Science News
clock | April 7, 2010There are 20 new articles in PLoS ONE today and several are, IMHO, very bloggable:
Why Do African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) Simulate Oestrus? An Analysis of Longitudinal Data:
Female African elephants signal oestrus via chemicals in their urine, but they also exhibit characteristic changes to their posture, gait and behaviour when sexually receptive. Free-ranging females visually signal receptivity by holding their heads and tails high, walking with an exaggerated gait, and displaying increased tactile behaviour towards males. Parous females occasionally exhibit these visual signals at…
grrlscientist | April 7, 2010tags: Seed Media Group, online media, science news, science writing, public outreach, education, announcement, press release
Yesterday, The Mothership (Scienceblogs.com), released their traffic figures from the launch of the site in January 2006 through the first quarter of 2010. These numbers are quite impressive, regardless of which universe you inhabit [free PDF]:
Visits for the quarter ending March 31 grew by 41% year-over-year to approximately 13 million, and page views topped 25 million. Monthly unique visitors grew to 2.4 million worldwide and in the US surpassed 2 million for the…
clock | April 6, 2010Still getting used to the new publication schedule. Yup, new papers just got published in four out of seven PLoS journals. 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:
Environmental Change Enhances Cognitive Abilities in Fish:
Animals with higher cognitive abilities should be better capable of…
j7uy5 | April 4, 2010This is a nice little study in PNAS. It is nice for a few
reasons. For one, it is the sort of thing that drives
conservatives crazy, for it seems to be a highly detailed study of
something useless. Two, it could turn out to be pretty
useful. Three, when I searched ScienceBlogs for "karrikin," I got
zero hits. Fourth, when I search Wikipedia for "karrikin," I got
zero hits. So it is about time someone started talking about
these chemicals. Plus, "karrikin" is a cool word.
"Karrikin" is the
href="http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/20090219889/biomedical-biomolecular-and-chemical-sciences/a-…
clock | April 4, 2010There are 23 new articles in PLoS ONE published last Friday (sorry, I'm late....). 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:
ARNTL (BMAL1) and NPAS2 Gene Variants Contribute to Fertility and Seasonality:
Circadian clocks guide the metabolic, cell-division, sleep-wake, circadian and seasonal…
clock | April 1, 2010There are 63 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.
Note: you may have noticed that today's papers were not published last night as you are used to seeing them. Starting today, PLOS ONE papers are published online on the same date as the official publication date (at or close to 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, I believe). That same date/…
clock | March 30, 2010There are 9 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:
Delimiting Species without Nuclear Monophyly in Madagascar's Mouse Lemurs:
Speciation begins when populations become genetically separated through a substantial reduction in gene flow, and it is at this…
clock | March 24, 2010There are 27 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:
A New Basal Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of Southern Utah:
Basal sauropodomorphs, or 'prosauropods,' are a globally widespread paraphyletic assemblage of terrestrial…
clock | March 22, 2010There are 32 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:
Laetoli Footprints Preserve Earliest Direct Evidence of Human-Like Bipedal Biomechanics:
Debates over the evolution of hominin bipedalism, a defining human characteristic, revolve around whether early…
clock | March 19, 2010Again, looking at papers I personally find interesting....or bloggable. There are 18 new articles today and there were additional 16 articles yesterday in PLoS ONE. 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:
The Spread of Sleep Loss Influences Drug Use in Adolescent Social Networks:
Troubled…
clock | March 17, 2010There are 18 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:
Generous Leaders and Selfish Underdogs: Pro-Sociality in Despotic Macaques:
Actively granting food to a companion is called pro-social behavior and is considered to be part of altruism. Recent findings show…
clock | March 12, 2010There are 19 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:
Plant Species and Functional Group Combinations Affect Green Roof Ecosystem Functions:
Green roofs perform ecosystem services such as summer roof temperature reduction and stormwater capture that directly…
clock | March 11, 2010There are 15 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:
Extreme Female Promiscuity in a Non-Social Invertebrate Species:
While males usually benefit from as many matings as possible, females often evolve various methods of resistance to matings. The prevalent…
clock | March 10, 2010There are 35 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:
Does Tropical Forest Fragmentation Increase Long-Term Variability of Butterfly Communities?:
Habitat fragmentation is a major driver of biodiversity loss. Yet, the overall effects of fragmentation on…
clock | March 9, 2010There are 22 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:
Measuring the Conservation Value of Tropical Primary Forests: The Effect of Occasional Species on Estimates of Biodiversity Uniqueness:
Developing effective conservation plans for multi-functional…
clock | March 8, 2010There are 22 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:
Genetic Patterns of Paternity and Testes Size in Mammals:
Testes size is used as a proxy of male intrasexual competition, with larger testes indicative of greater competition. It has been shown that in some…
clock | March 5, 2010There are 19 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:
Winter Active Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) Achieve High Foraging Rates in Urban Britain:
Foraging bumblebees are normally associated with spring and summer in northern Europe. However, there have been…
clock | March 4, 2010There are 27 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:
Body Size Evolution in Insular Speckled Rattlesnakes (Viperidae: Crotalus mitchellii):
Speckled rattlesnakes (Crotalus mitchellii) inhabit multiple islands off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. Two of…
clock | March 3, 2010There are 25 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:
Increased Health Risk in Subjects with High Self-Reported Seasonality:
Seasonal variations in mood and behaviour, termed seasonality, are commonly reported in the general population. As a part of a large…
clock | March 2, 2010Four of the seven PLoS journals post new articles on Monday nights - let's see what is exciting and bloggable 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:
Predation upon Hatchling Dinosaurs by a New Snake from the Late Cretaceous of India:
Snakes first appear in the fossil record towards…