Search Content

Displaying results 66801 - 66850 of 87947

Remembering the Wenchuan earthquake

One year ago today, a M 7.9 earthquake struck the Chinese province of Sichuan. It was horrific. I don't have anything profound or helpful to say about it myself, but I want to pass on links to other remembrances: Berkeley SeismoBlog explains the tectonics of the earthquake, and the possibility (raised in the Chinese journal Geology and Seismology that the water in the Zipingpu Reservoir may have triggered the earthquake. (The plate movements caused it, but the water may have made it easier for the fault to slip.) The NPR reporters who were in Chengdu last May for another story, only to find…

Blogging for World Water Day, March 22

Cr!key Creek invites bloggers to join him on World Water Day, March 22, and post about water basins and aquifers that cross political boundaries. Here's what he said: There are hundreds of water basins and aquifers that straddle our political boundaries, at both international and national levels. Neighbours stick their own straws into the same glass. This has historically led to both conflict and cooperation. "Over the last 60 years there have been more than 200 international water agreements and only 37 cases of reported violence between states over water." In the spirit of World Water…

A Big Day/Red Panda Week

My undergrad degree will be officially complete this afternoon. I walk with honors and a BS in biology and writing. It's a big day for me and my family, despite my general distaste for pomp and circumstance (literally in this case); I tentatively returned to college after getting fed up with the hospitality industry (and Annapolis, MD), worked full time and took as many credits as I could. It has taken me a bit longer than the traditional student, but I'm in no hurry at 28. If I was, perhaps this blog may never have been started. Perhaps a lot of things wouldn't be as sweet as they are today…

Cinching Up the Blogger Bioblitz

After the past month of planning, promoting and actually surveying, today is the last day of the Blogger Bioblitz (B3). But that doesn't mean we're quite done. Sara, Jenn and I will be tabulating data over the next week or so, getting a final count of species and shipping the data off to Madhu and Greg for mapping. We're hoping to have everything complete in the first couple weeks. The link list of B3 posts will be updated tomorrow morning, when I'm sure all the posts are in. If I have missed anyone, e-mail me. I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone involved. It started with just one idea and…

Shame on Spot-Prawn Fascists

There is a reason people are pushing for increased marine protected areas (which currently protect less than 0.1% -- yes, that decimal place is supposed to be there -- of our ocean from fishing). MPAs work. That's why in California they passed legislation ten years ago to create an underwater national park system. Now, finally, the project is underway. But not without some contention. Some fishermen are not too happy about closing areas to their industry. But spot prawn lovers are also sulking. In the LA Weekly, a food blogger wrote this lede: Your favorite Santa Barbara spot prawn dish…

If You Go Green, It Should Show

It seems people prefer flaunting their greenness to hiding it. If that's true, then companies should make their eco-friendly products distinguishable from their conventional (earth destroying) ones. In their book Nudge, authors Thaler and Sunstein point out that part of the reason for the Toyota Prius' success over other hybrids is that the model is exclusively a hybrid. "People who want to signal their green credentials are much happier in a Prius than a hybrid Camry because no one will know the Camry is a hybrid." Ditto for Ford Escape or the Honda Civic, which also both come in hybrids…

Nardil/Phenelzine (Hydrazine chases the blues away)

As I mentioned yesterday, derivatives of arylethylamines - phenethylamine in particular - are drug targets in depression, but a sophisticated mechanistic understanding remains elusive. When you have some idea what molecule you'd like less of, a favorite trick is to find something (an "inhibitor") that binds to some enzyme in the pathway to your molecule and mucks up the works. Of this sort of drug, the first class is "reversible" inhibitors, which just hang out like hands in mittens. They nestle in an active site and keep other molecules from binding. As the drug is metabolized and its…

Tetraline (More less explodey hydrogen)

As I've mentioned in the past, chemists often need to reduce a molecule by adding hydrogen. A medicinal chemist might get to an azide by way of an amine, or a food chemist might want to get to a saturated fat (or, although it's less and less popular, a trans fat). Adding hydrogen can be done with a catalyst and, well, just hydrogen gas. It's a gas and flammable under a huge range of concentrations. Even gasoline only burns in a narrow range in air - don't go sticking a lit stick in your gas tank, but it would just snuff it out. This is why molotov cocktails work. The gas-soaked rag will burn…

Potassium Permanganate (Purple...burning purple)

Potassium permanganate, or KMnO4, is one of the most well-known oxidizing agents in chemistry. Unfortunately, it's a bit like taking a gun to a knife fight... One of the big downsides of permanganate is the fact that it's a very polar ion. Crown ethers to the rescue. Permanganate is a beautiful purple color in solution (almost black as the solid, partly because it's such a rich purple, partly because of MnO2 contamination), which I maintain is responsible for at least part of its popularity. It is a beast, as I alluded to earlier - it will take toluene down to benzoic acid (or even generic…

Titanium Isopropoxide (Clear liquid to fluffy stuff, just add water!)

