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Destigmatizing depression among medical (and graduate) trainees

The Clinical and Translational Science Network (CTSciNet) section of Science Careers has just published a superb article by Karyn Hede on the issues of depression precipitated during the rigors of medical education. Hede is a freelance writer in Chapel Hill and has contributed before to Science Careers, particularly with this article on the challenges of women MD-PhDs and another on why so many of us have crappy interpersonal and lab management skills. The current article focuses primarily on the medical profession given its placement in the clinical/translational section but these issues are…

Clinton and the politics of fear

It wasn't easy keeping my 18-month-old son out of trouble in the crowd that had gathered yesterday to hear Hillary Clinton speak. But it was worth it, if for no other reason than the opportunities to hear presidential candidates deliver their message unfiltered and unedited are rare out here in western North Carolina. Of course, I was disappointed with what I heard on Hendersonville's Main Street. But the little guy didn't do any damage to himself or anyone else, or anyone else's dog, and I did come away with something to think about. I was disappointed because I'm one of those tree-hugging…

Popular Science and Time Travel Shenanigans

Our department here at Texas A&M has a student chapter of the Optical Society of America, and each week a student or professor gives a talk about something interesting while the rest of us eat pizza. I've been working on and off on a talk I'm going to give, tentatively titled "Just what the @#$% is a photon anyway?". The more I dig into the subject, the more I start to think that (like the rubber-sheet analogy in GR) the "particles of light" view that tends to be the common impression tends to cause more confusion than enlightenment. I have some good company here - E.T. Jaynes wrote a…

Maru the Cat does dimensional analysis

Here is a picture of (I think) Maru the cat playing in a bag. He loves bags. Here is the same picture of Maru, at half the size: Now imagine that Maru is a physicist and the pictures are not pictures but instead windows into the universe he occupies, separate from ours with (possibly) its own unique set of physical laws. The only difference between the two universes is that one has the lengths of everything reduced by a factor of 2. Can the parallel versions of Maru tell which universe they're in - the smaller or the larger? Or if you want to imagine what you might do, suppose that in some…

Hunting and Animal Size

This one's a little of the beaten path for this site, since it's not physics or even anything I normally follow as a hobby. But along with science and many other things I'm a bit of a firearms enthusiast, and since guns are closely connected with hunting it probably wasn't unlikely that I'd come across this Livescience piece about the genetic implications of hunting. The thesis is so simple as to be almost self-evident. Hunters tent to hunt for the largest and most impressive animals, especially when hunting seasons are short and bag limits are small. This unnatural selection, a practice…

Why information is its own reward - same neurons signal thirst for water, knowledge

To me, and I suspect many readers, the quest for information can be an intensely rewarding experience. Discovering a previously elusive fact or soaking up a finely crafted argument can be as pleasurable as eating a fine meal when hungry or dousing a thirst with drink. This isn't just a fanciful analogy - a new study suggests that the same neurons that process the primitive physical rewards of food and water also signal the more abstract mental rewards of information. Humans generally don't like being held in suspense when a big prize is on the horizon. If we get wind of a raise or a new job…

More on Radiohead and Science (You do it to yourself, you do...)

Last week, I proposed the writing of a piece that aimed to look at the music video for Radiohead's "Just" in a scientific way. Here, I just wanted to note that Bill Benzon over at The Valve picked up on it and generated some interesting reader feedback - feedback that was distinctly different from the sort generated here at Scienceblogs. Is this another good illustration of the "two cultures" phenomenon? Anyhow, you can go here to check out that dialogue, but here also is the commentary I provided when weighing in myself: In some respects, the basic idea behind the query is to look at what…

Nonlinear Optics, Back-of-Envelope Numbers

If you take a flashlight and shine it at a wall or through a prism or do pretty much anything with the light, you'll find that the effects of the light change in direct proportion to the amount of light the flashlight's putting out. Twice the light, twice the reflection from the wall. Twice the light, twice the brightness in each color component of the prism spectrum. Nothing really changes qualitatively as you change the light intensity, the only difference is quantitative. This property of light is called linear optics. Until the last half-century or so it was just called "optics". The…

