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Annals of McCain - Palin, XXXI: Powell

I'm not a fan of Colin Powell. He was there and helped start this catastrophic war. Maybe he tried to resist it in private but in public he shouldered the weight of selling it. He bears responsibility for it. He knew better but he was, as always, the good soldier. So now Powell has broken with his party (he is a longtime Republican and has served as an aparatchik in Republican administrations). He has endorsed Barack Obama for President. The usual suspects are already calling him a racist and a suggestion he is a secret Muslim can't be far behind. I don't know if Powell's nod will have any…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 14 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Experience Matters: Females Use Smell to Select Experienced Males for Paternal Care: Mate choice and mating preferences often rely on the information content of signals exchanged between potential partners…

Biotech wants more money for flu prep. So do I. But not for them.

The headline seemed to say it all: "Funding Issues Stymie Pandemic Preparation." Right, I thought. All the money is going in to procurement, too little into shoring up a failing public health system. Little did I know: The fear of bioterrorism and avian flu are driving a healthy new interest by biotech firms in developing products in the field of infectious diseases. "Even though we were developing a smallpox vaccine in 2000, there is no doubt that 9/11 was the moment that biodefense suddenly came up the funding ladder in the U.S.," said Clement Lewin, Ph.D., vp of marketing policy and…

The CDC Great Lakes report fiasco

We don't especially like being anonymous on this blog but we feel it is prudent given the retributive nature of this administration. We don't care that much ourselves as we are pretty well established. But we worry that our students, our colleagues and our institution will become collateral damage in retribution for things we say here. It's not just that we read about this stuff in the news. We know the people involved personally. Last week we posted about Deb Rice, a scientist in the State of Maine health department who is also one of the world authorities on the health effects of the…

Flu rolls into town

When my colleagues announced early afternoon on Friday he was headed home because he was sick, I knew the flu had finally arrived on my doorstep. It was already here, of course. The emergency rooms are jammed, clinics have long waits and hospital admissions for flu are up -- way up. The flu situation was the page one column eight story in Saturday's Boston Globe: The flu virus is rampaging across New England, spawning waves of coughs and fevers, causing patients to flood doctors' offices, and raising questions about the effectiveness of flu shots given to tens of millions of Americans. During…

Should voting be required in the US?

Today is a big day for American Presidential politics, the so-called Super Tuesday when citizens in 24 states vote or caucus with their fellows to help select the candidates of the two main political parties. I live in one of those 24 states and Mrs. R. and I vote regular as clockwork. We never miss elections, even minor, off year ones. I was saying to someone the other day, regarding the unsettled state of the race in the Democratic primary in our state, "At least this year our vote will count" (a reference to other years when the outcome was pre-ordained by the time the primary was held).…

The Rumsfeld School of Planning for Bird Flu

With the turn of the calendar there is always both hope and anxiety about the year ahead. This is nice because it gives pundits and bloggers something to write about. Just before Christmas The Times of London published\ a "leading article" (unsigned), Black Swans and Bird Flu, which was about the anxiety part, assessing the threats, and planning for them in advance: Living at risk, it has been said, is akin to jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down. Not everyone would be content with such a strategy. Some would not venture close to the edge, even if that meant missing a…

The federal government and hot buttered popcorn. Something smells.

The argument about whether bloggers ever do real reporting is not very interesting to us, but suffice it to say there are numerous instances where they do the same thing as journalists, even in the tiny public health blogosphere. A case in point is my colleague. Dr. David Michaels at The Pump Handle (TPH), who has been dogging the story of flavoring workers lung (aka popcorn workers lung) from the outset, and has even broken a few stories. Today's post at TPH may be the most significant entry yet. But first, some background. It is now known that an ingredient in microwave popcorn with…

Clocks in Bacteria IV: Clocks in other bacteria

Fourth in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria (from April 30, 2006): For decades, it was thought that prokaryotes did not have circadian clocks. Then, a clock was discovered in a unicellular cyanobacterium, Synechococcus (later also in Synechocystis [1] and Trichodesmium [2]) which quickly became an important model in the study of circadian rhythms in general. Still, it was thought, for ten years or so, that no other prokaryotes had a circadian clock. Recently, the clock genes were found in filamentous (chain-forming) cyanobacteria, as well as a whole host of other bacteria and…