I swore I posted this yesterday, but there's no sign of it. Thanks to Hillary for prodding me... Titanium isopropoxide is a Lewis acid and useful in organic synthesis for this reason. It's also useful for synthesis of various titanium compounds. Another neat thing about Ti(OIPr)4 is that it hydrolyzes into a voluminous precipitate of titanium (IV) oxide (titanium dioxide). Titanium (IV) isopropoxide's propensity to hydrolyze makes it useful for a number of things - its hydrolysis tends to generate nanoparticulate suspensions. The fact that it reacts with water so avidly means that it can…

Piperidine (Stinky, not peppery)

Piperidine is a useful little heterocycle - Walter Gilbert won a Nobel Prize, due in part to his development of a method of sequencing DNA (which uses piperidine as a base). It also has some use in peptide synthesis. Piperidine is also a very useful thing to hang off a drug, because it adds some lipophilic bits (the ring is mostly paraffinic carbon, after all), as well as an amine. These are often two very useful things to have in a drug molecule. There are also some less-savory uses of piperidine. Piperidine derivatives are found in fire ant venom. It is also a precursor to PCP and has been…

P-Toluenesulfonic Acid (Greasy sulfuric acid)

There are a number of "strong" acids that are essentially completely dissociated in water - hydrochloric and sulfuric acid are two of the most common. Unfortunately, these are often volatile (as in HCl), insoluble, or otherwise ill-behaved in organic solvents. The organic sulfonic acids are quite strong - the functional group is essentially sulfuric acid with one of its valences occupied by a carbon functional group instead of another -OH. para-toluenesulfonic acid, or tosylic acid is probably the most common sulfonic acid used in the lab. Much stronger than carboxylic acids (the other…

Trichloroanisole (At least, the superiority of screw-cap wine acknowledged)

If you take a look at wine bottles today, you'll note that the sealing devices are all over the place. Traditionally, cork was used, and that's still the dominant seal, but you'll also see synthetic foam-type corks, as well as screw-caps. Cork was originally used in wine because it was a relatively cheap airtight seal. It was the best available at the time. It worked pretty well, too; wines with the capacity to age will last many years if stored sideways (ensuring the cork doesn't shrink, allowing air in). However, there is a sinister side to corks. Some corks are contaminated with chemicals…

World go Boom

The thing I like most about this mashup is that it's superficially just a mashup of the most popular music of 2011, but it also manages to be a statement on some of the most important events of 2011: the protests from Egypt and Libya to OWS Maybe it's hard We will never be never be broken and scarred There's no way I'm turning back oh oh oh oh Here's the situation Got this feeling that you can't fight Been to every nation The city is on fire tonight Maybe it's hard We will never be never be broken and scarred There's no way I'm turning back oh oh oh oh Here's the situation Got this feeling…

Viruses, science and beer, Oh My!

Attention: Boston-based Beasties Tomorrow is the second Tuesday of June, and you know what that means: an all new Science by the Pint. From the organizers: As always, Science by the Pint is at 7:00pm on the second Tuesday of the month (June 14th) at Tavern in the Square in Porter Square. Tavern in the Square will provide a $10 gift card for every 10 people in attendance to raffle off as a door prize. Science by the Pint is primarily a mingling event, but there should be ample table space available. If you plan to eat dinner, make sure to arrive early to get a seat and to get your orders in!…

Extreme weather in Boston?

This was the scene from my front porch last night: Pictures of lightning are cool and all, and I've been in thunderstorms before. The crazy thing about this storm was the shear frequency of it. Here in Boston, we went outside and enjoyed the light show. Throughout the neighborhood, we could hear people cheering every time there was a particularly large bolt. Other people in the state, though, weren't having such a great time: BOSTON -- Residents of Springfield began cleaning up Thursday after the first tornadoes to hit Massachusetts in three years killed four people, destroyed buildings…

International correlation between gun ownership and homicide

Gun Control Advocates Purvey Deadly Myths Wall Street Journal, 11 Nov. 1998 By John R. Lott JR. The U.S. has a high murder rate because Americans own so many guns. There is no international evidence backing this up. The Swiss, New Zealanders and Finns all own guns as frequently as Americans, yet in 1995 Switzerland had a murder rate 40% lower than Germany's, and New Zealand had one lower than Australia's. Fin- land and Sweden have very different gun ownership rates, but very similar murder rates. Israel, with a higher gun ownership rate than the U.S., has a…

Who has time for the holidays?

