clock | April 26, 2008This is an appropriate time of year for this post (February 05, 2006)...
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So, why do I say that it is not surprising the exposure to bright light alleviates both seasonal depression and other kinds of depression, and that different mechanisms may be involved?
In mammals, apart from visual photoreception (that is, image formation), there is also non-visual photoreception. The receptors of the former are the rods and cones that you all learned about in middle school. The receptors for the latter are a couple of thousand Retinal Ganglion…
clock | April 25, 2008All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pick-ax or of one impression of the spade with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force…
clock | April 25, 2008Last night's dinner - crepes filled with a mix of cheese, eggs and sugar, baked in the oven with some sweet cream:
And, for the drinking game, we used 'Vranac', an excellent Montenegran wine:
clock | April 25, 2008Since this is another one of the recurring themes on my blog, I decided to republish all of my old posts on the topic together under the fold. Since my move here to the new blog, I have continued to write about this, e.g., in the following posts:
Preserving species diversity - long-term thinking
Hot boiled wine in the middle of the winter is tasty....
Global Warming disrupts the timing of flowers and pollinators
Global Warming Remodelling Ecosystems in Alaska
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Clocks, Migration and the Effects of Global Warming (December 23, 2005)
Circadian…
clock | April 25, 2008The Echinoblog
Observe The Banana
Ben Off to Iraq
Transient Reporter
Being the Chronicles of B
clock | April 25, 2008I was kicking myself all day yesterday because I forgot to take my camera with me for most of the day. First, my mother and I went to the bank to do some business which, of course, made us hungry so we stopped by a bakery and got fresh djevrek (no, although it looks like a sesame bagel, it is not - it is much lighter and crispier). Mmmmmm....
Then we went to the main building of the Natural History Museum and made some contacts there. The Director was at a meeting, but the secretary is smart, hip and on-the-ball and will be a great contact for the future as they try to design a new website…
clock | April 25, 2008This post (written on August 13, 2005) describes the basic theory behind photoperiodism and some experimental protocols developed to test the theory.
Timely prediction of seasonal periods of weather conditions, food availability or predator activity is crucial for survival of many species. Although not the only parameter, the changing length of the photoperiod ('daylength') is the most predictive environmental cue for the seasonal timing of physiology and behavior, most notably for timing of migration, hibernation and reproduction. While rising spring temperatures may vary from year to year,…
clock | April 25, 2008Last week in Trieste, immediately after the scienceblogging session at FEST, I helped start a new blog - Via Ginnastica. It will be run by nine room-mates (in an apartment in the Gymnastic Street), all nine graduates of the Science Communications program in Trieste and all now science journalists of one kind or another. They will mix English and Italian language, serious and fun posts. We'll keep watching....
clock | April 24, 2008I wish I could have this clock:
See a series of images and the sped-up animation to see how it works.
clock | April 24, 2008There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of workers in the world, the people who do all the work, and the people who think they do all the work. The latter class is generally the busiest, the former never have time to be busy.
- Stella Benson
clock | April 24, 2008Nurture Over Nature: Certain Genes Are Turned On Or Off By Geography And Lifestyle, Study Suggests:
Score one for the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate, as North Carolina State University geneticists have shown that environmental factors such as lifestyle and geography play a large role in whether certain genes are turned on or off. By studying gene expression of white blood cells in 46 Moroccan Amazighs, or Berbers - including desert nomads, mountain agrarians and coastal urban dwellers - the NC State researchers and collaborators in Morocco and the United States showed that up…
clock | April 24, 2008Skeptic's Circle #85 is up on Andrea's Buzzing About
Carnival of Space #51 is up on Astro Engine
clock | April 24, 2008This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior.
So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year.
Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…
clock | April 23, 2008OK, I posted a lot of pictures of Belgrade and my Mom's food so far, but the real business was on Tuesday, when I gave two talks about Open Access, PLoS, Science 2.0, the future of the scientific paper, Open Notebook Science and science blogging.
In the morning, I gave a talk in the gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art in front of about 20 people, mostly specialist librarians. That session was recorded and, as soon as the podcast is available, I will link to it. There were many good questions asked at the end and the excitement was palpable.
Afterwards I gave an interview for Radio…
clock | April 23, 2008The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English. Then I'd be able to charge you an upgrade fee every time I add new letters like N and T.
- Scott McNealy
clock | April 23, 2008Museum of Natural History in Belgrade is 113 years old. Tomorrow, I will go to the main building to talk to people and perhaps check the library and some specimens - there is no real exhibit there. But today I went to the ancient and tiny exhibit building, all the way out on Kalemegdan (the old fortress). Since the space is so small, they can only showcase a small portion of the collection at any given time. These few months, the exhibits is about Skeletons. Very nicely done. I particularly liked a whole series of skeletons of a fox and another series of a rat, both showing the various…
clock | April 23, 2008There are 41 new articles published this week in PLoS ONE. A always, make comments and ratings while browsing and reading the articles. Here are just a few picks - titles I found interesting - but you should go and check all the others as well:
Nutrition or Detoxification: Why Bats Visit Mineral Licks of the Amazonian Rainforest:
Many animals in the tropics of Africa, Asia and South America regularly visit so-called salt or mineral licks to consume clay or drink clay-saturated water. Whether this behavior is used to supplement diets with locally limited nutrients or to buffer the effects of…
clock | April 23, 2008From January 20, 2006, on the need to check the model-derived findings in non-model organisms.
There are pros and cons to the prevalent use of just a dozen or so species as standard laboratory models. On one hand, when a large chunk of the scientific community focuses its energies on a single animal, techniques get standardized, suppliers produce affordable equipment and reagents, experiments are more likely to get replicated by other labs, it is much easier to get funding, and the result is speedy increase in knowledge.
On the other hand, there are drawbacks. One is narrow focus which can…
clock | April 23, 2008Food is probably the most nostalgia-inducing facet of life....
Tuesday breakfast - prosciutto sandwich (right) and rosehip jam sandwich (left):
Poppyseed (left and center) and Walnut (right) roll:
Wednesday breakfast - cream and cheese and prosciutto and hot pepper and coffee:
Home-made, exceptionally strong plum brandy:
The internationally famous sarma (stuffed cabbage):
Turkish coffee: