A Blog Around The Clock

ClockQuotes

Category: Clock Quotes

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.

- William Shakespeare

Posted by Coturnix at 3:51 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Category: Science News

'Mitochondrial Eve' Research: Humanity Was Genetically Divided For 100,000 Years:

The human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have caused and maintained the separation.

Simple Artificial Cell Created From Scratch To Study Cell Complexity:

A team of Penn State researchers has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and the cytoplasm--the gelatinous fluid that surrounds the structures in living cells. The work could lead to the creation of new drugs that take advantage of properties of cell organization to prevent the development of diseases. The team's findings will be published later this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Crystal (Eye) Ball: Visual System Equipped With 'Future Seeing Powers':

Catching a football. Maneuvering through a room full of people. Jumping out of the way when a golfer yells "fore." Most would agree these seemingly simple actions require us to perceive and quickly respond to a situation. Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Mark Changizi argues they require something more -- our ability to foresee the future.

Weather, Waves And Wireless: Super Strength Signalling:

A new study from the University of Leicester has discovered a particular window of time when mobile signals and radio waves are 'super strength' -- allowing them to be clearer and travel greater distances, potentially interfering with other systems.

Gravity-defying Bird Beak Mystery Solved: Shorebirds Benefit From Surface Tension:

As Charles Darwin showed nearly 150 years ago, bird beaks are exquisitely adapted to the birds' feeding strategy. A team of MIT mathematicians and engineers has now explained exactly how some shorebirds use their long, thin beaks to defy gravity and transport food into their mouths.

Climbing As Easy As Walking For Smaller Primates:

Smaller primates expend no more energy climbing than they do walking, Duke University researchers have found. This surprising discovery may explain the evolutionary edge that encouraged the tiny ancestors of modern humans, apes and monkeys to climb into the trees about 65 million years ago and stay there.

Parrot Fossil 55 Million Years Old Discovered In Scandinavia:

Palaeontologists have discovered fossil remains in Scandinavia of parrots dating back 55 million years. Reported May 14 in the journal Palaeontology, the fossils indicate that parrots once flew wild over what is now Norway and Denmark.

Success By Learning: Smallest Predator Recognizes Prey By Its Shape:

The Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus) is one of the world's smallest mammals. It is about four centimetres long and weighs merely two grams. Being a nocturnal animal, it hunts predominantly with its sense of touch. Professor Michael Brecht (Bernstein Center for Computional Neuroscience, Berlin) now reported on the particularities of its hunting behaviour at the international conference "Development and function of somatosensation and pain" at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany. "As quick as a flash, the Etruscan shrew scans its prey and adapts, when necessary, its hunting strategy," explained Brecht in his talk. "Thus, no prey escapes."

Monkey Studies Important For Brain Science:

Studies with non-human primates have made major contributions to our understanding of the brain and will continue to be an important, if small, part of neuroscience research, according to a recent review published in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

Pain Free Without Numbness -- Substance Combination With Chili Peppers:

A dentist's injection typically causes numbness for several hours. This experience could soon be history. Now, Clifford Woolf, professor at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA, and his colleagues have developed a combination of two agents which is able to specifically block pain without producing numbness or motor paralysis. The substance is composed of a normally inactive derivative of the local anesthetic lidocaine, called QX314, and capsaicin, the pain-producing substance in chili peppers.

Culture Affects How Teen Girls See Sexual Harassment:

Teenage girls of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds still experience sexism and sexual harassment -- but cultural factors may control whether they perceive sexism as an environmental problem or as evidence of their own shortcomings.

Posted by Coturnix at 9:23 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

'The Hairy Beast' or 'Super Virgin'?

Category: Framing Science

Ha! Made you look! Which is exactly the point! Go and add your own ideas in the comments there....

Posted by Coturnix at 7:47 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Off to Florida....

Category: Housekeeping

...no idea what kind of Internet access I will have there, so I scheduled some re-posts and quotes to show up automatically. I'll add more if I can when I can.

Posted by Coturnix at 6:54 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Spider Boat

Category: Technology

I'd like to sail on this thing:

Bay Area engineer Ugo Conti has sailed the world, but has always suffered from seasickness. A queasy stomach became his motivation to design "Proteus" - a spider-like sea craft made for smoother sailing. He designed the Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel to cross the ocean while flexing with the movement of the waves. And it may change the way people take to the high seas.

Posted by Coturnix at 6:49 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Adolescent Sleep Schedule

Category: Rhythmic Human

This kind of ignorant bleating makes me froth at the mouth every time - I guess it is because this is my own blogging "turf".

One of the recurring themes of my blog is the disdain I have for people who equate sleep with laziness out of their Puritan core of understanding of the world, their "work ethic" which is a smokescreen for power-play, their vicious disrespect for everyone who is not like them, and the nasty feeling of superiority they have towards the teenagers just because they are older, bigger, stronger and more powerful than the kids. Not to forget the idiotic notions that kids need to be "hardened", or that, just because they managed to survive some hardships when they were teens, all the future generations have to be sentenced to the same types of hardships, just to make it even. This is bullying behavior, and disregarding and/or twisting science in the search for personal triumphalism irks me to no end.

Read on »

Posted by Coturnix at 4:59 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Clocks in Bacteria I: Synechococcus elongatus

Category: Clock Zoo

First in a series of five posts on clocks in bacteria (from March 08, 2006)...

Read on »

Posted by Coturnix at 7:50 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

ClockQuotes

Category: Clock Quotes

By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Posted by Coturnix at 3:50 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Category: Science News

Monarch Butterflies Help Explain Why Parasites Harm Hosts:

It's a paradox that has confounded evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859: Since parasites depend on their hosts for survival, why do they harm them? A new University of Georgia and Emory University study of monarch butterflies and the microscopic parasites that hitch a ride on them finds that the parasites strike a middle ground between the benefits gained by reproducing rapidly and the costs to their hosts. The study, published in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the first empirical evidence in a natural system of what's called the "trade-off hypothesis."

Recipe For Energy Saving Unravelled In Migratory Birds:

Pointed wings together with carrying less weight per wing area and avoidance of high winds and atmospheric turbulence save a bird loads of energy during migration. This has been shown for the first time in free-flying wild birds by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Montana, and the German Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. They state that climate change might have a critical impact on small migrants' energy budgets if it causes higher winds and atmospheric instability as predicted.

Warming Climate Is Changing Life On Global Scale, Says New Study:

A vast array of physical and biological systems across the earth are being affected by warming temperatures caused by humans, says a new analysis of information not previously assembled all in one spot. The effects on living things include earlier leafing of trees and plants over many regions; movements of species to higher latitudes and altitudes in the northern hemisphere; changes in bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia; and shifting of the oceans' plankton and fish from cold- to warm-adapted communities.

New Insights Into The Dynamics Of The Brain's Cortex:

Using mathematics and a computer model of brain activity, Roberto Fernández Galán, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has shown a direct link between activity in the cortex and the microscopic structure of this neuronal network.

Endocrine Disruptors In Common Plastics Linked To Obesity Risk:

Exposure during development either in the womb or during infancy to chemicals used to make products such as baby bottles, the lining of food tins and some plastic food wraps and containers, may contribute to the development of obesity, according to new research presented at the European Congress on Obesity.

Female Sex Offenders Often Have Mental Problems:

Women who commit sexual offences are just as likely to have mental problems or drug addictions as other violent female criminals. This according to the largest study ever conducted of women convicted of sexual offences in Sweden.

Girls, Young Women Can Cut Risk Of Early Breast Cancer Through Regular Exercise:

Mothers, here's another reason to encourage your daughters to be physically active: Girls and young women who exercise regularly between the ages of 12 and 35 have a substantially lower risk of breast cancer before menopause compared to those who are less active, new research shows.

