neurotopia | February 27, 2007Looking for The Bank? It will appear here this afternoon EST. I have a couple questions for the host and I have some fun fun monkey lab business to attend to in the morning, so once I get the final word from PZ after that I'll put it up.
Have a great day!!!
neurotopia | February 12, 2007It's official! In honor of Darwin Day celebrations everywhere, the Alliance for Science is having their first annual Evolution Essay contest! This year's question: Why would you want your doctor to have studied evolution?
Pop on over for contest details, if you're a high school student. First prize is $300, Second is $200, etc. Plus there are a lot of autographed books on evolution that you can win!!! Teachers, prompt your students. If yours wins you get $250 towards lab supplies! Students, submit something! For 1000 words you can buy a semester's worth of books in college, or make a…
neurotopia | February 8, 2007Darwin Day is fast approaching! In honor of Charles Darwin's birthday and his intellectual achievements, the Alliance for Science is starting an annual Darwin Day essay contest geared at high school students. We will be accepting essays from the 50 states, submissions sent by email. There will be cash prizes for the top entries, magazine subscriptions, and numerous signed books on evolution, creationism, or other relevant topics in biology available as prizes. Teachers, if your student is the winner then we will also kick in some money for your science labs.
Now here's the kicker: we don…
neurotopia | January 19, 2007Welcome to the latest edition of Mendel's Garden (in late bloom). To kick off, we have a number of posts relating to parthenogenesis in Komodo dragons. Evolgen, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, and and PZ give us the miracle of virgin births!
Phil B. presents How to Divide by Zero posted at Phil for Humanity. In another post, Phil brings up Global Warming, with the warning "Either our world leaders are going to recognize global warming as a real threat to humanity and address it properly, or the entire human population may become extinct." Read about it atGlobal Warming: Mankind'…
neurotopia | January 4, 2007The blog carnival Mendel's Garden got bumped because of the holiday. I've decided to post it this coming Monday, so I'm giving everyone until Sunday at 6pm EST to get their posts in!
neurotopia | January 2, 2007Check out the blog carnival Mendel's Garden and then send me your submissions. Due to the holiday, we're going to try and set up the carnival for later in the week when everybody is done traveling and back to their routine. I'm going to shoot for the morning of Friday the 5th to get everybody time to send their submissions my way.
neurotopia | January 1, 2007Check out the blog carnival Mendel's Garden and then send me your submissions. Due to the holiday, we're going to try and set up the carnival for later in the week when everybody is done traveling and back to their routine. I'm going to shoot for the morning of Friday the 5th to get everybody time to send their submissions my way.
neurotopia | December 20, 2006Welcome to Encephalon # 13!!!! Unlucky though it may be, we're up and running (and better late than never). I have to apologize to Encephalon readers, I've been trying to deal with my position being on the chopping block out of the blue. Yes, Virginia, the government doesn't offer job security either.
The next edition will be on 15th January at Mixing Memory, and not on New Year's Day as previously scheduled.
So let's get down to bidness!
We'll kick off with a post on FAK and Control of Axon Guidance, where Migrations comments on a relatively recent paper in Nature Neuroscience by Robles…
neurotopia | December 20, 2006I was going to comment on the whole Women/Scifi/Brown people argument going on in other areas of this blog, but since the culprit said it better than I ever could have, I'll just let his words speak for me. (Emphasis mine).
Now, does this surprise many of the readers of this weblog??? Ed was implying that only whites are the elite, but the reality is that Indian Americans might not be absolutely represented in the elite (being fewer than 1% of the population), but any given brown American is likely to be quite well off. There is at least one other regular brown frequenter of the wine bar,…
neurotopia | December 18, 2006Got a bunch of work to finish up and I'll get to posting it this afternoon. Keep your eyes peeled. Next one won't be for almost a month so there's no rush!
neurotopia | December 1, 2006Looks like, once again, when somebody bothers to crunch the numbers those flimsy justifications for abstinence-only programs are found lacking.
"It is remarkable that teens are becoming better contraceptors even as there are efforts afoot to reduce the information and skill-building that they receive about contraception," said Freya L. Sonenstein, a professor and director of the Center for Adolescent Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Truer words have never been spoken.
Only 14 percent of the decline in pregnancy was attributed to reductions in teens' sexual activity,…
neurotopia | November 20, 2006A Thanksgiving Treat!!! Even people who don't like sweet potatoes will like these!!!
