UPDATE: I submitted this post to the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center’s sponsored contest for a travel award to ScienceOnline2010. Let’s see how it goes… #scio10 In a previous post about Hatena we saw what might very well be the beginning of a (beautiful?) [:ttip=”symbiosis where one partner lives inside the cell of the other” id=”10″]endosymbiotic[:/ttip] […]
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 […]
Don’t you know We’re all light Yeah, I read that someplace –XTC This is interesting: an article in PLoS ONE that claims that Paramecia can communicate using light. The author, Daniel Fels from the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel, separated two Paramecia populations using quartz or glass vials, grew them in the dark, and checked […]
1976: Prologue In July 27, 1976, the American Legion, a US military veterans association, held a large meeting at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel a hotel in Philadelphia PA, celebrating the USA’s bicentennial year. Within 2 days, guests started falling ill with an atypical pneumonia. By the end of the week, 221 people were ill and […]
Jonathan Eisen started something nice in his blog: a review of children’s science books. So I think I’ll follow suit, especially since my first review will combine two of Jonathan’s faves: Microbiology and Open Access. The book is “Bacteria Galore by Sunday at Four” by Mel Rosenberg, a Professor of Microbiology at Tel-Aviv University who […]
Most of the Earth’s surface is colder than the inside of your refrigerator. Deep sea temperatures are almost universally 2-4C. That’s already 73% of the Earth’s surface. Then add to that the polar regions, mountain ranges and permafrost and you have about 85% of the Earth’s surface constantly at refrigerator or freezer temperatures. While there […]
But if you know what life is worth, You will look for yours on Earth — Bob Marley – “Is there life on Earth?” – “Well, duh.” – “I mean, is there another kind of life on Earth?” – “WTF?” – “You know… there could be these bugs that, like, they’re all around us and […]
Maybe I am slow on the uptake, but I never quite liked the term “post genomic”, and I used it very sparingly. (Yes, I do have that term in one of my better cited papers, smack in the first sentence of the abstract, but I never liked that). Perhaps because of all the associated abuse […]