Bears And Hibernation: New Insights Into Metabolism In Extreme Conditions:

Due to their ability to produce a potent inhibitor of protein degradation, hibernating bears do not lose muscle mass after long periods of hibernation. This is the main conclusion of the study directed by Professor Josep M. Argilés and co-written by Francisco J. López-Soriano, Gemma Fuster, Sílvia Busquets and Vanessa Almendro of the Cancer Research Group at the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department of the University of Barcelona (UB).

Rapid, Dramatic 'Reverse Evolution' Documented In Tiny Fish Species:

Evolution is supposed to inch forward over eons, but sometimes, at least in the case of a little fish called the threespine stickleback, the process can go in relative warp-speed reverse, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and published online ahead of print in the May 20 issue of Current Biology.

Mice Can Do Without Humans' Most Treasured Genes:

The mouse is a stalwart stand-in for humans in medical research, thanks to genomes that are 85 percent identical. But identical genes may behave differently in mouse and man, a study by University of Michigan evolutionary biologists Ben-Yang Liao and Jianzhi Zhang reveals.

Posted by Coturnix at 11:46 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Sciencewoman at ISEF 2008

Category: Science Education

Sciencewoman is in Atlanta, judging this year's International Science and Engineering Fair and liveblogging the whole thing:

Going to Atlanta....
First Taste of the International Science and Engineering Fair
ISEF 2008: Nobel Laureates Panel
ISEF 2008: Day 1 by the numbers
ISEF 2008: Full disclosure
ISEF 2008: Impressive science by high school students
ISEF 2008: Cool science and practical applications
ISEF 2008: Special awards and scenes from around the fair

Update: Here are the winners:

ISEF 2008: The best of the best! And they're girls!

Posted by Coturnix at 11:13 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Books: "Snooze...Or Lose! - 10 "No-War" Ways To Improve Your Teen's Sleep Habits" by Helene A. Emsellem, MD

Category: Books

My regular readers are probably aware that the topic of adolescent sleep and the issue of starting times of schools are some of my favourite subjects for a variety of reasons: I am a chronobiologist, I am an extreme "owl" (hence the name of this blog), I am a parent of developing extreme "owls", I have a particular distaste for Puritanical equation of sleep with laziness which always raises its ugly head in discussions of adolescent sleep, and much of my own research is somewhat related to this topic (see the bottom of this post for Related Posts).

So, I was particularly pleased when Jessica of the excellent Bee Policy blog informed me of the recent publication of a book devoted entirely to this topic. Snooze...or Lose! by Helen Emsellem was published by National Academies and Jessica managed to get me an Advanced Reading Copy to review.

Read on »

Posted by Coturnix at 7:53 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Columbia Book Sale

Category: Books

I got an interesting e-mail yesterday:

Columbia White Sale goes through May 31st. For more information, please visit: http://cup.columbia.edu/sale/23. We are offering up to 80% off on more than 1,000 titles in all subjects. (There are some really great deals). I hope this will be of interest to you and your readers. Please feel free to pass the word to friends and colleagues.

Hmmmmm, shiny!

Posted by Coturnix at 11:22 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Museum Night

Category: Balkans

The fifth annual Museum Night in Belgrade and other Serbian cities will be held this Saturday, May 17th:

More than 130 museums and galleries in 23 towns in Serbia will be open just for you, so the only decision you have to make is to choose a good company. We hope you are in good shape because there will be so many interesting exhibitions, concerts and performances that you will literally have the whole Belgrade under your feet!

What a great idea - pick a day, have special exhibits, events and concerts, all for free, and get the entire town to come out and enjoy.

Posted by Coturnix at 10:43 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

How YOU can help with malaria research

Category: Open Science

Social networking meets social conscience:

As reported today in the science journal Nature, MalariaEngage.org aims to help in the stuggle against malaria. Rather than throwing buckets of money at big name Western research institutes, the new website aims to give smaller locally-based African projects a bigger profile.

Relying on grass-roots support from people who are concerned about poverty and disease, the website hopes to fund in-country research that would otherwise be overlooked by the big funders such as the Gates Foundation or NIH.

The site provides profiles of projects that individuals (that's you and me!) can evaluate and choose to support.