Apologies for not having exact quantities worked out, I generally eyeball these things and taste them at the end to determine what I need to add.
You will need:
4 good sized sweet potatoes or yams or both (the fat ones take longer to bake)
olive oil
approx 1/4 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp maple syrup or honey (can use more if you like, or use both of them)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp to 1 Tbsp butter or SmartBalance
approx 1 tsp cinnamon
approx 1/4 to 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
Any of these (optional):
approx 1/4 to…
neurotopia | November 20, 2006UFC 65 was a night of surprises. Who knew that Tim Sylvia had a ground game, almost choking out a guy (who looked like the love child of Danny DeVito, that guy from The Shield, and a neckless Uncle Fester on steroids) to defend the heavyweight title? Who knew James Irvin would do a better job of knocking his own ass down than would Hector Ramirez? Who knew Joe Stevenson's shirt would put up a better fight than his opponent? Who knew Vera would make Frank Mir his bitch? Ok we kinda saw that last one coming.
But what about the big event of the night... the Welterweight Title Fight?
Unless…
neurotopia | November 19, 2006Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) refers to a condition where recurrent seizures arise in the temporal lobe of the brain. This condition is seen in humans and animals. Often, TLE arises following a neural insult such as head trauma or tumor, but can also be triggered by infection. These febrile seizures are often seen in children under the age of five, and subsequent scans can show atrophy of temporal lobe structures such as the hippocampus. The hippocampus is highly interconnected with other temporal lobe structures, so a seizure that originates from or propagates through the hippocampus is…
neurotopia | November 7, 2006As it stands now, Webb is down 0.5% of the vote to George Felix "Macaca" Allen Jr. with 95% of precincts reporting in. Unfortunately for Macaca, I just checked the VA election results site and the precincts left are all in Webb territory-- Prince William's, Loudon, Richmond City, Newport counties.
I believe that if the results are within 0.5%, there is a mandatory recount in VA. Here's to hoping a non-racist is elected senator in VA tonight, and helps bring a semblance of accountability back to the US Senate.
Along with a few extra bucks to the NIH. Ok so I'm biased.
neurotopia | November 7, 2006Looks like the infamous abortion ban in South Dakota ain't gonna fly with the state's residents.
Opponents of South Dakota's abortion ban are maintaining their lead over those who favor the law.
With 194 of 818 precincts reporting results, 60 percent of voters cast "no" votes, according to results from the Secretary of State's Office.
The ban - which outlaws all abortions except those performed to save the life of a pregnant woman - is a direct challenge to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
Welcome back to the reality-based community, SD, and here's to…
neurotopia | November 2, 2006Looks like creationist paragon of moral fortitude Kent Hovind might be headed to the slammer.
Kent Hovind is charged with 58 federal counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes and withholdings.
If found guilty, he faces a maximum of 288 years in prison. His wife, Jo Hovind, faces up to 225 years. Her charges include aiding and abetting her husband with 44 counts of evading bank-reporting requirements.
Don't drop the soap, Kent.
neurotopia | October 18, 2006I had grand plans in mind for blogging this conference. Then I got a virus and spent the last 2.5 days or so in bed. Lovely. Barely got to even meet Shelley and Jake. Forced to eat room service for meal after meal. Barf!
I'll put some stuff together for next week. In the meantime, I gotta skip town. They're onto me.
neurotopia | October 15, 2006Almost too cute for words. Poor SFN conference virgin Jake just got his cherry popped. I tried to warn him that this conference is nuts, but does anybody ever listen to me? NOOOOO.
This afternoon had a good run of posters relating to transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's Disease. Got me thinking a bit about the utility of these models and what we're really testing with them. Ok ok, so I already thought about all this stuff before but I realized that I need to do a blog post on them. I'll collect my thoughts on the matter and get back to you, dear reader. In the meantime, I got to hit…
neurotopia | October 15, 2006Greetings and salutations from the 36th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience!!!! I'm gonna try and get back in the bloggin' business after some major life changes by writing about exciting news from the forefront. Unfortunately, the only thing I have to report so far is that Jake and Shelley and I had dinner last night and went clubbing, and poor Neurocontrarian ended up crashing on our floor after making out with some hottie.
Ahh, the scientific life. Gonna try and squeeze in an actual science post or two this afternoon, but as today I have to catch up with friends and…