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Ignored
There is a website I am ignoring.Sometimes the best action to take is to ignore. The organization and the man leading it want to influence society in a major way, and I disagree with their agenda. If I...
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Simulate the transit of extrasolar planets
by @ulaulaman about #exoplanets #planetary_transit #kepler_mission #nasa #astronomy The search for extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) had its first success in 1991 with the discovery of some planets...
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Medicare data reveals that U.S. wastes half a billion dollars per year on...
Hold on, you're about to get "adjusted."Ten days ago, the federal government released a huge data set detailing how it spent $77 billion in Medicare funds in 2012 to over 880,000 health care providers....
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Dehydrated Jack Daniels?
One of my colleagues always used to kid around about having packed dehydrated Jack Daniels for field work. And now someone has invented a powdered alcoholic beverage? OK, based on what TPP knows about...
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What's on a cat's mind?
No one really knows, especially what's on this one's mind. Mind? This is an interesting article about people who study animal intelligence, and they say cats are just really, really difficult to work...
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Earth Day 2014
Wow, has it been that long? Yes, the 1st Earth Day was 44 years ago, a whole academic career ago, and at times you wonder what was accomplished? What the frack is happening to the Clean Water Act of...
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My year with the real wonks: how academia enriches journalism
I stepped out of a chemistry lab to receive a shiny doctorate a little more than two years ago. Then, against the wisdom of many, I decided to become a journalist. That decision was made not because I...
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"A Fred Sanger would not survive today's world of science."
Somehow I missed last year's obituary for double Nobel laureate and bench scientist extraordinaire Fred Sanger by Sydney Brenner in Science. The characteristically provocative Brenner has this to say...
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Spring field work
Well, it's been a late spring, and our field work has finally begun. This sort of sounds silly, but the first job is to actually find our study plots. Yes, they are marked, and yes, we've been using...
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It’s life, Charlie, but not as we know it – Charles Darwin and the search of...
In August 1881 the journal “Science” published an article with a letter exchange by two amateur geologist – British Charles R. Darwin and the German Otto Hahn- discussing the possibility of...
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A Video on the Moss Life Cycle
Take a break from your regularly scheduled program to check out this video on the moss life cycle. I would definitely recommend this video to students learning about mosses or bryophytes in class or...
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Taxonomy class field trip
A late spring always truncates TPP's plant taxonomy class, but what can you do? Well, today TPP guided his class to a seep spring, a smallish marshy-boggy habitat where in this particular area is one...
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Simple pleasures - first lettuce of spring
Anytime the Phactors get garden lettuce prior to May it's considered to be a successful start to the gardening season. It's hard to argue with garden fresh lettuce (and spring onions). TPP uses big...
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Y Combinator and biotech: The wave of the future?
Marcus Wohlsen's book "Biopunk" details the efforts of dedicated garage biotech enthusiasts. Startup incubators like Y-Combinator could help bring their efforts to fruition (Image: Steve Zazeski)Y...
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Drug costs and prices: Here we go again
Gilead's hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir (Sovaldi)Misleading statements and conclusions regarding drug costs and prices are again being thrown around. It started with a post right here on Scientific...
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Nature Communications faux pas
This article in Nature Communicationshas this figure showing the phylogenetic relationship between "contemporary human populations and Neanderthals":Basically, the contemporary "out-of-Africa"...
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Exhausted social butterflies
Near the end of semesters, especially the spring one, all sorts of social events get piled up on one another, and then there's spring stuff too. So Friday night the Phactors were out for pizza with a...
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UBC's new website
Here's the email UBC sent everyone the day before they launched their new web presence:"To the UBC Community,We are pleased to announce that a significantly redesigned UBC.ca website willlaunch on...
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A new Magnolia record!
Two new magnolias, a yellow-flowered butterflies hybrid and an anise magnolia (M. salicifolia) were both in flower for the first time. The anise magnolia is 10-12 years old but was just a stick when...
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