Posted by Coturnix at 10:38 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

EuroVision 2008

Category: Balkans

I am kinda glad I went to Belgrade earlier and escaped the craziness of the EuroVision contest. The tickets have been sold out for a long time now. At least the European visitors will see how pretty Belgrade is now and how nicely it has recovered from a decade of wars, sanctions, hyperinflation, mismanagement and bombing.

Posted by Coturnix at 10:10 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Blogrolling for today

Category: Housekeeping

Neurotic Physiology


Stitchin' Fish at the Ecology Action Centre


A Reasonable Theory


Scholarship 2.0: An Idea Whose Time Has Come


What Sorts of People


The Stanford Facebook Class


Giovanna Di Sauro


Wandering Primate


Vetskeptics

Posted by Coturnix at 8:12 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Today's carnivals

Category: Carnivals

I And The Bird #75 is up on Gallicissa

Oekologie #16 is up on Science and Supermodels

Posted by Coturnix at 8:09 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Circadian Clocks in Microorganisms

Category: Clock Zoo

The first in a series of posts on circadian clocks in microorganisms (from February 23, 2006)...

Read on »

Posted by Coturnix at 7:57 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Do androids dream of electric sheep? Sure, if they sleep.

Category: Clock News

To sleep or not to sleep: the ecology of sleep in artificial organisms:

We systematically varied input parameters related to the number of food and sleep sites, the degree to which food and sleep sites overlap, and the rate at which food patches were depleted. Our results reveal that: (1) the costs of traveling between more spatially separated food and sleep clusters select for monophasic sleep, (2) more rapid food patch depletion reduces sleep times, and (3) agents spend more time attempting to acquire the 'rarer' resource, that is, the average time spent sleeping is positively correlated with the number of food patches and negatively correlated with the number of sleep patches.

-------------

Collectively, the output suggests that ecological factors can have striking effects on sleep patterns. Moreover, our results demonstrate that a simple model can produce clear and sensible patterns, thus allowing it to be used to investigate a wide range of questions concerning the ecology of sleep.

Posted by Coturnix at 7:39 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

ClockQuotes

Category: Clock Quotes

Life is so much more meaningful if you take the time to hunt down and strangle twits who post blather to inappropriate newsgroups.

- Henry Spencer

Posted by Coturnix at 3:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Category: Science News

Wild Three-Toed Sloths Sleep 6 Hours Less Per Day Than Captive Sloths, First Electrophysical Recording Shows:

In the first experiment to record the electrophysiology of sleep in a wild animal, three-toed sloths carrying miniature electroencephalogram recorders slept 9.63 hours per day--6 hours less than captive sloths did, reports an international team of researchers working on the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Barro Colorado Island in Panama.

Educated People In US Living Longer, Less Educated Have Unchanged Death Rate:

A new study finds a gap in overall death rates between Americans with less than high school education and college graduates increased rapidly from 1993 to 2001. The study says the widening gap was due to significant decreases in mortality from all causes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and other conditions, in the most educated while death rates among the least educated remained relatively unchanged. The study is the first to examine recent trends in socioeconomic inequalities in mortality from all causes as well as several leading causes of death in the United States using national individual-level socioeconomic measures.

Weird Shrimp Has Astounding Vision:

A Swiss marine biologist and an Australian quantum physicist have found that a species of shrimp from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, can see a world invisible to all other animals. Dr Sonja Kleinlogel and Professor Andrew White have shown that mantis shrimp not only have the ability to see colours from the ultraviolet through to the infrared, but have optimal polarisation vision -- a first for any animal and a capability that humanity has only achieved in the last decade using fast computer technology.

Human Vision Inadequate For Research On Bird Vision:

The most attractive male birds attract more females and as a result are most successful in terms of reproduction. This is the starting point of many studies looking for factors that influence sexual selection in birds. However, is it reasonable to assume that birds see what we see? In a study published in the latest issue of American Naturalist, Uppsala researchers show that our human vision is not an adequate instrument.

