Clocks in Bacteria I: Synechococcus elongatus
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First in a series of five posts on clocks in bacteria (from March 08, 2006)... Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 16, 2008 Tags: Clock Zoo
ClockQuotes
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By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.
- W. Somerset Maugham Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 16, 2008 Tags: Clock Quotes
My Picks From ScienceDaily
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Monarch Butterflies Help Explain Why Parasites Harm Hosts:
It's a paradox that has confounded evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859: Since parasites depend on their hosts for survival, why do they harm them? A new University of Georgia and Emory University study of monarch butterflies and the microscopic parasites that hitch a ride on them finds that the parasites strike a middle ground between the benefits gained by reproducing rapidly and the costs to their hosts. The study, published in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Scien...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 16, 2008 Tags: Science News
Sciencewoman at ISEF 2008
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Sciencewoman is in Atlanta, judging this year's International Science and Engineering Fair and liveblogging the whole thing:
Going to Atlanta....
First Taste of the International Science and Engineering Fair
ISEF 2008: Nobel Laureates Panel
ISEF 2008: Day 1 by the numbers
ISEF 2008: Full disclosure
ISEF 2008: Impressive science by high school students
ISEF 2008: Cool science and practical applications
ISEF 2008: Special awards and scenes from around the fair Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 16, 2008 Tags: Science Education
Books: "Snooze...Or Lose! - 10 "No-War" Ways To Improve Your Teen's Sleep Habits" by Helene A. Emsellem, MD
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My regular readers are probably aware that the topic of adolescent sleep and the issue of starting times of schools are some of my favourite subjects for a variety of reasons: I am a chronobiologist, I am an extreme "owl" (hence the name of this blog), I am a parent of developing extreme "owls", I have a particular distaste for Puritanical equation of sleep with laziness which always raises its ugly head in discussions of adolescent sleep, and much of my own research is somewhat related to this topic (see the bottom of this post for Related Posts).
So, I was particularly pleased when Jessica of the excellent Bee Policy bl...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Books
"People don’t become doctors because they were destined to do so but because they weren’t good enough at anything else"
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That's from an essay in this week's British Medical Journal by associate editor Dr Christopher Martyn. Before you get defensive, let's let him explain:Although the practice of medicine is by no means a dishonourable way of making a living, there’s something decidedly uninspired about it. On the whole, people don’t become doctors because they were destined to do so but because they weren’t good enough at anything else. Perhaps that is too harsh a judgment. It is more likely that the things that they really wanted to do were too risky. They may have dreamed of becoming rock musicians, professional footballers, poets, t...
Source: Canadian Medicine - May 15, 2008
Columbia Book Sale
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I got an interesting e-mail yesterday:
Columbia White Sale goes through May 31st. For more information, please visit: http://cup.columbia.edu/sale/23. We are offering up to 80% off on more than 1,000 titles in all subjects. (There are some really great deals). I hope this will be of interest to you and your readers. Please feel free to pass the word to friends and colleagues.
Hmmmmm, shiny! Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Books
Museum Night
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The fifth annual Museum Night in Belgrade and other Serbian cities will be held this Saturday, May 17th:
More than 130 museums and galleries in 23 towns in Serbia will be open just for you, so the only decision you have to make is to choose a good company. We hope you are in good shape because there will be so many interesting exhibitions, concerts and performances that you will literally have the whole Belgrade under your feet!
What a great idea - pick a day, have special exhibits, events and concerts, all for free, and get the entire town to come out and enjoy. Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Balkans
How YOU can help with malaria research
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Social networking meets social conscience:
As reported today in the science journal Nature, MalariaEngage.org aims to help in the stuggle against malaria. Rather than throwing buckets of money at big name Western research institutes, the new website aims to give smaller locally-based African projects a bigger profile.
Relying on grass-roots support from people who are concerned about poverty and disease, the website hopes to fund in-country research that would otherwise be overlooked by the big funders such as the Gates Foundation or NIH.
