clock | February 24, 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 | February 24, 2007Wow! It seems that all the exciting sience news today are coming from my school:
Researchers Find Genes Involved In Nicotine Resistance In Fruit Flies:
North Carolina State University researchers have gleaned insight into the genes involved in resistance to nicotine in the lab rat of many gene studies - Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly. The research team led by Dr. Greg Gibson, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Genetics, and his graduate student, Gisele Passador-Gurgel, found that regulation of levels of a certain enzyme - ornithine amino transferase - plays an important role in…
clock | February 23, 2007Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
- Albert Camus
clock | February 23, 2007Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack To Drop 2008 Bid:
Democrat Tom Vilsack is abandoning his bid for the presidency after struggling against better-known, better-financed rivals, a senior campaign official told The Associated Press on Friday.
Vilsack left office in January and traveled through states holding early tests of strength. He had faced a tough challenge from rivals such as New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards, who have had more success raising money and attracting attention - even in Vilsack's home state of Iowa.
Vilsack was scheduled to make a…
clock | February 23, 2007The 105th edition of The Tar Heel Tavern will be on my old digs, Science And Politics, with no particular theme or topic. Just send your week's best by Saturday night to: Coturnix AT gmail DOT com
clock | February 23, 2007Evolution works according to a very small set of simple rules. If a) there is variation in a trait in a population and b) that variation is heritable and c) one variant is better adapted to the current local environment, then d) the best adapted trait will increase in the proportion within the population in the next generation. Once you understand this simple algorithm (perhaps, for fuller understanding, learn some basics of the ways genotype maps onto phenotype via development), everything about the living world is explainable without magic.
John McCain works according to a very small set…
clock | February 23, 2007Do You Hear What I See? Research Finds Visually Stimulated Activity In Brain's Hearing Processing Centers:
New research pinpoints specific areas in sound processing centers in the brains of macaque monkeys that shows enhanced activity when the animals watch a video. This study confirms a number of recent findings but contradicts classical thinking, in which hearing, taste, touch, sight, and smell are each processed in distinct areas of the brain and only later integrated.
Harmful Environmental Effects Of Livestock Production On The Planet 'Increasingly Serious,' Says Panel:
The harmful…
clock | February 22, 2007People find life entirely too time-consuming.
Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966), "Unkempt Thoughts"
clock | February 22, 2007The Blogging Curmudgeon
Scooter's Blog
Eye On Science
Spewing Truth in the face of Lies
Interrogating Nature
My Spleen and Welcome to It
Say it Better
Sequitur
clock | February 22, 2007OK, it is a premise of a new SF novel. The book description does not look too promising, though I guess I should read it for professional reasons (I put it on my amazon wish-list for now):
Last call from Earth -Stage I, Biological Survival (also available for download on Lulu.com).
This is what Newswire says about it:
Successful Soul Transplant Operation Featured in New Sci-Fi Book 'Last call from Earth'
Soul transplant operation is the last recourse for human survival in new trilogy, Last call from Earth - People affected with CRDS loose their DNA controls and become repugnant: The body…
clock | February 22, 2007Trying to push an anti-free-speech bill in Arizona:
The Arizona bill, if enacted, could take self-censorship in schools to a new level.
"This is yet another bill that is seeking to restrict the free exchange of ideas on campus, and, frankly, this is probably the most extreme form we've seen yet," Fitzgerald said. Unlike its cousins in other states, it lays out specific penalties when a teacher or professor advocates "one side of a social, political or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy."
And where MSM has to retain a dignified tone, the blogs can move in and trash the…
clock | February 22, 2007There are now 59 blogs on Seed Scienceblogs network - that is a lot of stuff to read! You may choose to start your day on the Last 24 Hours aggregator (that's what I do), or you may subscribe to the entire RSS feed for the whole site, or you may have just picked the feeds for a few of the blogs you particularly like.
Now you have another option - the super-special exclusive Scienceblogs Select feed! Each one of us occasionally (the agreed frequency, I believe, is an average of three posts per week) tags a particularly good post to be included in this feed.
Of course, each one of us has…
clock | February 22, 2007Boosting Brain Power -- With Chocolate:
Eating chocolate could help to sharpen up the mind and give a short-term boost to cognitive skills, a University of Nottingham expert has found. A study led by Professor Ian Macdonald found that consumption of a cocoa drink rich in flavanols -- a key ingredient of dark chocolate -- boosts blood flow to key areas of the brain for two to three hours.
Environment And Exercise May Affect Research Results, Study Shows:
A recently completed study at The University of Arizona may have implications for the thousands of scientists worldwide who use "knockout"…