Carnival of the Green #31

Welcome to the thirty-first edition of the Carnival of the Green. I am still trying to figure out the details of Movable Type after my move here last Friday (and please look around - there are 45 fantastic science bloggers here at SEED's ScienceBlogs), so fancy graphics and creative hosting will have to wait for some other time. Let's just take a straightforward look at this week's entries. Is it sexual repression that's behind the religious right's obsession with gay marriage? Or are they just plain evil? Either way, they are using it to distract us from the far more serious issue of…

We bid you farewell

It's been a long time coming but the time has come. Effect Measure is closing up shop, after 5 and a half years, 3 million visits and 5.1 million page views of some 3500. You commented on them some 37,000 times. It's been a grand ride but to all things there is a season. It's time to simplify my life and while my family has had me all along, at times science got short shrift. Now my time is getting short and I want to turn my attention to my research, the other polar star of my life. "Revere" will continue to post occasionally on Effect Measure's successor site, The Pump Handle (TPH), which…

Crumpled maps

I was surfing the other night after a long day of working on the grant and ran across this announcement (hat tip infosthetics) of a new kind of city map, one you don't have to fold but can crumple up. It's made of Tyvek, a soft but durable waterproof material you can crease anywhere you want or just jam it into your pocket, any old way. They aren't available just yet but will be soon for London, Paris, New York, Tokyo and Berlin. I'm not sure what the market for city maps will be when everyone is carrying around smartphones with GPS, but it put me in mind of something completely different, a…

New tool measures neighborhood opportunity factors that shape children’s health

As public health practitioners increasingly look upstream to identify the determinants that put people on a trajectory toward lifelong health and wellbeing, early childhood is often tapped as a pivotal intervention point. Now, a new tool is available that practitioners can use to measure neighborhood-level opportunity indicators that are fundamentally linked to children’s health. In the November issue of Health Affairs, researchers presented the newly developed Child Opportunity Index for the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The index covers three domains of opportunity: educational,…

Another study finds that despite rare adverse events, childhood vaccines are safe

Vaccine safety is one of those topics that has become so tragically mired in misinformation and myth that there can never be enough supporting evidence. So, here’s some more. In a systematic review of the scientific literature on childhood immunizations that will be published in the August issue of Pediatrics, researchers found that vaccine-related adverse events are “extremely rare” and that — once again — the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine (MMR) is not associated with autism. Overall, the study found that while the risks associated with childhood vaccines are not zero, the evidence shows…

New analysis offers a small snapshot of the toxic nature of oil and gas extraction

Crystalline silica, hydrofluoric acid and formaldehyde. Those are just three of the dozens of air toxic chemicals that oil companies have used thousands of times in southern California in just the past year. The data has come to light thanks to new reporting rules adopted in 2013 by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which now requires oil and gas well operators to disclose the chemicals they use in oil and gas operations. According to a recently released analysis of the first year’s worth of reported data, oil companies used 44 different air toxic chemicals more than 5,000…

Unsafe building projects at Texas A&M campus keep OSHA busy

[Updates below] Angel Garcia, 28 is being remembered as a son who dearly loved his family, and basketball. He died last month while working on a $450 million renovation project at Texas A&M University’s football stadium. Garcia, a construction worker who was employed by Lindamood Demolition, fell four stories and died shortly thereafter. OSHA is conducting a post-fatality inspection at the scene and of Lindamood’s operations.  Just last year, the firm was subject to an inspection by OSHA at a demolition site in Wichita Falls, TX.  The company received a citation and $4,900 penalty for a…

Teaching Environmentalism to Kids

Robyn's Adapting In Place Blog has a really great sermon she gave about teaching kids about the environment. I really like her points both about multiple environmentalisms, and also about the way kids react to empty nonsense like "101 ways you can save the planet." The whole thing is well worth a read! Robyn is one of the most intelligent and passionate advocates of good education of all kinds I know, and this is her stuff at its best! I also discovered that I was under a double whammy with kids when teaching conventional environmentalism. First, as I already said, kids can smell a lie, so…

