clock | February 6, 2007105th edition of the Carnival of Education is up on This Week In Education.
The 58th edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling is up on About:Homeschooling
clock | February 6, 2007Do You Mind?
Introspection of a Struggling Mad Scientist
Forensic Science Blog
Seeds Aside
Nature Woman
Mon@rch's Nature Blog
Coffee & Conservation
75 degrees South
Dogwood Alliance
North Carolina Sierra Club
I Love Colonoscopies
clock | February 6, 2007Yes, there is a Blogger MeetUp tomorrow (Wednesday) night. New place and time: 6:30 p.m. @ Milltown Bar & Restaurant (map). No particular topic this week (still preparing for all the topical meetings later on this season). See you all there.
clock | February 6, 2007Matt found a conference paper that shows that the risk of pre-term birth is the lowest in spring, rising through summer and fall and the greatest in winter.
The paper, IMHO erroneously, focuses on the time of conception (because it is an easy marker used to calculate the supposed birth-date). Matt correctly shifts the discussion to the time of birth. After all, pre-term births are much more likely to be caused by something happening around that time than anything at the time of conception.
On the other hand, Matt, though cautiously and almost tongue-in-cheek, makes an attempt at an…
clock | February 6, 2007I was just about to write about this story, but Grrrrl scoooped me and summarized it so well, I'll just ask you to go there.
Oh, btw, it is about an incredible discovery of about one hundred dinosaur eggs and some tracks around them.
clock | February 6, 2007My daughter, as part of her school assignment on Vasco Da Gama, bought a bunch of stuff that Vasco brought to Europe from Asia. Now I have all those foodstuffs and do not know what to do with them.
Cucumber and melon were easy.
But, what would I do with a coconut, a jar of cinnamon sticks and a jar full of whole cloves?
Give me your recipes or links to recipes to good dishes that contain one (or two or all three!) of those ingredients. And, if those dishes turn out tasty, I may as well start on my foodblogging career!
clock | February 6, 2007There are two new additions to the Basic Concepts and Terms in Science list that appeared today:
Voltage Gate: What Is Ecology?
The World Fair: Epistemology (what is a flower?)
Any others?
clock | February 6, 2007Lance wrote a brilliant post - An alien anthropologist discusses marriage with the Pope - which reminded me of an old (April 24, 2005) post of mine, which, perhaps, stood the test of time after all...
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I have not mentioned the Pope on this blog yet. What will the election of Ratzinger mean for the future? I don't know - nobody really does - but here are some thoughts.
If it is true that there are 1 billion Catholics on this planet, that makes it about a 6th or 7th of the world's population. This makes the Vatican the largest existing purveyor of myth, irrationality…
clock | February 6, 2007Slight changes in the hosting line-up for the Tar Heel Tavern:
Next Host: Scrutiny Hooligans
TTHT #104 (18 February 2007) Host: Writing for Nonprofits
TTHT #105 (25 February 2007) Host: Science and Politics
TTHT #106 (4 March 2007) Host: Slowly She Turned
TTHT #107 (11 March 2007) Host: Scrutiny Hooligans
TTHT #108 (18 March 2007) Host: ?
TTHT #109 (25 March 2007) Host: ?
TTHT #110 (1 April 2007) Host: Scrutiny Hooligans
TTHT #110 (8 April 2007) Host: ?
TTHT #111 (15 April 2007) Host: ?
TTHT #112 (22 April 2007) Host: ?
TTHT #113 (29 April 2007) Host: Writing for Nonprofits
Let me know if…
clock | February 6, 2007If they think that something like this will endear them to anyone not certifiably insane (via PZ), or to think that WorldNutDaily is not satire... It's like when you catch your kid in a lie and he starts spinnikng and digging himself depeer and deeper. Exept that thse guys, like wounded beasts, can be dangerous.
clock | February 6, 2007...by sending a Darwin (or a Lincoln, or more) to the Beagle project. Day six.
clock | February 6, 2007Slow-wave Activity During Sleep Affected By Quality, Intensity Of Wakefulness:
A study published in the February 1st issue of the journal SLEEP provides a first direct demonstration that the "quality" and "intensity" of wakefulness can affect slow-wave activity (SWA) during subsequent sleep.
According to Chiara Cirelli, MD, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the authors of the study, the importance and novelty of the paper lies in the demonstration that the crucial factor linking physiological waking activity to sleep SWA is synaptic plasticity, notably synaptic potentiation…
clock | February 6, 2007Wow - what a little tempest! The first response to the local NBC affilate's invitation to the "Blogger Ascertainmnent" by me, Paul Jones and Brian Russell provoked David Kirk to respond in NBC's defense. To that, Paul Jones, Brian Russell and Paul Jones again responded, and the NBC guy trying to get this organized commented on each of those threads.
Despite it being on Monday at noon (unless they show they are smarter then we give them credit for and change the time, venue and availability of food and drinks), I am thinking about going anyway (I signed up as "Maybe" for now). The NBC's…
clock | February 6, 2007Lots of cool stuff today:
Nature Could Have Used Different Protein Building Blocks, Chemists Show:
Chemists at Yale have done what Mother Nature chose not to -- make a protein-like molecule out of non-natural building blocks, according to a report featured early online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Nature uses alpha-amino acid building blocks to assemble the proteins that make life as we know it possible. Chemists at Yale now report evidence that nature could have used a different building block -- beta-amino acids -- and show that peptides assembled from beta-amino acids…
clock | February 6, 2007For Some Species, An Upside To Inbreeding:
Although breeding between close kin is thought to be generally unfavorable from an evolutionary standpoint, in part because harmful mutations are more easily propagated through populations in this way, theory predicts that under some circumstances, the benefits of inbreeding may outweigh the costs.
Researchers have now reported real-life evidence in support of this theory. Studying an African chiclid fish species, Pelvicachromis taetiatus, in which both parents participate in brood care, the researchers found that individuals preferred mating with…
clock | February 5, 2007The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it.
Plutarch (46 AD - 120 AD)
clock | February 5, 2007Two interesting papers came out last week, both using transgenic mice to ask important questions about circadian organization in mammals. Interestingly, in both cases the gene inserted into the mouse was a human gene, though the method was different and the question was different:
Turning a Mouse Into A Lark
The first paper (Y. Xu, K.L. Toh, C.R. Jones, J.-Y. Shin, Y.-H. Fu, and L.J. PtáÄek
Modeling of a Human Circadian Mutation Yields Insights into Clock Regulation by PER2. Cell, Vol 128, 59-70, 12 January 2007) is concerned with the human clock mutation that is responsible for FASBS (…
clock | February 5, 2007Jeffrey Feldman write in Frameshop: Dem Who Reframes "War on Terror," Wins in '08:
The Democratic candidate who wins the 2008 nomination for President will not be the candidate who simply puts forward the best policy proposal on Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or any other individual military issue. The candidate who wins will be the candidate who reframes the entire debate on national security in progressive terms--the candidate who steps up and liberates the country from the destructive logic of the propaganda frame that President Bush calls "The War on Terror."
Read the whole thing. Also…
clock | February 5, 2007Just quickly for now without commentary:
Totally cool paper in the last Science:
S. Libert, J. Zwiener, X. Chu, W. VanVoorhies, G. Roman, and S.D.Pletcher
Regulation of Drosophila lifespan by olfaction and food-derived odors:
Smell is an ancient sensory system present in organisms from bacteria to humans. In the nematode Caeonorhabditis elegans, gustatory and olfactory neurons regulate aging and longevity. Using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, we show that exposure to nutrient-derived odorants can modulate lifespan and partially reverse the longevity-extending effects of dietary…