retrospectacle | September 24, 2007Glendon Mellow of The Flying Trilobite just finished this beautiful banner (currently rotating with Carl's) for me this weekend, and I thought it might be interesting to show the stages and though process behind his art. Our initial conversations about what I wanted in a banner were along the lines of, that I blog about neuroscience, Greys, student life, fun stuff, hearing, and going anywhere with that was fine with me.
Step 1. Thought about wing, an ear, and started with the Valkyrie type image. Thought about how cool it would be if Shelley was leading a gang with multiple-species, parrot…
retrospectacle | September 21, 2007One of my favorite authors is Margaret Atwood, the Canadian sci-fi writer who has penned "The Handmaid's Tale," "The Robber Bride," and "Oryx and Crake." The first on that list is the book that initially hooked me, but I think "Oryx and Crake" holds a special place on my bookshelf for perhaps the silliest of reasons--it mentions a character who's obsessed with Alex the parrot. Naturally, I could relate.
Atwood's mention of Alex in her book made more sense to me when I met Irene Pepperberg, and she mentioned offhand that she was friends with Atwood. What at first seemed a coincidence was…
retrospectacle | September 21, 2007Call me an old-fashioned granny, but I do love knitting. I'm not very good (getting better), and what I can knit is limited to hats, mittens, scarves, and the obligatory pot holder. So I think that knitting this complicated and grotesque teratoma is still a bit beyond my skill level......wait!?! A teratoma.....knitted?! Yes, its true, and if you start now, it may be finished by Halloween.
Is that a teratoma or are you just happy to see me?
The word teratoma roughly means "monstrous tumor," and is a germ cell tumor which has some mature differentiated tissue types which are usually very out-…
retrospectacle | September 20, 2007Perhaps you might have noticed my brand spanking new banner up there! It was just recently finished by my friend Carl Buell, blogger at Olduvai George and a phenomenal natural history illustrator. I love it, and hope you do too. At the moment, its slightly oversized so I'm gonna have to figure out how to make it fit perfectly, and accomodate the tabs up there.
I've also got another banner-in-progress, by Glendon Mellow who blogs over at The Flying Trilobite. Its still secret, and won't be done for another week or so, but when it is I plan on doing a 'making of' post showing off Glendon's…
retrospectacle | September 18, 2007There's a discussion I was clued into recently, taking place over at a spiked, a reporting website, which describes it self thusly:
spiked is an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms. spiked is endorsed by free-thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, and hated by the narrow-minded such as Torquemada and Stalin. Or it would be, if they were lucky enough to be around to read it.
I'm not quite…
retrospectacle | September 18, 2007
Perhaps some of you may remember me mentioning the plight of the Florida manatee a few months back, specifically that their status as an endangered species was being petitioned by the powerful boating lobby. This would have meant that many of the special protections that manatees enjoyed, such as existing in boat-free zones and making boats slow down in the presence of manatees, would have been changed. Well, against my hopes, I have good news to report, as told to me by the SaveTheManatee Club:
Good news for manatees! [On Sept 14th], the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission…
retrospectacle | September 17, 2007What would happen if a handful of bloggers started asking questions about the impact of blogging on the "Real World"? What would change if the Academy was made more aware of science blogs, and that they may have an impact of science (for better or worse)? What would happen if a lot of people were asked questions about their opinions of blogs, and the results were published?
Well, its happening right now. Me and a few other bloggers are currently involved in writing a manuscript discussing the impact of science blogging, on, well "real" science. Is there one?
Let us know by taking our short…
retrospectacle | September 14, 2007So, looks like I'll be giving a talk in Antwerp, Belgium during a conference on hearing research October 19-20th. I'll be flying into Amsterdam on the 15th, taking the train to Antwerp for the conference, and then spending the 21-24th in Paris, flying out of Charles DeGaulle. I'm so psyched! Please give me some ideas of what to do while I'm in any of those cities.
Also, I was thinking of trying out Couch Surfing for my stay in Amsterdam and Paris (Antwerp's covered). Has anyone tried this before, and what were the results? Staying in Europe is expensive, which is why I'm considering cheap…
retrospectacle | September 13, 2007Saw this over at Wired Science a couple days back, an interesting article about an unusual, uh, herb called Diviner's sage which has hallucinogenic properties and could spark a new class of drugs. Reports of people curing themselves of depression and treating pain with this form of sage are common, however the likelihood of pharmaceutical-grade drugs from companies arising from it may be slim since it cannot be patented exclusively.