Fit for Physics

Ah, semester has started, and with it comes the grind of studying for the big test, where callow highschoolers finally get to see if they can make it in the big leagues. Here we see them in lecture: One of the 30 or so in class lectures before the test Yes, football players go to lectures. About football, as well as whatever other subjects they are taking. The coach gets up there, talks about football and shit, and they all listen, and nod, and maybe take some notes, and check their cool pics on facebook, and text their friends, and nap... afterwards they go their separate ways back to their…

LHC: Higgs mass vs SUSY

The LHC Shows the Way workshop rolls on, looking at the implications of the Higgs at 125-126 GeV for supersymmetry. I live blog, slowly. Where are the sparticles. Coloured supersymmetric partners, the quark and gluon supersymmetric partners, must be massive - greater than ~ 1,000 GeV in some natural implementation of supersymmetry, natch, clever theorists can of course think of increasingly contrived ways to get around most any limit, at the expense of fewer and fewer people believing them. Minimal supersymmetric extensions to the standard model, with the Higgs mass assumed to be 126 GeV and…

Crandall Canyon Mine: "Destined to Fail"

"Destined to fail."  That is the troubling conclusion of MSHA's 12-month investigation of the coal mine disaster at the Crandall Canyon coal mine that killed nine men last August.  They were: Kerry Allred, 58; Dale Black, 48; Don Erickson, 50; MSHA's Gary Jensen, 53; Brandon Kimber, 29; Luis Hernandez, 23; Brandon Phillips, 24; Carlos Payan, 22; and Manuel Sanchez, 41.  It is terribly disturbing to realize how these families' lives would so be different today, had someone made the conclusion "destined to fail" before these engineering plans were being develop and approved. Mike Gorrell…

Anything you can do, I can do better?

In honor of the Washington, DC Area Bicyclist Association and their annual Bike to Work Day (Friday, May 15) by Reut Tenne A couple of days ago, I announced to a few friends that I regret not participating in the District of Columbia's (DC) bicyclistsâ movement.  I am not sure that there is such a thing, but I sure would have liked to create one.  For the past two years, I have gotten myself everywhere with my little old bike, and it has become my pride and joy.  When I bike down a street crowded with cars, I feel superior to all the drivers; I see them as trapped in their big polluting…

Thoughts on Water

by Madison Hardee Studying public health over the last two years, drinking water in the US and in the developing world is a regular topic of conversation.  In my studies, I was surprised to learn that only 1% of the worldâs fresh water is available for human use (drinking, sanitation crops, etc.) The rest of the worldâs water is salt water (97%) or locked in glaciers (2%). In the developed world, water is something we rarely think about.  When I am thirsty, I just turn the knob on my sink.  When I want to take a shower, hot water comes out at the pull of a lever.  But for every time I…

Further consider of OSHA's new FOM

Yesterday, I was pressed for time when I wrote "OSHA revises its field ops manual."   I didn't have time to comb through the new 322-page manual , let alone spend much time writing the blog post itself.  A funny thing happens sometimes when I rush to put together a blog post---like a magnet, I'm pulled back to the topic, forced to look for something obvious that I missed in the first round.  On further consideration, here's what I should have mentioned yesterday about OSHA's revised how-to guide for OSHA compliance S&H officers (CSHO's) and field staff: Observation #1:   The…

Rejecting Homosexual Children Results in Disastrous Health Outcomes - An Appeal to Parents

Not infrequently, science butts heads with culture as the data scientists collect about issues of the day may conflict with cultural perceptions and deeply-held beliefs. Attitudes and perceptions about homosexuality are, not surprisingly, a source of denialism as certain overvalued ideas about sexuality are being challenged with our deeper understanding of human sexual desire. For one, homosexuality is not a choice, despite all attempts to reprogram or suppress homosexual desires, the desires do not go away. One might even hypothesize the attempts to repress or disparage such a…

Where do you get your mercury?