Sunday Function

Back in 2003, I was a college freshman sitting in my first college math class - Honors Calculus I. On what was probably the second or third day of class, the professor gave us a surprise quiz. It was something like: "Give the formal statement of the principle of induction". It was my first graded assignment of my college career, and like most of the class I got a 0 on it. Which was the professor's point - he had gone over it in great detail previously and was baptizing us by fire into the world of mathematical rigor. We didn't yet understand that mathematics both requires great attention to…

Sunday Function

Anybody heard of the idea of The Singularity? Roughly, it goes like this: technological progress builds on itself, and this self-reinforcing feedback loop is eventually going to come to a head where humanity makes a quantum leap into an unknowable and godlike transhuman technological future - possibly as early as the middle of this century. The name of the idea comes from mathematics, where approximately speaking a singularity is a place where a function rockets off to infinity. Alternately, some adherents of this type of thinking believe that progress is exponential; formally this doesn't…

Hot Hot Heat

A few days ago we calculated the radiative power output of a very radioactive source like cobalt-60. CCPhysicist suggests we also calculate its surface temperature. Sounds like a plan! A radioactive plutonium pellet, glowing red hot. Still much less radioactive than our hypothetical cobalt. It would be difficult to calculate the temperature of the sample by itself, as we have no clean way of determining how much energy escapes in the form of the various nuclear decay processes without heating the sample. Most but not all of the gamma rays will escape, very few of the beta rays will, and…

Physics Poetry

A little off the beaten path today, I'd like to present two poems by two physicists who were both on my Ten Greatest list. They're very different, one contemplative and loose in form, the other playful but more rigorous. It's an interesting comparison. Untitled Richard Feynman There are the rushing waves... mountains of molecules, each stupidly minding its own business... trillions apart ...yet forming white surf in unison. Ages on ages... before any eyes could see... year after year... thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? ...on a dead planet with no life to entertain…

What health care and the climate have in common: an enemy

The similarities between the campaign against mitigating the consequences of climate change and the campaign against health insurance reform go far beyond the use of distortion and fiction. The parallels are everywhere. For example, those with vested (monied) interests in the status quo are turning to the same lobbying and public relations outfits to carry out the campaigns. The latest firm to be identified is Bonner & Associates, which, according to the Virginia Daily Progress, was founded in 1984 by Jack Bonner and is considered a pioneer in the field of "strategic grassroots," in…

Moonquakes

As someone who was born on a lunar eclipse (explains a lot, no?) the 40th anniversary of man walking on the moon has a special place in my heart. Okay, that sentence makes no sense (I was born on a lunar eclipse however), but anyway everyone is all abuzz about the anniversary of the moon landing so it's as good as any sentence to let me talk about booming sand dunes. Booming whah? Take a big sand dune. Kick some of the sand down the face of the dune. Sometimes, if you are lucky, the sand dune will emit a loud 70 Hz to 100 Hz booming sound. I used to have a sealed container of the booming…

There can be no chance, no junk, no purposelessness, or God is dead

Over at the Panda's Thumb, there is a sharp rebuttal of the creationists' complaint about junk DNA. Read it, it's useful. It leads to a bothersome and more general point, though. Despite its connotations, the phrase “junk DNA” (originated by Susumu Ohno in 1972) does not intend to convey an absolute and irreversible lack of function. Indeed, as it is often noted, had that been the case “garbage DNA” would have been a better term. In fact, “junk” is what accumulates in people’s basements and attics, not immediately useful but not nasty or burdensome enough to be quickly discarded – indeed,…

An anti-science cartoonist

AAAAAAAAAARGH! Someone is wrong on the internet, and I don't know whether to scream or to facepalm! (I tried doing both at once, but then it just comes out as a muffled gargle.) Please go look at this creationist comic called "How Darwin Got It Wrong". It's typical creationist garbage, and practically every panel is wrong, wrong, wrong…yet it purports to be an objective discussion of the scientific problems with evolution. The author, however, knows no biology at all. Take this page (please). Look at that one word balloon: "BUT IN MY OPINION THE WHEELS USED TO BE DOORS AND THE DOORS WERE…

Dear Jezebel

There's a reason I promote atheism and skepticism coupled with feminism, and it's not because I'm trying to foist a feminist ideology on skepticism. It's because skepticism drives me to consider discrimination and injustice as wrong, not just in an abstract moral sense, but unjustifiable and invalid. If I am in any sense a feminist, it is because I am a skeptic, not vice versa. And I think the best way to achieve equality for women, and for minorities of all kinds, is to view the world rationally, empirically, and as objectively as possible. It's the people who try to justify everything with…