Put The Trees In The Ground: A Fix For The Global Carbon Dioxide Problem?:

Of the current global environmental problems, the excessive release of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels and the related global warming is one of the most pressing. In an essay in the journal ChemSusChem , Fritz Scholz and Ulrich Hasse from the University of Greifswald introduce a possible approach to a solution: deliberately planted forests bind the CO2 through photosynthesis and are then removed from the global CO2 cycle by burial. "For the first time, humankind will give something back to nature that we have taken away before," says Scholz.

What's The Difference Between A Human And A Fruit Fly?:

Fruit flies are dramatically different from humans not in their number of genes, but in the number of protein interactions in their bodies, according to scientists who have developed a new way of estimating the total number of interactions between proteins in any organism.

Teen Helps Design Classroom DNA Experiments Using Common Food Dyes:

Agarose gel electrophoresis? Most teenagers wouldn't have a clue what this scientific term means, but middle school student Andrew Trigiano knows the protocol inside and out. When Andrew was 12, his father Robert Trigiano, a professor at the University of Tennessee, was looking for an interesting science project for his son. Setting out to compare differences in popular brands of Easter egg dyes, Trigiano's project soon grew into a full-blown scientific study and set of replicable classroom experiments.

When It Comes To Living Longer, It's Better To Go Hungry Than Go Running, Mouse Study Suggests:

A study investigating aging in mice has found that hormonal changes that occur when mice eat significantly less may help explain an already established phenomenon: a low calorie diet can extend the lifespan of rodents, a benefit that even regular exercise does not achieve.

Posted by Coturnix at 6:36 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Today's carnivals

Category: Carnivals

Tangled Bank #105 is up on The Beagle Project Blog

Carnival of Education #171 is up on Instructify

Posted by Coturnix at 11:31 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Daily Rhythms in Cnidaria

Category: Clock Zoo

The origin and early evolution of circadian clocks are far from clear. It is now widely believed that the clocks in cyanobacteria and the clocks in Eukarya evolved independently from each other. It is also possible that some Archaea possess clock - at least they have clock genes, thought to have arived there by lateral transfer from cyanobacteria.[continued under the fold]

Read on »

Posted by Coturnix at 7:54 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

ClockQuotes

Category: Clock Quotes

I feel so agitated all the time, like a hamster in search of a wheel

- Carrie Fisher

Posted by Coturnix at 3:51 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

Category: Science News

There are 57 articles this week in PLoS ONE - look around for yourself, these are my own picks:

The Secret World of Shrimps: Polarisation Vision at Its Best:

Animal vision spans a great range of complexity, with systems evolving to detect variations in light intensity, distribution, colour, and polarisation. Polarisation vision systems studied to date detect one to four channels of linear polarisation, combining them in opponent pairs to provide intensity-independent operation. Circular polarisation vision has never been seen, and is widely believed to play no part in animal vision. Polarisation is fully measured via Stokes' parameters--obtained by combined linear and circular polarisation measurements. Optimal polarisation vision is the ability to see Stokes' parameters: here we show that the crustacean Gonodactylus smithii measures the exact components required. This vision provides optimal contrast-enhancement and precise determination of polarisation with no confusion states or neutral points--significant advantages. Linear and circular polarisation each give partial information about the polarisation of light--but the combination of the two, as we will show here, results in optimal polarisation vision. We suggest that linear and circular polarisation vision not be regarded as different modalities, since both are necessary for optimal polarisation vision; their combination renders polarisation vision independent of strongly linearly or circularly polarised features in the animal's environment.

Sticky Gecko Feet: The Role of Temperature and Humidity:

Gecko adhesion is expected to be temperature insensitive over the range of temperatures typically experienced by geckos. Previous work is limited and equivocal on whether this expectation holds. We tested the temperature dependence of adhesion in Tokay and Day geckos and found that clinging ability at 12°C was nearly double the clinging ability at 32°C. However, rather than confirming a simple temperature effect, our data reveal a complex interaction between temperature and humidity that can drive differences in adhesion by as much as two-fold. Our findings have important implications for inferences about the mechanisms underlying the exceptional clinging capabilities of geckos, including whether performance of free-ranging animals is based solely on a dry adhesive model. An understanding of the relative contributions of van der Waals interactions and how humidity and temperature variation affects clinging capacities will be required to test hypotheses about the evolution of gecko toepads and is relevant to the design and manufacture of synthetic mimics.

