retrospectacle | November 26, 2007Well I arrived back in Michigan after a deep-fried Thanksgiving in Florida, hope you all had an as opulently greasy and delicious a meal as I did. I have to share a funny anecdote from my drive to the airport yesterday. My parents drove me to the Orlando airport, and we had to drive through the now-infamous Polk County. On the highway, my dad pointed out this dog (a "hunten-dawg") standing on top of what can only be described as a huge cage on wheels. We saw that the dog's collar was tied to the top of the cage so he wouldn't fall off. As I was voicing protest as to how mean that was (traffic…
retrospectacle | November 22, 2007The South is a great place to spend Thanksgiving. There's pecan pie and fried ocra, green-bean casserole, and ham AND a turkey, and lots and lots of gracious hospitality.
Except for my parents, my entire extended family lives in the epicenter of small-town Florida, surrounded by the orange groves they depended on for their livlihood. This isn't the flashy beachfront Florida glorified in "CSI" or the plastic touristy Florida disdained by everyone who's been to Orlando and thinks they "know" Florida. My parents were highschool sweethearts in that same small town, and when they go back, they…
retrospectacle | November 21, 2007A Japanese whaling fleet recently set sail amidst much local fanfare, but Greenpeace is yet again determined to interfere with the hunt by placing themselves in between the whales and the Japanese harpoons. Unlike some other whaling protest groups, Greenpeace relies strictly on peaceful non-violent protesting despite the Japanese government labeling them "dangerous animal rights terrorists."
A dangerous terrorist act by Greenpeace.
Furthermore, the Japanese government states that the hunt is allowable, despite a long-standing moratorium against whaling by the International Whaling…
retrospectacle | November 20, 2007I have a love-hate relationship with Florida. The "hate" part of the equation comes from their shameful treatment of the manatee issue, their conservative Republican politics, their wanton destruction of the Everglades, and now, giving consideration to putting intelligent design in schools. As a product of the Florida public school system, I'm intensely grateful to the excellent teachers I had who instilled in me wonder for the natural world.
Polk County is close to where my entire family lives (Highland County) and close to where I went to undergrad (New College in Sarasota). A majority of…
retrospectacle | November 19, 2007In the fair use story that just won't die, my internet romp over the use of a figure from the Journal of Science of Food and Agriculture was mentioned in this story on Newsweek now. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, this article in The Scientist describes that incident factually. The Newsweek story's main focus, however, is a small dust up where a book published by Wiley appeared to have two pages plagarized from Wikipedia. The offending passage was noticed by the wiki's author, Ydorb, who noted the identical text on a Wikipedia forum. From there it was submitted to Slashdot who…
retrospectacle | November 19, 2007Didn't go to the Society for Neuroscience conference, but still want to know what happened (and in an English accent, no less)?
Then check out this new NeuroPod podcast from Nature, where Kerri Smith talks about the highlights from SFN.
"Find out what computers can do for brains, find two ways to zoom in on pain, hear some of the most quickfire conference presentations ever, and discover what the Rolling Stones were doing at the meeting."
If you dig this podcast, you can subscribe to it here.
retrospectacle | November 18, 2007Looking for an unusual brain atlas for that very special neuroscientist in your life? This one is a bit non-traditional, but...wow....
By Sam Brown, 2007
The above map's original data was created from a reference photo of a real human brain which was used to build the 3d terrain. This digital elevation model was then used to create contour line data, relief shading and to plan where the roads and features should be placed for map compilation. Real New Zealand public domain data was then added for the surrounding islands.
This appeared as the cover of the most recent issue of the journal…
retrospectacle | November 16, 2007He might present this at the next meeting:
And have you heard about B.E. Smalls? I hear he's made a breakthrough:
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the eminent Dr. Dre's work (coauthor, Eminem):
If you aren't familiar with the Unified Theory of Everything (no, not *that* one), you might do well to learn now.
Check out more abuses of Excel, here. Hap tip to the evil kitten.
retrospectacle | November 15, 2007
This trend has continued until the present.
Despite the NIH's budget remaining stagnant for years, not even compensating for inflation, Bush has decided to wield the presidential veto against an increase in just $1 billion for the next fiscal year. The bill also contained new open-access legislation-- a mandate for any government-funded manuscript to be submitted to PubMed for full text open-access within one year. The veto seemed more a response to the budget increase rather than the open access issue, which is not surprising given Bush's own fiscal, uh, issues. But, for comparison, the US…
retrospectacle | November 14, 2007
By Dr. Sonja Pyott
Department of Biology and Marine Biology
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Wilmington, NC, USA
Specimen: Cochlea and Hair Cells
Technique: Confocal
This confocal microscopy image of the organ of Corti is just stunning. Judges at the Olympus Bioscapes Digital Imaging Competition thought so too, and awarded Dr. Sonja Pyott 4th prize in the contest. For an even larger, more hi-res version, go here. Winners receive Olympus microscopes and other prizes! Guess who the 1st place winner is? Yeah, its the Brainbow mouse, which I discussed in a previous post.