Nitpicker's Paradiso: We Don't Need no Stinking Scientists and Engineers Edition

Researchers Dispute Notion That America Lacks Scientists and Engineers in the Chronicle of Higher Education is a fine example of how thinking that scientific or engineering degree's are like technical training degrees will lead you to say all sorts of funny things. Yep, it's another edition of Nitpicker's Paradiso. The article begins with some fun stuff which is ripe for nitpicking: At a hearing of a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives science committee, Michael S. Teitelbaum, vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, told lawmakers.... Federal policy encourages an…

The Jayco Tree

Botanical names drive me nuts, sometimes.  Every plant that is worth anything has many names.  The supposed gold standard, the (Latin) Linnaean taxonomical name, gets changed every so often.  So there is no constancy.  You'd think it would be easier to research something if it has an unusual name that you can use as a keyword.  But that is not always the case.  Especially if the names are changed. Last week, I noted that I am familiar with one kind of tree, called a mimosa tree.  This tree has blossoms of an unusual color.  But that color is not mimosa.  There are other trees, also called…

Reset Button for DSM Diagnosis? (Part 2)

This obviously is the second part of the part I put up a couple of days ago: href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2009/04/reset_button_for_dsm_diagnosis.php">Reset Button for DSM Diagnosis? (Part 1).  It may not make much sense unless you read the first part. In order to understand the idea behind the use of the FFM, instead of the current diagnostic criteria, it helps to look at an illustration.  Although the original journal article is viewable by registration only, it appears that the pop-up illustration can be viewed by anyone who has the URL.  I think href="http://ajp.…

What Would You Say to your Children about the Canadian Government? (My Two Cents)

It's election time again and, as is the norm, we see teachers using the opportunity to talk to their students about things such as Prime Ministers, parliaments, senates, and, well, basically - how this thing we call the "Canadian Government" is meant to work. My own daughter who is in Grade 4 is in such a class, and has been asking me all sorts of questions: the most prevalent of which is "Who is Alice Wong?" Not a surprising question, since her face is fairly ubiquitous in Richmond, BC where I live, being set against the many blue Conservative signs and placards (she is our incumbent MP…

Eulogy for the Gulf of Mexico

I've started to write a few different posts in the past few weeks, but their different topics just don't seem to matter in the face of the death of the Gulf of Mexico, especially the affectionately named Redneck Riviera - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle - these areas are most assuredly dead. Field researchers from LSU who have been on the coast in the past few weeks say that these shorelines will be dead for decades, no question, and that we still don't know how much longer it will go on, and consequently how much farther it will extend. There numerous excellent…

Assorted Rays, Ranked According to Coolness (Wednesday's reading)

Science Scout twitter feed (From MonkeyBicycle) 6. Ray Romano Is it just me or is this guy too funny? I mean, that thing he does with his TV mom and wife just cracks me up. Plus, he once made $50 million bucks in one season, which is totally cool, and is in no way the reason for putting him on this list. Too bad about the TV kid twins, though - I mean, what's up with their foreheads being so massive? It doesn't look natural. 5. Cosmic Rays These are the rays that gave the Fantastic Four their powers. But even cooler - in astrophysics, they are basically high-energy outer space particles…

A World Suited to be Measured, Some Final Thoughts

This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.* Epilogue: Further Hauntings To prove that, in some very profound way, I remain myself haunted by the thoughts I engaged here earlier -- on mystery, monsters, and ghosts -- I thought it prudent (somehow) to offer an epilogue. This comes in the form of two novels I have recently read: Measuring the World, by Daniel Kehlmann and Spook Country, by William Gibson. I was made aware of Measuring the World by Ben, one of the curators of this here menagerie. It looks back at the differing efforts of explorer Alexander von Humboldt and…

Friday Rants: People

People, you suck. When I was younger (and less of a calloused bastard), I was willing to believe that human beings' pernicious behavior was restricted to particular unsavory individuals or select groups. Likewise, I would write off unscrupulous behavior as isolated incidents in the lives of otherwise good people. In short, I used to believe that bad behavior in people was circumscribed in some way, either in time or into individuals. The more I experience it, however, the more I believe that bad behavior in humans is so pervasive as to damn our whole species. This is not an anomaly. We…