Rival Male Relatedness Does Not Affect Ejaculate Allocation as Predicted by Sperm Competition Theory:

When females are sexually promiscuous, the intensity of sperm competition for males depends on how many partners females mate with. To maximize fitness, males should adjust their copulatory investment in relation to this intensity. However, fitness costs associated with sperm competition may not only depend on how many males a female has mated with, but also how related rival males are. According to theoretical predictions, males should adjust their copulatory investment in response to the relatedness of their male rival, and transfer more sperm to females that have first mated with a non-sibling male than females that have mated to a related male. Here, for the first time, we empirically test this theory using the Australian field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus. We expose male crickets to sperm competition from either a full sibling or non-sibling male, by using both the presence of a rival male and the rival male's actual competing ejaculate as cues. Contrary to predictions, we find that males do not adjust ejaculates in response to the relatedness of their male rival. Instead, males with both full-sibling and non-sibling rivals allocate sperm of similar quality to females. This lack of kin biased behaviour is independent of any potentially confounding effect of strong competition between close relatives; kin biased behaviour was absent irrespective of whether males were raised in full sibling or mixed relatedness groups.

Pointed Wings, Low Wingloading and Calm Air Reduce Migratory Flight Costs in Songbirds:

Migratory bird, bat and insect species tend to have more pointed wings than non-migrants. Pointed wings and low wingloading, or body mass divided by wing area, are thought to reduce energy consumption during long-distance flight, but these hypotheses have never been directly tested. Furthermore, it is not clear how the atmospheric conditions migrants encounter while aloft affect their energy use; without such information, we cannot accurately predict migratory species' response(s) to climate change. Here, we measured the heart rates of 15 free-flying Swainson's Thrushes (Catharus ustulatus) during migratory flight. Heart rate, and therefore rate of energy expenditure, was positively associated with individual variation in wingtip roundedness and wingloading throughout the flights. During the cruise phase of the flights, heart rate was also positively associated with wind speed but not wind direction, and negatively but not significantly associated with large-scale atmospheric stability. High winds and low atmospheric stability are both indicative of the presence of turbulent eddies, suggesting that birds may be using more energy when atmospheric turbulence is high. We therefore suggest that pointed wingtips, low wingloading and avoidance of high winds and turbulence reduce flight costs for small birds during migration, and that climate change may have the strongest effects on migrants' in-flight energy use if it affects the frequency and/or severity of high winds and atmospheric instability.

Read on »

Posted by Coturnix at 12:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Lihnida

Category: Balkans

This one is for Rob, one of those strange-metered (7/8, or 1-2-3;1-2;1-2/1-2-3;1-2;1-2/...) Macedonian songs of old:

There are many more like this in the menu there on YouTube....

Posted by Coturnix at 12:35 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Category: Science News

College Student Sleep Patterns Could Be Detrimental:

A Central Michigan University study has determined that many college students have sleep patterns that could have detrimental effects on their daily performance.

When Following The Leader Can Lead Into The Jaws Of Death:

For animals that live in social groups, and that includes humans, blindly following a leader could place them in danger. To avoid this, animals have developed simple but effective behaviour to follow where at least a few of them dare to tread -- rather than follow a single group member. This pattern of behaviour reduces the risk of imitating maverick behaviour of an individual as the group recognise that consensus is better than following someone that goes it alone.

Ancient Protein Offers Clues To Killer Condition:

More than 600 million years of evolution has taken two unlikely distant cousins -- turkeys and scallops - down very different physical paths from a common ancestor. But University of Leeds researchers have found that a motor protein, myosin 2, remains structurally identical in both creatures.