Mumble, mumble, stupid holidays... mumble mumble, final exams... mumble, grumble, not enough time in a day... mumble, curse, mumble... There must be some corollary to Murphy’s law that states every time I want to do something nice for myself, I will be swamped with other things. That seems to be the theme for the entire autumn of 2008. I want to update my blog and home site, but thanks to family issues, computer problems, and class work, this fix-up keeps getting postponed. I’d like to say that I have the solution, that I’m finally free, but the fact is, even this note is on stolen time. I…

Political Party Favors and Fun

It’s probably very common right now... you go to a cocktail party during the election season, and you end up discussing politics. Who said what? Who agrees with who? Hopefully, after comparing responses at the Science Debate 2008, you should have a good idea of where our candidates stand, and would be prepared for any spontaneous party discussions. So, since you’re so prepared, here’s a way to do the fun political comparisons without actually attending a party. Try the Match-O-Matic, created by ABC News and USA today. It throws you a variety of quotes from the candidates on hot-button issues…

Sassy Bitches of Science: Rita Levi-Montalcini

Happy Ada Lovelace Day! Today we blog to celebrate women in technology and science and remember Ada Lovelace, the woman considered to have written the world's first computer program back in the 1840's. So to celebrate, here's a clip of an interview with Rita Levi-Montalcini, one of my favorite Sassy Bitches of Scienceâ¢. At age 100, she is the oldest living Nobel laureate, sharp as a tack, still working, and a sassy dresser to boot. Her story is incredible and inspiring (especially in light of what I wrote about yesterday on DIYbio, oppression, and opportunity). Turned away from her position…

The Science of Nudity

There's a funny article over at H+ magazine called "Get Naked: It's Good for Your Brain," telling us exactly that: Clothing is crushing us! Trapped in tomb-like textiles, we exile our flesh from experiencing the environment. We atrophy the majority of our epidermis. If you put a plaster cast on a broken arm, the skin starves for Vitamin D; muscles weaken due to strangled range of motion; nerve synapses depress to a whimper of their former joy. Twenty-first century hominids shroud the entire skin palette, obliterating symbiosis with the planet except via face, neck and hands. (Burqa-clad…

Got questions for 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki? Now's your chance

Those interested in the commercial, technical or ethical issues around the emerging industry of personal genomics now have a chance to put their questions to the co-founder of 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki. The NY Times blog Freakonomics is inviting readers to add their questions to the comments section of this post; Wojcicki will respond in a later post. The questions are already pouring in: one reader asks if Wojcicki believes that there is a genetic component to intelligence; another asks for advice on getting a tattoo made from his 23andMe raw data; another reader is looking for a job. This is…

Genetic Alliance calls for a genetic test registry

GenomeWeb reports that the advocacy group Genetic Alliance is lobbying the FDA for the construction of a public registry of genetic tests: [Genetic Alliance Director of Genetics and Health Policy Kristi] Zonno said FDA should create a public registry for genetic tests to "enable transparency and promote informed decision making for consumers and providers." She said that registry "could and should include the myriad of genetic, genomic, and pharmacogenomic testing available to the US market." Open to the public, the registry should at the very least include the name of the lab performing a…

The personal genomics startup game

Drew Yates at ThinkGene has a delightfully cynical take on the personal genomics industry: I know 23andMe's game, it's the "break the mean with variance" game, and it's the same Silicon Valley game that's been played by internet media companies for the last decade. How to play: a network of superior talent and funding backs a group of startups that executes something outrageous and otherwise unobtainable by contractual or legal permission (like YouTube, Napster, Google itself... have we forgotten the shear audacity of copying all the information in the world without permission?) Then, that…

Not that I'm bitter or anything...

