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
I get mail:
The National Academies want to identify the topics in science, engineering, and medicine that matter most to the public and that people have the greatest interest in learning more about. Once the topics have been selected, we plan to create a suite of educational materials (in both…
The deadline for the PLoS ONE Second Birthday Synchroblogging Competition is now officially over. Here are all the posts written for the competition - 18 posts, written by 17 people, covering 22 PLoS ONE articles. Liz, Dave, Jason and I will be reading them today and will announce the winner as…
Urbanization: 95% Of The World's Population Lives On 10% Of The Land:
A new global map released by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and published in the World Bank's World Development Report 2009, measures urbanisation from the new perspective of Travel Time to 8,500 Major Cities.…
Bringing up teenagers is like sweeping back ocean waves with a frazzled broom - the inundation of outside influences never stops. Whatever the lure - cars, easy money, cigarettes, drugs, booze, sex, crime - much that glitters along the shore has a thousand times the appeal of a parent's lecture…
There is a new interview in the series by the students in Miss Baker's class: An Interview with Danielle Lee, Author of Urban Science Adventures. Danielle Lee will be moderating a session about Race in Science.
Two very interesting papers this week:
The Circadian Clock in Arabidopsis Roots Is a Simplified Slave Version of the Clock in Shoots:
The circadian oscillator in eukaryotes consists of several interlocking feedback loops through which the expression of clock genes is controlled. It is generally…
So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own…
From EconPapers:
Scientific research has come to dominate many American universities. Even with growing external support, increasingly the costs of scientific research are being funded out of internal university funds. Our paper explains why this is occuring, presents estimates of the magnitudes of…
Publish in Wikipedia or perish:
Wikipedia, meet RNA. Anyone submitting to a section of the journal RNA Biology will, in the future, be required to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work. The journal will then peer review the page before publishing it in Wikipedia…
A very sad story:
What started for me as an amusing collection of photos -- who takes photos every day for eighteen years? -- ended with a shock. Who was this man? How did his photos end up on the web? I went on a two-day hunt, examined the source code of the website, and tried various Google…
Jeff Cohen put them all together:
For years I have been intrigued by the local celebrations across America where they "drop," or in many cases lower, something from above to ring in the New Year. Many of these traditions are relatively recent and are based on the ball dropping in New York's Times…
Kausik Datta asks:
There may be someone among us who has had this happen to him or her at some point or other: You embark on a new project in uncharted territories with gusto, your goal being gathering preliminary data that would aid generation of a hypothesis. You get data, analyze trends, feel…
Get involved:
There are many reasons to celebrate science. With the many seminal anniversaries that are on the horizon in 2009, it seemed only logical that we should celebrate them as a community! From astronomy to zoology we are all here - ready to support public understanding of the process and…
Probably not:
Rumors swirl, but a Swedish prosecutor will only confirm a "preliminary investigation" into allegations that pharma giant AstraZeneca fixed the Nobels for financial gain.
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As for the Nobels, as scurrilous as the charges may sound, there is little evidence to…
Give it a try. Keep refreshing the page and you'll get compliments like:
"May your succulent earlobes ever flap about my knees like a thousand wooden pigeons fleeing the local sawmill."
"Wend you not to wreak annihilable havoc with my tumefascent transmitters and turgid devices. "
"If you were a…
The entries for the PLoS ONE Second Birthday Synchroblogging Competition have been coming in all day. Here are the posts I found so far. If you have posted and your post is not on this list, let me know by e-mail. I will keep updating this post and moving it to the top until the competition…
Listen here to the The December 16, 2008 David E. Barmes Global Health Lecture given by Dr.Harold Varmus:
Harold Varmus, former Director of the National Institutes of Health and co-recipient of a Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, is President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer…
The Schutz Family recently arrived in Belgrade and are blogging the experience. Read the posts about Sounds of Serbia and Survivor, Serbian Style to begin with....
Hat-tip: Victor
Starting High School One Hour Later May Reduce Teen Traffic Accidents:
A new study shows that after a one-hour delay of school start times, teens increased their average nightly hours of sleep and decreased their "catch-up sleep" on the weekends, and they were involved in fewer auto accidents.
Low…
Beaked Whales' Tusks Evolved Through Sexual Selection Process:
For years, scientists have wondered why only males of the rarely seen family of beaked whales have "tusks," since they are squid-eaters and in many of the species, these elaborately modified teeth seem to actually interfere with feeding…
Bob Grant, over on The Scientist's blog, describes a recent kerfuffle over a Cell paper and what it says about peer-review. The 40 comments on the post are already there with some interesting additional perspectives:
Improper citation, disregard for antecedent research, and shoddy experimentation…
Top sci-fi authors discuss the future of technology :
Science fiction isn't (as a rule) about predicting the future, and science fiction writers aren't trying to predict it.
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But many science fiction stories are set in the future, which means they need to include the future of…
From The Scientist: Flagging fraud:
A team of French life sciences grad students has launched an online repository of fraudulent scientific papers, and is calling on researchers to report studies tainted by misconduct.
The website -- called Scientific Red Cards -- is still in a beta version, but…
