here right now. The mature adults are at their breeding grounds, further south, and will be back in August, just after I leave. Still, these were interesting to observe for a while:
clock | July 22, 2007Some more pictures. At the time many of those were made, there was no telephone, no movies, no radio, no TV, no computer games, no Second Life. This was the most high-tech entertainment. I wish I could bring back some of those inventors and show them what evolved out of their inventions. Also, how society changed, i.e., what is deemed 'acceptable':