Two Economics Lessons

I just finished Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter. It was excellent, and I will review it when I get around to it. It uses the abysmal understanding of economics of the average American -- even on a non-quantitative, intuitive level -- to illustrate why voters choose bad policies. Anyway, the side issue of the poor economics understanding still exists, so I thought I would post these two economics lessons that I stumbled on the last couple days. Lesson #1 is a video of Milton Friedman explaining the myriad things that go into the making of the common #2 pencil. The explanation…

How to Get Into Graduate School for the Sciences: Part 2

Here's the continuation of some tips to get into (and be happy in) graduate school for the sciences. These tips may help you focus yourself during interviews and the admission process, or at least give you something to think about. 11. Good scientists don't always make good mentors. When you read awesome papers, its easy to imagine this brilliant scientist as the perfect mentor. But its important to get a variety of opinions to find out if the person you want to work with is a good teacher, and good with people. Personalities are not always compatible, don't let it interfere in getting your…

More on Richardson and Epidural Hematomas: Who is to blame?

I have been reading more on the Natasha Richardson story overnight, and it appears the story has moved into blame-placing mode. (For the original discussion of the story, read this.) Possible places to lay the blame (that I have read thus far): The absence of mandatory helmet laws Canadian medicine's failure to administer rapid CTs Quebec's inadequate air ambulances Inadequate patient education More on these under the fold. I said before about mandatory helmet laws (and many others said in the comments of the previous post) that while I don't have a problem with mandatory helmet laws for…

Discuss: why don't they just spin the ship?

It is speculation time. My roommate and I were watching a story this morning on CNN by Sanjay Gupta about how astronauts lose bone mass while in space. One of the limitations with space travel is that because of the absence of gravity, your bones steadily deteriorate. Load bearing exercise is required for bone maintenance. To compensate for this, the people at NASA have all manner of contrivances to let the astronauts do load bearing exercise. Read the story. There is even a vertically oriented treadmill. Anyway, this story stimulated a discussion between my roommate and me about how…

Gut bacteria may influence thoughts and behaviour

THE human gut contains a diverse community of bacteria which colonize the large intestine in the days following birth and vastly outnumber our own cells. These intestinal microflora constitute a virtual organ within an organ and influence many bodily functions. Among other things, they aid in the uptake and metabolism of nutrients, modulate the inflammatory response to infection, and protect the gut from other, harmful micro-organisms. A new study by researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario now suggests that gut bacteria may also influence behaviour and cognitive processes such…

The brain keeps time with a metronome

The fourth dimension - time - is essential for many cognitive processes, and for rhythmic movements such as walking. Recent research has begun to elucidate how neuronal activity encodes events that occur on the timescale of tens to hundredths of milliseconds (hundredths of a second) and contain cues which are required for processes such as visual perception, speech discrimination and fine movements. Many organisms time events on much larger scales. However, next to nothing is known about the mechanisms by which the brain encodes longer periods of time. A new study now sheds some light on…

NPR: Are we asking scientists to be advocates? To spin false information? Read the transcript.

The transcript of the interview I did last week at NPR's On the Media is now available. In the interview, I restate exactly what we argued first at Science and then at the WPost. It's worth reading. I've bolded parts of key sentences. First, I emphasize, as we do in our published commentaries, the problem with going beyond the science in framing messages to the public. I use the example of global warming and more intense hurricanes. Then the host, Brook Gladstone, follows by asking whether we suggest scientists become advocates. BROOK GLADSTONE:....Climate change, says Nisbet, is a…

Why Weird Animals Matter, Continued: Untangling the Branches

In my last post I wrote about how scientists are learning about the origin of animals by studying their genomes. One of the surprising findings of the latest research is that a group of animals called comb jellies (ctenophores) belong to the oldest lineage of living animals. Comb jellies look a bit like jellyfish--soft, tentacled creatures without brains or eyes but with a nervous system. As I wrote in the Boston Globe Monday, earlier studies had generally pointed to sponges as belonging to the oldest lineage. If comb jellies take their place, that may mean that the ancestors of sponges lost…