The image above…
retrospectacle | November 13, 2007Well, apparently you make it *pink.* This is just weird.
"We wanted to make sure that it was something that people were comfortable carrying and didn't make it look like they were 'Dirty Harry,'" said Tom Smith, the company's co-founder and board chairman, referring to the Clint Eastwood movie.
"And it does the job."
What's next, snap-on outfit coordinating covers and dangly charms? Wait, what if a tiny cute taser WAS a dangly cellphone charm?! Well, it's already big in Japan.
Who would think this cute little guy is a taser?
Don't worry, it only gives a slight "zap" to (as the website…
retrospectacle | November 12, 2007
Whoever said that you can't learn anything useful from TV? A Harvard research team, headed by Jeff Lichtman, has duplicated the way that a television monitor uses varying amounts of just three colors (red, blue, green) to produce a huge array of resultant hues. They have applied this technique in the brain using fluorescent cyan, yellow, and red pigments--varying amounts of which can produce 90 possible color combinations to label individual neurons. Through genetic recombination, pigment-expressing genes are inserted into the genomes of developing mice. The result is the "Brainbow" mouse,…
retrospectacle | November 10, 2007Perhaps one of the most frustrating parts of science is inadvertantly destroying the thing which you study in the pursuit of knowledge. Its unfortunate, and sometimes unavoidable, as in the case of these marine biologists who hauled an ancient ocean quahog out of Icelandic waters.
The group from Bangor University in Wales was conducting a routine dredge for research purposes when they found a clam-like mollusk, brought up from 250 feet down. The researchers cut though its shell, only to determine that the oceanic quahog had been between 405-410 years old, making it the oldest animal known.…
retrospectacle | November 9, 2007The University of Michigan just started a new blog on the topic of how to handle the academic interview. What kinds of questions do you fear, and how should they be handled? How do you prepare for the interview?
In general the four primary topical areas of any interview, especially early in the process, are your dissertation work, future research goals, your teaching, and your interest in the specific institution and/or department. Obviously the role and importance of each of these will vary by each situation, but in general most interviews will spend considerable time on each of these…
retrospectacle | November 9, 2007Its hard to find a more stereotyped relationship than that of the cat and mouse. The cat hunts the mouse, and the mouse fears and runs from the cat. An innate fear response can be replicated in mice just but introducing it to feline urine, which contains olfactory clues which give the mouse information about the presence of a friend or foe. And in fact, an important group of olfactory sensory cells are responsible for detecting these molecules and translating it to a behavioral response which all mice are born with. Recent research by Kobayakawa et al. has discovered that deleting this group…
retrospectacle | November 6, 2007The New York Times has an interesting piece up about Antony Flew, formerly vocal atheist and revered philosopher, who's been co-oped by the Intelligent Design brigade in his dotage. In 1950, Flew published a discourse on atheism "Theology and Falsification" which pointed out something quite astute: that the term "God" is so amorphous as to be impossible to either prove or disprove. Seems like common sense now, but at the time it sent shock waves through an academia only recently comfortable with evolution and secular science.
Years later, Flew was forking over his legacy to the creationists,…
retrospectacle | November 5, 2007There are a few plants and fungi that rely on extremely offensive odors to attract insects and spread its pollen or spores. These odors, to people, stink like decomposing, rotten meat, but to flies they are highly attractive.
The stinkhorn is a phallus-shaped mushroom which produces a sticky spore goop which (you guessed it) stinks. Flies land on the sticky stinky fluid and fly away taking the spores with them, allowing the schroom to pop up quickly, even overnight, in weird places. I've come across a few types of these mushrooms growing up in Florida, and I can attest to the fact that they…
retrospectacle | November 4, 2007Scientists, read this statement.
A new era has dawned for those who fund the abusers and raise funds for them to murder animals with. You too are on the hit list: you have been warned. If you support or raise funds for any company connected with Huntingdon Life Sciences we will track you down, come for you and destroy your property with fire.
- Animal Liberation Front statement on behalf of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
Let it sink in. Now insert your research institution in the place of Huntingdon Life Sciences, and you know what might be in store for anyone doing, or associated with,…
retrospectacle | November 2, 2007Just a few days after Halloween, and who could have thought the inner ear could be so terrifying? Uzumaki by Junji Ito is a magna that I recently picked up, which describes a town whose inhabitants are becoming infected with an obsession with spirals. Although I've only read the first of three books in the series, the art is both beautiful and grotesque AND involves the subtle integration of the cochlea into the horrible tale. Specifically, one of the main characters is driven mad by her "contamination" with spirals and feels the desperate need to eliminate all spirals from her body. First…
retrospectacle | November 1, 2007Sure, you've seen the cockatoo that gets down to the Backstreet Boys, but have you seen the African Grey that tears it up to techno?
The Techno Parrot - Watch more free videos
I don't understand this dancing bird phenomonon. Don't parrots dance to any *decent* music? Pepper doesn't like really loud music and I've never seen him jumping around like a bird possessed in response to the TV or anything. Do your parrots dance? If so, let's start a campaign to only let them listen to worthwhile music!
Hat tip Ted!