There is an ongoing discussion amongst our Sciblings regarding our German counterparts at scienceblogs.de. Apparently they have some odd folks as science bloggers over there, including people who think ayurvedic heavy metals are good for you. In the tradition of countering speech with speech, I'm giving you this repost. More to come, I'm sure. --PalMD The Infectious Disease Promotion Movement (let by such intellectual luminaries as Jenny McCarthy) may be worried about "toxins" in vaccines, but the real problem may hiding in plain sight. Today's issue of JAMA has an interesting study of…

An hour of radio inanity

I've tuned into KKMS, although to be honest, I lost all respect for these evangelical radio cretins when they had that Simmons "debate" and left me out. We'll have to see if their guest's attempts to criticize atheists in their absence will be as effective. I'm trying to grade exams while simultaneously listening — it's like listening with half my brain tied behind my back. The host claims that it is important to understand the perspective of the "New" Atheists…so why are they inviting this Aikman clown on, instead of an actual atheist? Aikman claims the atheists are bringing "pestilence",…

Exciting news on the HIV front

In my earlier post about HIV therapy (a post I strongly recommend), I wrote, "After entering a cell (never mind how for now), HIV needs to find a way to makes copies of itself, which requires DNA." Because of some recently released data, it's time to look at how HIV enters the cell, and to expand a bit on the biology of HIV infection (but this is really a "Part II" so please refer to the above-linked post, even though this should stand on its own). This will also allow us another glimpse into how real science works. proceeding from observation, though hypothesis, and hypothesis testing.…

Read intelligently because the next crank you read may be your last

A reader of ours ran into a questionable book ad, and being a good citizen, sent it on to me. I glanced at it, and it seemed to be the usual silly book purporting to cure all that ails, but on deeper inspection, it was much uglier. The book says that it "renders insulin and related medicines unnecessary within four days...". This is a bit scary, not because this would be a bad thing, but because many diabetics are completely dependent on insulin to live. But, hey, maybe this is a good diet plan for type II diabetics and will at least help them reduce their need for meds. I mean, it could…

Toxins!

I'd love to see what the angry toxicologist thinks of this scary article from CNN Tests reveal high chemical levels in kids' bodies. Michelle Hammond and Jeremiah Holland were intrigued when a friend at the Oakland Tribune asked them and their two young children to take part in a cutting-edge study to measure the industrial chemicals in their bodies. "In the beginning, I wasn't worried at all; I was fascinated," Hammond, 37, recalled. But that fascination soon changed to fear, as tests revealed that their children -- Rowan, then 18 months, and Mikaela, then 5 -- had chemical exposure…

Mixing Religion and Politics - bad for religion too

Check out this fascinating new study from the Barna group that appears to show the damage that is being done to the Christian faith by the political actions of right wing fundamentalists. This should serve as a serious wake-up call for the culture warriors who are attempting to increase the role of religion in politics - they are alienating the next generation of believers and non-believers severely. The study shows that 16- to 29-year-olds exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a…

Preparing for the zombie apocalpyse

I have a paper out in the Christmas issue of BMJ on the coming zombie apocalypse. You read that right. And yes, it was peer-reviewed. I've discussed previously how I've used the attention paid to zombies to talk about infectious diseases with children and other audiences; and to bring some science to the Walking Dead and other zombie tales. I even include a zombie lecture as part of the talks I give in my position as an American Society for Microbiology distinguished lecturer. Why? Like them or hate them, zombies are part of the zeitgeist. The Walking Dead is still one of the highest-rated…

Bob Murray's Toilet-Paper Problem

During one of Mr. Bob Murray's endless television appearances, he was asked why his underground coal mine in Illinois had received more than 900 safety and health violations last year.  In his "I'm just a humble coal miner" kind-of-way, he tried to explain that the public just doesn't understand that getting written up by a mine inspector is commonplace, and most of those 900 violations were for trivial items like not having toilet paper in the restrooms. Oh really?  I reviewed all 975 violations cited in 2006 at Murray Energy's coal mine in Galatia, Illinois, and only 3 of the 975…

