clock | May 7, 2009The latest Skeptic's Circle is up on Ferret's Cage
Carnival of the Liberals, Number 90 is up on Quiche Moraine
clock | May 7, 2009How Social Insects Recognize Dead Nestmates:
When an ant dies in an ant nest or near one, its body is quickly picked up by living ants and removed from the colony, thus limiting the risk of colony infection by pathogens from the corpse. The predominant understanding among entomologists - scientists who study insects - was that dead ants release chemicals created by decomposition (such as fatty acids) that signal their death to the colony's living ants.
'Hobbits' Couldn't Hustle: Feet Of Homo Floresiensis Were Primitive But Not Pathological:
A detailed analysis of the feet of Homo floresiensis…
clock | May 6, 2009There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.
- John Hoyer Updike
clock | May 6, 2009There are 12 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:
Adult-Generated Hippocampal Neurons Allow the Flexible Use of Spatially Precise Learning Strategies:
Despite enormous progress in the past few years the specific contribution of newly born granule cells to the…
clock | May 6, 2009Letting it All Hang Out: The Personal Genome Project
May 19, 2009
6:30-8:30 p.m. with discussion beginning at 7:00 followed by Q&A
Tir Na Nog 218 South Blount Street, Raleigh, 833-7795
Two years ago no one knew what personal genomics was; now it's everywhere. For a few hundred dollars, you can have a peak at part of your own genome. You can theoretically learn your genetic risks for various diseases. And some companies say you can find romance based on your DNA. But what is all this stuff really? What does it actually mean? What will genomic privacy look like in the digital age? The…
clock | May 6, 2009I know PZ has recently posted a picture and a video of slugs mating. But these pictures were taken here in North Carolina, by blog reader Kris Barstow, who says:
The year was 1999 plus or minus a year, the site was a few miles from Asheboro, NC. I don't recall the season, but it was warm, and there is definitely a chill there in the cold seasons, so I assume spring or summer. It was about half an hour after sunrise; I was walking my dog. I would occasionally carry my camera "just because ..."
I saw these two acting strangely on the surface of the wooden shed. They actually attached themselves…
clock | May 6, 2009It is really sad when an independent book store closes. It is even sadder when that book store was not just a shop but also a center of local community, a place where people gathered to have coffee, talk, interact with boook authors, take art or yoga classes, participate in theater or children's activities. But the economic downturn is affecting everyone and Market Street Books in Southern Village was forced to close by May 1st.
I went there a couple of times last week, to commiserate with the employees and volunteers who were packing, wondering what the future will bring for them and picked…
clock | May 5, 2009The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.
-Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)
clock | May 5, 2009Circus of the Spineless #38 is up on Birder's Lounge
May 2009 edition of Scientiae Part II is up on Endless Possibilities v2.0
Carnival of the Green #178 is up on Go Green Travel Green
Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 33 is up on Nursing Handover
clock | May 5, 2009There are 16 new articles in PLoS ONE today (as well as 13 last night and 5 on Friday night). 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:
Darwin's Manufactory Hypothesis Is Confirmed and Predicts the Extinction Risk of Extant Birds:
In the Origin of Species Darwin hypothesized that the "manufactory" of…
clock | May 5, 2009
Discussion with David Cohn, Mathew Ingram, Amber MacArthur, Sarah Milstein and Jay Rosen.
A good conversation for those interested in Twitter and the current journalistic revolution, calm-headed and smart.
Steve Paikin, who did the interview, was sometimes a little hazy about what journalism is, mixing up breaking news with news analysis with investigative journalism - I wish he has read my little classification effort - but the others corrected him politely. Worth 38 minutes of your time.
clock | May 5, 2009Brian made me do this:
There are several others in this series, featuring warthogs, pterodactyls, mammoths and moas....all found on YouTube
clock | May 4, 2009You know I went to the #TriangleTweetup last week at @Bronto, an Email Service Provider in Durham, NC, with an inflatable brontosaurus as its mascot:
Apart from searching Twitter for TriangleTweetup, you could also follow @triangletweetup for updates. At one point during the event, the hashtag was 'trending' but I don't know how high it got.
There were about 250 people there, mostly programers, web developers and PR folks. Reminds me of the old bloggercons. Will tweetups also evolve over the years to attract more people who are using it and less people who are designing it? A first Science…
clock | May 4, 2009...are three blogs written by the same person - Ross Horsley, a librarian with interesting creative juices.
Her first blog is My First Dictionary in which she uses pictures from an old 1950s kids' Dictionary and replaces the text with something....usually ominous!
Her second blog is Musty Moments with old clippings and ads, sometimes with her own text added:
And the third is Anchorwoman In Peril! where she reviews slash-pics:
Read the interview with Horsley at NO JUAN HERE
clock | May 4, 2009Just read it here, then bookmark it for the next time you write a blog post about a PLoS paper...
clock | May 4, 2009Scientia Pro Publica 3: the Swine 'flu Edition is up on Deep Thoughts and Silliness
Carnival of the Blue 24 is up on Monterey Bay Aquarium's SeaNotes
clock | May 3, 2009The more important the title, the more self-important the person, the greater the amount of time spent on the Eastern shuttle, the more suspicious the man and the less vitality in the organization.
- Jane O'Reilly
clock | May 3, 2009Dolphins Maintain Round-the-clock Visual Vigilance:
Dolphins have a clever trick for overcoming sleep deprivation. Sam Ridgway from the US Navy Marine Mammal Program explains that they are able to send half of their brains to sleep while the other half remains conscious. What is more, the mammals seem to be able to remain continually vigilant for sounds for days on end. All of this made Ridgway and his colleagues from San Diego and Tel Aviv wonder whether the dolphins' unrelenting auditory vigilance tired them and took a toll on the animals' other senses?
Dietary Fats Trigger Long-term Memory…
clock | May 3, 2009I am pretty much on record that I would not pay for anything online (to be precise, to pay for content - I certainly use the Web for shopping). But with some caveats. I have been known to hit a PayPal button of people who provide content and information I find valuable. And I would presumably pay, though not being happy about it, if the information behind the pay wall is a) unique (i.e., not found anywhere else by any other means) and b) indispensable for my work (i.e., I would feel handicapped without it).
But I am not subscribed to, or paying for, anything right now and haven't been in…