germany
grrlscientist | October 8, 2009The representative from the moving company is coming tomorrow evening to look over the things I plan to move so he can write an estimate for how much the move will cost and help me get the paperwork taken care of. Needless to say, I've been busy doing other things, so the place is as messy as it was one week ago, although the mess is distributed much differently than it was then.
I checked my apartment mailbox yesterday and was surprised to find a letter from USFWS regarding my application for CITES permits for the birds (don't they read their own instructions regarding mailing addresses…
grrlscientist | October 2, 2009Not much to report today except, as I expected, the USFWS has still not responded to my application for CITES permits for my birds. So as I predicted, I am panicking. Instead of going out for a beer or two tonight to relieve my stress, I am at home and now I am suffering intense foot cramps that have almost paralyzed my feet and make me want to scream. Is it time for some codeine-based pain relief or maybe just some alcohol?
The moving company representative had to reschedule visiting my apartment to look at my things until Friday evening next week. It sounds like the company where he works…
grrlscientist | October 1, 2009You might not know this, but I am planning to leave America and move overseas -- permanently. There are a lot of reasons I am doing this, not the least of which is the fact that I am in love with a British scientist and that, even as a child growing up in a farming community, I always took it for granted that I would relocate overseas (it just took a helluva lot longer to accomplish than I ever thought it would).
Originally, I thought I'd be moving to Finland -- comparatively easy for me since I'm Finnish and I've fallen in love with that beautiful country, the people and the language.…
eklemetti | September 28, 2009A bit of news for your last Monday in September:
Pumice deposits from the ~13,000 year old Laacher See eruption. Image by Erik Klemetti, taken in August 2007.
More press for Dr. Joyce and his campaign to make the people of Australia terrified that volcanoes will destroy them. He warns of "new volcanoes" springing up in the Ballarat region to the northwest of Melbourne (which, incidentally, is where I pointed out might be the most likely place for future volcanism). Yes, sure, we should expect that a new, unknown scoria cone may form in the Newer Volcanic Province - I mean, that is what…
dgmacarthur | September 2, 2009David Clark at Genomics Law Report has a thorough dissection of the recent and highly restrictive laws passed in Germany governing access to genetic testing. You should read the whole thing to get a sense of what happens when governments grab the wrong end of the regulation stick, but here's the crucial paragraph:
The German Act [...] adopts an extremely protective, even fearful, view of genetic information as something so dangerous and private that the generation and disclosure of genomic data must be mediated solely through specially trained physicians, accompanied by psychological and…
razib | July 28, 2009Short article in PLoS Biology, Charles Darwin's Reception in Germany and What Followed.
jricco | June 19, 2009
Annually focusing on a different discipline, the Nobel Laureates meet in Lindau (Southern Germany). This year's meeting is going to be about chemistry and we, the editors of ScienceBlogs.de will be covering all events along with seven blogging scientists.
Although there will of course be lots of articles in German, we also launched an English section of the blog in which the most interesting articles will be translated - may the readers of this site forgive occasional bumpiness in our language skills.
As mentioned earlier here, PZ Myers will also attend the conference. The main topic of this…
zooillogix | April 24, 2008Festo, a German engineering firm known for finding inspiration in biology, recently unveiled its two newest robots at the Hannover Festival.
Picture courtesy of Gizmodo
The AquaJelly and AirJelly share the same basic form - a sphere surrounded by eight mechanical tentacles run off lithium-ion batteries. In the case of the AquaJelly which functions underwater, the central sphere is a laser sealed vacuum, while the flying (floating) Air Jelly's center is a helium balloon. Most interestingly, the AquaJelly is autonomous in that it "guides itself with the help of a sensor array, communications…