clock | December 31, 2008Competition, Not Climate Change, Led To Neanderthal Extinction, Study Shows:
In a recently conducted study, a multidisciplinary French-American research team with expertise in archaeology, past climates, and ecology reported that Neanderthal extinction was principally a result of competition with Cro-Magnon populations, rather than the consequences of climate change.
Facial Expressions Of Emotion Are Innate, Not Learned:
Facial expressions of emotion are hardwired into our genes, according to a new study. The research suggests that facial expressions of emotion are innate rather than a…
clock | December 30, 2008Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmas Time.
- Charles Dickens
clock | December 30, 2008This article is almost two years old, but it is perhaps even more current today than it was when it first appeared:
Pretend for a second that you're a CEO. Would you reveal your deepest, darkest secrets online? Would you confess that you're an indecisive weakling, that your colleagues are inept, that you're not really sure if you can meet payroll? Sounds crazy, right? After all, Coke doesn't tell Pepsi what's in the formula. Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. But that's exactly what Glenn Kelman did. And he thinks it saved his business.
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The…
clock | December 30, 2008Every now and then I mention light pollution on this blog, usually from a biologist's perspective. But here is another perspective - using "dark sky" as a tourist attraction - a place where one can actually see the stars:
Nonetheless, Galloway Forest Park contains the darkest skies in Europe, and Steve Owens, co-coordinator of the IYA plans in the UK, is determined to gain recognition from the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) as a lasting legacy for the 2009 celebrations.
The certification process is challenging. According to the Guardian, "to earn dark sky park status, officials in…
clock | December 30, 2008On the Hopebuilding's Weblog, Rosemary wrote:
When I was a journalist, many years ago now, it never really occurred to me that we spent much more time on "bad news" than on "good news". In fact, sometimes people caricatured the "good news" attempts as being Pollyanna-ish; they thought "good" news was not really news.
But these days, as I spend so much time on the web, I really appreciate the "good news" sites. It provides a healthy balance to the daily diet of so much "bad news" in the media - what my friend Jim Lord calls "deficit thinking", and what he replaces with "appreciative thinking…
clock | December 30, 2008Introducing Sex, Drugs and Rockin' Venom: Confessions of an Extreme Scientist by Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry, the venom biologist!
clock | December 30, 2008There 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 click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Evolutionary Patterns and Selective Pressures of Odorant/Pheromone Receptor Gene Families in Teleost Fishes:
Teleost fishes do not have a vomeronasal organ (VNO), and their vomeronasal receptors (V1Rs, V2Rs) are…
clock | December 30, 2008Three Obligatory Readings of the Day:
Brian Switek: Stephen Jay Gould's view of life
Larry Moran: An Adaptationist View of Stephen Jay Gould
Greg Laden: How fast does evolution happen?
clock | December 30, 2008Go say Hello to Rebecca Skloot, the newest addition to the Scienceblogs.com family, and her blog Culture Dish.
Check out her About page and the first post.
clock | December 30, 2008
And what Joe says in response? He claims that he got his information from NYTimes and Washington Post, not realizing that those two publications are just as superficial as he is. Yes, Joe, throw those out and call Zbig if you want to get educated, not that he does not have his own agenda and his own perspective, but it's a start, the first baby-steps from just not knowing anything yet saying it on TV with smug self-adoration....
clock | December 30, 2008
Let's highlight some more of the participants of this year's ScienceOnline09 conference:
Karen James is the Director of Science for The Beagle Project, writes the Beagle Project Blog and also works full time at the Natural History Museum in London doing original research in the Department of Botany. At the conference, Karen will be on two panels: Hey, You Can't Say That! and Blogging adventure: how to post from strange locations.
Anne Jefferson is a hydrogeologist at UNC-Charlotte and blogs on Watershed Hydrogeology Blog.
Clinton Jenkins is an ecologist and researcher in the Pimm group at…
clock | December 30, 2008It is with great sadness that I learned that Dr.Greg Cahill died a few days ago, at the Houston airport, waiting for his flight. I have met Greg at several meetings of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms and while, those being fairly large meetings, we never had big one-on-one conversations, I remember him as a humble and friendly person, beloved by everyone.
He started his scientific career in Mike Menaker's lab, studying the entrainment of the mammalian clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus in vitro. Making preparations of SCN and optic tracts and doing electrophysiology on such…
clock | December 30, 2008Edition #12 of Berry-Go-Round is up on Foothills Fancies
Grand Rounds 5.15: At the interface of evolution and medicine are up on Moneduloides
Carnival of the Green is up on Ruscombe Green
Carnival of the Elitist Bastards: Stardate 62453.9 is up on Submitted to a Candid World
Friday Ark #223 is up on Modulator
clock | December 30, 2008
Humans, Oceans Shaped North American Climate Over Past 50 Years, NOAA Report Says:
Greenhouse gases play an important role in North American climate, but differences in regional ocean temperatures may hold a key to predicting future U.S. regional climate changes, according to a new NOAA-led scientific assessment. The assessment is one in a series of synthesis and assessment reports coordinated by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
Our Unconscious Brain Makes The Best Decisions Possible:
Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that the human brain--once thought to be a…
clock | December 29, 2008Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.
- Johnny Carson
clock | December 29, 2008Some guy named Mulshine, who is apparently an ancient journalist (remember: generation is mindset, not age), penned one of those idiotic pieces for Wall Street Journal, willingly exposing his out-datedness and blindness to the world - read it yourself and chuckle: All I Wanted for Christmas Was a Newspaper:
This highlights the real flaw in the thinking of those who herald the era of citizen journalism. They assume newspapers are going out of business because we aren't doing what we in fact do amazingly well, which is to quickly analyze and report on complex public issues. The real reason they…
clock | December 29, 2008There are 21 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:
Rapid Acoustic Survey for Biodiversity Appraisal:
Biodiversity assessment remains one of the most difficult challenges encountered by ecologists and conservation biologists. This task is becoming even more urgent…