It Started With A Squeak: Moonlight Serenade Helps Lemurs Pick Mates Of The Right Species:

Lonely hearts columns testify that finding a partner can be hard enough, but at least most human beings can be fairly certain that when we do we have got one of the right species. Things aren't so simple for all animals. Some Malagasy mouse lemurs are so similar that picking a mate of the right species, especially at night time in a tropical forest, might seem like a matter of pot luck. However, new research in BioMed Central's journal BMC Biology has shown that our desperately cute distant cousins use vocalisations to pick up a partner of the right species.

Psychological Stress Linked To Overeating, Monkey Study Shows:

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have found socially subordinate female rhesus macaques over consume calorie-rich foods at a significantly higher level than do dominant females.

'Shaquille O'Neal' Of Bacteria Big Enough To See With Naked Eye:

Cornell researchers are studying bacterium big enough to see -- the Shaquille O'Neal of bacteria. Well, perhaps not quite Shaquille O'Neal. But it is Shaq-teria. The secret to an unusual bacterium's massive size -- it's the size of a grain of salt, or a million times bigger than E. coli bacteria, and big enough to see with the naked eye -- may be found in its ability to copy its genome tens of thousands of times.

Sniffing Dogs Detect Feces To Help Monitor And Protect Threatened Animals In Brazil:

It's a tough job, but somebody, or at least some dogs, have to do it. In the Cerrado region of Brazil, four dogs trained to detect animal feces by scent are helping researchers monitor rare and threatened wildlife such as jaguar, tapir, giant anteater and maned wolf in and around Emas National Park, a protected area with the largest concentration of threatened species in Brazil.

Architecture For Fundamental Processes Of Life Discovered:

A team of Canadian researchers has completed a massive survey of the network of protein complexes that orchestrate the fundamental processes of life. In the online edition of the journal Science, researchers from the Université de Montréal describe protein complexes and networks of complexes never before observed -- including two implicated in the normal mechanisms by which cells divide and proliferate and another that controls recycling of the molecular building blocks of life called autophagy.

Posted by Coturnix at 12:24 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Today's carnivals

Category: Carnivals

Grand Rounds 4:34 are up on Health Business Blog

The 124th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Mom Is Teaching

Posted by Coturnix at 10:18 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Cell Signaling in PLoS ONE

Category: PLoS

Peter Binfield, the new Managing Editor of PLoS ONE, did some analysis of the content of the journal so far, and realized that the single most frequent Category our authors use is 'Cell Signaling'. And, as he writes in his blog post, those are some impressive papers....and we want more of them!

Posted by Coturnix at 2:09 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The Open Sleep Journal and The Phylogeny of Sleep Database

Category: Sleep

One of the latest additions (just two days ago, I think) to the Directory of Open Access Journals is a journal that will be of interest to some of my readers - The Open Sleep Journal. The first volume has been published and contains several interesting articles. One that drew my attention is The Phylogeny of Sleep Database: A New Resource for Sleep Scientists (PDF download) by Patrick McNamara, Isabella Capellini, Erica Harris, Charles L. Nunn, Robert A. Barton and Brian Preston. It describes how they built a database that contains information about sleep patterns in 127 mammalian species. The Database itself can be found here and one can search it by species, by what was measured, by physiological or environmental conditions in which sleep was measured, etc. It has links to research on everything from platypus and echidna, through humans and kangaroos, to elephants, giraffes and sloths.

Since one of the stated projects that will come out of the database is a publication of a book on the Evolution of Sleep, I looked around to see if they are interested in anything else apart from mammals. Looking at the Projects page, I see they intend to add birds to the database later on. But that is not enough. Sleep did not suddenly appear full-blown in mammals and separately in birds. There is a long history of sleep research in reptiles, amphibians and fish, as well as - more recently - in insects like cockroaches, honeybees and Drosophila. In order to study the origin, evolution and adaptive function of sleep we have to look at its precursors among the invertebrates, not just focus on mammals and birds.

Posted by Coturnix at 11:11 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Do sponges have circadian clocks?

