Science Car – Print it out and stick it on your car
Heh.
OK, I just read this completely amazing book by Nathan Yau. He has been running the Continue Reading →
I haven’t had my DNA sequenced or tested by 23andMe, though I have some analysis done by Continue Reading →
Lots more to be seen at http://www.microbialart.com/
I don’t want to freak you all out with this, but if you don’t see Continue Reading →
The Journal of Improbable research has published a phylogenetic analysis of Pokemon characters, using bayesian inference implemented in the MrBayes software. Continue Reading →
This is an animated gif of the internet as it works day and Continue Reading →
These are the exchanges between the crew of the Starship Enterprise and Commander Hadfield of the International space station.
Continue Reading →
I just listened to Sheryl Sandberg from the TED Symposium in Continue Reading →
The latest XKCD comic is a lesson in phylogenetics – both cladistic and phenetic.
The original is here: http://www.xkcd.com/1211/
This time I am featuring a collection of Continue Reading →
Commander Chris Hadfield sings David Bowie’s Space Oddity, but this time he sings it in space. I think it is time for Commander Hadfield to stop being so flipping cool.
The current thinking on animal evolution through the medium of modern culture.
I believe this is attributable to Paul Arriola: http://www.elmhurst.edu/~bio/arriola/
I took this photograph last night at Inman Square, Cambridge MA. It was posted onto a Continue Reading →
Despite the fact that a female baboon’s bum looks like it might be quite sore and in need of some ointment Continue Reading →
Do I put this into the “travel” category? Oh, OK.
Saw this on Pondly and thought I had to share it. http://www.pondly.com/2013/05/test-tube-chandelier-by-pani-jurek/
Ever been bored out of your mind in a lecture? Ever wanted to scream at the presenter and tell them they are a complete waste of space? Ever spent a Continue Reading →
It’s that time of the year again – the exams have rolled around and students are stressing over the curriculum and how to answer this question and that question.
My advice is to do your best and remember that there are more important things in life and life presents you with many options and opportunities.
A profound communication between Buddha and a squirrel.
So, most of you are familiar with Facebook the social network. Facebook technology is based on graph theory – that is to say that Facebook represents each member as a node and each friendship between members as an edge. This combination of nodes and edges Continue Reading →
This is a double helix made by humans. Nice.
For some years I have been interested in gene fusions and how frequent they are in nature and how important they are. It is “introgressive descent” in one form.
They are surprisingly difficult to analyse, in part because they come in so many different guises and in part Continue Reading →
Recently, PNAS started giving their authors some access to post-publication statistics. Not a lot of statistics, just download statistics. I don’t know when they started it, but Continue Reading →
It’s Friday, darlings. Have a great weekend.
Humorous letter published in a computer science journal:
Dear Sir, Madame, or Other:
Enclosed is our latest version of Ms. #1996-02-22-RRRRR, that is the re-re-re-revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten Continue Reading →
This is by far the strangest bovine I have ever seen.
Sexual selection is blamed for a lot of the traits that look strange in the animal world.
Sexually selected traits are often whimsical, sometimes they might actually offer a selective disadvantage in the standard evolutionary sense, since they might cost a lot to make (in terms of energy). Continue Reading →
Larry Brilliant’s public health career has taken him from India, where he lived for more than a decade and helped run the successful Continue Reading →
I have just done a small analysis of the scientific publication output for the 10 years from 2003-2012 inclusive where the publications had the address “Ireland” or the address “England” in them. I have used the ISI database, which is a conservative database and I have constrained my analysis to journal publications only. Continue Reading →
Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one but only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows: Continue Reading →
Behold the Red Lipped Batfish.
Batfish are not good swimmers; they use their highly-adapted pectoral fins to “walk” on the ocean floor. When the batfish reaches maturity, its dorsal fin becomes a single spine-like projection (thought to function primarily as a lure for prey). Similar to the anglerfish, the Red-Lipped Batfish has a structure on its head known as illicium. This structure is employed for attracting prey.
Here is a super story of how a basic science project has resulted in an incredibly useful patch for wound healing, delivery of bioactive healing agents or other drugs etc. This is potentially a revolutionary little device for medicine and it has come about by studying a small parasite of fish.