deCODE CEO Kari Stefansson on the recent award of Time magazine's "Invention of the Year" to personal genomics competitor 23andMe: Despite the fact that we launched our test first - so we basically invented this, and also 23andMe is using a substantial number of sequence variants that we discovered. So we feel flattered by the fact that our test was selected as the invention of the year by Time magazine. We are amused by the fact that they decided to ascribe the invention to 23andMe, probably because its founder is associated with the rich and famous. From an article in Bio-IT World on deCODE…

John Edwards Endorses Barack Obama

This just in: John Edwards has officially endorsed Barack Obama for president. It's a little late (since Obama has had the nomination all but wrapped up for a couple of months now), and I'm not sure what kind of an impact this will have, but I still find this exciting. Although I've been an Obama supporter for a while, John Edwards was still one of the most exciting candidates in the race this year (and that's saying a lot, considering how groundbreaking this presidential race has already become). I find him to be honest and genuine, particularly in his dedication to tackling poverty. He…

Only in Oxford...

The following email was recently sent out to members of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford: Sometime between last Wednesday, 5th, and yesterday Sunday 9th, about two and a half tons of lead roofing was stripped from the top of the building on the outside of the deer park (at the southern, Holywell St junction end, near the small tower in our wall) on Longwall St. This is the Conservation Studio library, owned by Merton. If you saw anything, such as a lorry loading up, please let me know and I will pass on the information to Merton who are in contact with the Police. A few thoughts…

Bush Vetoes Stem Cell Bill

I'm at a conference right now and unfortunately don't have time to write extensively about this, but for those who were not aware, President Bush vetoed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (S. 5) on Wednesday. There are not enough votes in the House and Senate to override this veto, so it's clear that our lack of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research will continue until we have a new President in the White House. On Wednesday the President also announced an executive order to encourage research into alternatives to embryonic stem cell research. As I've written before, these…

Commuting Dust Mites

This is a 285 micrometer racecar, printed at the Vienna University of Technology. Credit: Vienna University of Technology Imagine a car small enough for a dust mite. Crazy, right? Well, with new printing technology, this just might be possible. The 3D printer uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a polymerized line of solid polymer, just a few hundred nanometers wide. This high resolution enables the creation of intricately structured…

An Orally Gifted Artist

Sheril Kirshenbaum has studied why we kiss and what happens biologically. One artist, Natalie Irish, has taken this to a whole new level. She paints using her lips! Her creative method is demonstrated in this video: I wonder what's going on biologically as she creates these paintings? From her website: curious indeed. To say the least, young Natalie was a child prodigy. Her wizardry in drawing, painting, and sculpture truly showed no bounds. Her transcendent intellect, flowing blonde hair and angelic face simply added to her magnetism as a young artist. Her charm and philanthropic…

Linkin Park: Creativity for Japan's Disaster Relief

Disaster relief for Japan has taken on many forms, and I applaud artists when they use their talents and their broad outreach to help the victims and their families. The band Linkin Park has responded in their own way, using graphic design guided by their fans. This effort is part of the "Music for Relief" campaign. You can view the CNN broadcast here about their design. Linkin Park - Not Alone Lyrics I break down, fear is sinking in The cold comes, racing through my skin Searching for a way to get to you Through the storm you... Go, giving up your home Go, leaving all you've known You are…

Aquatic Ethereal Beauty

Juvenile Cowfish Photograph by Chris Newbert, Minden Pictures A photographer's strobe gives a violet sheen to this translucent juvenile roundbelly cowfish off the coast of Kona, Hawaii. Also known as the transparent boxfish, the roundbelly cowfish has two short horns in front of its eyes. Stunned by the beauty of these photographs of translucent undersea creatures by National Geographic, I would like to share a few of my favorites. Pelagic Octopus Photograph by Chris Newbert, Minden Pictures A pelagic, or open-ocean, octopus gives off a neon glow in Hawaii. Most species of octopus have…

Fruit Fly Brain Atlas Decoded

My previous postings on the fruit fly brain generated quite a bit of interest, and I wanted to share with you some more detail that I received from Terry C.-W. Yeh, researcher at the Applied Scientific Computing Division of the National Center for High-Performance Computing in Taiwan. Thank you, Terry, for being so gracious! I hope you enjoy this decoded tour as much as I have. Detail of 150 neurons. Ever wonder about the distribution of neurotransmitters throughout the brain? {Recall my recent posting about dopamine receptors and liberalism - OK, there's no such thing as a "liberal" fly…