Category: Chronobiology

Read on »

Posted by Coturnix at 8:01 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

ClockQuotes

Category: Clock Quotes

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

- Carol Burnett

Posted by Coturnix at 3:50 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Today's carnivals

Category: Carnivals

Encephalon #45 is up on PodBlack Blog

Carnival of the Green #127 is up on The Evangelical Ecologist

Posted by Coturnix at 10:22 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Category: Science News

Female Concave-eared Frogs Draw Mates With Ultrasonic Calls:

Most female frogs don't call; most lack or have only rudimentary vocal cords. A typical female selects a mate from a chorus of males and then --silently -- signals her beau. But the female concave-eared torrent frog, Odorrana tormota, has a more direct method of declaring her interest: She emits a high-pitched chirp that to the human ear sounds like that of a bird.

Math Plus 'Geeky' Images Equals Deterred Students:

Images of maths 'geeks' stop people from studying mathematics or using it in later life, shows new research.

Kids Think Eyeglasses Make Other Kids Look Smart:

Young children tend to think that other kids with glasses look smarter than kids who don't wear glasses, according to a new study.

Genetics Confirm Oral Traditions Of Druze In Israel:

DNA analysis of residents of Druze villages in Israel suggests these ancient religious communities offer a genetic snapshot of the Near East as it was several thousands of years ago.

Worms Triple Sperm Transfer When Paternity Is At Risk:

Scientists used to think that hermaphrodites, due to their low position in the evolutionary scale, did not have sufficiently developed sensory systems to assess the "quality" of their mates. A new work has shown, however, that earthworms are able to detect the competition by fertilising the eggs that is going to find its sperm, tripling its volume when there is rivalry. This ability is even more refined as they are able to transfer more sperm to more fertile partners.

Fish Diet To Avoid Fights With Slightly Larger Rivals:

People diet to look more attractive. Fish diet to avoid being beaten up, thrown out of their social group - and getting eaten as a result.

What Does The Label On Your Chicken Really Mean?:

Buying chicken these days is not like it used to be. With labels like "100 percent natural," "organic," "grain-fed," and "free range," many consumers don't really know what they're buying.

Posted by Coturnix at 9:43 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Blogrolling for today

Category: Housekeeping

Diabola in Musica


Hoxful Monsters


StevenBerlinJohnson


An American Businesswoman's New Life in Serbia & Abroad


RoBlog


Speaking Serbia - Rob's Blog

Posted by Coturnix at 8:33 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

New and Exciting in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine

Category: Science News

The Case of Deborah Rice: Who Is the Environmental Protection Agency Protecting?:

For researchers who operate at the intersection of basic biology and toxicology, following the data where they take you--as any good scientist would--carries the risk that you will be publicly attacked as a crank, charged with scientific misconduct, or removed from a government scientific review panel. Such a fate may seem unthinkable to those involved in primary research, but it has increasingly become the norm for toxicologists and environmental investigators. If you find evidence that a compound worth billions of dollars to its manufacturer poses a public health risk, you will almost certainly find yourself in the middle of a contentious battle that has little to do with scientific truth.

Retail Sales of Alcohol and the Risk of Being a Victim of Assault:

The relationship between alcohol sales, alcohol consumption patterns, and levels of violence is well established. In a meta-analysis of data from seven countries, Jason Bond and colleagues estimated that the fraction of violence-related injuries attributable to alcohol is between 28% and 43% [1]. There is a stronger link between alcohol impairment and being a victim of violence than between alcohol impairment and suffering from accidental injuries.

Communicating the Results of Clinical Research to Participants: Attitudes, Practices, and Future Directions:

Recent commentaries advocate routinely offering study results to research participants [1,2]. However, debate continues over the scope and limits of investigators' responsibilities in this regard. A 2006 review identified 30 national and international policies and guidelines concerning the duty to return research results [3], of which 21 were published in the last decade. Worldwide interest in this complex issue will likely continue to rise in light of the increasing relevance of the results of biomedical research to participants' health and well-being.

Posted by Coturnix at 7:01 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Open Access to Scholarly Publications (video)

Category: Open Science

Open Access to Scholarly Publications (Updated May 10, 2008) from