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More Loony Christian Math

Yesterday, I posted [this article][bozo] about the bozo who didn't like his college calculus course because it wasn't Christian enough. One of the commenters pointed out that there's actually a site online where a college professor from a Christian college actually has [a collection of "devotionals"][devotional] to be presented along with the lecture in a basic calculus course. They're sufficiently insane that I have to quote a couple of them. No comment that I could possibly make could add anything to the sheer goofiness of these. For the lesson on "Function Operations": >**God's Surgical…

Ideas for Change in America

Change.org/ideas (not the official Change.gov) is a place where people can post ideas for the Obama administration and readers can, Digg-like, vote the ideas up and down. This is how it works: What is Ideas for Change in America? Ideas for Change in America is a citizen-driven project that aims to identify and create momentum around the best ideas for how the Obama Administration and 111th Congress can turn the broad call for "change" across the country into specific policies. The project is nonpartisan, and invites all political points of view. It is not connected to the Obama campaign or…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jonathan Eisen

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Jonathan Eisen of Tree Of Life blog (and Academic Editor in Chief of PLoS Biology) to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both…

Dark Matter: Is it right in front of us?

Last year, I had just finished my Ph.D. studies, and had moved to Madison, WI to teach introductory physics at the University of Wisconsin. I was working on this paper, and when I submitted it, I got a phone call from New Scientist magazine's space division. Fast-forward two weeks, and I find this article online, where I got to see my name in print: Now, scientists led by Ethan Siegel of the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, US, have come up with a new way to potentially reveal blobs of dark matter drifting nearby and perhaps even pin down what it is once and for all. And I thought to…

Science21: The Journal of Stuff I Like

Another thing I thought was intriguing that came up at the Science in the 21st Century meeting wasn't from a formal talk, but rather a conversation over dinner with Garrett Lisi and Sabine Hossenfelder about the future of publishing. Garrett was suggesting a new model of publishing, based on pulling things from the arxiv (or something like it). The idea here is that anybody who cared to would set up a "journal," consisting of a collection of links to papers they found worthwhile. If you wanted to know what Garrett Lisi finds interesting and useful from recent research, you would look at his "…

Missing the Eureka Moment

Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev hit on the idea of the Periodic Table as an organizing theme for a textbook he began writing in 1868. He did some work on refining the idea, and in 1870 presented a paper on it to a meeting of the Russian Chemical Society. Well, actually, that's not quite true-- Mendeleev did write up a paper for Russian chemists in 1870, but he didn't present it himself. He had a friend do the presentation in his stead. Mendeleev himself was out of town, inspecting artisanal cheese-making operations for the Russian government. I talked a bit last week about Eureka moments and…

Men, Women, and Graduation Statistics

There was a great big New York Times article on women in science this week, which prompted no end of discussion. (I also highly recommend Bee's response at Backreaction.) It's built around the personal story of the author, Eileen Pollack, a physics major at Yale who decided not to go to grad school, and her story is compellingly told, providing a nice frame to her investigation of the question of why there continue to be so few women in the sciences. Pollack comes out very much in favor of the notion that many women choose not to go to graduate school in the sciences because they don't…

The neurological basis of intuition

Most of us have experienced the vague feeling of knowing something without having any memory of learning it. This phenomenon is commonly known as a "gut feeling" or "intuition"; more accurately though, it is described as implicit or unconscious recognition memory, to reflect the fact that it arises from information that was not attended to, but which is processed, and can subsequently be retrieved, without ever entering into conscious awareness. According to a new study, our gut feelings can enhance the retrieval of explicitly encoded memories - those memories which we encode actively - and…

Twitter Thread - The end of the MSM and its aftermath

Bloggers like to talk about how nasty the Main Stream Media is (I'm looking at you physioprof). And although I agree that there are MANY problems, I think that the fifth estate makes a real contribution to our public discourse. Now unlike what others have written, I am not talking about science journalism, a branch of that discipline mostly filled with dilettantes who write trite articles about their misconceptions about the latest research, or the opinion of political pundits (Washington insiders who spin any and every bit of news into some pro-ideology narrative), but the real news…

Will the Doctor be The Prisoner?