Public Transit, Public Health

By James Celenza Driving a private car is probably a typical citizenâs most âpollutingâ daily activity, yet in many cases, individuals have few alternatives forms of transportation. Thus urban planning and smart growth are imperative. -- American Academy of Pediatrics Ambient Air Pollution: Health Hazards to Children Public Transit is an Environmental Health Issue. The built environment is a summarizing concept that links issues like housing, transportation, neighborhoods and jobs. Safe and efficient public transit is a key component of healthy environments.  How so?  Numerous studies…

The EDGE amphibian project launches today

A major global conservation effort, aiming to bring to better attention the chronic plight of the world's amphibian species, was launched at the start of this year. You might have heard of it: the Year of the Frog movement. And, today, a second project aimed at conserving the world's endangered amphibians launches: the EDGE amphibian project, a website designed by the Zoological Society of London to draw attention to amphibian species that are not just globally endangered, but are also evolutionarily distinct... As you might have guessed, 'EDGE' stands for Evolutionarily Distinct and…

Neighborhoods (Updated)

The past couple of posts on continuity and homeomorphism actually glossed over one really important point. I'm actually surprised no one called me on it; either you guys have learned to trust me, or else no one is reading this. What I skimmed past is what a *neighborhood* is. The intuition for a neighborhood is based on metric spaces: in a metric space, the neighborhood of a point p is the points that are *close to* p, where close to is defined in terms of the distance metric. But not all topological spaces are metric spaces. So what's a neighborhood in a non-metric topological space? A…

Rehashing Conservative Liars: Did Edwards tell the truth about poverty?

You might remember my post last week about [conservatives who can't subtract][subtract]: in particular, about how a conservative blogger who goes by "Captain Ed" attacked John Edwards for saying there are 37 million people in poverty in the US. It turned out that good ol' Ed wasn't capable of doing simple subtraction. You might also remember a post about [lying with statistics][liar], discussing an article by Tim Worstall, who quoted a newspaper piece about abortion rates, and tried to misuse the statistics to argue something about sexual education in the UK. Well, Tim (the target of the…

Coloring Planar Graphs

Coloring general graphs is, as I said in my last post, quite difficult. But if you can restrict the structure of the graph, you can change the problem in a way that makes it *much* easier. The classic example of this is *planar graphs*. A planar graph is a graph which can be drawn on a plane with no edges crossing. Every planar graph is also the structural equivalent to a map, where the vertices corresponding to two countries on a map are adjacent if and only if the countries share a border in the map. (A border here has non-zero length, so two countries that only meet in a corner don't…

Free Will and Fruit Fly Behavior

I've been seeing articles popping up all over the place about a recent PLOS article called Order in Spontaneous Behavior. The majority of the articles seem to have been following the lead of the Discovery Institute, which claims that the article demonstrates the existence of free will, which they argue is inconsistent with naturalism and darwinism. The thing is, the paper says nothing of the sort. The paper did a very interesting study on the behavior of fruit-flies. They basically tethered fruit flies inside of a small cylindrical apparatus, which basically amounts to a little tiny…

Bad Software Design: Getting the Level Wrong

I came across a link to an excellent article that provides an example of one of my professional bugaboos: the truly awful way that we often design software in terms of how the implementer thinks of it, instead of how the user will think of it. Take a look at that link to see what I mean. The short version of it is: xerox produces a copy machine that includes a billing system. Attached to the copier is a little card reader. You can't use the machine without inserting a card into the reader telling it who should pay for the paper/toner you use. The card reader's software is implemented as if…

The Mapping of the E8 Lie Group (Minor Update)

I've been getting tons of mail from people in response to the announcement of the mapping of the E8 Lie group, asking what a Lie group is, what E8 is, and why the mapping of E8 is such a big deal? Let me start by saying that this is way outside of my area of expertise. So I fully expect that I'll manage to screw something up as I try to figure it out and explain it - so do follow the comments, where I'm sure people who know this better than I do will correct whatever errors I make. Let's start with the easy part. What's a Lie group? Informally, it's a group whose objects form a manifold,…

David Kingsley—Fishing for the Secrets of Vertebrate Evolution

This talk should put me back in my comfort zone—developmental biology, evolution, and fish, with the stickleback story, one of the really cool model systems that have emerged to study those subjects. What is the molecular basis of evolutionary change in nature? How many genetic changes are required to produce new traits? Which genes are used? What types of mutations? Few or many changes required? The dream experiment would be to cross a whale and a bat and figure out what their genetic differences are. That's impossible, so they searched for other organisms with a suite of differences that…

