Science News

There are 16 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, Mendeley, 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: Sibling Competition and Conspicuousness of Nestling Gapes in Altricial Birds: A Comparative Study: Nestlings of altricial birds capture parents' attention through conspicuous visual displays, including…
There are 37 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, Mendeley, 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: First Known Feeding Trace of the Eocene Bottom-Dwelling Fish Notogoneus osculus and Its Paleontological Significance: The Green River Formation (early Eocene, about 42-53 Ma) at and near Fossil Butte…
Today, four of seven PLoS journals published new articles. I took a look and picked (under the fold) those I found interesting and/or 'bloggable'. 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, Mendeley, 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: Mapping the Evolution of Scientific Fields: Despite the apparent cross-disciplinary interactions among…
There are 32 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, Mendeley, 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: Novel Weapons Testing: Are Invasive Plants More Chemically Defended than Native Plants?: Exotic species have been hypothesized to successfully invade new habitats by virtue of possessing novel biochemistry…
Four out of seven PLoS journals published new articles today. Under the fold are those I personallyt found most interesting and/or 'bloggable'. 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, Mendeley, 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: Climate Change Risks and Conservation Implications for a Threatened Small-Range Mammal Species: Climate…
There are 31 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, Mendeley, 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: A Dominance Hierarchy of Auditory Spatial Cues in Barn Owls: Barn owls integrate spatial information across frequency channels to localize sounds in space. We presented barn owls with synchronous sounds…
Four of seven PLoS journals published today. I think these, below, are the most interesting and bloggable. 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, Mendeley, 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: Chikungunya: A Potentially Emerging Epidemic?: Chikungunya virus is a mosquito-borne emerging pathogen that has a major health impact in humans…
There are 22 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, Mendeley, 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: Bee Threat Elicits Alarm Call in African Elephants: Unlike the smaller and more vulnerable mammals, African elephants have relatively few predators that threaten their survival. The sound of disturbed…
Friday - when four out of seven PLoS journals publish new articles. Check them out. And 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, Mendeley, 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: Monitoring Great Ape and Elephant Abundance at Large Spatial Scales: Measuring Effectiveness of a Conservation Landscape: Protected areas are fundamental to…
There are 35 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, Mendeley, 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: Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data: The growing competition and "publish or perish" culture in academia might conflict with the objectivity and…
Four out of seven PLoS journals published new articles last night - here are the ones that caught my eye. 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, Mendeley, 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: Do Decapod Crustaceans Have Nociceptors for Extreme pH?: Nociception is the physiological detection of noxious stimuli. Because of its obvious…
The New York Times Reader: Science & Technology by Holly Stocking is now out: Science writing poses specific challenges: Science writers must engage their audiences while also explaining unfamiliar scientific concepts and processes. Further, they must illuminate arcane research methods while at the same time cope with scientific ignorance and uncertainty. Stocking's volume not only tackles these challenges, but also includes extraordinary breadth in story selection, from prize-winning narratives, profiles and explanatory pieces to accounts of scientific meetings and new discoveries, Q…
Today, four out of seven PLoS journals published new articles. Here's my pick of papers I find most interesting and/or bloggable. 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, Mendeley, 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: Use of Herring Bait to Farm Lobsters in the Gulf of Maine: Ecologists, fisheries scientists, and coastal managers have…
A large part of my affection for science comes from the thrill of terror I get when a particularly insane piece of science news hits the presses. When an article begins with a sentence like, "there is something strange in the cosmic neighborhood," or "all the black holes found so far in our universe may be doorways into alternate realities," my pulse quickens and a dormant paranoia is roused from deep within my breast: a sensation of joyful panic. I used to call this the "fourth-grade nightmare fantasy." This might be because as a long-time science fiction adept, I tend to read science news…
There are 19 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, Mendeley, 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: BioTorrents: A File Sharing Service for Scientific Data: The transfer of scientific data has emerged as a significant challenge, as datasets continue to grow in size and demand for open access sharing…
Four of the seven PLoS journals published today. Let's take a look. 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, Mendeley, 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: Male Accessory Gland Protein Reduces Egg Laying in a Simultaneous Hermaphrodite: Seminal fluid is an important part of the ejaculate of internally fertilizing animals. This fluid…
Whenever I read a paper from Karl-Arne Stokkan's lab, and I have read every one of them, no matter how dense the scientese language I always start imagining them running around the cold, dark Arctic, wielding enormous butterfly nets, looking for and catching reindeer (or ptarmigans, whichever animal the paper is about) to do their research. If I was not so averse to cold, I'd think this would be the best career in science ever! It is no surprise that their latest paper - A Circadian Clock Is Not Required in an Arctic Mammal (press release) - was widely covered by the media, both traditional…
This is a pretty neat idea.  This technology, still under development, promises to enable the printing of skin grafts.  It uses a technology similar to inkjet printers: href="http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/cell-fabricator-prinks-healing-flesh-burn-victims">Inkjet Cell Fabricator Prints Healing Flesh Directly Onto Wounds Popular Science By Stuart Fox 04.09.2010 As if fabricating a new heart from scratch wasn't impressive enough, the doctors at the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine have come up with another astounding breakthrough. This time, they've designed…
There are 27 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, Mendeley, 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: Dung Beetles Eat Acorns to Increase Their Ovarian Development and Thermal Tolerance: Animals eat different foods in proportions that yield a more favorable balance of nutrients. Despite known examples of…
There are 22 new articles in PLoS ONE today. I think these are the most interesting (to me) and perhaps most bloggable: High Natality Rates of Endangered Steller Sea Lions in Kenai Fjords, Alaska and Perceptions of Population Status in the Gulf of Alaska: Steller sea lions experienced a dramatic population collapse of more than 80% in the late 1970s through the 1990s across their western range in Alaska. One of several competing hypotheses about the cause holds that reduced female reproductive rates (natality) substantively contributed to the decline and continue to limit recovery in the…