Well here's an interesting tidbit of news: Former Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston will star as Number Six in a television remake of the cult favorite series, "The Prisoner". "The 1967 series, starring Patrick McGoohan as a former secret agent who was kidnapped and imprisoned in a mystery village, baffled millions of viewers around the world," says the Times. "The new version, made by Granada for Sky One, will incorporate the paranoia, conspiracy theories and hi-tech action sequences of modern-day spy dramas 24 and Spooks. ... Hollywood stars have also pitched for the role but…

Smellscape

My Synthetic Aesthetics partner, Sissel Tolaas, is featured in the terrific current issue of the German interview magazine mono.kultur. Her work focuses on smell, exploring the unique smellscapes of different cities, creating provocative scents to show in art galleries, branded "logo" scents for Adidas, "Swedish" scents for Ikea, and therapeutic memory-triggering scents, part of the healing process for patients dealing with traumatic experiences. Until we have smell-o-vision, her work is almost aggressively analog--"beyond what is seen and heard to something indiscernible yet more…

Genetic differences between human populations: more drift than selection?

T. Hofer, N. Ray, D. Wegmann, L. Excoffier (2009). Large allele frequency differences between human continental groups are more likely to have occurred by drift during range expansions than by selection Annals of Human Genetics, 73 (1), 95-108 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-1809.2008.00489.x I've just been reading over an article from late last year in the Annals of Human Genetics: In this study, we examined 772 STRs, 210 diallelic indels, and 2834 SNPs typed in 53 human populations worldwide under the HGDP-CEPH Diversity Panel to determine to which extent allele frequency differs among four regions (…

Earth to Kansas ... Come in please...

How many times do the Kansans have to go out of their way to prove to the rest of the world that Kansas is a state populated by morons, psychopaths and mental defectives? Well, OK, I admit, Kansas has no more than the normal share of psychopaths... Here is the latest, chronicled by Kevin Grandia at De-Smog Blog: Desperate times, call for desperate arguments. In a last ditch bid to build two new coal plants in Kansas, Larry Powell (R- Garden City) is making the argument that the new coal plants would be in fact good for local crops. It's worth mentioning that Garden City, Kansas is also home…

Dangerous medicine?

An interesting discussion has been going on over at TerraSig. Abel used his expertise in pharmacology to help explain some of the nearly-inexplicable events that led to the injury of dozens and deaths of several participants in a sweat lodge ceremony. The investigation led to a Michigan physician who runs a "men's health" practice and pharmacy. The leader of the sweat lodge ceremony was apparently found to have prescription medications prescribed by and purchased from this doctor. The medications were putatively for "anti-aging" and "low testosterone" treatments. It would clearly be…

Fight Science = Bad Science

Fight Science is an entertaining show. Great graphics. The basic idea is to look at the science in different fighting styles. They had a clip-style commercial on it during a MythBusters episode I was watching. And from that, I can say that the kicking looked cool, but the science needs some work. The Setup The basic idea is that they wanted to compare kicks from different fighting styles. From what I can gather, they collected data by having some dudes kick this "kicking bag". During the kick, they measured the force exerted on the bag and they had a sensor on the kicker's leg - I…

Politics of Animal Protection

There has been a lot of commentary online about the Inside Higher Ed article about an UCLA primate researcher who quit his research due to being terrorised by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and the follow up article about the steps UCLA and other Universities are taking to ensure the safety of their faculty and staff: The announcement by Abrams follows an upswing in activities in which UCLA professors who work with animals have been targets. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, a researcher who does…

Politics of Animal Protection

Originally written on September 1, 2006, re-posted today to raise more dust ;-) There has been a lot of commentary online about the Inside Higher Ed article about an UCLA primate researcher who quit his research due to being terrorised by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and the follow up article about the steps UCLA and other Universities are taking to ensure the safety of their faculty and staff: The announcement by Abrams follows an upswing in activities in which UCLA professors who work with animals have been targets. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a…

