clock | August 20, 2006Every now and then, David Niewert takes a break from discussing Far-Right White-Supremacist groups and writes a beautiful post on orcas (after all, Orcinus blog has been named after these beautiful whales). Here's the latest.
clock | August 20, 2006Mapping The Neural Landscape Of Hunger
The compelling urge to satisfy one's hunger enlists structures throughout the brain, as might be expected in a process so necessary for survival. But until now, studies of those structures and of the feeding cycle have been only fragmentary--measuring brain regions only at specific times in the feeding cycle.
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In their paper, Ivan de Araujo and colleagues implanted bundles of infinitesimal recording electrodes in areas of rat brain known to be involved in feeding, motivation, and behavior. Those areas include the…
clock | August 19, 2006Harry Potter Carnival #29 is up on The Pensieve (Edit: you can dig through the archives of the carnival there). I remember linking to the first two editions but then forgot about this cool carnival. Go check it out.
clock | August 19, 2006A kangaroo bounds round the Australian outback. Every now and then she stops and a little penguin climbs out of the kangaroo's pouch. It looks awfully sick and promptly vomits.
Thousands of miles away in Antarctica, a little kangaroo sits in the snow shivering, crying and mumbling to itself, "Damned #$%^&* student exchange program!"
clock | August 19, 2006Visit the Balkans, join the Lost Highway Expedition (already in progress):
A massive movement of individuals will pass through Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Prishtina, Tirana, Podgorica and Sarajevo. The expedition will generate projects, art works, networks, architecture and politics based on the found knowledge. Projects developed from the expedition will lead to events in Europe and the US.
clock | August 19, 2006Correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is really ground-breaking:
Study Finds Brain Cell Regulator Is Volume Control, Not On/off Switch:
He and his colleagues studied an ion channel that controls neuronal activity called Kv2.1, a type of voltage-gated potassium channel that is found in every neuron of the nervous system.
"Our work showed that this channel can exist in millions of different functional states, giving the cell the ability to dial its activity up or down depending on the what's going on in the external environment," said Trimmer. This regulatory phenomenon is called '…
clock | August 19, 2006Have You Ever Seen An Elephant ... Run?:
Dr John Hutchinson, a research leader at the UK's Royal Veterinary College (RVC), has already shown that, contrary to previous studies and most popular opinion, elephants moving at speed appear to be running. Now with funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) his team is using Hollywood-style motion capture cameras combined with MRI and CT scans of elephants to build 3D computer models of elephant locomotion to show the forces and stresses at work on muscles, tendons and bones.
The research team has been working…
clock | August 19, 2006The American poet Frederick Ogden Nash was born at Rye, New York on this day in 1902. After family finances prevented him from finishing even a year at Harvard, he struggled as a school teacher (a class of 14-year-olds caused too much stress), bond broker (he sold but one bond in 18 months, and that to his godmother), advertising copywriter, children's book author (The Cricket of Carador sold only 900 copies), but finally thrived as an editor at Doubleday. He dashed off some very silly poetry to relieve office boredom, his boss suggested he send a few to the New Yorker where he was first…
clock | August 19, 2006Yeah, I know everyone is doing it, but when I first tried I never got quotes that were really satisfying. But when PZ set up a random 5 from his own vault, I got an embarrasment of riches. So here are the first 5 I liked from there:
Creeds made in Dark Ages are like drawings made in dark rooms
[Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, 1929]
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Bertrand Russell
The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight -- that God is,…
clock | August 18, 2006I had several ideas for today's edition that I thought were really great, until I saw this. There is nothing I can write today that can get any better. I know when I am outcompeted and I bow to His Tentacled Majesty. I'll try something better next week....
clock | August 18, 2006Well, the first five-day plan, all-politics blogging, kinda happened all on Echidne of the Snakes where one post got 120+ comments (mostly nasty) while the same post here got 5 nice comments. So, you pretty much missed out on all the fun if you just came here.
The second five-day plan, all about clocks is now officially over. I could not resist, of course, jumping in with short posts on other topics every now and then, which was probably refreshing for those not too heavily into nitty-gritty chronobiology.
So, tell me, do you like 5-day plans or not? And if so, what should be the next week…
clock | August 18, 2006One of the several hypotheses floating around over the past several years to explain the phenomenon of repeated wake-up events in hibernating animals although such events are very energy-draining, is the notion that the immune system needs to be rewarmed in order to fend off any potential bacterial invasions that may have occured while the animal was hibernating:
Now, a group of researchers provided a mathematical model that supports this hypothesis:
"A habit in some animals to periodically wake up while hibernating may be an evolutionary mechanism to fight bacterial infection, according to…
clock | August 18, 2006Allen McNeill's Cornell course on Evolution and Design is now over and the student papers have been posted online.
Dan comments on some of them.
clock | August 18, 2006Carnival of the Green #40 is up on Camden Kiwi.
Philosophy Carnival 34 is up on El Blog de Marcos.
Friday Ark #100 (congratulations!) is up on The Modulator.
clock | August 18, 2006I know most visitors do not read longer posts, especially not posts on arcane topics likeentrainment of circadian rhythms which filled this blog all week long.
But I wrote them for myself and everything else is profit. I wrote them because I wanted to hype myself for my own Dissertation writing. Even if no one reads those posts, I feel better having written them.
This whole exercise was quite instructive to me. Re-reading my old papers again, after 4-5 years made me see them in a different light. Compare, if you are interested, the way I described the data in my papers to the way I…
clock | August 18, 2006Kevin is back in the field, catching herps with abandon...
Return to Muyu
7 August
My first day back to the great town of Muyu. No more pizza, no more burgers, no more fries, no more cold beverages, just curious friendly faces. Linsen appeared in my room around 9am almost as if he hadn't missed a beat. I hadn't even told him I was back. I had gotten in at 11pm and without a Muyu card I didn't bother to call, and of course I wasn't going to call at 11pm. I'm guessing he walked by the hotel and Hi Yin or someone told him I was back. Emma had said Hi Yin was very excited when she heard when I…