Watchmaker builds 24.65 hour clock for Mars scientists

Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NPR both have features on watchmaker Garo Anserlian, who designed a special watch that keeps time with Martian solar days.  Snip: The martian day is longer than Earth's, but this minimal variance can amount to physical and mental fatigue. Every day, team members are reporting to work 39 minutes later than the previous day. "Everything on this mission is based on local solar time on Mars," said Julie Townsend, Mars Exploration Rover avionics systems engineer. "From home, during the mission practice tests, it was very difficult to constantly translate Earth…

Semiconductor's 20 Hz: listen to a geo-magnetic storm rage

I've covered the work of Semiconductor before on these pages: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt are responsible for a series of visual and acoustic sculptures that intersect art and science. Previously they brought magnetic fields to life for Channel 4, and recaptured minerals squeezed into existence deep inside the Earth's crust.. This time Ruth and Joe have turned their eyes skyward, where solar winds rasp against the upper reaches of our atmosphere, stirring huge geo-magnetic storms. 20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected…

Fleming Painted With Bacteria

The Smithsonian has an interesting article on Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered penicillin, revealing how the scientist used his bacterial cultures to paint works of art. Fleming used different bacterial strains to create a range of colours, timing his innoculations so that the different species would mature at the same time. From the OP: It is not clear why Fleming started painting microbes; perhaps he picked up a brush one day and noticed that it felt like the loop he used for his bacteria. Or maybe it was due to the promiscuous sexual predilections of artists. Fleming worked at…

London's Theatre of Ideas: Future Human

Next week I'll be in London to attend Bad Idea magazine's Future Human, part of a series of salons exploring themese of transhumanism. Wednesday's event looks at whether increasingly sophisticated software will render some clerical occupations obsolete. In the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, it was the British working class who fell victim to the mechanisation of industry. In the Information Revolution of the 21st century, however, industrial productivity is increasingly driven by software algorithms and the exponential rise of computer processing power.Middle-class…

Glow in the dark mushrooms

Live Science reports on the discovery of several new species of bio-luminescent fungi, bringing the total up to 71 different flavours of AWESOME. These are not fluorescing under a UV lamp - they really do glow in the dark, giving them the most beautiful name in mycology: Mycena luxaeterna, meaning "eternal light". Live Science says: Three quarters of glowing mushrooms, including the newly identified species, belong to the Mycena genus, a group of mushrooms that feed off and decompose organic matter."What interests us is that within Mycena, the luminescent species come from 16 different…

Nine days of 9 (part 4): What memories would you save for future races?

It's time to win another prize! You know the score - I give you a starter topic, you wax lyrical, someone wins a prize! It's like Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, but with less questions and a smaller budget. You might call it Who Wants to Win a Sweet-Ass Coffee Table Book?. Yesterday's winner, as chosen by the random echoes of the Big Bang, was Mike. Congratulations, Mike! Now that I've got you all thinking about post-human intelligence, it's time to find out how you can win a prize! For those of you who haven't been following the Scientist's fin-de-monde postings from Facebook, here's a…

Friday Flash Fun: Cosmic Crush

From CrazyMonkey, the powerhouse of internet Flash fun, comes Cosmic Crush, a deceptively simple game of meteor might. The rules are straightforward: propel your sentient lump of rock through space, absorbing smaller asteroids whilst avoiding the gravity wells of larger planets. If this sounds fun, you've been conned. It is fun, but it's also fiendishly difficult. Unfortunately for you, large planets wield a gravitational pull that extends far beyond the visible screen, meaning that by the time you see them, it's too late. Driving blind, you must be sensitive to the minor tugs and drifts…

How to straighten the Leaning Tower of Pisa

In 2006, scientists discovered a 3D optical illusion that had never been reported before. Frederick Kingdom, Ali Yoonessi, and Elena Gheorghiu of McGill University noticed that when placed side-by-side, identical images of objects tilted and receding into the background appeared to have different angles. So while one picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa looks normal: Put two copies of the same image next to eachother and suddenly one seems to veer off at an angle: This effect, reported in Scientific American here, occurs because of the way that our brain constructs a three-dimensional…

Hey, That Could Have Been My Genome!

