(Thanks to F.B. for the inspiration). Sigh… people don’t seem to learn. It’s been almost 22 years (yikes!) since a distinguished group of scientists published a letter in Cell calling for a responsible use of the word “homology”. If you were born when that letter was published, then in the US you can already drink […]
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Iddo
Maintaining a water balance is essential to life. Cells must regulate their water content carefully and within a very narrow margin. Too much water intake, and the cell bursts like a water balloon; too much water outflow, and it shrivels like a raisin. The cell itself is contained in a waterproof membrane. But there are […]
Since I touched upon the Romantic movement in the last post… few are as strongly associated with it as Edward Elgar. Daniel Barenboim conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Recorded 1997 in Carnegie Hall. First movement (Adagio – Moderato):
In the Hatena story about symbiosis, I posted the following picture drawn by Ernst Haeckel: Beautiful! In this day and age of imaging, high resolution photography, and molecular graphics, we forget that scientific drawing was a skill as necessary to life scientists as microscopic imaging, or molecular graphics is today. Indeed, biology was very much […]
The story of a predator that, upon eating a certain food, suddenly becomes a peaceful plant. Sort of. Free-living versus symbiotic A working definition for symbiosis is two or more species that live and interact. Mutualism means that each derives a certain benefit from the other, or at most causing no harm to each other. […]
Thanks to Michael Shapira for introducing me to this insane group combining blues-rock with Rai, Arab and Israeli music.
Mass Extinctions and Genomics The geological signs for mass extinctions are very distinct: the photo shows the boundary of the Cretaceous-Tertiary KT extinction that happened ~65 million years ago (Mya), and killed some 70% of the species on Earth, most famously the dinosaurs. This was the last mass extinction, and its effects on Earth’s life […]
Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology (ISMB) is a large international gathering of computational biologists, mostly from the bioinformatics side: genomics, structural bioinformatics, computational genomics, etc. This year there is a friendfeed room for microblogging ISMB 2009. So if you are not in Stockholm, or also if you are, look it up. Most of the microbloggers […]
Since the Swine Influenza Media and Blogging Pandemic has died for now, I think I can finally write about ‘flu myself. A quick aside: until I was about 15, I thought that the word Influenza came from the Arabic “Inf-Il-enza” meaning “goat’s nose”, which it is a bit runny, like a dog’s, or like someone […]
From Annals of Diagnostic Pathology. This is what happens when you bring a pathologist to a fast food joint. Hat tip to Laura for pointing this out. Here were my initial thoughts about these findings. “Bleaaachhhh!” (I’m very verbal when reading scientific papers). Well, it looks bad.. but. But. Cooked ground beef can have up […]
eMusic, a subscription-based indie music estore has hiked its prices and concurrently signed a deal with Sony BMG to sell their back catalog. What’s wrong with this? Well, a lot. Read my previous post for details. It seems like the reaction on the intertubes has been less than joyful, with phrases like “corporate sellout” and […]
eMusic is by far my favorite music store. A huge collection of indie, jazz, blues, classical, world, ambient… anything but mainstream. They keep the music DRM free,which means you are free to make as many copies as you please, and play on whatever device you like. For this reason, eMusic has little to offer from […]
Harvard University has removed from YouTube the video I embedded in my Leonardo Da Vinci and the F0-F1 ATPase post, due to copyright concerns. It is a pity. I believe the main sufferer from this step is the lab that actually created this video, and now has one outlet less to publicize its work. One […]
A short follow up to the previous post on latherin. A quick reminder: latherin is a protein that exists in the horse’s sweat and saliva. In the sweat, latherin acts like a detergent, wetting the horse’s coat to allow for better water evaporation and hence better cooling. In the saliva, it helps wet the horse’s […]
Dennis Mitchell: “Margaret, you are all sweaty” Margaret Wade: “Dennis, girls don’t sweat. Horses sweat, boys perspire and girls glow” Dennis Mitchell: “Margaret, you are glowing like a horse”. — Dennis the Menace / Hank Ketcham Horses and humans sweat but most other mammals do not. Sweating lowers the body’s surface temperature by evaporating […]
