clock | October 14, 2006
Marbles, doing her best impersonation of David Bowie circa 1976. (pic by Coturnietta)
clock | October 14, 2006Composting May Be Alternative In Wake Of Horse Slaughter Bill:
The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, making its way from the U.S. House to the Senate, could leave thousands of horses with no final resting ground. Composting may be an environmentally friendly option that fits in the 'circle of life' frame of mind and may be less emotional, two area researchers said.
clock | October 14, 2006Amazing history lesson from Archy: Nazis in Antarctica.
* title totally stolen from Mustang Bobby, as there is no possible improvement on it.
clock | October 14, 2006Giant Insects Might Reign If Only There Was More Oxygen In The Air:
The delicate lady bug in your garden could be frighteningly large if only there was a greater concentration of oxygen in the air, a new study concludes. The study adds support to the theory that some insects were much larger during the late Paleozoic period because they had a much richer oxygen supply.
clock | October 14, 2006
Brian Russell is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference
clock | October 13, 2006Great catch by Radical Russ,Thursday night on Scarborough:
O'DONNELL: Is there anyone on this panel who believes that every Jew on earth is going to burn in hell forever if they do not accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior? Do any of us believe that?
HOLT: But you're attacking Christians. You don't have a reason to attack Christians!
O'DONNELL: Do you believe that? Do you believe that? Because if you do, you're a nut!
HOLT: And you've used the word "nut" probably a hundred times in the last seven-and-a-half minutes, and I don't know why.
SCARBOROUGH: And I will just say that I go to…
clock | October 13, 2006No posting tomorrow. I will (or should be) at ConvergeSouth all day tomorrow. That is, if I make it there. My ride suddenly quit. I e-mailed a few local bloggers but have not received any responses yet. Perhaps I'll make it, perhaps I won't. If I do, I'll post my thoughts on the conference on Sunday.
Upodate: Got a ride. See ya on Sunday. I have scheduled several posts for automatic posting before bed tonight, a picture of a cat, some science news, etc, just to prevent the blog from rotting away and falling apart...
clock | October 13, 2006Another one from the post-election 2004 analysis series (November 27, 2004):
My previous post is long, I know. It is quite dense and there are lots of links. Many areas are touched on quite superficially. I have covered some of them in more detail earlier, and intend to cover some others in the near future.
One response to my previous post (on Kos, by "dotpeople", who I believe is Rich Persaud, a brilliant guy who appeared not to have liked me very much in the good old days of the Edwards campaign blog, particularly when I wrote this after Super Tuesday: http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/…
clock | October 13, 2006You may remember that Clark's Nutcracker is one of my favourite birds, so I'll be watching this guy (I am assuming he got his PhD with Nikki Clayton):
Researcher Uncovering Mysteries Of Memory By Studying Clever Bird:
Scientists at the University of New Hampshire hope to learn more about memory and its evolution by studying the Clark's nutcracker, a bird with a particularly challenging task: remembering where it buried its supply of food for winter in a 15-mile area. Like many animals preparing for the winter, every fall the Clark's nutcracker spends several weeks gathering food stores. What…
clock | October 13, 2006
Josh Wilson is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference
clock | October 12, 2006Really cool stuff today:
Pheromone From Mother's Milk May Rapidly Promote Learning In Newborn Mammals:
By studying the ability of newborn rabbit pups to learn the significance of new odors, researchers have found that a mammary pheromone secreted in mother's milk may act as a chemical booster that facilitates the ability of pups to quickly associate environmental odors with the opportunity to nurse.
Vegetables, Like People, Urged To Live Up To Potential:
A major stress in a carrot's life -- like the slash of a kitchen knife -- and the tapered tuber kicks in the juice and pumps up its…
clock | October 12, 2006Tiny genome may be melting away, study suggests:
Researchers have identified the smallest known genome, and say it may suffer a strange fate.
For ants, one playbook fits many situations:
Scientists are interested in the "algorithms," or step-by-step rules, by which organisms make decisions.
Fitness, childhood IQ may affect old-age brain function:
Mental function in old age depends more on fitness than on childhood IQ, a study has found.
Strongest evidence yet that planets form from 'disks':
The philosopher Emmanuel Kant got it right 200 years ago, researchers proclaim.
clock | October 12, 2006Philosophia Naturalis Part Deux, the carnival of physics, is now up on Nonoscience.
[BTW, what happened to Tangled Bank? It was supposed to appear yesterday on Neurophilosophy]
clock | October 12, 2006Study Links Extinction Cycles to Changes in Earth's Orbit and Tilt:
If rodents in Spain are any guide, periodic changes in Earth's orbit may account for the apparent regularity with which new species of mammals emerge and then go extinct, scientists are reporting today.
It so happens, the paleontologists say, that variations in the course Earth travels around the Sun and in the tilt of its axis are associated with episodes of global cooling. Their new research on the fossil record shows that the cyclical pattern of these phenomena corresponds to species turnover in rodents and probably other…
clock | October 12, 2006This is what I do and this is how I think about what I do (from February 13, 2006)...
I teach Biology at a community college, but not on the main campus. Instead, I teach at a satellite campus dedicated to adult education. Those are all accelerated courses, which means that classes meet for about three hours once a week, either in the evening or on Saturday, and the classes last five, eight or twelve weeks.
Biology lasts eight weeks, although I teach the Lab over four weeks, doubling the face-time each week - that way more gets done, students are happier, and if an experiment does not work…
clock | October 12, 2006New type of mouse discovered in Cyprus:
A previously unknown type of mouse has been discovered on the island of Cyprus, apparently the first new terrestrial mammal species discovered in Europe in decades.
The "living fossil" mouse has a bigger head, ears, eyes and teeth than other European mice and is found only on Cyprus, Thomas Cucchi, a research fellow at Durham University in northeast England, said Thursday. Genetic tests confirmed that the new mouse was a new species and it was named Mus cypriacus, or the Cypriot mouse, he said.
His findings appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa…
clock | October 12, 2006You can read and LISTEN TO the 45th Edition of the Skeptic's Circle at The Inoculated Mind