clock | December 30, 2006Sex Ends As Seasons Shift And Kisspeptin Levels Plummet:
A hormone implicated in the onset of human puberty also appears to control reproductive activity in seasonally breeding rodents, report Indiana University Bloomington and University of California at Berkeley scientists in the March 2007 issue of Endocrinology. The paper is now accessible online via the journal's rapid electronic publication service. The researchers present evidence that kisspeptin, a recently discovered neuropeptide encoded by the KiSS-1 gene, mediates the decline of male Siberian hamsters' libido and reproduction as…
clock | December 30, 2006
Stephanie Holmgren is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference
clock | December 29, 2006You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
Arlo Guthrie (1947 - )
clock | December 29, 2006John Edwards Identifies Global Warming as a Priority in His Presidential Campaign:
John Edwards has clearly made global warming a prominent part of his campaign at least at this early stage and has met one of the criteria (#2) that I identified. By including it as one of the issues he has chosen to highlight in his announcement for president, he is saying to voters that he takes the issue seriously and is implicitly promising to take action if he is elected. By my criteria John Edward's campaign is off to a good start on global warming. I hope he continues to talk about global warming at his…
clock | December 29, 2006Martin Rundkvist is a very smart guy. By renaming his blog from Salto Sobrius to Aardvarchaeology, he has displaced my blog from the vaunted #1 spot on the alphabetical list of SB blogs on the front page! Go say Hello and Welcome to this great addition to the Seed blogging family!
clock | December 29, 2006I've been lazy over the holidays with my blogging, so I'll defer, once again, to Physics Of Sex blog:
Part 2 of Pumped Up and Ready for Love: Sex and Fluid Physics
And once the flow gets going, you may want to make sure that your toys are ethical.
clock | December 29, 2006Zoo trumpets birth of rare African okapi :
The Brookfield Zoo announced this week the birth of a baby okapi - an endangered African animal that looks as if it were put together by committee.
With a dark brown body and striped upper hind legs, the 1-month-old female looks a bit like a zebra, but claims closer ties to a giraffe. Her name, Sauda, means "dark beauty" in Swahili.
Not yet on public display, except through a video feed from her quiet nesting area with her mother, baby Sauda will make her debut in the zoo's African forest exhibit in the spring.
-------------------------------
The zoo…
clock | December 29, 2006Which one are you? (December 25, 2005)
--------------------------------------
Big debate over Wonkery and Activism on blogs is brewing around the biggies in the Left Blogistan. Let me rehash it quickly before starting my own rant.
It all started with a Washington Monthly article titled Kos Call by Benjamin Wallace-Wells:
"Moulitsas is just basically uninterested in the intellectual and philosophical debates that lie behind the daily political trench warfare. By his own admission, he just doesn't care about policy.
--------------------
He doesn't pretend to be a policy wonk. But the more that…
clock | December 29, 2006How Zebra Finches Learn Songs: Cellular Killer Also Important To Memory:
A protein known primarily for its role in killing cells also plays a part in memory formation, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report. Their work exploring how zebra finches learn songs could have implications for treatment of neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
-----------------
"Graham had this intuition that growth and memory is really a kind of remodeling," said Clayton, who is a professor of cell and structural biology. "You can't have growth without…
clock | December 29, 2006
Becky Oskin is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference
clock | December 28, 2006If you read the papers or watched TV today, you may have gotten the impression that Edwards announced his run this morning around 9am in front of TV cameras. Wrong! The MSM folks think they still matter and are blind to everything happening outside of their domain.
The first people he directly announced to were about 20 of us bloggers on a teleconference phone call last night around 7pm. Soon afterwards, his campaign posted this video on YouTube, soon followed by the launch of his website.
Then, after the NOLA announcement, he spent about two hours on DailyKos answering questions from more…
clock | December 28, 2006That title was the only way I could think of to connect nurses and birds....
I and the Bird #39 - A Visit from Sandy Claws - is up on Natural Visions.
Change of Shift: Vol 1, No 14 is up on NeoNurseChick
clock | December 28, 2006Here is the next installment of my lecture notes for teh adult education speed-class in biology. As always, I ask for corrections and suggestions for improvement (May 20, 2006):
--------------------------------------
BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 3 - Part 1
Imagine that you are a zebra, grazing in the savannah. Suddenly, you smell a lion. A moment later, you hear a lion approaching and, out of the corner of your eye, you see the lion running towards you.
What happens next? You start running away, of course. How does that happen? Your brain receieved information from your sensory…
clock | December 28, 2006Africa's Least-known Carnivore In Tanzania: Mongoose Is One More Rare Find:
The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced that a camera-trap study in the mountains of Southern Tanzania has now recorded Africa's least-known and probably rarest carnivore: Jackson's mongoose, known only from a few observations and museum specimens.
Pet Owners Are Sick More Often And Exercise Less Than Other Working-aged People, Study Finds:
A common perception is that pet owner is a young person who is full of action, exercises a lot, and actively plays with a pet, particularly with a dog.…
clock | December 28, 2006
Marissa Mills is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference
clock | December 27, 2006All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.
Baltasar Gracian