The site provides profiles of projects that individuals (that's you and me!) can e...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Open Science
EuroVision 2008
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I am kinda glad I went to Belgrade earlier and escaped the craziness of the EuroVision contest. The tickets have been sold out for a long time now. At least the European visitors will see how pretty Belgrade is now and how nicely it has recovered from a decade of wars, sanctions, hyperinflation, mismanagement and bombing. Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Balkans
Blogrolling for today
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Neurotic Physiology
Stitchin' Fish at the Ecology Action Centre
A Reasonable Theory
Scholarship 2.0: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
What Sorts of People
The Stanford Facebook Class
Giovanna Di Sauro
Wandering Primate
Vetskeptics Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Housekeeping
Today's carnivals
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I And The Bird #75 is up on Gallicissa
Oekologie #16 is up on Science and Supermodels Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Carnivals
Circadian Clocks in Microorganisms
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The first in a series of posts on circadian clocks in microorganisms (from February 23, 2006)... Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Clock Zoo
Do androids dream of electric sheep? Sure, if they sleep.
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To sleep or not to sleep: the ecology of sleep in artificial organisms:
We systematically varied input parameters related to the number of food and sleep sites, the degree to which food and sleep sites overlap, and the rate at which food patches were depleted. Our results reveal that: (1) the costs of traveling between more spatially separated food and sleep clusters select for monophasic sleep, (2) more rapid food patch depletion reduces sleep times, and (3) agents spend more time attempting to acquire the 'rarer' resource, that is, the average time spent sleeping is positively correlated with the number of food patches ...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Clock News
ClockQuotes
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Life is so much more meaningful if you take the time to hunt down and strangle twits who post blather to inappropriate newsgroups.
- Henry Spencer Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 15, 2008 Tags: Clock Quotes
My Picks From ScienceDaily
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Wild Three-Toed Sloths Sleep 6 Hours Less Per Day Than Captive Sloths, First Electrophysical Recording Shows:
In the first experiment to record the electrophysiology of sleep in a wild animal, three-toed sloths carrying miniature electroencephalogram recorders slept 9.63 hours per day--6 hours less than captive sloths did, reports an international team of researchers working on the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Barro Colorado Island in Panama.
Educated People In US Living Longer, Less Educated Have Unchanged Death Rate:
A new study finds a gap in overall death rates between Americans with less than high scho...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 14, 2008 Tags: Science News
New Ontario study on alcohol-violence link recalls "booze tax" idea
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When alcohol sales are low, the rate of assault is low. But when alcohol sales are high, according to a new Ontario study, so too is the rate of violent assaults."The risk of being a victim of serious assault increases with alcohol sales, especially among young urban men," concludes the study, published yesterday in PLoS Medicine. "Akin to reducing the risk of driving while impaired, consideration should be given to novel methods of preventing alcohol-related violence."The researchers found that for every 1,000 litres of alcohol sold in a day at a provincial liquor store, the likelihood of being hospitalized for assault ri...
Source: Canadian Medicine - May 14, 2008 Tags: Ontario addiction
Today's carnivals
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Tangled Bank #105 is up on The Beagle Project Blog
Carnival of Education #171 is up on Instructify Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 14, 2008 Tags: Carnivals
Daily Rhythms in Cnidaria
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The origin and early evolution of circadian clocks are far from clear. It is now widely believed that the clocks in cyanobacteria and the clocks in Eukarya evolved independently from each other. It is also possible that some Archaea possess clock - at least they have clock genes, thought to have arived there by lateral transfer from cyanobacteria.[continued under the fold] Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 14, 2008 Tags: Clock Zoo
ClockQuotes
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I feel so agitated all the time, like a hamster in search of a wheel
- Carrie Fisher Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 14, 2008 Tags: Clock Quotes
New and Exciting in PLoS ONE
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There are 57 articles this week in PLoS ONE - look around for yourself, these are my own picks:
The Secret World of Shrimps: Polarisation Vision at Its Best:
Animal vision spans a great range of complexity, with systems evolving to detect variations in light intensity, distribution, colour, and polarisation. Polarisation vision systems studied to date detect one to four channels of linear polarisation, combining them in opponent pairs to provide intensity-independent operation. Circular polarisation vision has never been seen, and is widely believed to play no part in animal vision. Polarisation is fully measured via Sto...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 14, 2008 Tags: Science News
Lihnida
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This one is for Rob, one of those strange-metered (7/8, or 1-2-3;1-2;1-2/1-2-3;1-2;1-2/...) Macedonian songs of old:
There are many more like this in the menu there on YouTube.... Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 14, 2008 Tags: Balkans
My Picks From ScienceDaily
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College Student Sleep Patterns Could Be Detrimental:
A Central Michigan University study has determined that many college students have sleep patterns that could have detrimental effects on their daily performance.
