My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. I am not an MD so I cannot diagnose and treat your sleep problems. As well as writing this blog, I am also the Online Discussion Expert for PLoS. This is a personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
"One can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
- Lewis Carroll
There is a Triangle Tweetup tonight and I'll be there, along with about 250 people from the Triangle, as well as from Greensboro and Greenville. You can follow the proceedings on Twitter, of course - @triangletweetup. You will also be able to watch it live!
Looking at the list of attendees, I see…
Remembrance Of Things Past Influences How Female Field Crickets Select Mates:
UC Riverside biologists researching the behavior of field crickets have found for the first time that female crickets remember attractive males based on the latter's song, and use this information when choosing mates. The…
There are 24 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…
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- Henry Louis Mencken
There are 27 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…
Five years ago, PLoS Medicine, the second journal in the PLoS stable, sent its first call for submissions. It has quickly gained reputation as one of the top medical journals.
In the editorial published last night, the Editors look back at the five years so far, and also look forward into the…
There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.
- John Fowles
Biological Basis For The Eight-hour Workday?:
The circadian clock coordinates physiological and behavioral processes on a 24-hour rhythm, allowing animals to anticipate changes in their environment and prepare accordingly. Scientists already know that some genes are controlled by the clock and are…
When I woke up this morning and went online while kids were getting up and ready for school, the first this I saw was this tweet by abelpharmboy:
Two articles on @BoraZ in today's Durham Herald-Sun. Will post links later. Herald-Sun has pain in the ass registration to access site.
So, I went out…
Two interesting new papers in PLoS Biology today:
A Role for the PERIOD:PERIOD Homodimer in the Drosophila Circadian Clock:
The current models of circadian clocks in flies and mammals involve the formation of complexes between clock proteins in the cytoplasm. These complexes are usually…
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 100 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 (…
Identifying Hyenas By Their Giggle:
To human ears, the laughs of individual hyenas in a pack all sound the same: high-pitched and staccato, eerie and maniacal. But every hyena makes a different call that encodes information about its age and status in the pack, according to behavioral neurologists…
Sometimes ... when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face. (Following summit meeting with Ronald Reagan)
- Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (b. 1931)
If you missed it before, I have written about this kind of research before - this is interesting stuff, as much as the video is just plain funny (video, hat-tip: Psique).
If you think that political or religious debates can get nasty, you haven't seen anything until you go online as see how much hate exists between people who love cilantro and those who hate cilantro. What horrible words they use to describe each other!!!!
Last weekend, I asked why is this and…
Plants Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Under Polluted Hazy Skies:
Plants absorbed carbon dioxide more efficiently under the polluted skies of recent decades than they would have done in a cleaner atmosphere, according to new findings published this week in Nature.
Why You May Lose That Loving Feeling…
So they say.
I guess even the government is not interested in saving the newspaper business....eh!
Q1: why did they subscribe every employee? Couldn't they buy one copy and put it in the waiting room at the reception desk, or at the water cooler, or in the dining hall? Or, well, they could have…
Just a collection of links to my and other people's posts/articles I need to have collected all in one place (I will explain later):
1.a.Breaking News
Scientific American Editor, President to Step Down; 5 Percent of Staff Cut
'Scientific American' Editor Out in Reorg
1. b.Death of print: how…
There 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…
I hope you got educated before the UCLA Pro-Test yesterday. It went great - see the coverage by DrugMonkey, Nick Anthis, DrugMonkey again and Scicurious.
Show Your Support for Medical Progress by signing the Petition for responsible animal research.
Then go and crash this poll, despite it being…
I regularly get Google News alerts for articles that contain the word "circadian" in them. Most of them are not too exciting, but when a really good one comes along, I like to point it out to you. Today, you should go and read Larks, Owls and Hummingbirds, a guest post by Leon Kreitzman over on…
I loved Mary Roach's 'Stiff' when it first came out, so I was excited to see that Sheril started a book club reading the third book, Bonk, by the same author. My copy just arrived, so I will be participating as much as I can find the time.
Some of my SciBlings have already read and reviewed the…
