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Friday Fabulous Flower - Friday Fabulous Flower
Obviously the flower being featured is the twin flower (Linnaea borealis), named after Linnaeus himself. Yes, good old Linnaeus' honorific plant, and he's featured prominently in many things, for...
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Triphoton Wigner quasi-probability distributions on the Poincaré sphere
Quantum mechanics places a fundamental limit on the accuracy of measurements. In most circumstances, the measurement uncertainty is distributed equally between pairs of complementary properties; this...
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When can you shoot a student? Inquiring faculty want to know.
A distant correspondent and long-time friend has provided TPP with this letter written by a biological colleague at Boise State. The Opinion PagesOp-Ed ContributorWhen May I Shoot a Student?By GREG...
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Expected witch-hazel, got more snow instead
Well, isn't this just a fine development? By this time the witch-hazels should be in bloom and probably the silver maples too. Instead it snowed some more and the forecast is for another week of...
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Airline food isn't very good anyways
Well, TPP wishes he had known this over the years because those darned trans-oceanic flights and the resulting jet-lag hasn't gotten any easier over the years. Supposedly, and it is a research study,...
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Pale Terraqueous Globes
Imagine the closest star beyond the Sun has a planet orbiting it about the size of Earth. Visualize what your sunset would look like on this distant planet. Perhaps there would be two stars at the...
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Bikini
#Bikini #BikiniAtoll #fallout #ColdWar The United States was in a Cold War Nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union to build bigger and better bombs. The next series of tests over Bikini Atoll was code...
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Stunning Sea Slugs
Chromodoris willani, photographed by Samantha Craven.The name 'sea slug' does not sound immediately enticing to those not in the know, but in fact they include some of the world's most fabulous...
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Plant cold hardiness - It's the extremes, people!
When it comes to plant distributions based on temperature, it's the extremes that determine the limits. Unfortunately, there also is a lot of misinformation, some might call it fraud, in the nursery...
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Wy do you believe?
If you say you believe in something, what is it that you mean by that? For example, if you say you believe you will find a hundred-dollar bill today, what is that belief built upon?I posit that what...
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Evolutionary dynamics in holey fitness landscapes
What do real fitness landscapes look like? Do they look more like the image on the left, a nearly-neutral holey fitness landscape, or the one on the right, a rugged fitness landscape with many distinct...
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Do as we say, not as we do
John Kerry said, “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests. This [Russian troops in Crimea] is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in...
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More hypercompetent mutants Part 1
Well, I did submit a CIHR proposal after all. Not on the regulation of competence as I had originally planned, but a resubmission of our last proposal (from 18 months ago) to develop the knowledge...
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Professor or entertainer?
An article on Slate asks "how entertaining does education have to be?" The answer is simple; not at all. Entertainment is a diversion; education requires engagement. Very little entertainment...
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Do migraines cause religion?
Stop sniggering there at the back. I'm serious!This is a study on nearly 25,000 Norwegians conducted over 10 years (the Nord-Trøndelag Health Survey (HUNT)). The purpose of HUNT is to track changes in...
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An eerie, quiet calm has settled over the campus
An eerie, quiet calm has settled upon our campus. The hallways are empty. This can only mean one thing this time of year; spring break has begun a day early, which is the usual time it begins. And...
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Friday Fabulous Flower - Mimiature "holly"
Not too many people notice these little pink flowers on a little shrub in our glasshouse. Most people think it's some kind of miniature holly because of its leathery leaves with spiny margins, and...
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Life and lemons: The Memory Addition
About two weeks ago I opened my eyes realized I was in a strange room laying in a strange bed. I saw my ex-wife sitting off to the side. Other people were around. I thought to myself 'oh shit! wtf...
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A Rose by any other name might be a Heather
The Chi-town Trib had an article today about botanical names for people, well, actually for babies because that's when they get named, and it seems only for girls. Why are flower and plant names...
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Extracting energy from a black hole
The Penrose process is a process theorised by Roger Penrose wherein energy can be extracted from a rotating black hole. That extraction is made possible because the rotational energy of the black hole...
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