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Weightless Flies Have Wanderlust
To astronauts, science fiction writers, and entrepreneurs selling tickets on private space flights, the question of how weightlessness affects an organism is crucial. Our cells and organs are...
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Once more into the dark...recesses of a creationist
I hate to send traffic to a creationist but so it goes. I wrote, what I thought, was a thoughtful response to a question I was asked regarding math and evolution and creationists. This, not...
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Who thinks Britain should be a Christian country?
In a speech just before Christmas, the British Prime Minister David Cameron declared that "We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so." He did go on to accept that it's OK to have...
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Molecular modeling: How far can physics take us?
Of all the scientists writing about modeling and simulation in drug discovery in the last decade or so, I have found Anthony Nicholls of OpenEye Scientific Software to be one of the most insightful....
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The Gagrella Problem Cranked Up to Eleven
A Leiobunum eating a cricket, photographed in North Carolina by Jeffrey Pippen. In previous posts on this site, I have referred to the problem of Gagrella: a large genus of Asian harvestmen diagnosed...
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Textbooks and botany
In grade school science books generally plants get overlooked, downplayed, and portrayed as static objects, so kids come to think of plants as "boring". For those of us in the botanical education...
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January 6, 1912: Continental Drift!
January 6, 1912 the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener presented in a lecture entitled “Die Heraushebung der Großformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane) auf geophysikalischer Grundlage” (The...
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A Great Start to the New Year!
2012 has started out super well for me professionally. The second chapter of my dissertation was just published! Budke, Jessica M., Bernard Goffinet, and Cynthia S. Jones. 2012. The cuticle on the...
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Friday Fabulous Flower - Bottle plant
Even though this January day feels like spring outside, it's still January, so there are limited pickings available even in our glasshouse. However, over on the succulent bench, one of the pachycaulous...
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HuffPo Science Page
Huffington Post has not been known for its rigorous reporting on science, particularly when it came to medicine. But HuffPo's new science news page looks pretty good. Who would have thunk it? And...
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What I read (2011)
(Grade A-F, no E's) Title-Author Additional thoughts B+ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson Reasonably good story which I flew through in a couple of days. Mostly enjoyed the cultural...
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Stalking the wild death cap mushroom
As purveyor of plant identifications, the Phactor gets lots of requests and even urgent calls for help. Identifications require both knowledge and experience, and a good reference collection also helps...
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History of Scarlet Fever: The Fight against Childbed fever, and it's many...
It was 1790,when Dr Alexander Gordon, a retired naval physician, decided to settle down in the scottish town of Aberdeen . He had had an esteemed career , and a wide experience in treating malady. So...
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At the Earth's Core
"[]...the materials of the geologists are not charts, chalk and chatter, but the earth itself. We should never know the truth, until we are able to make that journey, and see for ourselves." Jules...
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How dumb do (a couple of) our students think we are?
Email I just received from a couple of undergraduates: HI Dr.Rosie Redfield, Here's a chance to represent UBC's Zoology Science Department. The annual Science Week Events Committee , organized by the...
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What if winter never comes?
For the 7th and 8th of January, this has been extremely mild weather this weekend. Gave us a chance to police the yard and pick up all the limbs deposited during a wind storm a week ago. A few buds on...
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Temporal Cloak
The physics and optics blog, Skulls in the Stars, ask this what is a “temporal cloak”, anyway?I’ve been saying for a few years that optical science has entered a truly remarkable new era: instead of...
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The trouble with social algorithms
Via Wikimedia Commons, in US public domain.Say that you're like me, someone who's spent most of their lives observing others for any number of reasons, among them to pick up tips about social rules. To...
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Mosses without Sex for 50,000 years
Karlin, E. F., Hotchkiss, S. C., Boles, S. B., Stenøien, H. K., Hassel, K., Flatberg, K. I. and Shaw, A. J. (2011), High genetic diversity in a remote island population system: sans sex. New...
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new semester + new course = unprepared
Uh-oh! Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is a train headed your way! In 8 days, a class of bright, eager, faces will be wanting to learn some botany, and all that other course stuff like a...
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