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Physics and multidimensions
posted by @ulaulaman about @lirarandall conference at #wirednextfest in #milano One of the most famous theoretical physicist in the world, Lisa Randall, was yesterday in Milano for the Wired's Next...
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The Early Evolution of Synapsids
Brocklehurst, N., Kammerer, C. F., and J. Frobisch. 2013. The early evolution of synapsids, and the influence of sampling on their fossil record. Paleobiology 39:470-490. DOI: 10.1666/12049Abstract -...
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June 2013 Desktop Calendar
I spent the past week visiting my family in Cincinnati, Ohio. We went for a ride on an old railroad bed that was converted into a bike path. This Fissidens was growing on a muddy bank at the edge of...
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The Stone Mantis
Lithomantis carbonarius, as illustrated by Woodward (1876). In 1876, Henry Woodward published the description of a large fossil insect found in a Scottish clay-ironstone nodule. This insect, when...
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Analysis of Triassic Archosauriform Trackways
Kubo, T. and M. O. Kubo. 2013. Analysis of Triassic archosauriform trackways: difference in stride/foot ratio between dinosauromorphs and other archosauriforms. Palaios 28: 259-265...
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No rain? Back to field work!
What? No rain? Well, soggy or not, there's field work to be done. A hard thing to figure out is the life history of some plants. Out on the prairie one of our target species is a lousewort, a green...
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Quick Quiz
Recently, this has been seen doing the rounds on the interweb: My first thought: clever. My second thought: hang on, there's something wrong here. Anyone care to guess what it was?
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Carnival of Evolution the 60th edition up at NeuroDojo
The 60th edition is now up at NeuroDojo. Go check it out, it doesn't have very many posts (what is going on with that, btw? Summer?), but Zen wrote a great one. I'm just a little disappointed he...
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Repo Men and gender roles
Scene 1: Man comes home to find that his key doesn't work anymore. He rings the bell, his wife opens the door, and tells him hers works just fine. She has had the lock changed. She gives him his...
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Book Review: The World's Rarest Birds, by Erik Hirschfeld, Andy Swash and...
The World's Rarest Birds is a fairly self-explanatorily named new book from Princeton University Press, a copy of which was recently forwarded to me to review. Published under the auspices of the...
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Interesting flowering data
Data from our garden flowering log shows some interesting patterns. Here's one. So far 2013 has been above average wet and below average in temperature, and in general flowering has lagged behind and...
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Antibiotics & Agriculture Part 1: The Discovery of Growth Promoters
This story begins with Robert Stokstad, an agricultural scientist brought up on a Californian poultry farm . He had started his career fighting against malnutrition in chicks. He had found that a...
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Catalogue of Organisms on Twitter
Ok, so I've finally opened an account on Twitter, about five years after it was a Thing. For those looking, I can be found at @CatOfOrg.
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Better IQ Testing for Animals: There's an App for That
It's 2013, and laboratory pigeons are demanding an upgrade. Well, maybe they aren't demanding so much as continuing to do whatever tasks get them their pigeon pellets. Nevertheless, switching from...
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Chili pepper eating contest - in India!
Chili peppers, which have no relationship to black pepper (Piper nigrum), are of a neotropical origin, but like all domesticated plants as they move around with people they get changed because...
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The Zombie Mosses Rise from Beneath a Glacier
Mosses that were buried beneath a glacier for the last 400 years were able to resume growth. Fortunately these resurrected mosses will not be out to eat us. These findings were reported last week in...
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Dental Microwear of the Late Triassic Dinosauriform Silesaurus opolensis
Kubo, T., and M. O. Kubo. 2013. Dental microwear of a Late Triassic dinosauriform, Silesaurus opolensis. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica (in press).doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4202/app. 2013.0027Abstract...
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Does hallucinations + happiness = spirituality?
Many highly spiritual people report experiences that are akin to mild versions of psychiatric illnesses. That's not terribly surprising because, as researchers have learned, hallucinations and such...
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Exotic plant food bucket list
The Telegraph has a list of 100 exotic plant foods to try before you die (which hopefully is listed in order of reverse toxicity!). Of course they got help from an economic botanist at Kew Gardens....
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Antibiotics & Animals Part 2: The First Warnings
In the previous post, we were wowed by the miraculous discovery that antibiotics could improve the growth and well being of farmed animals, such as pigs and baby chicks. The use of these growth...
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