clock | December 13, 2008And now that everyone is on an elephant-blogging spree, here are clips from two of my favourite childhood movies, both featuring elephants - Elephant Walk and Hatari:
clock | December 13, 2008A recent survey of Asian elephants in European zoos showed that their lifespan is much, much shorter than for elephants in the wild. Ed and Brian go into details of this survey.
The survey does not look at African elephants, nor at North American zoos - in both cases I feel that the picture looks much better, if nothing else because North American zoos tend to be newer, not located in the middle of a big city, and thus more spacious.
In the comments on Ed's post, I said: "Many elephants in zoos are kept in enclosures that are too small for them. This is why more and more zoos are shutting…
clock | December 13, 2008So, the zoo nutritionists got together for a 2-day meeting at NCSU to discuss the issue:
Obesity among zoo animals is such a complex problem that zoo nutritionists, scientists and others, from as far away as England, gathered at N.C. State University on Friday for a two-day symposium on such weighty matters as how to tell when an oyster's weight is about right.
"It's actually a huge problem, and a multifaceted one," said Michael Stoskopf, a professor at the college. "You have to look at not only diets themselves and the amount of calories delivered, but also things like exercise."
The basic…
clock | December 13, 2008This is pretty long and not easy to read, but it puts together a lot of thoughts about blogs, wikis and the stability of the Web as a science publishing platform. Post your comments there, or here.
clock | December 13, 2008As you know, H.M. died last week.
Listen to this brief (9 minutes) NPR Science Friday podcast - you will be able to hear Henry Gustav Molaison's voice. But most importantly, he has donated his brain to further scientific study. His brain will be sliced and stained and studied at The Brain Observatory at the University of California, San Diego.
But the way they are going to do it will be in a very Open Science manner. Dr. Jacopo Annese, who is leading the project said, in this interview, that the entire process will be open - there will be a forum or a blog where researchers from around…
clock | December 13, 2008In The Animal World, Bigger Isn't Necessarily Better:
Shocking new research shows size isn't always an advantage in the animal world, shattering a widely-held belief that bigger is better. Michael Kasumovic, a former University of Toronto Scarborough PhD student, examined Australian Redback male spiders to determine whether the larger ones had an edge in achieving mating success and producing offspring. Surprisingly, Kasumovic found the large spiders didn't always have an advantage. Instead, because the larger males experienced a much longer maturation process, they were unable to search for…
clock | December 12, 2008The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
- Paul Ambroise Valery
clock | December 12, 2008Why is mainstream media obsessively focused, out of all the cool science out there, on silly titillating EvoPsych garbage, presented in a "shocked! shoked!" tone? Here is today's crop - feel free to savage them on your own blogs:
46% Of Women Prefer Internet To Sex, Says Intel Survey
Fertile women more open to corny chat-up lines
20% of teens say they've put nude pics of themselves online
Science Dweebs Often Virgins
Orgasms During Childbirth?
Are daughters-in-law to blame for the menopause?
clock | December 12, 2008CNN reports: Scientists baffled by mysterious acorn shortage:
Up and down the East Coast, residents and naturalists alike have been scratching their heads this autumn over a simple question: Where are all the acorns? Oak trees have shed their leaves, but the usual carpet of acorns is not crunching underfoot. In far-flung pockets of northern Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states, scientists have found no acorns whatsoever.
But closer reading reveals that it is lay people and amateur naturalists who are baffled, while scientists are not. Scientists are well aware…
clock | December 12, 2008In yesterday's New York Times:
Scientists have understood ocean acidification for a long time. But what they are learning now is how quickly it is increasing, in step with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. New studies show that if carbon dioxide emissions continue at current rates, shells and corals could begin to dissolve -- especially in the southern oceans -- within 30 years. Observations from many places, including the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, suggest that ocean acidification is proceeding much faster than anyone had thought.
clock | December 12, 2008On arXiv, by M. E. J. Newman (Santa Fe Institute):
We investigate the structure of scientific collaboration networks. We consider two scientists to be connected if they have authored a paper together, and construct explicit networks of such connections using data drawn from a number of databases, including MEDLINE (biomedical research), the Los Alamos e-Print Archive (physics), and NCSTRL (computer science). We show that these collaboration networks form "small worlds" in which randomly chosen pairs of scientists are typically separated by only a short path of intermediate acquaintances. We…
clock | December 12, 2008Hmmm, I am wondering if this is connected - adult sites are feeling the crunch so....are they now funding scientific consumer research?
clock | December 12, 2008There are 11 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:
Coupled Contagion Dynamics of Fear and Disease: Mathematical and Computational Explorations:
In classical mathematical epidemiology, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during epidemics. They do not…
clock | December 12, 2008Remember this?
Now Simon Ovens interviewed several key players in this game - Pulitzers Open to Online-Only Entrants -- But Who Qualifies? It's longish, but worth your attention:
He did, however, confirm that a blog could hypothetically qualify. "If one or two people call their website a text-based newspaper, would it be eligible?" he said. "Blogs tend to fall into three categories. There are news reporting blogs, there are commentary blogs, and there's a hybrid version of the two. If they're text-based and meet our criteria, then they probably could compete. But it would be up to them to…
clock | December 12, 2008Evolution: Education and Outreach, Volume 1, Number 4, is a thematic issue - 26 articles on the Evolution of the Eye. It's Open Access so you can download and read all the articles.
clock | December 12, 2008Food for thought:
Bill Farren: Insulat-Ed:
Opening up the institution may seem like a counter-intuitive way of protecting it, but in an era where tremendous value is being created by informal and self-organized groups, sharing becomes the simplest and most powerful way of connecting with external learning opportunities. Why limit students to one teacher when a large number of them exist outside the institution? Why limit students to a truncated classroom conversation when a much larger one is taking place all over the world? Why not give students real-world opportunities to learn how to…
clock | December 12, 2008"In the summer, I will begin an appointment at the Harvard Law School, while directing the Safra Center."
More details here.