clock | June 8, 2007On this day a year ago, A Blog Around The Clock was born. Twenty-something other bloggers moved to the Scienceblogs.com empire on that same day. My old blogs are still up there, gathering cyberdust, slowly losing Google traffic and rankings, because all of the action is right here. During this year, I posted 2941 posts (that is about 8.12 posts per day) and received 5233 legitimate comments. While my new job is likely to somewhat change the tone of the blog (more science, less politics, most likely), I have no intention of slowing down. I hope you are all still here for the second…
clock | June 8, 2007So, it appears that Koufax Awards will happen. These are the most celebrated blog awards of them all (unless you are a wingnut). I am not exactly sure when all the lists of nominations will be finalized (or if any additions will be allowed at this date - these are 2006 awards, after all) and when the voting will begin.
But I found my blog nominated in several categories, including Best Blog (no chance in hell), Best Post (for this post, for which I have high hopes), Best Series (the BIO101 lecture notes), Best Consonant Level Blog, Best Expert Blog and Most Deserving of Wider Recognition…
clock | June 8, 2007Why didn't I hear about this before? Why is it not in the media? On blogs?
Lindsay reports on the new book "Steeplejacking" that documents how the Religious Right, hand-in-hand with the hawkish conservative Democrats, systematically, over the past couple of decades, performed hostile take-overs of liberal churches. Whenever a pastor/priest/whatever preached peace (and tolerance, equality, need to fight the environmental problems and problems of poverty, etc), the "Institute on Religion and Democracy" would move in and, using various heavy-handed tactics, including lawsuits, remove such…
clock | June 8, 2007Ruchira Paul alerted me to this article about a scientific fight between Robert J. Baker of Texas Tech University (who I never heard of) who alleges that the evacuation of humans from the area allowed animals to come in and multiply with no apparent bad consequences from radiation, and Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina (who I have met and read and greatly respect) who finds whopping numbers of bad mutations in the region and very low fertility rates. The first argues that the populations are growing, while the latter suggests that the area is a sink for animals who come in…
clock | June 8, 2007I often blog about malaria because it is a fascinating disease which has to be studied in a highly integrative manner, is a great teaching topic and I could tie it in with my own field.
If you share my fascination, than your Obligatory Reading Of The Day is this post by Bug Girl (via) about the truth about DDT, Rachael Carson, malaria and the wingnut lies about it. Follow the links within it as well for more information.
clock | June 8, 2007On some Fridays, I write about strange reproductive strategies and mating habits of various organisms, sometimes in excrutiating detail, though I have not done it very regularly lately (see the Friday Weird Sex Blogging archives).
But some people just collect them all in one place, in one post full of strangeness. You can read about 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits on Neatorama. Or 11 Examples of Unusual Mating Habits on Canongate (both via Liberals in Exile).
Others have a regular feature on science and nature of sex, e.g., Insect Sex on What's That Bug, the Sexy Beast category on the…
clock | June 7, 2007There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.
- Miguel de Cervantes
clock | June 7, 2007So, it is fitting that Carnival of the Blue kicks off today. The first edition (already huge!) is up on Blogfish. Lots of great posts!
clock | June 7, 2007A paper in press in Current Biology (press release here) looks at mitochondrial DNA of mammoths and advances a primarily environmental cause for the mammoth extinction. Razib explains why such a black-and-white dichotomy is unhealthy.
Looking at a different hypothesis, also environmental, for the mammoth extinction (comet impact), Archy places the black-and-white dichotomy in the historical context and tries to figure out why the environmental hypotheses are so popular nowadays, while extinction at the hands of human hunters is not a popular idea any more.
clock | June 7, 2007When I was a kid I swallowed science-fiction by the crates. And I was too young to be very discerning of quality - I liked everything. Good taste developed later, with age. But even at that tender age, there was one book that was so bad that not only did I realized it was bad, it really, really irked me. It was The Ayes of Texas (check the Amazon readers' reviews!), a stupid 1982 Texas-secessionist fairy-tale in which a rich (and of course brilliant and smooth with ladies) conservative Texan, by throwing millions of dollars at scientists, gets all sorts of new gizmos and gadgets which he…
clock | June 7, 2007Bjoern Brembs is attending and liveblogging from the Gastropod Neuroscience meeting at Friday Harbor Laboratories and has posted about several talks already and will likely post more over the next couple of days.
Something struck me in his coverage of Dennis Willows' talk about magnetoreception in Tritonia:
However, in 20 years of research, the researchers haven't found the cells which sense the magnetic field and transmit the information to the neurons in the brain.
Well, Ken Lohmann, barely a mile or so from me, has already published several papers on Tritonia neurons sensitive to changes…
clock | June 6, 2007I am long on ideas, but short on time. I only expect to live about a hundred years.
- Thomas Alva Edison
clock | June 6, 2007Tangled Bank #81 is up on Behavioral Biology Blog (darn, I forgot to send my entry this time).
Grand Rounds Vol 3., No. 37 are up on Inside Surgery.
Pediatric Grand Rounds 2:4 are up on Adventures of An Awesome (Sometimes) Mother.
Bio::Blogs #11 is up on Nodalpoint.
The Festival of the Trees 12 - Meditations - is up on Arboreality.
clock | June 6, 2007On Topp of the World
Liberals In Exile
Green Chameleon
Monkey Trials
Carnival of the Blue
Epidemix
clock | June 6, 2007Yesterday, PLoS-ONE celebrated the publication of the 500th paper (and additional 13). Here are some quick stats:
1,411 submissions
513 published paper
360 member editorial board and growing
19 day average acceptance to publication
600+ post publication comments posted
I am assuming that the remaining 898 manuscripts are in various stages of the publication process: rejected, in review, in revision, or in the pipeline to appear on the site any day now.
The very first paper was published on December 20, 2006. The 500th paper is this one "Climate Change Cannot Explain the Upsurge of Tick-…
clock | June 6, 2007Jason aka Argonaut saw how I got the job and decided to try the same tactic. And, lo and behold, check the first comment on this post! I hope it works out for Jason as it did for me.
clock | June 6, 2007What Did Dinosaurs Hear?:
What did dinosaurs hear? Probably a lot of low frequency sounds, like the heavy footsteps of another dinosaur, if University of Maryland professor Robert Dooling and his colleagues are right. What they likely couldn't hear were the high pitched sounds that birds make.
Scientists Join Fight To Save Tasmanian Devil From Deadly Cancer:
CSIRO scientists have joined the battle to save Australia's iconic Tasmanian devils from the deadly cancer currently devastating devil populations.
Stray Penguins Probably Reached Northern Waters By Fishing Boat:
Guy Demmert got quite a…