clock | July 10, 2009I am now going to make you a gift that will stay with you the rest of your life. For the rest of your life, every time you say we've always done it that way, my ghost will appear and haunt you for twenty-four hours.
- Grace Murray Hopper
clock | July 10, 2009
A January 20, 2006 post placing a cool physiological/behavioral study into an evolutionary context.
There are two main hypotheses - not mutually exclusive - for the adaptive value of having a circadian clock. One is the Internal Synchronization hypothesis, stating that the circadian clock serves to synchronize biochemical and physiological processes within the body. The second is the External Synchronization hypothesis, stating that the circadian clock serves to syncronize the physiology and behavior to the natural environment.
The prediction from the Internal Hypothesis is that circadian…
clock | July 10, 2009There are 19 new articles published last night and 22 new articles published today in PLoS ONE. 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:
Energy Stores Are Not Altered by Long-Term Partial Sleep Deprivation in Drosophila melanogaster:
Recent human studies reveal a widespread association…
clock | July 10, 2009From Quail Ridge Books
Quail Ridge Books & Music
hosts author
Sheril Kirshenbaum
for a discussion of her book
UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA: HOW SCIENTIFIC ILLITERACY THREATENS OUR FUTURE
Thursday, July 23 at 7:30 pm
Climate change, the energy crisis, nuclear proliferation -- many of the most urgent problems of the twenty-first century require science-based solution. And yet Americans are paying less and less attention to scientists. Journalist and author Chris Mooney (The Republican War on Science) and Duke scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum explain how religious ideologues, a weak education system,…
clock | July 10, 2009Twitter-friendly I and the bird #104 is up on A birding blog by Gunnar Engblom - part I and part II.
Friday Ark #251 is up on Modulator
clock | July 10, 2009The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January.
Today, I asked Bob O'Hara of the Deep Thoughts and Silliness blog to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?
My name is Bob O'Hara, but I comment on blogs and such places under the absolutely…
clock | July 10, 2009As you know, I gave two lectures here in Belgrade. The first one, at the University Library on Monday, and the second one at the Oncology Institute of the School of Medicine at the University of Belgrade. As the two audiences were different (mainly librarians/infoscientists at the first, mainly professors/students of medicine at the second) I geared the two talks differently.
You can listen to the audio of the entire thing (the second talk) here, see some pictures (from both talks) here and read (in Serbian) a blog post here, written by incredible Ana Ivkovic who organized my entire Belgrade…
clock | July 10, 2009As the Universiade is happening in Belgrade right now, the city is full of young people from around the world and there is a lot of cool stuff in town, including a variety of clay figurines emerging out of asphalt:
clock | July 10, 2009Going into more and more detail, here is a February 11, 2005 post about the current knowledge about the circadian organization in my favourite animal - the Japanese quail.
Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica), also known as the Asian Migratory Quail, are gallinaceous birds from the family Phasianidae, until 1960s thought to be a subspecies of European migratory quail (Coturnix coturnix coturnix), but now considered to be a separate species, designated as Coturnix japonica. The breeding range of the wild population encompasses Siberia, Mongolia, northeastern China and Japan, while the…
clock | July 9, 2009Better to strive and climb, And never reach your goal, Than to drift along with time - An aimless, worthless soul, Aye better to climb and fall Or sow, though the yield be small, Than to throw away day after day And never strive at all.
- Grace B. Hinkey
clock | July 9, 2009This is an appropriate time of year for this post (February 05, 2006)...
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So, why do I say that it is not surprising the exposure to bright light alleviates both seasonal depression and other kinds of depression, and that different mechanisms may be involved?
In mammals, apart from visual photoreception (that is, image formation), there is also non-visual photoreception. The receptors of the former are the rods and cones that you all learned about in middle school. The receptors for the latter are a couple of thousand Retinal Ganglion…
clock | July 9, 2009The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January.
Today, I asked Stacy Baker, everyone's favorite Biology cyber-teacher, to answer a few questions.
Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?
I'm a high school biology teacher. I've taught general, honors, and advanced placement biology for the past four years.…
clock | July 9, 2009 This post was originally written on February 11, 2005. Moving from relatively simple mammalian model to more complex systems.
I have previously described the basic properties of the circadian organization in mammals. Non-mammalian vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds) have more complex circadian systems than mammals. While the suprachiasmatic area remains a site of circadian pacemakers, it is, unlike in mammals, not the only such site.
The pineal organ, which in mammals is a purely secretory organ, is directly photosensitive in other vertebrates (with the exception of snakes)…
clock | July 8, 2009One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.
- Governor George W. Bush
clock | July 8, 2009Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 42 are up on Pharmamotion
Change of Shift Volume Four, Number One is up on Emergiblog
clock | July 8, 2009
When teaching human or animal physiology, it is very easy to come up with examples of ubiqutous negative feedback loops. On the other hand, there are very few physiological processes that can serve as examples of positive feedback. These include opening of the ion channels during the action potential, the blood clotting cascade, emptying of the urinary bladder, copulation, breastfeeding and childbirth. The last two (and perhaps the last three!) involve the hormone oxytocin. The childbirth, at least in humans, is a canonical example and the standard story goes roughly like this:
When…
clock | July 8, 2009The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January.
Today, I asked Stephanie Zvan of the Almost Diamonds and Quiche Moraine blogs and co-moderator of the session on Science Fiction on Science Blogs, to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?
I have…
clock | July 8, 2009The Science Café for July (description below) will be held on July 21st at Tir Na Nog. This is the season when our utility bills begin to skyrocket. Our costly electric bills often bring into focus the high demand our community has for energy, as well as questions about where electricity will be coming from in the future as North Carolina's population grows. This will be the subject of our next cafe. We will be meeting Dr. David McNelis from UNC-Chapel Hill's Institute for the Environment. Dr. McNelis will give us information about options that we have for energy production in our…
clock | July 8, 2009I asked last year. And several other SciBlings also asked last year.
And now the fashion is starting again, I see. It started with Ed, and was picked up by DM and Sci. So, let me ask again:
Identify yourself in the comments. Even if you've never commented before, speak up. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? Are you interesting lay-person, practicing scientist, journalist, sentient virus, or something else? Are you a close friend, colleague, acquaintance or stranger?