clock | July 18, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 210 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post
A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…
clock | July 18, 2009Ah, with all the traveling I forgot to post the 'Best of" post on the 1st of the month. But what the heck - I got new readers over the past couple of weeks, so better late than never. So here it goes - I posted 150 times in June. Here are some of the highlights.
I announced my plans for the trip to Germany and Serbia and later added some more details.
I was interviewed by Caryn Shechtman at Nature Network and later reposted the interview here.
I went to the XXVI International Association of Science Parks World Conference on Science & Technology Parks in Raleigh and wrote a longish post…
clock | July 18, 2009This time, the Seed Overlords could not keep the secret from me - I knew about this move for a month!
Go and say Hello to the newest SciBling, another librarian blogger, Dorothea Salo at The Book of Trogool (you can browse Dorothea's old archives at Caveat Lector to get a feel for her amazing writing).
clock | July 18, 2009One of the assumptions in the study of circadian organization is that, at the level of molecules and cells, all vertebrate (and perhaps all animal) clocks work in roughly the same way. The diversity of circadian properties is understood to be a higher-level property of interacting multicellular and multi-organ circadian systems: how the clocks receive environmental information, how the multiple pacemakers communicate and synchronize with each other, how they convey the temporal information to the peripheral clocks in all the other cells in the body, and how peripheral clocks generate…
clock | July 17, 2009We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder censorship, we call it concern for commercial viability.
- James Russell Lowell
clock | July 17, 2009This April 09, 2006 post places another paper of ours (Reference #17) within a broader context of physiology, behavior, ecology and evolution.
The paper was a result of a "communal" experiment in the lab, i.e., it was not included in anyone's Thesis. My advisor designed it and started the experiment with the first couple of birds. When I joined the lab, I did the experiment in an additional number of animals. When Chris joined the lab, he took over the project and did the rest of the lab work, including bringing in the idea for an additional experiment that was included, and some of the…
clock | July 17, 2009As you may remember, a beautiful mammoth fossil was discovered in Serbia a couple of months ago. I promised I'd try to go and see it myself on my recent trip to Belgrade. And I did get to see it. But the story is more fun than just that.... ;-)
First, I tried to get in touch with Dr.Miomir KoraÄ, the Director of the Archaeological park Viminacium to ask for permission to photograph the fossil as well as to interview him. After a couple of e-mail addresses bounced, I got what I think is the correct address...but got no response.
Once I got to Belgrade, I asked my contacts there about this and…
clock | July 17, 2009The 115th Skeptic's Circle is up on Effort Sisyphus
Friday Ark #252 is up on Modulator
clock | July 17, 2009This post (written on August 13, 2005) describes the basic theory behind photoperiodism and some experimental protocols developed to test the theory.
Timely prediction of seasonal periods of weather conditions, food availability or predator activity is crucial for survival of many species. Although not the only parameter, the changing length of the photoperiod ('daylength') is the most predictive environmental cue for the seasonal timing of physiology and behavior, most notably for timing of migration, hibernation and reproduction. While rising spring temperatures may vary from year to year,…
clock | July 16, 2009To carry care to bed is to sleep with a pack on your back.
- Thomas C. Haliburton
clock | July 16, 2009This post from March 27, 2006 starts with some of my old research and poses a new hypothesis.
The question of animal models
There are some very good reasons why much of biology is performed in just a handful of model organisms. Techniques get refined and the knowledge can grow incrementally until we can know quite a lot of nitty-gritty details about a lot of bioloigcal processes. One need not start from Square One with every new experiment with every new species. One should, of course, occasionally test how generalizable such findings are to other organisms, but the value of models is hard…
clock | July 16, 2009There are 23 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:
Morphometrics Parallel Genetics in a Newly Discovered and Endangered Taxon of Galápagos Tortoise:
Galápagos tortoises represent the only surviving lineage of giant tortoises that exhibit two different…
clock | July 16, 2009The Giant's Shoulders #13 are up on Skulls in the Stars
July Accretionary Wedge is up on Volcanista
clock | July 16, 2009That is the title of the article in the latest issue of BioScience by Elia Ben-Ari (@smallpkg on Twitter) which just came online today (if you'd rather see the PDF, click here).
It is a nice article about Twitter and the way scientists use it, the difference between 'lifecasting' and 'mindcasting' (with attribution to Jay Rosen for the concept), a brief mention of FriendFeed, and quotes from Jonathan Eisen, David Bradley and myself. It also mentions the National Phenology Network and North Carolina Sea Grant experiments in using Twitter for collection of scientific data.
clock | July 16, 2009A year ago, almost none of my old school friends were on Facebook. Today, many are.
Facebook statistics show that this past year has seen a huge influx of people, globally, of roughly my age who are not techies or bloggers, just normal people. Over the past 5-6 years, Facebook has evolved and changed quite a lot. Some of the best and most liked functionalities on Facebook right now are blatant copies of the best aspects of FriendFeed and Twitter and Flickr and YouTube and Dopplr and LinkedIn and other services (some of which are now already dead).
As us oldsters are joining in great numbers…
clock | July 16, 2009Sally-Christine Rodgers and Randy Repass do a TON for ocean conservation around the world, including supporting students and getting the right folks involved on the ground. They wrote this letter and asked a bunch of us bloggers to spread it around the Web:
_______
We are both lifelong boaters. What we have learned from sailing across the Pacific over the past 6 years, and especially from scientists focused on marine conservation, is startling. Whether you spend time on the water or not, Ocean Acidification affects all of us and is something we believe you will want to know about.
What…
clock | July 16, 2009This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior.
So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year.
Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…
clock | July 15, 2009There are 20 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:
The Aversive Effect of Electromagnetic Radiation on Foraging Bats--A Possible Means of Discouraging Bats from Approaching Wind Turbines:
Large numbers of bats are killed by collisions with wind turbines and…
clock | July 15, 2009Four Stone Hearth #71 is up on Neuroanthropology
Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 43 are at Medicine & Technology