clock | July 13, 2007In the USA:
Effective this week, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have proposed FY08 spending bills that direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to change its Public Access Policy so that NIH-funded researchers are required to deposit copies of NIH-funded research into the online archive of the National Library of Medicine.
This is big step toward making the policy a success -- we need your help now more than ever.
The bills now go to the full House and the Senate for approval. To help ensure success there, we ask that all supporters contact their Representatives AND…
clock | July 13, 2007A short post from April 17, 2005 that is a good starting reference for more detailed posts covering recent research in clock genetics (click on spider-clock icon to see the original).
As I have mentioned before, there was quite an angst in the field of chronobiology around 1960s about the lack of undestanding of circadian and other rhythms at cellular and subcellular levels. Experiment involved manipulation of the environment (e.g,. light cycles) and observing outputs (e.g., wheel-running rhythms), while treating the clock, even if its anatomical location was known, as a "black box".…
clock | July 12, 2007No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there's a wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
- Erma Louise Bombeck
clock | July 12, 2007Richard Dawkins is doing a reading/signing at Kepler's bookstore this Saturday. Any Bay Area bloggers wanna go?
clock | July 12, 2007I And The Bird carnival is two years old! The anniversary edition is appropriately hosted by its founder, Mike at 10000 Birds.
clock | July 12, 2007A new paper just came out today on PLoS-Biology: Glucocorticoids Play a Key Role in Circadian Cell Cycle Rhythms. The paper is long and complicated, with many control experiments, etc, so I will just give you a very brief summary of the main finding.
One of the three major hypotheses for the origin of circadian clocks is the need to shield sensitive cellular processes - including cell division - from the effects of UV radiation by the sun, thus relegating it to night-time only:
The cyclic nature of energetic availability and cycles of potentially degrading effects of the sun's ultraviolet…
clock | July 12, 2007I buried this information between numerous pretty pictures in a yesterday's post, so let me now tell you a little bit more.
A couple of days ago, a new feature was introduced on all published papers on PLoS ONE. Along with commenting on and annotating each paper, you can now also rate it.
The rating system is familiar to all of you from other sites, I'm sure - it is a simple five-star system. You can rate papers on three criteria: Insight, Reliability and Style and let the software average your three ratings to produce a single number, as well as average your ratings with other readers…
clock | July 12, 2007Echidne, Amanda Marcotte, Laelaps and Larry Moran beautifully destroy the "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature" article from the recent issue of 'Psychology Today', the latest garbage from the Evolutionary Psychology crowd. Much fun was had by all....
clock | July 12, 2007 I wrote this post back on January 23, 2005. It explains how clock biologists think and how they design their experiments:
So, are you ready to do chronobiological research? If so, here are some of the tips - the thought process that goes into starting one's research in chronobiology.
First, you need to pick a question. Are you interested in doing science out of sheer curiosity to discover stuff that nobody knew before (a very noble, but hard-to-fund pursuit)? Or would you prefer your work to be applicable to human medicine or health policy, veterinary medicine, conservation biology, or…
clock | July 12, 2007Four excellent, thought-provoking articles all in some way related to the idea of Open Science. One by Bill Hooker:
Competition in science: too much of a good thing
and three by Janet Stemwedel:
Clarity and obfuscation in scientific papers
Does thinking like a scientist lead to bad science writing?
OpenWetWare
clock | July 12, 2007Revere, Orac and PZ have an update on the fate of the Tripoli 6. Revere explains:
The final act in the drama of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor imprisoned for seven years and sentenced to death by firing squad in Libya after being accused of deliberately infecting over 400 chidren with HIV in a children's hospital in Bengazi ... is now being played out in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Affirming the death sentence is a (regrettably) necessary first step in resolving the issue and, paradoxically, saving the lives and obtaining the freedom of the accused, whose confessions…
clock | July 11, 2007As you are probably aware, behind the scenes we are busily working on the organization of the 2nd Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is almost all set up - all that is missing are maps and information about travel, directions, etc. (and the dinner wiki) which will be there by the end of August. We will open the registration on September 1st, but you can always e-mail me with questions or to tell me about your intentions to register.