When Following The Leader Can Lead Into The Jaws Of Death:
For animals that live in social groups, and that includes humans, blindly following a leader could place them in danger. To avoid this, animals have developed simple but effective behaviour to follow where at least a few of them dare to tread -- rather than follow a single group member. This pattern of behaviour reduces the risk of imitating maverick ...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 14, 2008 Tags: Science News
Today's carnivals
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Grand Rounds 4:34 are up on Health Business Blog
The 124th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Mom Is Teaching Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 13, 2008 Tags: Carnivals
Cell Signaling in PLoS ONE
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Peter Binfield, the new Managing Editor of PLoS ONE, did some analysis of the content of the journal so far, and realized that the single most frequent Category our authors use is 'Cell Signaling'. And, as he writes in his blog post, those are some impressive papers....and we want more of them! Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 13, 2008 Tags: PLoS
Hospital versus residents in Montreal hospital construction struggle
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Today is day one of public consultations on Montreal General Hospital's proposed expansion on protected land in the city's revered Mount Royal park.The hospital is requesting exemptions from the downtown bylaws that govern construction on protected land. Tonight, at 7pm, officials will present the plans to the public. (See right for an artist's rendering of the new entrance.)The school has been working hard to convince residents that the hospital won't impinge upon the integrity of the park.In a release, McGill University Health Centre (which operates the Montreal General) CEO Dr Arthur Porter said:“Mount Royal is one of...
Source: Canadian Medicine - May 13, 2008 Tags: hospitals Quebec environmentalism
The Open Sleep Journal and The Phylogeny of Sleep Database
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One of the latest additions (just two days ago, I think) to the Directory of Open Access Journals is a journal that will be of interest to some of my readers - The Open Sleep Journal. The first volume has been published and contains several interesting articles. One that drew my attention is The Phylogeny of Sleep Database: A New Resource for Sleep Scientists (PDF download) by Patrick McNamara, Isabella Capellini, Erica Harris, Charles L. Nunn, Robert A. Barton and Brian Preston. It describes how they built a database that contains information about sleep patterns in 127 mammalian species. The Database itself can be found ...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 13, 2008 Tags: Sleep
Do sponges have circadian clocks?
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Much of the biological research is done in a handful of model organisms. Important studies in organisms that can help us better understand the evolutionary relationships on a large scale tend to be hidden far away from the limelight of press releases and big journals. Here's one example (March 30, 2006): Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 13, 2008 Tags: Chronobiology
ClockQuotes
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Comedy is tragedy plus time.
- Carol Burnett Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 13, 2008 Tags: Clock Quotes
Today's carnivals
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Encephalon #45 is up on PodBlack Blog
Carnival of the Green #127 is up on The Evangelical Ecologist Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Carnivals
My Picks From ScienceDaily
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Female Concave-eared Frogs Draw Mates With Ultrasonic Calls:
Most female frogs don't call; most lack or have only rudimentary vocal cords. A typical female selects a mate from a chorus of males and then --silently -- signals her beau. But the female concave-eared torrent frog, Odorrana tormota, has a more direct method of declaring her interest: She emits a high-pitched chirp that to the human ear sounds like that of a bird.