SIRT1 Pathways and the Prevention of Alzheimer's Pathology

A highly conserved set of genes known as the sirtuin family are known to be activated by caloric restriction (CR) and extend the lifespan of a number of species. CR may also reduce the risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and can prevent the formation of amyloid plaques in transgenic mouse models of AD. The question, then, is whether sirtuin gene activation is a mechanism through which CR can prevent AD pathology, and what genes/compounds are involved in this particular biochemical cascade. Since I'm writing this post, you can probably guess that I've found an article that addresses this very…

An Idle Mind, or More? Alpha Oscillations and Consciousness

In the new issue of Seed, Douglas Hofstadter talks about "strange loops" - his term for patterns of level-crossing feedback inside some medium (such as neurons) - and their role in consciousness. Likewise, Gerald Edelman has talked about how a "reentrant dynamic core" of neural activity could tightly integrate large groups of neurons through positive feedback cycles. Similarly, many view interactions among neural oscillations as a candidate mechanism for the formation of consciousness - such oscillations can perform abstract computations (as in liquid state machines) and can interact with…

Linking Tasks to Substrate in the Developing Brain

Suppose that "memory task A" shows marked improvement at 5 months, but "memory task B" doesn't show marked improvement until 9 months. Before we can make inferences about the development of memory, we need to understand how tasks A and B differentially strain the developing cognitive system. Along these lines, Gross et al.'s 2002 Developmental Psychobiology article investigates the relationship of three different memory tasks in 6-month-old infants. The tasks are pretty representative of current behavioral work with human infants: 1) In the mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm, infants…

Darwin and Hitler, Again?

Image: via PZ Myers PZ Myers has a new post condemning Discovery Institute ideologue David Klinghoffer's recent post connecting Darwin to the eugenic policies of Hitler. He trots out some of the same points that have been refuted time and again. Darwin elaborated a picture of how the world works, how creatures war with each other for survival thus selecting out the fittest specimens and advancing the species. In this portrait of animal life, man is no exception. Any animal that strives to preserve the weak, as man does, is committing racial suicide. "Thus the weak members of civilized…

Argumentum ad nauseum---more on conscience clauses

Sometimes I feel like I'm pounding my head against a wall. I've been wondering why the issue of so-called conscience clauses just won't die, why otherwise intelligent people can't just agree with me just don't get it. Quick review: some health care professionals wish to be able to deny patients certain types of care, and want to be protected by law for imposing their own morals on others, in violation of basic medical ethics and human dignity (as you can see, I don't have a strong opinion about this one). Ethical behavior is difficult. It requires empathy---but in a very particular sense…

Weird Stars!

What are stars? Despite their ubiquity in our universe, their praises often go unsung. A friend admitted to me once that he hadn't realized -- you know, really viscerally realized -- that our sun was itself a star until he was in his twenties. From that moment forward, however, every glance at the night sky bowled him over with such an emotion of vast familiarity that he could hardly stand to look at it. And with just cause: every star, like our sun, is a wonder, a factory producing almost all the heavy elements floating around the cosmos -- including the everyday matter that makes up the…

Community and archival

FriendFeed, now due to be absorbed into the Borg the Facebook empire, allowed me to lurk on the fringes of the scientific community Cameron Neylon mentions in his post on the takeover. Insert all the usual clichés here: it was enormously valuable, I learned a lot, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. My humanities training wouldn't normally gain me entrée into such a circle, and neither would my professional identity. Insofar as I have professional ambitions in scientific data management, every bit of acculturation I can come by is priceless. That community wasn't the only one I…

Stress-triggered nightmares

It never fails. During particularly stressful times, I tend to have nightmares. (In fact, sometimes I don't even really know how stressed I am until I start having recurring nightmares.) They were especially prevalent during my third-year review year, during a hiring mess a while back, and then again this past spring, when I was struggling mightily for some unknown reason. They seem to be back, now that I'm heading into my tenure review year---I've had one almost every night this week. Oh, joy! Helpfully, I've discovered that my bad dreams are usually some variation of the following: The…

OOI Science Community Workshop, Day 1

And now for something completely different :) I am attending the Ocean Observatories Initiative Science Workshop in Baltimore. Today was the first day and there's a half day tomorrow. OOI is big science in its purest form.  It's multi-decade, multi-hundred million dollar facility for studying the ocean. In Europe, they have ESONET and in Japan, they have lots of similar projects, but DONET is probably the most similar. Canada has NEPTUNE. There are several parts to this thing: regional scale nodes (RSN), global scale nodes (GSN), coastal nodes, cyberinfrastructure (CI), and education/public…

How could gun control cause an abrupt decrease?

