clock | February 24, 2009XI Congress of the European Biological Rhythms Society, organized in association with the Japanese Society for Chronobiology
Hmmmm, Strasbourg in August. Fun for the family to do stuff while I chat with fellow chronobiologists, and just a short flight away from Belgrade.... Have to investigate if there's a way for me to go....
And the program looks interesting...
clock | February 24, 2009New Questions About Evolution Of Hormones In Mammals:
New techniques used to examine hormones in feces and urine of mammals in the wild are yielding surprising results about hormones and evolution. The new techniques allow scientists to examine the social structure of a broader range of mammals.
Tree Lizard's Quick Release Escape System Makes Jumpers Turn Somersaults:
If you've ever tried capturing a lizard, you'll know how difficult it is. But if you do manage to corner one, many have the ultimate emergency quick release system for escape. They simply drop their tails, leaving the twitching…
clock | February 23, 2009I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families, sometimes into no family at all. When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.
- Russell Baker
clock | February 23, 2009Change of Shift - Valentines Edition! 3.17 - is up on This crazy miracle called life
Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 23 are up on The Blog that Ate Manhattan
clock | February 23, 2009Monday night - the day when four of the PLoS journals publish new articles - here is a sample. 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:
Wings, Horns, and Butterfly Eyespots: How Do Complex Traits Evolve?:
Throughout their evolutionary history, organisms have evolved numerous complex morphological,…
clock | February 23, 2009How Fat or Fit Were Dinosaurs? Scientists Use Laser Imaging:
Karl Bates and his colleagues in the palaeontology and biomechanics research group have reconstructed the bodies of five dinosaurs, two T. rex (Stan at the Manchester Museum and the Museum of the Rockies cast MOR555), an Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, a Strutiomimum sedens and an Edmontosaurus annectens. The team found that the smaller Museum of the Rockies T. rex could have weighed anywhere between 5.5 and 7 tonnes, while the larger specimen (Stan) might have weighed as much as 8 tonnes.
Genes Important To Sleep Discovered:
For many…
clock | February 22, 2009This morning we took it easy - a little shopping for kids, some cakes at Veniero (white is shampita, brown is Napoleon), a little walk, including past the Museum Of Sex (did not have time to go in, though), with the special exhibit about sex in animals (including this, of course). Then a long wait at the new JetBlue terminal at JFK which is nice, big and technically very modern. Now at home, exhausted - tomorrow is a new (work)day!
clock | February 22, 2009There are 19 new articles in PLoS ONE published 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:
Kestrel-Prey Dynamic in a Mediterranean Region: The Effect of Generalist Predation and Climatic Factors:
Most hypotheses on population limitation of small mammals and their predators come from…
clock | February 21, 2009For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting.
- Robert Charles Benchley
clock | February 21, 2009A couple of times over the past few years I tried to find if there was a Serbian restaurant in New York City, but Google could not find one. So, I gave up looking and assumed there wasn't one. And that was true - until recently. Last night at the meetup, Nikola Trbovic told me there is one now - opened just last June: Kafana on Avenue C (between 8th and 9th Street, see reviews here and here).
So, tonight, after watching the amazing August: Osage County on Broadway, The Bride Of Coturnix and I went to 'Kafana' to give it a try. And we were not disappointed - the atmosphere was pleasant and the…
clock | February 21, 2009Taken on the corner of 14th Street and Avenue C in Manhattan on February 21st, 2009:
moar funny pictures
clock | February 21, 2009"In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.", Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Or, in modern online usage - "Pics, or it didn't happen!"
So, here are some of the pick from last night. First, we went to Seed offices, where we met everyone during the Happy Hour, including the Overlords, Erin and Arikia:
Then we walked over to Old Town Bar, where we soon were joined by my Scibling Jake Young, my old friend from SciFoo and the 1st Science Blogging Conference Jacqueline Floyd, my Twitter buddy Arvind Says, and the Overlords of the new Nature Network NYC Hub Barry…
clock | February 20, 2009When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
- Robert Anson Heinlein
clock | February 20, 2009Just had a very pleasant lunch with John Timmer, the editor of Ars Technica. I learned about the history and concept of Ars Technica, we talked about science journalism, science communication, science blogging, and even about science itself: his and my old research:
clock | February 20, 2009Just came back from coffee with Jay Rosen:
Topic: The state of journalism, of course. Fun was had by all.
clock | February 20, 2009
New 'Light' On Fascinating Rhythms Of Circadian Clock:
....Using DNA microarray techniques, Duffield and the other researchers identified an important gene called the "Inhibitor of DNA-binding 2" (Id2) and found that the gene is rhythmically expressed in various tissues including the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
"In the last few years, my laboratory has focused on a family of transcription factor genes expressed in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, liver and heart," Duffield said. "In conjunction with colleagues at Dartmouth Medical School and Norris Cotton Cancer Center, we produced a knockout mouse…
clock | February 19, 2009We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
- Richard Feynman
clock | February 19, 2009Miss Baker and two of her students, Erik and Brandon, who you have met at ScienceOnline'09, appeared on a New Hampshire NPR affiliate station today - you can (and really should!) listen to the entire segment here.
Also see their blog post about it, some pictures from the studio, and how nervous they were just before the show started.
clock | February 19, 2009There are 18 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:
Lipid Profile and Serum Characteristics of the Blind Subterranean Mole Rat, Spalax:
Spalax (blind subterranean mole rat), is a mammal adapted to live in fluctuating oxygen levels, and can survive severe hypoxia and…