clock | June 11, 2006After three lectures on the basics, a long lecture on diversity, and a hard first exam, it is time to turn our attention to anatomy and physiology for the rest of the course:
Anatomy is the subdiscipline of biology that studies the structure of the body. It describes (and labels in Latin) the morphology of the body: shape, size, color and position of various body parts, with particular attention to the internal organs, as visible by the naked eye. Histology is a subset of anatomy that describes what can be seen only under the misroscope: how cells are organized into tissues and tissues into…
clock | June 11, 2006New World Cup Soccer Ball Will Unsettle Goalkeepers, Predicts Scientist:
The Adidas 'Teamgeist' football has just 14 panels - with fewer seams - making its surface 'smoother' than conventional footballs which have a 26 or 32 panel hexagon-based pattern.
This makes it aerodynamically closer to a baseball and, when hit with a slow spin, will make the ball less stable, giving it a more unpredictable trajectory in flight.
This will make for some interesting viewing, to say teh least!
So far, I only caught about half of the Sweden vs. Trinidad match yesterday. I need to make an exam for…
clock | June 11, 2006Want this badge?
The newest edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up on The Atheist Mama. If you are unfamilirar with this carnival, check out the Archives here.
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Also, if you are interested in local blogging, check out The Tar Heel Tavern, a blog carnival of North Carolina bloggers. The latest edition is up on 2sides2ron.
clock | June 11, 2006The Synapse is a new neuroscience carnival. The first edition will appear on Pure Pedantry on June 25th, and the second two weeks later here on A Blog Around The Clock.
Anything involving the brain, nervous system, behavior and cognition is fair game for this carnival, from brand new research to historical studies, from pure basic science to applications in medicine or robotics. Please send the links for the first edition, including your name, your blog's name and a short blurb about the post, to Jake at: jamesjyoung AT gmail DOT com.
Then, once your post appears in an edition of the…
clock | June 10, 2006According to Blogger Dashboard (which cannot be trusted, but there is no other source), I have written a total of 2420 posts (Science And Politics - 2124; Circadiana - 220; The Magic School Bus - 76). Many of those posts are too irrelevant to move to the Archives here - things like carnival announcements, linkfests with lots of dead links, outdated news, etc.
But, there are perhaps somewhere between 100 and 200 posts that are, in my opinion, good, timeless and thoughtful. [more under the fold]
Starting on Monday I will start moving them over here, one at a time. I'll use the 'scheduled…
clock | June 10, 2006Shamelessly stolen from Cyberspace Rendezvous:
In pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name.
For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen. Aleve is also called Naproxen.
Amoxil is also call Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.
The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra. After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin.
Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.…
clock | June 10, 2006If Janet says something, we better listen! So, a little introduction is in place:
3 reasons you blog about science:
At the time when the Age of Reason is under assault, every effort must be made to make science accessible and understandable to as many people as possible. I'd like to think of myself as a small part of that effort.
Blogging about politics distracts me from my Dissertation writing. Blogging about science inspires to me to try to finish as soon as possible, go back to the lab and re-join the reseacrh community.
It is generally a good idea to blog, at least sometimes, about…
clock | June 9, 2006Friday, May 26th.
Morning
After such an exciting and exhausting first day, we gave ourselves the luxury of sleeping late on Friday. After grabbing some bagels and pretzels from street vendors, we took the kids on their first ever ride on the Underground. They were excited. Of course, we got on a wrong train which took us to Brooklyn. After we realized we have crossed a bridge, kids got nervous, but we just got out, crossed to the other side of the tracks and got on the same line in the other direction and back to Manhattan in minutes.
Interestingly, I did not find the NYC underground very…
clock | June 9, 2006Hey, I just came here - don't even know where the bathroom is, yet the SEED overlords are already making demands - the "Ask the ScienceBlogger" question of the week. At least they picked a relatively easy one for us rookies this week - no need for a two-part post of 4000 words each, written after hours of research on the topic....Here it is:
Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
Something outdoors. Anything outdoors! Get me out of the house and lab, please! Now!
