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Hack Your Workout: These Songs Make People Take Bigger Steps
Do you have a workout playlist? You may find yourself matching the stride of your power walk to the beat in your earbuds—but tempo isn't the only thing affecting how fast you go. Certain musical...
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Herbarium specimen filing problem
Here's a problem TPP has never had to deal with before. Our herbarium contains an unfiled folder of historically important specimens collected a bit over 100 years ago by Mary Strong Clemens, a famous...
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Where's the chemistry lobby?
Veteran chemistry blogger Derek Lowe's takedown of the nonsensical Buzzfeed article about eight "chemicals" that you should stay away from was an excellent rejoinder to what was essentially a pile of...
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Another flying bicycle?
Actually this is a human powered heliocopter rather than a bicycle because there aren't any wheels. This is a pretty awesome machine, rather different than you would expect (video at link). There are...
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Citation index going up, a little
This really doesn't mean a whole lot, but TPP has a sort of weird fascination with seeing where and how his publications are cited. You don't want to be an example of "couldn't grab his butt with both...
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Ongoing page for protistology resources
(Yes, I still exist!) I've been prompted to compile a collection of suggested resources on protist diversity and biology, and quite frankly, I'm getting a bit too lazy to look things up and send the...
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Need help understanding photosynthesis? This may help.
Here's some help understanding photosynthesis in the form of a graphic comic book starring a super hero scientist. TPP will have to get a copy and see how it does, but it wouldn't have to be too good...
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In Defense of Ignorance: Heffernan Edition
An article making the rounds on Yahoo does a great job of reinforcing societal loathing of science. You know that stupid activity being done everyday by jerk wads and has given us things like clean...
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Friday Fabulour Flower - Flower of an hour
Well, Friday got away without a flower. Here's one that TPP likes even if it is a weed because it does have a pretty flower, and large for the size of the plant too. This isn't a common weed in our...
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Tippy canoe and river rats too
The Phactors used to canoe quite a bit, but in the past 15 years not so much largely because we no longer have a river and a canoe. The two sort of went together. Today was a pretty nice day for...
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Accouterments for the perfect garden
Don't you just love funky things for your garden? This fish water spigot is something TPP would love to have although not quite certain what it would be used for. Let's say, it's an attractive...
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Largest flower?
Here's another news article about the blooming of the "world's largest flower", and every time this happens, they make the same mistake; the "corpse flower" isn't a flower. No question about it...
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Loons Choose Homes That Remind Them of Where They Grew Up
Before settling down to have chicks of its own, a young adult loon shops around. It visits different lakes, swimming in them to test the water. Finally it chooses a home. Rather than selecting the...
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Peaky performance
Right now there is a giant spike of traffic to GamesWithWords.org, following Steve Pinker's latest tweet about one of the experiments (The Verb Quiz). I looked back over the five years since I started...
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T. rex - carnivore or lowly herbivore?
Apparently some paleontologists think that finding a T. rex's tooth in the tail bones of another dinosaur weighs heavily on the side of those who think T. rex was a mighty carnivore rather than a...
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Barn Owls and Such
European barn owl Tyto alba, photographed by Nuno Barreto. I have no idea where the 'wise old owl' stereotype originally came from. Perhaps it simply originated from their appearance: their broad...
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Fried eggplant spaghetti
The Phactors are great fans of the long narrow Asian-type eggplant that come in a variety of skin colors, purple to white or green, and white or greenish flesh. Fortunately, although late, the...
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Hopkins is #1 hospital in the U.S.
My institution had a bit of good news this week. The latest U.S. News rankings of the nation's top hospitals just appeared, and Hopkins has regained the number 1 spot, which it temporarily lost last...
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Reclaiming my explainer energy (from MOOCing back to blogging)
My Useful Genetics MOOC (massive open online course) isn't really over yet, but almost all the work is done so I'm finally able to think about research. And it's high time, because we have two...
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VerbCorner (and others) on SciStarter.Com
There is a brief profile of our crowd-sourcing project VerbCorner on SciStarter.com, with a number of quotes form yours truly. SciStarter profiles a lot of Citizen Science / Crowd-sourced Science...
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