Sanity rescued from the jaws of madness

Not the Georgians and the Russians, though indications are they they too have pulled back from utter stupidity. No, this is far more important: rowing, and in particular the bumps. Background: those paying close attention on day 4 will have noticed the problem with Robs 1. It seems that the 10 minute delay on the start was a bit more than I'd realised: it consisted of the umpires telling Robs they had an illegal crew and couldn't row, and Robs refusing to listen (they even had the man they'd bumped out standing on the bank, so they didn't even have the excuse of no sub available). And the…

The Left Does "Give a Fig About Science"--For Its Own Sake

By way of Matthew Yglesias, we read that,over at National Review Online, Kevin Williamson claims progressives only care about science as a way to wage culture war (yes, coming from movement conservatives, that's rich): There are lots of good reasons not to wonder what Rick Perry thinks about scientific questions, foremost amongst them that there are probably fewer than 10,000 people in the United States whose views on disputed questions regarding evolution are worth consulting, and they are not politicians; they are scientists. In reality, of course, the progressive types who want to know…

Michael Nielsen: SPARC Innovator

Sometimes good things happen to good people and this is certainly the case. Michael Nielsen has been named a SPARC Innovator for 2012. I don't usually do awards announcements here but I've made exceptions in the past for friends and I'm doing that again today. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition has a program called the SPARC Innovators that twice a year recognizes innovations in the field. The SPARC Innovator program is a new initiative that recognizes an individual, institution, or group that exemplifies SPARC principles by working to challenge the status quo in…

Road trip

It's late-ish in the evening and this one of the Revere troop has pulled his/her/its new-ish car (funny, it doesn't look newish) into the Best Western parking lot and gotten online for the first time since this morning. First about the car. It isn't brand new. It's a couple of years old but we bought it to replace the infamous 15-year old Volvo sedan shit box I've been complaining about for years here. I finally got someone to take it off my hands for $340. I was asking $800, we settled on $600, but when he drove 100 miles to look at it (he'd seen pictures and I had described it with brutal…

Explosion Kills 4 Workers at Florida Lab

Updated 12/20: See below  Four workers were killed and at least 14 people were injured in a violent explosion at the T2 Labs in Jacksonville, Florida.  The firm manufacturers Ecotane®, the gasoline additive "methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl" (i.e.,  MMT® or MCMT), which increases the octane rating of gasoline.  The firm says that its Florida facility is state-of-the art, and uses a "novel, safe and efficient process."  We'll have to wait for OSHA or the Chemical Safety Board to tell us whether they had an effective process management safety system.  The company's…

Two articles on Wakefield and Anti-vax denialism

Two Guardian articles appear today on Andrew Wakefield and his associates. The first is a discussion of his unethical and invasive methods used in his now-debunked study that purported to show a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. Vulnerable children were subjected to "inappropriate and invasive" tests by a doctor who prompted one of the biggest health controversies of the past 10 years, it was alleged today. Andrew Wakefield, who linked the MMR vaccine to autism, was described at a General Medical Council (GMC) fitness panel as having breached "some of the most fundamental rules of…

Research at NCSU

I love getting alumni letters from NCSU - I get reminded over and over again how cool research gets done there all the time. In this issue, for instance: NC State Study Finds Genes Important to Sleep: For many animals, sleep is a risk: foraging for food, mingling with mates and guarding against predators just aren't possible while snoozing. How, then, has this seemingly life-threatening behavior remained constant among various species of animals? A new study by scientists at North Carolina State University shows that the fruit fly is genetically wired to sleep, although the sleep comes in…

Making the Data Public: Interview With Xan Gregg

Xan Gregg has also attended both the first Science Blogging Conference and the second one in January, where he co-moderated a session on Public Scientific Data. He blogs on FORTH GO. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your scientific background? What is your Real Life job? I'm a software engineer working at SAS Institute on a desktop "statistical discovery" application called JMP. (Yes, we have a blog, and I sometimes post to it.) My primary interest is data visualization, and in 2006 I won a data…

Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent: The improbable importance of everything and other lessons from Darwin's lost notebooks

