clock | August 18, 2006Chossat's Effect in humans and other animalsThis April 09, 2006 post places another paper of ours (Reference #17) within a broader context of physiology, behavior, ecology and evolution.
The paper was a result of a "communal" experiment in the lab, i.e., it was not included in anyone's Thesis. My advisor designed it and started the experiment with the first couple of birds. When I joined the lab, I did the experiment in an additional number of animals. When Chris joined the lab, he took over the project and did the rest of the lab work, including bringin in the idea for an additional…
clock | August 17, 2006No, not here, but I wrote my first post on my first blog on Wednesday, August 18, 2004.
2144 posts on Science And Politics
220 posts on Circadiana
76 posts on The Magic School Bus
498 posts on A Blog Around The Clock
clock | August 17, 2006[Slightly edited post from May 04, 2006] Collecting stories has become a really exciting endeavor lately. While writing down people's stories has been done since time immemorial, on stone tablets, clay tablets and papyrus scrolls, the modern technology allows more people to record oral and written histories than ever before.
Everyone can now write, make an audio or video recording, and publish their life stories. We can tap into the wisdom of the elders and preserve their memories for posterity. The history will not be written only by winners, and, gasp, by semi-automated textbook-writing…
clock | August 17, 2006It's a big AIDS week here and I hope you are checking the AIDS at 25 special blog here on scienceblogs.com. There is a lot of good information and opinion there. And then, sometimes there is some fun. Like this one, for instance, which look almost elegant compared to the one under the fold....
This dress reminds me of posters with a bunch of colorful condoms, inflated, with smiley faces drawn on their 'heads' I remember since late 1980s (when AIDS became big news in Yugoslavia). I also remember the slogan "Kondom u svaki dom!" (a condom in every home) from that era.
clock | August 17, 2006Many Commercial Drivers Have Impaired Performance Due To Lack Of Sleep
Truck drivers who routinely get too little sleep or suffer from sleep apnea show signs of fatigue and impaired performance that can make them a hazard on the road, according to a major new study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The study results are published in the August 15th issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
clock | August 17, 2006Snuck into the very end of this, otherwise very interesting article on neurobiology of cephalopods and moths, is this little passage:
As for flies, Tublitz outlined a tantalizing question, as yet unanswered, that has continued to take flight out of his lab for the last decade. Scientists for years, he said, have held "one hard rule" about what constitutes a neuron -- that a neuron cell always arises from the ectoderm of a developing embryo. However, a discovery in Drosophila -- fruit flies -- has softened that assumption.
Cells arising from the mesoderm rest in a layer on top of the fruit fly…
clock | August 17, 2006Animalcules Volume 1, Issue 11 is up on Snail's Tails.
Skeptic's Circle #41 is up on Interverbal
clock | August 17, 2006
This is a summary of my 1999 paper, following in the footsteps of the work I described here two days ago. The work described in that earlier post was done surprisingly quickly - in about a year - so I decided to do some more for my Masters Thesis.
The obvious next thing to do was to expose the quail to T-cycles, i.e., non-24h cycles. This is some arcane circadiana, so please refer to the series of posts on entrainment from yesterday and the two posts on seasonality and photoperiodism posted this morning so you can follow the discussion below:
There were three big reasons for me to attempt…
clock | August 17, 2006This post (written on August 13, 2005) describes the basic theory behind photoperiodism and some experimental protocols developed to test the theory.
Timely prediction of seasonal periods of weather conditions, food availability or predator activity is crucial for survival of many species. Although not the only parameter, the changing length of the photoperiod ('daylength') is the most predictive environmental cue for the seasonal timing of physiology and behavior, most notably for timing of migration, hibernation and reproduction. While rising spring temperatures may vary from year to year,…
clock | August 17, 2006This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior.
So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year.
Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…
clock | August 16, 2006Different strokes occur at different times
Different types of strokes occur most often at different times of day say scientists at Iwate Medical University in Iwate, Japan.
The team based their findings on data from 12,957 cases of first-ever stroke diagnosed by CT or MRI scans and drawn from the Iwate Stroke Registry between 1991 and 1996.The researchers chose patients who had experienced cerebral infarctions, or ischemic strokes, where cells die because blood flow to the brain is restricted, and two kinds of hemorrhagic strokes: intercerebral hemorrhages that occur within the brain, and…
clock | August 16, 2006I And The Bird #30 is up on Burning Silo. Get your birding blogging thirst quenched today!
clock | August 16, 2006If you go to the ScienceBlogs front page you will see that The Buzz word of the day is Pluto. And when there is a new Buzz Word, a lot of us tend to post about it - see how many already chimed in on the topic.
I am actually quite happy to see the revisions of the definition of a planet. The old 9-planet system was just too neat and clear-cut, too iconic, to fixed and unmovable.
Let's jolt the masses out of the lull and show them the way science moves and changes and shatters our most valued beliefs!
Twelve planets today, twelve thousand planets tomorrow, twelve million planets in OUR…
clock | August 16, 2006Have you heard about the stupid German study that uses evo-psych Just-So-Stories about, supposedly, women losing interest in sex shortly after marriage?
I wanted to dissect it when it first came out but Real Life and time-constraints prevented me. In the meantime, Dr.Petra, Shakespeare's Sister, Amanda and Echidne ably debunked and destroyed the study and the media reporting on it, so I don't have to do anything but link to them.
clock | August 16, 2006The third part of the series on authoritarian psychology by Sara Robinson is now up on Orcinus. It tackles the strategies for dealing with (and hopefully healing and converting) the victims of authoritarian upbringing who turned out authoritarian themselves. The whole series is a must-read.
clock | August 16, 2006KateWD: Eggplants and Exploitation
Mr.WD: Talkin' Tut: 'magic' and 'Africans'
clock | August 16, 2006Tangled Bank #60 is up on FrinkTank.
History Carnival XXXVII is up on Mode For Caleb.
Carnival of Education #80 is up on Education Wonks.
The first Carnival of GRADual Progress is up on Fumbling Towards Geekdom.
clock | August 16, 2006This April 16, 2005 post gives you links to further online resources and literature on entrainment and Phase-Response Curves, as well as a link to a database of PRCs so you can play with them yourself.
One of the most useful chronobiological databases available online is the PRC Atlas. Compiled by Dr.Carl Johnson of Vanderbilt University, it contains hundreds of published and unpublished Phase-Response Curves. One can sort the Curves by species or by type of stimulus (e.g., light pulses, pulses of varius chemicals, dark pulses on constant-light background, etc.) and one is also able to…
clock | August 16, 2006This is the sixth post in a series about mechanism of entrainment, running all day today on this blog. In order to understand the content of this post, you need to read the previous five installments. The original of this post was firt written on April 12, 2005.
A Phase Response Curve (PRC) can be made in three ways:
One can construct a PRC for a single individual. If you have a reasonably long-lived organism, you can apply a number of light pulses over a period of time. The advantage is that you will always know the freerunning period of your organism, and you will know with absolute…