clock | March 21, 2007Yes, we are on the ball, getting the second conference organized already! The date has been set - so mark your calendars now: January 19th, 2008. You all come to Chapel Hill that day, OK?
We'll use the wiki again so help us make the event as good as possible by posting suggestions and editing the wiki.
We also need a new logo - so stir up your creative juices and send your suggestions (not to be confused with the logo contest for BlogTogether for which we offer a prize!).
To go with the conference, we'll be assembling another Science Blogging Anthology, so send your nominations here.
clock | March 21, 2007A new paper just came out today on PLoS-Biology: Glucocorticoids Play a Key Role in Circadian Cell Cycle Rhythms. The paper is long and complicated, with many control experiments, etc, so I will just give you a very brief summary of the main finding.
One of the three major hypotheses for the origin of circadian clocks is the need to shield sensitive cellular processes - including cell division - from the effects of UV radiation by the sun, thus relegating it to night-time only:
The cyclic nature of energetic availability and cycles of potentially degrading effects of the sun's ultraviolet…
clock | March 21, 2007The Carnival Of Education: Week 111 is up on The Education Wonks.
Carnival of Homeschooling - Spring Migration themed - is up on Principled Discovery.
clock | March 21, 2007Threatened Vulture Wanders Far From Mongolia:
Dr. Rich Reading (Denver Zoo) reports that a young cinereous vulture tagged in Mongolia as part of his Earthwatch-supported research was spotted 1200 miles away, near Pusan, South Korea. The vulture was tagged last August. Two other vultures were subsequently sighted in other parts of South Korea and one was seen in Heibei Province, China. Scientists have suspected that birds from Mongolia sometimes winter in Korea, but believe that their research provides the first documented confirmation.
Termites Get The Vibe On What Tastes Good:
Researchers…
clock | March 21, 2007Researchers Uncover Protection Mechanism Of Radiation-resistant Bacterium:
Results of a recent study titled "Protein Oxidation Implicated as the Primary Determinant of Bacterial Radioresistance," will be published in the March 20 edition of PLoS Biology. The study, headed by Michael J. Daly, Ph.D., associate professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), Department of Pathology, shows that the ability of the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans to endure and survive enormous levels of ionizing radiation (X-rays and gamma-rays) relies on a powerful mechanism that…
clock | March 21, 2007Another Chance To See
The Tree of Life
Flop Eared Mule
Blog about science
Monkey Fluids
Idyllopus
EFFin' Unsound
Sex, genes & evolution
The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Postdoc
Denialism.com
Cyberspace Rendezvous
clock | March 21, 2007Eavesdropping Nuthatches Appear To Understand Chickadees In Distress:
If Dr. John Watson had been chronicling the work of Christopher Templeton rather than the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, he might have entitled the latest research by Templeton "The Adventure of the Avian Eavesdroppers." The University of Washington doctoral student has found the first example of an animal making sophisticated decisions about the danger posed by a predator from the information contained in the alarm calls of another species.
Grrrrl explains.
clock | March 20, 2007I have written about the relationship between circadian clocks and food numerous times (e.g., here, here and here). Feeding times affect the clock. Clock is related to hunger and obesity. Many intestinal peptides affect the clock as well.
There is a lot of research on food-entrainable oscillators, but almost nothing on the possibility that there is a separate circadian pacemaker in the intestine. It is usually treated as a peripheral clock, entirely under the influence of the SCN pacemaker in the brain, even when it shows oscillations in clock-gene expression for several days in a dish.…
clock | March 20, 2007No Sex For 40 Million Years? No Problem:
A group of organisms that has never had sex in over 40 million years of existence has nevertheless managed to evolve into distinct species, says new research published today. The study challenges the assumption that sex is necessary for organisms to diversify and provides scientists with new insight into why species evolve in the first place.
The research, published in PLoS Biology, focuses on the study of bdelloid rotifers, microscopic aquatic animals that live in watery or occasionally wet habitats including ponds, rivers, soils, and on mosses and…
clock | March 20, 2007A few months ago, Mike defined the Compulsive Centrist Disorder and I have argued something similar a number of times in the past, e.g., here and here. In short - there is no such thing as a political middle. There is no line between "Left" and "Right" that you can put your own dot on. Most issues are quite binary - there is a "for" position and an "against" position, with each perhaps having additional modifiers. On each issue, one makes a decision. If on most issues you take a conservative option, you are predominantly conservative, and likewise for liberal option. Most people hold…
clock | March 20, 2007In the back-channels here on Scienceblogs and on Panda's Thumb we were discussing the pros and cons of paying so much attention to one Dr.Michael Egnor, a new creationist shill for the Discovery Institute. Yes, it feels like a tremendous waste of time to debunk incredibly stupid (and incredibly old and well-worn and well-debunked) claims of a very minor figure in the anti-Enlightenment movement.
But, who knows, one day he may appear in MSM (you know how they like to show "both sides" of everything!) and some journalist (or just interested people) will like to know who this Michael Egnor is…
clock | March 20, 2007Grand Rounds: Volume 3, Issue 26 is up on Blog, MD
Carnival of The Green #69 is up on The Goode Life
clock | March 20, 2007Crows Can Recognize The Calls Of Relatives:
Most of us would know our mother's voice on the phone from the first syllable uttered. A recent Cornell study suggests that crows also can recognize the voices of their relatives. By recording and analyzing the alarm caws of American crows, Jessica Yorzinski '05 found seven subtle acoustic differences in features that differed among individuals -- differences that the crows could potentially use to recognize one another's calls. She also found that female crows had higher-pitched calls than males. Yorzinski is now a graduate student at the…
clock | March 20, 2007The first four books in the Cherry Ames series are back in print, published by Springer Publishing Company.
Apparently, many people, upon reading them, decided to join the nursing profession. Mind you, that was between 1943 and 1968. when these books first came out.
I bet Kim was the first one to order the new reprints (although I bet she still keeps her old originals somewhere around the house). My wife is ordering her set today.
clock | March 20, 2007Actually, no, he knows exactly where they went - and for a good reason:
Shooting Marbles At 16,000 Miles Per Hour:
NASA scientist Bill Cooke is shooting marbles and he's playing "keepsies." The prize won't be another player's marbles, but knowledge that will help keep astronauts safe when America returns to the Moon in the next decade. Cooke is firing quarter-inch diameter clear shooters - Pyrex glass, to be exact - at soil rather than at other marbles. And he has to use a new one on each round because every 16,000 mph (7 km/s) shot destroys his shooter.
clock | March 19, 2007Just in case you have not seen it yet, Bee of Backreaction blog has posted an interesting trio of posts well worth reading (each in the series, IMHO, better than the previous): Science and Democracy, part I, part II and part IIi. They are a little physics-centric (especially part I), but if you squint just right, you can easily translate it into any scientific field you are ineterested in. Join in the commenting over there.