How important it is to walk along, not in haste, but slowly, looking at everything and calling out Yes! No! -- Mary Oliver Almost everyone has heard about "Darwin's Finches" -- those dark little birds that live on the Galapagos Islands. But most people don't realize that Darwin didn't set eyes upon those birds until nearly the end of his five year journey. Additionally, when Darwin first stepped aboard the HMS Beagle in 1831, he was neither an ornithologist nor a professional scientist; instead, he was a 22-year-old beetle collector and an amateur naturalist with only a smattering of…

Beautiful Vendel Period Jewellery

I'm happy and relieved. A 73-page paper that I put a lot of work and travel into and submitted almost five years ago has finally been published. In his essays, Stephen Jay Gould often refers to his "technical work", which largely concerns Cerion land snails and is most likely not read by very many people. Aard is my attempt to do the essay side of what Gould did. The new paper "Domed oblong brooches of Vendel Period Scandinavia. Ãrsnes types N & O and similar brooches, including transitional types surviving into the Early Viking Period", though, is definitely a piece of my technical work…

Expert Consensus on the Economics of Climate Change?

Expert Consensus on the Economics of Climate Change is a report from the Institute for Policy Integrity1, and comes to me via Slate via Twitter. I read the paper and failed to find the obvious flaws, so over to you. They ran a 15-question online survey... We invited the 1,103 experts who met our selection criteria [publication in journals] to participate, and we received 365 completed surveys. The survey data revealed several key findings [trimmed]: • Economic experts believe that climate change will begin to have a net negative impact on the global economy very soon – the median estimate…

Hot Topics and Controversies

The Dave Bacon post linked earlier today is actually the beginning of a plug for Doug Natelson's list of hot topics and controversies in condensed matter and nanoscale science. As was suggested in a recent comment, now that a nonzero number of condensed matter and nano people are (apparently) reading this blog (at least occasionally), this could be a fun opportunity to have a series of discussions about the hot topics and controversies out there in the world of condensed matter and nanoscale science. The idea would be to take maybe one topic a week, give a relatively gentle introduction to…

Earth Warrior Saves Canada from Geologists!

Hi everyone; this morning at 8:00am, July 14/09, I proceeded to the Denny Island aerodrome, located on Denny Island in the midst of the BC Central Coast archipelago, aka "The Great Bear Rainforest" where I broke open the welded steel cover and dismantled and destroyed a large seismic shot which was slated for blasting in the early morning hours of July 17th, 2009. I took this action alone, without the participation or knowledge of any other person, association or organization. I accept full and sole responsibilty for my action and look forward to the consequences. And so reads the on line…

Boom in Bible Publishing

Have a look at at this interesting article, from The New Yorker, about the boom in Bible publishing: The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles--twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars. In…

Privacy? How quaint is that?

One of the best things about the Science Blogs collective is that so little of what gets posted concerns the mundane and prosaic details of the authors' lives. We write substantial, serious stuff, posts that deal with public figures and weighty issues. No what-I-had-for-breakfast claptrap for us, no siree. So I didn't think twice when my wife and I set up a separate blog to detail, for the benefit of our friends and family, her pregnancy and the subsequent birth of our first child. Neither did I give any thought to the ethical implications of another incarnation of that blog, one dedicated to…

So you got a telescope for Christmas...

Great! So did I! Now the sky is a big place, and telescopes don't often come with an astronomer to explain how to use them. I'm not an astronomer either, but I've been an amateur stargazer on and off for years and I might be able to give you some good advice. First, the telescope itself. There's basically two kinds, assuming your budget was under a couple grand. There's the refractor (which has a lens on the front) and the reflector (which has a mirror at the end). If you have a cheap refractor, trade it in and get a reflector. Essentially the only parameter of interest at the amateur…

Whoa! Too much coffee dude. Maybe just limit yourself to the aroma... (the chemistry of coffee aroma)

So I see Ben has put up a post on the various reviews out there on Dawkins' book, and I noted one comment saying: This is utterly ridiculous. The distilled argument here is that the discussion of religion and god(s) should include only believers. Perhaps you should think about that for 3 or 4 seconds. I won't comment further on the post itself, since I happen to think Ben does a good job in raising a valid point, but I will say to the commenter to maybe lay off the coffee for a while (although I will note that he did weigh in again in a much calmer fashion). Anyway, I bring this up more as…