Yes – you heard me, this came from studying a little worm-like thing that is found in fish guts.
What’s that, you say? This didn’t come from an applied science study, but a basic, discovery science study on how a fish parasite sticks to the wall of the fish gut?
This is true. the study has just been published in Nature Communications:
Go take a read: Continue Reading →
Thought this drawing was funny. The original comes from here: http://astronasty.blogspot.com/2012/05/what-is-hipster.html
Sounds like a bad B-movie, but this is true.
From Reuters:
South Florida is fighting a growing infestation of one of the world’s most destructive invasive species: the giant African land snail, Continue Reading →
A strain of influenza that is usually a bird strain, H7N9, has made the jump into human hosts and seems to be have a high mortality rate. Today the death toll came to 13, with the total Continue Reading →
Had a couple of chats this week about shellfish and seafood in general. So, this photo series is just to let people know that we have some very nice oysters in Ireland.
Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer Continue Reading →
SMBE 2013 is rolling around again and I’m trying to get everything together for the meeting. I was elected as Secretary of the Society last year and took up office on January 1st. Therefore, I have a few things to do apart form simply turn up to the meeting.
I officially organise the council meeting and will be present at the general meeting of all members as well. In addition, we are about to announce the new call for proposals for SMBE satellite meetings, so it is all go go go.
More announcements next week.
This is E.O. Wilson’s book on the idea of consilience. Consilience means “the jumping together of ideas”, or as it was put by the 19th Century British Philosopher, William Whewell, who wrote “The Consilience of Inductions takes place when Continue Reading →
Data from: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6110/1065
Ha – this is funny.
Small infographic on the speed at which animals can move
Francis Crick’s Nobel Prize medal was sold yesterday for $2.27 Million, including a buyers premium, whatever that is. It seems odd to see the sale of such an object. Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded, arguably, the “Nobel of Nobels”. A portion of the money is going to go to Francis Crick Institute in the UK, which is estimated to have an operating budget of £100 Million. Oddly, I was just reading a part of Crick’s book yesterday: What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery
This is a video made by Percival Bevan and it is stunning – view it full-screen. It’s sort-of science, I guess.
This is a super interesting book and you can buy it here.
Brief overview of the course: This course ran in the Fondazione Ettore Majorana from March 10th to 17th, 2013.
A total of 25 students attended and were taught by 8 teachers and 2 laboratory demonstrators. The students stayed in rooms in the institute and the teachers stayed in a hotel located 2 minutes from the institute. All meals were taken together as well as all coffee breaks. The majority of the teachers were present for every day of the course. The course ran for a total of seven days and consisted of morning lectures and afternoon practical sessions. Every student spoke for 15 minutes, using seven slides about their research. The Italian Society for Evolutionary Biology (SIBE) contributed three prizes for the best student talks. Continue Reading →
The meaning of scientific terms cannot and should not remain fixed forever by the priority of the original definition. This is simply because our experience constantly outruns our terminology
- Dobzhansky, T., (1955) A Review of Some Fundamental Concepts and Problems of Population Genetics. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 20: 1-15
In the last five years, there has been tremendous progress made in understanding the origin of the eukaryote cell.
This progress has been on a number of fronts – phylogenetic, metabolic and bioenergetic and in terms of other data that relate directly to evolution. Our latest paper in PNAS is, I feel, the latest in a line of manuscripts that have Continue Reading →
The words of Harvey Milk apparently, when he was campaigning and this is the purpose of this blog post.
So, I have launched answer.ie and it has gone so much better than I had hoped. We have had more than 500 unique visitors and more than 3,000 pages/question views served in the first three days. This is much better than I thought would happen and it augurs well for the future.
Having spent some time exploring new ways of using innovative technologies to deliver better access to education, I have spent some time working on a website that might be of some assistance to Irish second-level and third-level students, so…
First of all, the most noticeable thing about Harvard University and its various colleges is the level of support for students and staff.
The second is the extraordinary caliber of the students – but more about this some other time.
Got my official notification today that I am going on sabbatical. Continue Reading →
