clock | May 12, 2009Carel P. Brest van Kempen (yes, the artist who did the banner of this blog) submitted this video for a contest. I am not sure how the voting goes, but perhaps lots of visits to this YouTube video are the thing they are looking for:
clock | May 12, 2009There are 22 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, 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:
Ants Sow the Seeds of Global Diversification in Flowering Plants:
The extraordinary diversification of angiosperm plants in the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods has produced an estimated 250,000-300,000 living…
clock | May 11, 2009Sometimes I wonder if we live life by reliving life, rather than by living life.
- Michael Landon
clock | May 11, 2009Are you up to date on the hot debate in biology regarding how genes influence evolution? Some scientists contend genes are in the driver's seat. Others assign more pull to regulatory factors controlling genetic expression. At noon, Wednesday, May 27, come hear Duke biologist Greg Wray explore the importance of it all in a talk entitled "Hardware or Software: Searching for the Genetic Basis for Biological Diversity."
You may not want to miss this one. After Wray's talk, Pizza Talk embarks on its traditional three-month summer vacation. The next nine-month series debuts in September.
Sigma Xi…
clock | May 11, 2009
Petnica Science Center has been doing science summer camps for high school graduates and undergrads for 25 years and many of its alumni went on to have good careers in science both in Serbia and abroad:
Petnica Science Center is the biggest and, probably, the oldest independent nonprofit organization for extracurricular science education in SE Europe. Since 1982, Petnica has organized more than 2,500 programs (seminars, workshops, research camps...) for nearly 50,000 students and science teachers in 15 disciplines of science, technology and humanities. Majority of programs are designed for…
clock | May 11, 2009Greenland's Constant Summer Sunlight Linked To Summer Suicide Spike:
Suicide rates in Greenland increase during the summer, peaking in June. Researchers speculate that insomnia caused by incessant daylight may be to blame. Karin Sparring Björkstén from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, led a team of researchers who studied the seasonal variation of suicides in all of Greenland from 1968-2002. They found that there was a concentration of suicides in the summer months, and that this seasonal effect was especially pronounced in the North of the country - an area where the sun doesn't set…
clock | May 10, 2009My Birthday! what a different sound
That word had in my youthful ears;
And how each time the day comes round,
Less and less white its mark appears.
- Thomas Moore
clock | May 10, 2009Miss Baker went to the Two Cultures conference in NYC, and there she showed this video of her students:
clock | May 10, 2009For a whole year, I knew the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Starting today, I am ignorant again.
clock | May 10, 2009Most people are aware that social insects, like honeybees, have three "sexes": queens, drones and workers.
Drones are males. Their only job is to fly out and mate with the queen after which they drop dead.
Female larvae fed 'royal jelly' emerge as queens. After mating, the young queen takes a bunch of workers with her and sets up a new colony. She lives much longer than other bees and spends her life laying gazillions of eggs continuously around the clock, while being fed by workers.
Female larvae not fed the 'royal jelly' emerge as workers.
Workers perform a variety of jobs in the hive.…
clock | May 9, 2009The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free or to be slaves.
- George Washington
clock | May 9, 2009Massage After Exercise Myth Busted:
A Queen's University research team has blown open the myth that massage after exercise improves circulation to the muscle and assists in the removal of lactic acid and other waste products.
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Kinesiology MSc candidate Vicky Wiltshire and Dr. Tschakovsky set out to discover if this untested hypothesis was true, and their results show that massage actually impairs blood flow to the muscle after exercise, and that it therefore also impairs the removal of lactic acid from muscle after exercise.
Spontaneous Activity Found In The Idling Brain:…
clock | May 8, 2009Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
- Joseph Wood Krutch
clock | May 8, 2009There are 11 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, 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:
To Be or Not to Be a Flatworm: The Acoel Controversy:
Since first described, acoels were considered members of the flatworms (Platyhelminthes). However, no clear synapomorphies among the three large flatworm taxa -…
clock | May 7, 2009Unprecedented Data On Circadian Rhythms Revealed:
Fluctuations in light intensity allow restoring the regularity of circadian rhythms. This is the main conclusion of the work carried out by Javier Buceta, group leader of The.Si.M.Bio.Sys. Group(Theoretical and In Silico Modelling of Biological Systems) from the Co.S.Mo Lab -based at the Barcelona Science Park- and Antoni DÃez-Noguera, dean at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Barcelona and group leader of Chronobiology at the Department of Physiology of the said faculty.
Scientists Surprised By Unexpected Emergence Of Periodical…
clock | May 7, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date and, as someone who has been through this three times already, I have to say I am impressed both by the number and the quality of submissions to date. And it's only early May!
As we have surpassed 130 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes, 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:…
clock | May 7, 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, 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:
Does Sleep Really Influence Face Recognition Memory?:
Mounting evidence implicates sleep in the consolidation of various kinds of memories. We investigated the effect of sleep on memory for face identity, a…