The Potent Fear of Male Menopause

Three products that profit on male insecurities (Enzyte, Viagra and Tiger Penis Wine) Note: the third image is from a campaign to encourage people to stop, not an actual ad. In my earlier posts I explored why women experience menopause and discussed the Grandmother Hypothesis as a leading explanation. There is accumulating evidence that suggests reproductive senescence in women is an adaptation promoting inclusive fitness. However, there are many claims that menopause also occurs in men. There's even a fancy name for it: andropause. A quick Google search reveals an onslaught of online "…

New Publication: Big Breasts, An Indicator of Dangerous Fat Deposition?

In June of last year, I discussed the results of a large epidemiological study in women that showed that women with larger breasts have an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes. As soon as Travis and I read this study, we knew we had to do a follow-up study of our own to see if this finding was simply spurious or if there was actually something to large breasts that indicated health risk - beyond that explained by obesity per se. The project that Travis and I began over a year ago has culminated in both a hot-off-the-press publication in the journal Obesity, as well as my…

“Don't politicize this tragedy!”

I'm seeing a lot of email complaining about my response to the Giffords shooting. Here's just a representative sampling. You saw fit to use our pain to win political points. Here is my question to you - What if the killer was not a conservative? At least one report describes him as left-wing. His posted video does show any clear political affiliation, and his reading list was from across the spectrum. The local tea party group has denounced the killings, and leaders from across our state have spoken in one voice. As someone who usually enjoys reading your blog, I was a little dismayed to…

Amazing early psychology research on movies: Hugo Münsterberg's The Photoplay

I'm currently reading Hugo Münsterberg's fascinating 1916 book, The Photoplay (I'm reading a paper copy, but the link takes you to the complete online text). It's one of the earliest serious works on film, which was unfortunately not well received at the time it was published due to the start of World War I and Münsterberg's strong German nationalism (he was a professor at Harvard at the time). Anyway, I wanted to direct your attention to a couple descriptions of amazing research conducted with the extremely limited tools available at that time: If a flash of light at one point is followed…

Weekend Essay Links: from Fish to fish, it's been a wierd week.

Stanley Fish writes a provocative essay in the NYT on whether curiosity is tantamount to "a mental disorder," or even a sin: Give this indictment of men in love with their own capacities a positive twist and it becomes a description of the scientific project, which includes among its many achievements space travel, a split atom, cloning and the information revolution. It is a project that celebrates the expansion of knowledge's boundaries as an undoubted good, and it is a project that Chairman Leach salutes when he proudly lists the joint efforts by the University of Virginia and the N.E.H…

The baller's brain (and his pinky)

Participation in most sports requires agility, impeccable timing and the planning and execution of complex movements, so that actions such as catching a ball or throwing it into a hoop can be performed. Performing well at sports also requires anticipating and accurately predicting the movements of others. Athletes and sportspersons undergo years of specialized training to hone these abilities, and nobody would sensibly argue that they are not more proficient at them than others. Indeed, numerous behavioural studies show that those who take part in sports have better sensory and motor skills…

The Forester and the Romantic

I had the chance to cover some winter activities for PA state parks last week, which meant I had the fortune of a couple of visits for photos and interviews. As I browsed around online and in the park offices and exhibits for info, I couldn't escape references to either the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Work Progress Administration, which I've read about before, but never realized just how much work they did in the Appalachian region. The history of these organizations opens a whole box of interesting questions for the future, believe it or not, as this was a pivotal moment in…

In Which I Call the "Impeach Obama" Bluff...