Math Plus 'Geeky' Images Equals Deterred Students:
Images of maths 'geeks' stop people from studying mathematics or using it in later life, shows new research.
Kids Think Eyeglasses Make Other Kids...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Science News
Blogrolling for today
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Diabola in Musica
Hoxful Monsters
StevenBerlinJohnson
An American Businesswoman's New Life in Serbia & Abroad
RoBlog
Speaking Serbia - Rob's Blog Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Housekeeping
New and Exciting in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine
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The Case of Deborah Rice: Who Is the Environmental Protection Agency Protecting?:
For researchers who operate at the intersection of basic biology and toxicology, following the data where they take you--as any good scientist would--carries the risk that you will be publicly attacked as a crank, charged with scientific misconduct, or removed from a government scientific review panel. Such a fate may seem unthinkable to those involved in primary research, but it has increasingly become the norm for toxicologists and environmental investigators. If you find evidence that a compound worth billions of dollars to its manufactur...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Science News
Open Access to Scholarly Publications (video)
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Open Access to Scholarly Publications (Updated May 10, 2008) from Sean Kass on Vimeo.
by Sean Kass (Via). Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Open Science
Removing the Bricks from the Classroom Walls: Interview with David Warlick
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David Warlick is a local blogger and educator. We first met at the Podcastercon a couple of years ago, then at several blogger meetups, and finally last January at the second Science Blogging Conference where David moderated a session on Science Education.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background? What is your Real Life job?
I've been an educator for more than 30 years, starting as a middle school social studies, science, and math teacher. Every once in a while, I have to remind myself that when I entered the classroom, ...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: SBC'08 Interviews
Just so you know....
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....this is what I got for my birthday yesterday.... Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Personal
Friday Weird Sex Blogging - Deepest Lovin'
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According to the referrers pages of my Sitemeter, a lot of you are excited by strange penises, strange penises, strange penises and strange penises (or something like it). So, today we have to move to a different topic, traffic-be-damned, for those without phallic fixations. So, read on (first posted on July 21, 2006).... Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Basic Biology
ClockQuotes
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What we love to do we find time to do.
- John L. Spalding Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Clock Quotes
Ettiquette for blogging a scientific meeting - a question
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I will be going to a scientific conference next week. Believe it or not, this will be the first purely scientific meeting I'll attend since I quit grad school and started blogging (all the others had to do with science communication, blogging, technology, journalism, Internet, publishing...). So, I am thinking....
I remember going to scientific meetings meant going to a nice little Florida resort and spending a couple of days with one's friends and colleagues, isolated from the rest of the world, talking about science 24/7. It is an opportunity to share your latest work and ideas with an inner circle of the field. Seeing ...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 12, 2008 Tags: Academia
The good guys won
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Serbs vote for closer ties with Europe in huge turnaround:
Serbs voted for closer ties with Europe instead of isolation for the second time in three months in Sunday's snap parliamentary poll, in a stunning turnaround that negated pre- election surveys. A pro-European coalition led by President Boris Tadic won the most votes, claiming 39 per cent of the ballots cast, overtaking the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party as the largest group in parliament, the private election monitoring agency Cesid said.
Even the best of them all, the LDP, won some seats in the Parliament:
Basing its projection on a sample of some 400...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 11, 2008
A cellular riddle
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It takes 38 minutes for the E.coli genome to replicate. Yet, E.coli can bo coaxed to divide in a much shorter time: 20 minutes. How is this possible?
Larry poses the riddle and provides the solution.