Research on hallucinogenic sage has been stop-and-go. In 2002, Bryon Roth and his research group explained how the potent drug plays games with the nervous…
retrospectacle | September 12, 2007
The popular press loves to harp on iPods, and their potential to cause hearing loss due to loud music pumped through embedded earbuds. Looks like there's something else, a little more drastic and a lot less common to worry about in regards to your hearing: getting struck by lightning while wearing an iPod. A middle-aged man was jogging in a thunderstorm (ok, not the smartest move, but hey) when a tree he was standing next to was struck by lightning, which threw him 8 feet from the tree. At the ER, he was treated for burns which extended from his chest up his neck and sides of his face and…
retrospectacle | September 10, 2007
Well, just heard that the necropsy of Alex was performed and that no discernible cause of death could be found. This is puzzling and sad, since it would have been better to have some sense of closure, but I suppose we may never know what killed Alex.
I was also sent the official obituary of Alex, written by Irene, which is under the fold.
RIP Alex.
In addition, Irene Pepperberg was be interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" today, check out the summary of the interview here. The audio of the interview will be at that link at 7pm Eastern Time.
8pm UPDATE: The audio link is now up!…
retrospectacle | September 10, 2007A few months back, I was interviewed for the University of Michigan's med school magazine "Medicine at Michigan," which made me feel like quite the star seeing as how I had my picture taken in dramatical black and white. The interview, which just came out, was about the "kerfuffle" with the fair use copyright-fight I was involved with in May with the Journal of Food and Agriculture.
Yeah, its kinda amusing, check it out (pssst, there's cleavage! lol)
retrospectacle | September 8, 2007This is a repost from July of 2006. I thought it was appropriate, given Alex's passing. Please check out Friday Grey Matters in my archives for many more reports on Dr. Pepperberg's work with Alex.
Alex is a 28-year-old African Grey parrot who lives in the lab of Irene Pepperberg, in Brandeis University, and is the eqivalent of a superstar in the bird world. Long ago, Dr. Pepperberg chose Alex at a pet store as neither an exceptional nor sub-par bird. Through the years, Dr. Pepperberg has engaged Alex in a complex form of communication, where, much like a parent teaching a child, Alex is…
retrospectacle | September 8, 2007
On Friday, I received an email letting me know that the world's most famous African Grey, Alex, had passed away. For those of you who have read this blog for some amount of time, you probably realize that I was a huge fan of Irene Pepperberg's work with Alex and even dedicated a weekly series (Friday Grey Matters) to her work. Irene was also kind enough to allow me to interview her and to give a talk at the University of Michigan's Neuroscience Spring Symposia last May. She is truly a wonderful and extremely bright person, and I'm sure she is devastated. Alex was her companion and colleague…
retrospectacle | September 7, 2007I came across a good article in the New York Times which highlights the need for hearing tests for newborns: without them it is difficult to predict what might be wrong if the child is not speaking or reaching other developmental milestones.
Hearing tests are mandatory in 40 states, and routine but optional in the rest. There's a good reason for the rule:
"We need to identify children early and provide them with hearing tools and training by the time they are 6 months," said Dr. John Greinwald, a pediatric otologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Studies now confirm that…
retrospectacle | September 7, 2007Ok, but you're gonna have to fight me for it.
A non-profit organization, Collegescholarships.org, is holding another student blogging scholarship contest. You may remember it from last year, I was actually a runner-up (and yes, still eligible this year). This year the prize money is increased to $10,000 for the first place blog, so I heartily recommend that everyone enters. I mean, 10 grand to a student is a heck of a lot of textbooks, iTunes, and beers.
Go here to submit a brief essay and your blog for consideration. Good luck!
Important Dates:
Submission Deadline: Midnight PST on Oct.…
retrospectacle | September 6, 2007A few months back, the folks from the blog City Parrots shared these beautiful photos with me of a wild parrot population (red-masked parakeets and Amazon parrots) in Ocean Beach, far from their native home in Mexico and South America. One of them (under the fold to preserve the mirage of decency on this blog) caught two amorous birds in the act of mating. So, if you ever wondered how parrots "did it," now you say can you know.
Two red-masked parakeets in Ocean Beach, California
The story of the wild Amazon parrots of Ocean Beach is quite interesting, as two separate species were discovered…
retrospectacle | September 4, 2007Yahoo News reports on a recent study by Dr. Francois Carre of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Rennes, France, which found that almost all cyclists competing in the Tour de France had enlarged hearts. The size increase was on the order of 20-40% larger than normal! He thought it would interesting to see whether the cyclists' hearts are large to begin with or expand to accomodate the rigors of training (probably both). A bigger heart translates to more blood-pumping ability which in turn translated to increased oxygenation of blood and tissues.
In his study, Carre tracked seven former…