If I was not…
clock | June 9, 2006Want this badge?
Carnival of the Green has nothing really to do with the Green Party, but is a blog carnival that focuses on sustainability, ecology and conservation.
Next week, June 12th, the carnival will be hosted by me, right here on my new digs! I hope that means more exposure for all the entrants.
Check out the archives of previous editions of Carnival of the Green and see if you have written (or can write) something that fits with the theme.
You can send your entries to: carnivalofgreen AT gmail DOT com, or directly to me at: Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com. I'd like to have all the entries…
clock | June 9, 2006You may have noticed a button on my sidebar (under the heading "I Support") that looks like this:
If you click on it, you will be transported to the homepage of one of my favourite science educational programs - the Project Exploration. This project is the brainchild of paleontologist Paul Sereno and his wife, historian and educator Gabrielle Lyons.
More under the fold....
If you do not know who Paul Sereno is, you are probably not interested in dinosaurs at all, as he is the #1 Big Star of Dinosaur Paleontology. Among else, he has discovered Carcharodontosaurus saharicus, one of the…
clock | June 9, 2006Where did I get my Internet handle? Answer below the fold...
Many years ago, when my wife signed up for AOL (at the time when that was still a rational choice), all the rest of the family could add their own e-mail addresses. I thought it might be a good idea to have an AOL addresss to serve as a public address for everyone to know - spam and all.
So, I tried to pick various nice names but, nope, they were all taken, so in the end I thought nobody on Earth would have "coturnix". Well, one other person did, but I added number 1 to it and it's been serving me well for many years now. When…
clock | June 9, 2006I hope you like my new banner. It was commissioned from a real artist,....
.....Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen. You may want to visit his website to check his artwork (and perhaps buy some, or comission your own banner). You can see some of his art also on this webpage.
He has also recently published a gorgeous book, which you can buy either here or here.
Finally, you are surely going to enjoy his beautiful blog. I hope he gets invited to be in the next wave of new SEED sciencebloggers.
I tried to upload the uncropped, unreduced, unmodified version of the banner art so you can play the…
clock | June 9, 2006The Big Blogging Gurus suggest that one should often link back to old posts. I do that, actually, quite often, but now that I have moved my blog here, all the old posts are elsewhere. Over the next few months I will re-publish some of my best posts here so they get archived on this blog. In the meantime it is nice to have the permalinks of the best (and most likely to be linked) posts, or at least most interesting posts all in one place.
I noticed that, when they moved to their new digs at SEED, several science bloggers posted their lists of "best of" posts. I found those lists very…
clock | June 9, 2006I am Coturnix.
If that is insufficient information for you, click on "Read more..."
I used to run three blogs (all three linked from the sidebar): Science And Politics (a little bit about everything, certainly not limited to just science and politics), Circadiana (focused on chronobiology: study of biological timing, including circadian clocks, photoperiodism and the biology and medicine of sleep) and The Magic School Bus (a blog about education, especially Higher Ed and science education).
You can learn much more about me if you click on the "About" button above, just below the banner.…
clock | June 9, 2006So, the Big Day has finally arrived - the inauguration of the new SEED scienceblogs homepage and the addition of 24 new bloggers to the stable, including me - yeay! So, go check out the brand new front page and all the old and new bloggers there.
My new blog, a fusion of all three of my blogs, is a new brand, with a new name - A Blog Around The Clock, reflecting my age and musical taste, my usual blogging frequency and the area of my scientific expertise, all in one title.
The Banner was designed by Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen who also runs a delightful science/art blog Rigor Vitae.
The…
clock | June 5, 2006OK, let's try to figure out this Movable Type thingie.
Let's see how bold looks like.
...and italics...
How about I put something inblockquotes?
Or try to embed an image:
That is the early bird that got the worm (which, as R.A. Heinlein said, just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed). So, PZ, Tara and the other early birds here caught worms. Now, we in the second eshelon may not get a worm, but we may get some seed, or SEED...
Hmmm, the "Under the Fold" function is not working....
And "Comments" are not working...
The MovableType thingie apparently gives individual posts…