clock | January 28, 2007Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz (1950 - )
clock | January 27, 2007Considering I've been writing textbook-like tutorials on chronobiology for quite a while now, trying always to write as simply and clearly as possible, and even wrote a Basic Concepts And Terms post, I am surprised that I never actually defined the term "biological clock" itself before, despite using it all the time.
Since the science bloggers started writing the 'basic concepts and terms' posts recently, I've been thinking about the best way to define 'biological clock' and it is not easy! Let me try, under the fold:
A biological clock is a structure that times regular re-occurence of…
clock | January 27, 2007Nicole Eugene recently defended her Masters Thesis called Potent Sleep: The Cultural Politics of Sleep (PDF) on a topic that I find fascinating:
Why is sleep, a moment that is physiologically full and mentally boundless, thought to be a moment of absence and powerlessness? Where did this devalued notion of sleep come from and how can we situate sleep studies within a continuation of a historical processes and economic infuences? In other words, how does sleep effect and exist within systems of power? To answer these questions I turn to a range of scholarship and theoretical studies to examine…
clock | January 27, 2007.. when someone rips PETA a new one...
Added later: Jill and Chris have more (and watch all those disccussions in the comment threads on all three posts!).
Added even later: Archy has a great analysis of this.
clock | January 27, 2007
I am:
Robert A. Heinlein
Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.
Which science fiction writer are you?
clock | January 27, 2007There are also more responses to the U of California lawsuit described by Sara Robinson the other day.
See what Amanda and PZ Myers have to say about it.
Edit: and Mike
clock | January 27, 2007More and more science bloggers are chiming in on the story about a nasty PR campaign against open-source publishing. See Revere, Alex, Steve, Tim and Corie for a taste and several more are linked from here. Also, read David Biello in Scientific American who wrote an article about it: Open Access to Science Under Attack
Update: Now WaPo chimes in here (thanks Alex).
Please go to discuss this on the SciAm blog.
clock | January 27, 2007The Merriam-Webster Word of the Day for January 27, 2007 is:
quotidian ⢠\kwoh-TID-ee-un\ ⢠adjective
1 : occurring every day
*2 : belonging to each day : everyday
3 : commonplace, ordinary
Example Sentence:
As an employee, Fiona is gifted at solving the difficult problems that arise from time to time, but she is often careless about the quotidian responsibilities of her job.
Did you know?
In Shakespeare's play As You Like It, the character Rosalind observes that Orlando, who has been running about in the woods carving her name on trees and hanging love poems on branches, "…
clock | January 27, 2007Fish Can Determine Their Social Rank By Observation Alone, Study Finds:
A male fish can size up potential rivals, and even rank them from strongest to weakest, simply by watching how they perform in territorial fights with other males, according to a new study by Stanford University scientists. The researchers say their discovery provides the first direct evidence that fish, like people, can use logical reasoning to figure out their place in the pecking order.
Genetic Evaluations Help Breed Better Bossies:
Breeding dairy cattle is an inexact science, so many gene-linked traits must be…
clock | January 26, 2007There is never enough time, unless you're serving it.
Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
clock | January 26, 2007After a very pleasant dinner on Saturday where we discovered we agree on pretty much everything (e.g., religion, evolution, etc.), I am pleased that Larry Moran and I also agree on yet another thing.
clock | January 26, 2007
I am not surprised at all.
Read more on Splintered Mind and Cognitive Daily (check the comments on both)
clock | January 26, 2007I was too busy with the conference so I missed the NPR Morning Edition story on one of my favourite subjects: Adolescent Sleep, which was followed by two more stories on the same subject! I am glad to see this topic becoming this prominent.
Hat-tip: Mind Hacks
clock | January 26, 2007In this Sunday's NY Times Magazine (not available online yet), Michael Pollan will have the cover story: "The Age of Nutritionism: How Scientists have Ruined the Way We Eat."
Looking forward to reading (and perhaps blogging) it.
Update: You can now read it here.
clock | January 26, 2007Write about science and get exposure - send your stuff to carnivals.
Calls for submissions have been announced for Tangled Bank, Grand Rounds, Skeptic's Circle, Mendel's Garden, Bio::Blogs, Encephalon, Circus of the Spineless, I And The Bird, Philosophia Naturalis, Change Of Shift, Radiology Grand Rounds, Four Stone Hearth, Festival of the Trees, Oekologie, Teaching Carnival, History Carnival.
And you just missed submitting to the first Carnival of Postdocs as it just went live today, but you can apply to host the next one or submit your posts to the next edition.
clock | January 26, 2007SCIndex is a new online project that provides a searchable database of scientific publications in Serbia. Some papers are in Serbian language, others in English (and they all tend to have at least the Abstract in English) and all papers are available as PDFs for free download. KoBSON has more information about the project.
clock | January 26, 2007This is two years old (February 16, 2005) but still as provocative....(also my belated contirbution to the Blog For Choice Day) and I'll repost the second part of it next Friday.
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William Raspberry wrote an editorial in Washington Post last weekend (I picked a link to a syndication that does not require registration instead of dinosaurid WaPo) about the sexual practices of young people, mainly college people. This is not the first time he wrote on this topic. For instance, he wrote a column a few years ago, immediately after the release of the…
clock | January 26, 2007Comparative analysis of sexual dreams of male and female students (PDF)
The subject of research is analysis of connection between sexuality as instinctive function and dreams with sexual content as cognitive function. The sample consisted of 656 students, 245 males and 411 females. Research showed significant difference between genders concerning sexual dreams their appearance, frequency, image of sexual partner, and content subjective emotional experience during dreams and talk about sexual fantasies. Based on the obtained data, the authors believe that dreams with sexual content are not…
clock | January 26, 2007As always, put the press releases under the dissecting microscopes:
Thinking With The Spinal Cord?:
Two scientists from the University of Copenhagen have demonstrated that the spinal cord use network mechanisms similar to those used in the brain. The discovery is featured in the current issue of Science.
More under the fold...
Quitting Smoking May Be Harder If Mom Smoked During Pregnancy:
Quitting smoking may be more difficult for individuals whose mothers smoked during pregnancy, according to animal research conducted by Duke University Medical Center researchers. Prenatal exposure to…