clock | June 28, 2007A whole bunch of papers got published on PLoS-ONE yesterday. I did not have time to check them out very closely yet, but a few titles immediatelly caught my attention:
High Costs of Female Choice in a Lekking Lizard
by Maren N. Vitousek, Mark A. Mitchell, Anthony J. Woakes, Michael D. Niemack and Martin Wikelski
The cost to males of producing elaborate mating displays is well established, but the energy females spend on mate choice is less clear. This study monitored the heart rates of female Galápagos marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) and found they expended almost a days' worth of…
clock | June 28, 2007Mathematicians Discover A Simple Way To Formulate Complex Scientific Results:
A new analysis of behaviour in a structured population illuminates Darwin's theories of co-operation and competition between kin, and provides an abstract model that could simplify scientists' quest to map behaviour among disease-causing organisms within a cell. The study by Queen's Mathematics and Statistics professor Peter Taylor, and co-authors Troy Day (Queen's) and Geoff Wild (University of Western Ontario) presents a simple formula for balancing the benefit and cost in altruistic acts, allowing researchers to…
clock | June 27, 2007Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you: You do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
clock | June 27, 2007I'll be leaving in one week and staying in San Francisco for one month. I'll be busy, to say the least. What should I do with the blog in the meantime? After all, it is the middle of the summer when everyone is travelling or enjoying the great outdoors and the online traffic is pitiful - my traffic is about half of what I had in April and May. So, I doubt I'll be penning long thoughtful essays (unless I get really inspired once or twice).
I think I'll sit down one of these days before I leave and schedule for automatic posting a Clock Quote to appear every day around 4am for the next…
clock | June 27, 2007Everyone always blogs about Bush...
After all, Bush is such an easy target - there is not a day that he or some of his buddies do not do something outrageously bad. And with the Media covering it as if it was OK, where else can one voice outrage if not on blogs.
So, it is refreshing to see people, for once, blogging about something else, for instance about bush...
Ooops, not the Burning Bush...
And not this kind of bush either....
But bush in the sense of "hair" you know....
No, not that hair...
No, not that hair either, this is a science blog, after all....
But, this kind of hair and…
clock | June 27, 2007These three links have recently become freely available:
Chris Mooney's interview with Treehugger.
Chris Mooney's article in Harper's Magazine/
And a report from the NYAS meeting.
clock | June 27, 2007Finally someone is standing up to the lunatics!
First shot was firm but polite.
The second was uncompromising - yes, they really are "crazies" and that is how we should call them. And it is high time someone stood up to them and called them on their calculated craziness and hate-speech.
clock | June 27, 2007My friend (and the driving force behind all bloggy events in the Triangle area) Anton Zuiker has a new job! And not just any job - but a perfect job:
In August, I will take a new job at Duke University Health System as manager of internal communications. This will be a chance for me to mold a communications strategy that uses traditional tools (magazines, newsletters, posters) with new media tools (blogs, videocasts, wikis). I'm looking forward to the opportunities and challenges.
They really, really need Anton. Finding information online about anything that has to do with Duke University…
clock | June 27, 2007My friend, neighbor, blogger, frequent commenter on this blog, and fellow Edwards supporter, Robert Peterson just became a father again! Congratulations!
clock | June 27, 2007I find it very difficult to say something nice, deep, profound or meaningful at the time of sorrow. But I am deeply saddened by the news that Lindsay Beyerstein's father has died. Lindsay is a dear friend, a philosopher and a superb blogger (one of the rare bloggers who really became an online journalist in the best sense of the word), and her father, who I never had the fortune to meet, was an extraordinary man as well. So sorry!
clock | June 27, 2007Nature News just had an article announcing a new social networking site for physicians and biomedical scientists called Prometeo Network. Another one to check out and add to the ever-growing list of such new sites.
clock | June 27, 2007Here is some chemistry of bisphenol A, but what is really interesting is this article about Fred vom Saal. It is quite revealing about the way industry produces bad science in order to protect its financial interests:
"The moment we published something on bisphenol A, the chemical industry went out and hired a number of corporate laboratories to replicate our research. What was stunning about what they did . . . was they hired people who had no idea how to do the work."
Several of my grad school buddies worked on some aspect or other of neuroendocrinology, including environmental endocrine…
clock | June 27, 2007
Foreign Herbivores May Be Key To Curbing Invasive Weeds:
Joint research with scientists in Argentina, Australia and China could lead to discovery of new biological control agents for several exotic weeds plaguing Florida and other U.S. states. Some of the worst offenders are hydrilla, Brazilian pepper, Chinese tallow and Australian pine. These and other aggressive invasive weeds occupy diverse habitats and cause many environmental problems, especially a decrease in biodiversity within infested areas.
How Fish Punish 'Queue Jumpers':
Fish use the threat of punishment to keep would-be jumpers…
clock | June 26, 2007Throw out an alarming alarm clock. If the ring is loud and strident, you're waking up to instant stress. You shouldn't be bullied out of bed, just reminded that it's time to start your day.
- Sharon Gold
clock | June 26, 2007Grand Rounds Vol. 3, No. 40 are up on Wandering Visitor
Carnival of the Green # 83 is up on Dianovo.
Carnival of Education, The RoadTrip Edition is up on Education in Texas
Radiology Grand Rounds XIII are up on NeuroRAZiology & co.
Carnival of Homeschooling - Surgery Edition - is up on HomeschoolHacks.
clock | June 26, 2007It's Time for a Literary Medblogging Project.... :
Literary medblogging projects seem to occur on a semiannual basis: There was the "Dark and Stormy Night" series in December 2005, the "Literary Cheese Wheel" in July 2006, and the "Showcase" in December 2006. (Who would have thought that a website devoted to medical gadgets would link to all of these literary things?) The good Dr. Charles also hosted a travelling story, though it seems that his previous Blogger venue has been hijacked and thus, I cannot link to that literary work of art.
If you
* are a nursing student, nurse, medical…
clock | June 26, 2007As more and more people are slowly coming out of the woodwork and revealing they are going to Science Foo Camp, I am getting more and more excited about it! Yes, I have registered and reserved my hotel room already.
Sure, people like Neal Stephenson and Carl Djerassi are going to be there (as well as all those bloggers I linked to before - see the link above), but I am so excited to be able, for the first time, to meet in person Gabrielle Lyons, the power behind Project Exploration (the link to their site has been on my sidebar - scroll down - for about a year now). I wrote about it in more…
clock | June 26, 2007Yves Roumazeilles
Jacks of Science
Science of the Invisible
I, Platform (by Eric Rice)
CorpBlawg
Notes From Ukraine
Howard Hughes Precollege Program Summer 2007
Student Research at Duke
William Kamkwamba's Malawi Windmill Blog
clock | June 26, 2007Libraryman just gave a Presentation about it, and Danica likes it. Anyone using it yet?