I've told you before that I once dreamt of becoming a conservation geneticist. I major turning point for me occurred after I had completed rotations during my first year of grad school. I had to decide between two different labs: in one I would use molecular markers to study the demography of a species of tree and in the other I would study the evolution of Drosophila genomes. I chose the Drosophila lab (for reasons I won't get into here or now), and the rest was history. It turns out I could have been a coauthor on a Science paper if I had chosen the tree lab. My potential advisor in that…

The Ultimate Predictor of Academic Performance

You wanna know the best way to predict the quality of undergraduates at a college or university? It's not SAT scores or high school GPA. It's the quality of the school's ultimate team. From the press release: A study (slated for release September 1) by Dr. Michael Norden shows that among all 86 private national universities, those ranking in the top half for Ultimate have a graduation rate of over 85%, while those in the bottom half graduate just 60%. The difference in the totals of Rhodes scholars and Marshall scholars among their graduates during this decade is even more dramatic -- 208…

Friday Cephalopod: They're forming tribes!

We're doomed. The Pacific striped octopus is exhibiting complex social behaviors. Panamanian biologist Aradio Rodaniche first reported the Pacific striped octopus in 1991 off the coast of Nicaragua, noting its strange behavior—living in groups of possibly up to 40, laying multiple egg clutches, and mating face-to-face and sucker-to-sucker. Most other octopus species, for instance, come together only to mate. Next thing you know, they're making spears, forming hunting parties, warring with one another. And then they develop city-states, philosophy, diplomacy, and politics, and all the…

Welcome to the International Life Sciences Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Associate Association

Mr. Thoughts from Kansas, Josh Rosenau, has joined the ScienceBlogs conglomerate operated by Seed Media Group. That gives us two blogs involved in thinking (Wilkins the philosopher has the other one), to go with our three evolution blogs (Evolution Blog, Evolving Thoughts, and evolgen). Josh is a graduate student, working on a PhD in Ecology and Evolution. By my count, we now how have six seven bloggers working on PhD's in the life sciences (Josh, Bora, Jake, Mike D, Shelley, Nick, and myself), along with two life sciences post docs (Alex and Evil Monkey), plus Wilkins who's a biologist by…

Jesus's Cheerleader

Have you ever wondered what's happened to the line between church and state? Are you curious as to whether the line has been blurred or erased altogether? Clay at DeadlyHippos investigates the issue by visiting a megachurch in Tennessee. The church is run by Maury Davis, a man convicted of first degree murder who subsequently found God-uh and was saved-ah. Pastor Davis is also the man behind the DVD Islam: An Evil Religion (A four part series). Oh the sweet, sweet irony. In between pop songs, unraveling of enormous American flags, and fireworks displays, Davis cheers the virtues of…

More Koufax nominations!

I've got a couple of posts that have been nominated for The 2005 Koufax Awards: Best Post, so I've quickly brought them on board here at the new site. Voting isn't yet open, but here they are: Idiot America. This one is something of a howl of anguish, and it's really more a lot of quotes from Charles Pierce's article of the same name in Esquire. If this gets the nomination, credit should go more to Pierce than to me—and that's OK. Planet of the Hats. This article is probably the best representation for how I actually feel about religion. It's all metaphor, but if you don't get it, I won't be…

It Beats Pairs Figure Skating

Apparently, you can fall down in figure skating and still win a silver medal. Imagine if this happened in a real sport. Say, for example, one of the Italian hockey players falls to the ice and a Canadian player scores a goal. Does the Italian team get a do over? I don't know what I hate more, figure skating or tape delay. My favorite drunk skier, Bode Miller, was DQ'd after straddling a post. I'm guessing that post won't be the only think straddled in the Olympic village. My second favorite drunk skier is this guy. I'm especially fond of this description of his experiment on drunk…

Where are the faculty bloggers?

I have an intuition, backed up by absolutely no evidence, that my particular area of interest (evolutionary genetics) has more faculty blogging about stuff related to their research than other fields. This is most likely the result of my interest in those blogs, and, hence, my increased awareness of them compared to blogs of faculty in other research areas. From a quick scan of my blogroll and the feeds I subscribe to, here's a list of research faculty who blog about evolutionary genetics: TR Gregory Rod Page John Hawks John Logsdon Jonathan Eisen Larry Moran That's not a lot of blogs, but…

Frank Wants a Shiny Prize

Please God, don't let it happen. Please don't let Franky Collins win this stupid award. I don't usually make pleas to you, but, given that this is a matter regarding a man of faithTM, I figured it's a good time to plea to the sky fairy. So, do whatever you can to prevent Congress from awarding Frank the medal. As for my more terrestrial readers, here's the skinny. The Genetic Alliance is petitioning the US Congress to award Collins the Congressional Gold Medal. Why? Because he's in charge of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Now, the NHGRI has done a great job in promoting…