Turing Equivalent vs. Turing Complete

In my discussion with Sal Cordova in this post, one point came up which I thought was interesting, and worth taking the time to flesh out as a separate post. It's about the distinction between a Turing equivalent computing system, and a Turing complete computation. It's true that in informal use, we often tend to muddy the line between these two related but distinct concepts. But in fact, they are distinct, and the difference between them can be extremely important. In some sense, it's the difference between "capable of" and "requires"; another way of looking at it is "sufficient" versus "…

Birdbooker Report 118

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. ~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books. The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Bats Pick Up Rustling Sounds Against Highway Background Noise: When bats go hunting by listening for faint rustling sounds made by their quarry on a quiet night they don't have any problems. But what happens when a bat goes foraging next to a noisy highway? Can they still hear the faint sounds? America's Smallest Dinosaur Uncovered: An unusual breed of dinosaur that was the size of a chicken, ran on two legs and scoured the ancient forest floor for termites is the smallest dinosaur species found in North America, according to a University of Calgary researcher who analyzed bones found during…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 6 new articles in PLoS ONE today - and one of them has nothing to do with biology or medicine (ONE is meant to be for all areas of science, after all). As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: In Situ Observation of Modulated Light Emission of Fiber Fuse Synchronized with Void Train over Hetero-Core Splice Point: Fiber fuse is a process of optical fiber destruction under the action of laser radiation, found 20 years ago. Once…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Snooze Button For Body's Circadian Clock: We may use the snooze button to fine-tune our sleep cycles, but our cells have a far more meticulous and refined system. Humans, and most other organisms, have 24-hour rhythms that are regulated by a precise molecular clock that ticks inside every cell. After decades of study, researchers are still identifying all the gears involved in running this "circadian" clock and are working to put each of the molecular cogs in its place. A new study by Rockefeller University scientists now shows how two of the key molecules interact to regulate the clock's…

Happy birthday, PLoS Genetics!

PLoS Genetics is celebrating its third birthday this month! Let's see what's new this week, among else... PLoS Genetics Turns Three: Looking Back, Looking Ahead: PLoS Genetics is three years old this month--a milestone worth celebrating! As we do, and as we recognize all who have helped us reach this point in time, we thought this would be a good opportunity to share with you a summary of our brief history and a look ahead. Our original intent was to provide an open-access journal for the community that would "reflect the full breadth and interdisciplinary nature of genetics and genomics…

The amorality of the faithful

Rabbi Avi Shafran is a columnist who, to my mind, represents the very worst of religious dogma. He often writes about "morality", bemoaning the horrid state of godlessness, but his morality is little more than the rote obedience of the dogmatically orthodox. His usual complaint is that atheism removes the moral compass provided by a god — that one can believe that any arbitrary thing is good if you're an atheist. Now he has written another bogus argument that shows the exact opposite: if you use religion, you can justify anything. It's a very strange piece, a study in contrasts. On the one…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Some Like It Hot! Structure Of Receptor For Hot Chili Pepper And Pain Revealed: You can now not only feel the spicy kick of a jalapeno pepper, you can also see it in full 3D, thanks to researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Early Life Exposure To Cats May Reduce Risk Of Childhood Allergies And Asthma Symptoms: A study released by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, shows that cat ownership may have a protective effect against the development of asthma symptoms in young children…

Clocks in Bacteria IV: Clocks in other bacteria

Fourth in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria (from April 30, 2006): For decades, it was thought that prokaryotes did not have circadian clocks. Then, a clock was discovered in a unicellular cyanobacterium, Synechococcus (later also in Synechocystis [1] and Trichodesmium [2]) which quickly became an important model in the study of circadian rhythms in general. Still, it was thought, for ten years or so, that no other prokaryotes had a circadian clock. Recently, the clock genes were found in filamentous (chain-forming) cyanobacteria, as well as a whole host of other bacteria and…