Lots of Links

There's a giant crater underneath Antartica! The collision that caused it may have also precipitated the Permian-Triassic extinction ... or perhaps not.

Can't get to the overloaded Knox homepage to read the Colbert Commencement speech? Well then click here.

MIT Cosmologist vs. Mus musculus. From Max Tegmark's homepage:

According to the authoritative text on the subject, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, humans are the 3rd most intelligent species on Earth, superceded not only by dolphins but also by mice. This page provides evidence supporting that hypothesis, although it can be debated whether it mainly demonstrates the intelligence of mice or my own lack thereof.

So who wins? Click here to find out.

Some random quotes over at Sum Over Histories:
-God is real, unless declared integer.
-All models are wrong. Some are useful.
-Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
-War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
-Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.
-In science as in love, too much concentration on technique can often lead to impotence.
-If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.

A long but enjoyable discussion of an atom in some liver-cell of an alcoholic cosmic terrorist, our lack of imagination, and the anthropic priciple at Backreaction.

New Seed Sciencebloggers??? Here is some leaked info from Science & Politics.

Joolya (who recently got hitched) shows off a nice pic of a cell.

L-amino acids are slightly more soluble than D-amino acids? See the article in the New Scientist. (from Afarensis)

Lamin muations lead to early onset aging? From Science Sampler:

Now it was found that the same mutation on lamin A protein associated with progeria, a rare disease were children suffer from premature aging, also accumulates in elderly human cells.

That's it for today. I have to split some cells ... (don't you just love lab talk?)

Tags

More like this

There are 11 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, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one…
This is the February 20, 2008 edition of The Tangled Bank web carnival. The next edition will be hosted at Archaeoporn. Behavioral Ecology Blog Thinking like an economist (about Parent-Offspring Conflict) Published in 1974, this paper is arguably Bob Trivers 2nd most influential paper behind the…
tags: global warming, Permian-Triassic boundary, mass extinction, weather Computer simulation of the Earth's annual average surface temperatures in degrees Celsius 251 million years ago, at the Permo-Triassic (PT) boundary. Approximately 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate…
Tips for flourishing after a mass extinction. Ceratites nodosus (MCZ-7232) (A), from the Triassic of Germany, was similar to the ceratitid ammonoid species that thrived in the water column in the Early Triassic (1), while bottom-dwelling species languished. Key to the ceratitids' rapid success…

Like this bit from the Colbert transcript:

"Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics dont learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. Yes is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes."

He didn't mean to drugs, of course.