The program is slowly taking shape (go look - we have already lined up some phenomenal people to lead discussions), though I guess there will still be many…
clock | July 11, 2007There are 19 new papers on ONE that were published this week (thus breaking the 600 papers number). Here are a couple that caught my eye (apart from those I already blogged about or will soon):
Imitation as Faithful Copying of a Novel Technique in Marmoset Monkeys:
This evidence of imitation in non-human primates questions the dominant opinion that imitation is a human-specific ability. Furthermore, the high matching degree suggests that marmosets possess the neuronal mechanism to code the actions of others and to map them onto their own motor repertoire, rather than priming existing motor-…
clock | July 11, 2007Songbirds Prefer The Latest Music: Golden Oldies Just Don't Cut It With The Chicks:
When it's time to mate, female white-crowned sparrows are looking for a male who sings the latest version of the love song, not some 1979 relic. And territorial males simply find the golden oldie much less threatening. Duke University graduate student Elizabeth Derryberry played two versions of the white-crowned sparrow song to the birds as part of her thesis research and found that a 1979 recording didn't inspire them nearly as well as a 2003 recording of the very same song.
Birds Take Cues From Their…
clock | July 11, 2007New Habanero Blasts Taste Buds -- And Pepper Pests:
The super-hot, bright orange TigerPaw-NR habanero pepper offers extreme pungency for pepper aficionados, plus nematode resistance that will make it a hit with growers and home gardeners. Plant geneticist Richard L. Fery and plant pathologist Judy A. Thies at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) U.S. Vegetable Laboratory, Charleston, S.C., put the pepper through three years of greenhouse and field tests before determining, in 2006, that it was ready for commercial fields and backyard gardens.
Exhibiting A Pepper For Every Pot:
Peppers don'…
clock | July 11, 2007You really don't want to be an enemy of the aphids - two papers today! The first is quite straightforward:
Aphids Make 'Chemical Weapons' To Fight Off Killer Ladybirds:
Cabbage aphids have developed an internal chemical defence system which enables them to disable attacking predators by setting off a mustard oil 'bomb', says new research. The study shows for the first time how aphids use a chemical found in the plants they eat to emit a deadly burst of mustard oil when they're attacked by a predator, for example a ladybird. This mustard oil kills, injures or repels the ladybird, which then…
clock | July 11, 2007There is a new piece of information regarding the mammal vs. bird controversy in Chernobyl:
Brightly Colored Birds Most Affected By Chernobyl Radiation:
Brightly coloured birds are among the species most adversely affected by the high levels of radiation around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, ecologists have discovered. The findings -- published online in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology -- help explain why some species are harder hit by ionising radiation than others.
Dr Anders Møller of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie and Professor Timothy Mousseau of the…
clock | July 11, 2007Our former scibling David Dobbs has posted/published two interesting articles about recent findings in neuroscience and behavior:
The Gregarious Brain in New York Times Magazine, about the Williams Syndrome:
If a person suffers the small genetic accident that creates Williams syndrome, he'll live with not only some fairly conventional cognitive deficits, like trouble with space and numbers, but also a strange set of traits that researchers call the Williams social phenotype or, less formally, the "Williams personality": a love of company and conversation combined, often awkwardly, with a poor…
clock | July 11, 2007OK, so I've been here for about a week now. It's been so far an exciting and overwhelming experience - there is so much to learn! And I am impatient with myself and want to get in the groove right now. I need to learn to slow down a little...
Anyway, I did manage to drop in here at the blog a couple of times and report on meetups with some local bloggers, but here is a little bit more about the week so far...
San Francisco is quite a unique city - I really cannot say it reminds me of any other place I've been to. Quite ecclectic and freewheeling. And hilly! My house is on top of the…