Your claim that I have not shown that the situations were stable is false. The homicide rate was roughly constant in the period before gun control and in the period after gun control. Andy Freeman said: The graphs have shown that it was roughly constant AFTER, but before.... there was a dip in the period 1915-18, associated with WWI and fluctuations before 1905. It might be that demographic change caused the decline i.e. a decrease in the percentage of young men in the population. However, the demographic change associated with WWI when 40% of the males 18-45 enlisted, is far far larger…

Tourette's, goalie timing, and downside & upsides

  A few days ago Jonah Lehrer put up a lovely post about stuttering and Tourette's syndrome. He looks at stuttering, Updike, Kanye  -- and a couple papers suggesting that many people with Tourette's (and by extension, I suppose, perhaps stuttering) develop a compensatory change ... whereby the chronic suppression of tics results in a generalized suppression of reflexive behavior in favor of increased cognitive control." In other words, the struggle makes us stronger. Jonah chose his studies well; you should read his (fairly brief) post to see how they that reveal this apparently…

Bad financial decisions: Low-balling risk, high-balling certainty

"How We Decide" author Jonah Lehrer, fresh from a book tour of the UK, offers what he calls a "spluttering answer" (it's really quite lucid) to a question he says he's getting a lot these days: What decision-making errors were involved in our current financial meltdown?? The short version of his answer -- well worth reading in its entirety -- is that we (and big investment outfits particularlyl) succumbed to an abhorrence of uncertainty. We hate not knowing, and this often leads us to neglect relevant information that might undermine the certainty of our conclusions. I think some of the…

How health-care inefficiencies are tanking the economy

The health-care system's maddening inefficiencies -- high per-capita spending with poorer overall health outcomes; tens of millions uninsured and tens of millions more underinsured; insane-making battles with insurers to get reimbursements you're entitled too -- are reason enough to spur reform. But "The Big Fix," David Leonhardt's marvelous-but-long piece on the fiscal crisis in last week's Times Magazine, argues that these inefficiencies are a) a prime example of a vested elite's ability to manipulate the economy for its own good and b) one of the most serious obstacles to the nation's…

The 'power of god' attribution error

I was reading an article this morning that I found on fark (yeah yeah...) and for once I actually read the comments underneath the main article. I was pretty surprised on the consistency of the attribution errors that the religious folks were making and thought it would be something interesting to share here and get your thoughts. For the setup here's the (really pretty amazing!) story: On the hike, Cole started fooling around by walking in the water. It was not incredibly steep, but the water had lots of slippery algae and rocks. To Johnson, it looked dangerous. She pleaded with her…

Carnival of the Blue #36

Ahoy mates, and welcome aboard the 36th edition of the Carnival of the Blue! The Oceans as a whole: As many of you might know, CITES had its once-every-three-years meeting during which it decides which organisms are to be regulated and how. As Rick MacPherson explains, the overall message was simple: FU, Ocean. He takes a closer look at the CITES listing process and digs a little deeper into the "secret ballots." Maybe CITES will take note if the world made it clear that oceans matter. There's no better time than now to take Oceana's Ocean Pledge. If you do, $1 will be donated to Oceana to…

Ruining the fantasies of kids everywhere: Study claims big Pterodactyls couldn't fly

One of the coolest dinosaurs you learn about as a kid are Pterodactyls (really Pterosaurs, but who's checking). As giant flying lizards, these guys are thought to have dominated the skies long before birds existed (from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous, 220-65 million years ago). The biggest of the bunch are Pteranodon and Quetzalcoatlus, which are thought to have weighed as much as 250 kg with wingspans in excess of 30 feet. But a new study, published in PLoS ONE is casting doubt on the ability of these massive winged dinos to actually fly. Instead, their results add to others…

Night owls - the energizer bunnies of society

I have to start work at 8 am every morning. I'm not sure exactly who decided that scientists should start early, but it seems to be a universal assumption. Throughout college my science classes were always first thing, and research efforts often seem to involve early morning work. But I've never really been a morning person. Last night is a great example: I had to clean up the house in preparation for Barry's brother coming to stay with us (which, with a dog and a cat and two messy people, is no small feat). We started when we got home and tackled room after room. As I looked up at the clock…