I really like plaid. But I am not a hipster. I wish I were because then I would have more photographs of myself and would ride a nice bicycle. I think it is a partial combination of growing up in the Midwest and my love for higher education that has rendered me a mere observer of the hipster movement. People where I am from wear plaid to farm, not skateboard. It doesn't matter. The point is, until today, I watched the hipster movement from the sidelines. Collected a few hipster friends. Read about hipsters in hip magazines, including Douglas Haddow's recent piece in Adbusters. I noticed…

Reclaiming ground

(My apologies; this post inadvertently went up prematurely. If you were wondering where I was going with it, please read on!) I met Steve Koch at Science Online 2010, where he wowed me showing off his students' open-notebook-science work. I love, just love, teachers who do that. I wish the sort of work I typically assign students was appropriate to it. Because of the interactions Steve had with librarians at that conference, he's going back to talk with the digital librarian at his institution to see what they can do for each other. I love that, too, though it makes me nervous. Consider a…

Culture clashes II: PDF, XML and what's in it for me?

When I wrote this post, I left out a whole second "trigger" because of time and energy. That trigger--once again, wondering whether my humanities background (rhetoric major, math minor) leaves me simply unable to cope with the true Scientific Mind--regarded the format used for publication. Or, to put it another way, the widespread and vehemently-expressed view that PDF sucks (to use a polite version). What I saw, in several conversations, was a seeming demand from text-miners that everything must be in HTML (or, better, XML) so it was easy to mine, with a complete disdain for layout and…

A Story and some probability

I am going to tell a story and then calculate the probability of part of it happening. Really, it's just an excuse for me to put this online (since no one got hurt). My parents have this house on a lake, but it is really hilly. There is a dock down there, but it is like a bajillion stairs to get there. Good for exercise, bad for carrying a cooler full of beer (and ice). I don't know where he found about it, but my Dad got these guys from Minnesota to install this tram thingy. Basically it's a little train car with benches that rides down on two rails to the dock below. The thing is…

Science reporting takes a hit

CNN shutters its science/environment/technology unit: [Longtime CNN anchor/reporter Miles] O'Brien's departure comes as the network dismantles its science, space, environment and technology unit in Atlanta. That includes O'Brien as well as six producers. O'Brien has been CNN's chief technology and environment correspondent since being replaced as anchor of American Morning in April 2007. Before, during and after anchoring, O'Brien worked the NASA beat for CNN. He covered John Glenn's return to space in 1998. In 1999 he led CNN's coverage of the failed Mars Orbiter and Polar Lander missions…

Birds in The News 156

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Rainbow Lory, Trichoglossus haematodus moluccanus. This subspecies of rainbow lory is also found in Australia, along the east coast. Image: John Del Rio. [larger view]. Birds in Science One of the most contentious issues among scientists who study the evolution of birds is identifying precisely when the modern birds (Neornithes) first appeared. This is due to conflicts between the fossil record and molecular dating methodologies. For example, fossils support a Tertiary radiation whereas molecular dating methodologies…

Clock Tutorial #14: Interpreting The Phase Response Curve

This is the sixth post in a series about mechanism of entrainment, running all day today on this blog. In order to understand the content of this post, you need to read the previous five installments. The original of this post was first written on April 12, 2005. A Phase Response Curve (PRC) can be made in three ways: One can construct a PRC for a single individual. If you have a reasonably long-lived organism, you can apply a number of light pulses over a period of time. The advantage is that you will always know the freerunning period of your organism, and you will know with absolute…

Clock Tutorial #14: Interpreting The Phase Response Curve

This is the sixth post in a series about mechanism of entrainment, running all day today on this blog. In order to understand the content of this post, you need to read the previous five installments. The original of this post was first written on April 12, 2005. A Phase Response Curve (PRC) can be made in three ways: One can construct a PRC for a single individual. If you have a reasonably long-lived organism, you can apply a number of light pulses over a period of time. The advantage is that you will always know the freerunning period of your organism, and you will know with absolute…

Clock Tutorial #14: Interpreting The Phase Response Curve

This is the sixth post in a series about mechanism of entrainment, running all day today on this blog. In order to understand the content of this post, you need to read the previous five installments. The original of this post was first written on April 12, 2005. A Phase Response Curve (PRC) can be made in three ways: One can construct a PRC for a single individual. If you have a reasonably long-lived organism, you can apply a number of light pulses over a period of time. The advantage is that you will always know the freerunning period of your organism, and you will know with absolute…