The key is that complex biochemical processes are taught sequentially, one by one, because that is how we think and process information. Yet, unless there is a need for precise timing (in which case there will be a timer triggering the starts and ends of cellular events), most processes occur all the time, simultaneously, in parallel. How do we teach that? Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 11, 2008 Tags: Microorganisms
Today's carnivals
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The 31st Gene Genie is up on Adaptive Complexity
The 64th Carnival Of The Liberals is up on Sir Robin Rides Away
Friday Ark #190 is up on Modulator Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 11, 2008 Tags: Carnivals
My Picks From ScienceDaily
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Dying Bats In The Northeast U.S. Remain A Mystery:
Investigations continue into the cause of a mysterious illness that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of bats since March 2008. At more than 25 caves and mines in the northeastern U.S., bats exhibiting a condition now referred to as "white-nosed syndrome" have been dying.
'Early Birds' Adapt To Climate Change:
Individual birds can adjust their behaviour to take climate change in their stride, according to a study by scientists from the University of Oxford. A study of the great tit (Parus major) population in Wytham Woods, near Oxford, has shown that the birds are...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 11, 2008 Tags: Science News
42
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I have finally found the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Much better than on this day last year. If I remember correctly, so will Melissa and Jennifer on this exact day as well. Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 11, 2008 Tags: Personal
ClockQuotes
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The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.
- Douglas Noel Adams Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 11, 2008 Tags: Clock Quotes
Postscript to Pittendrigh's Pet Project - Phototaxis, Photoperiodism and Precise Projectile Parabolas of Pilobolus on Pasture Poop
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We have recently covered interesting reproductive adaptations in mammals, birds, insects, flatworms, plants and protists. For the time being (until I lose inspiration) I'll try to leave cephalopod sex to the experts and the pretty flower sex to the chimp crew.
In the meantime, I want to cover another Kingdom - the mysterious world of Fungi. And what follows is not just a cute example of a wonderfully evolved reproductive strategy, and not just a way to couple together my two passions - clocks and sex - but also (at the very end), an opportunity to post some of my own hypotheses online. Read the rest of this post... | Rea...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 10, 2008 Tags: Clock Zoo
My Picks From ScienceDaily
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Young People Are Intentionally Drinking And Taking Drugs For Better Sex, European Survey Finds:
Teenagers and young adults across Europe drink and take drugs as part of deliberate sexual strategies. New findings reveal that a third of 16-35 year old males and a quarter of females surveyed are drinking alcohol to increase their chances of sex, while cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis are intentionally used to enhance sexual arousal or prolong sex.
How 'Horse Tranquilizer' Stops Depression:
Researchers have shown exactly how the anaesthetic ketamine helps depression with images that show the orbitofrontal cortex - the part of ...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 10, 2008 Tags: Science News
ClockQuotes
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Take time every day to do something silly.
- Philipa Walker Read the comments on this post...
Source: A Blog Around The Clock - May 10, 2008 Tags: Clock Quotes
Infection control doc sick of cleaning up after Ontario's dirty hospitals
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"I'm getting kind of tired of seeing history repeat itself," a weary Dr Michael Gardam (right) told the Hamilton Spectator. "People need to learn from it now."Dr Gardam was drafted in to help clean up Burlington's Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital following a C difficile outbreak that's killed 62 people and infected many more. He says simple mistakes like not charting cases and using ineffective disinfectants contributed to the Jo Brant outbreak. His review (PDF) of the outbreak was released on Wednesday.Dr Gardam - director of Infection Prevention and Control at the University Health Network at U of T and a veteran of the SA...
Source: Canadian Medicine - May 9, 2008
Death train could be in grips of flu outbreak: MD
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A VIA rail train has been quarantined following the onboard death of a woman in her sixties. Ten other passengers on the train travelling from Vancouver to Toronto are also reported ill, suffering from "flu-like" symptoms. One has been airlifted to Timmins, about a 100km away from where the train has been stopped in Foleyet, Northern Ontario.There's a lot of pretty outlandish speculation at this point about what the mystery illness could be (SARS, Norwalk, food poisoning, plague...), but some good old medical deductive reasoning produces a much saner theory: the flu."The thing that makes influenza more likely is that someo...
Source: Canadian Medicine - May 9, 2008
