Clik here to view.
Response to poorly argued opinion on student evaluations
This week the campus paper published an opinion piece by Harlan Hansen, professor emeritus, College of Education and Human Development entitled 'The missing factor of course evaluation discussion' with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Art and Plant Evolution
Check out this beautiful art project telling the tale of sporophyte evolution in plants. They use wonderful finger drawings in sand to illustrate the the story. HatTip to Dr. Bernard Goffinet for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Free Energy Perturbation (FEP) methods in drug discovery: Or, Waiting for Godot
For interested folks in the Boston area it's worth taking a look at this workshop on Free Energy Perturbation (FEP) methods in drug design at Vertex from May 19-21. The list of speakers and topics is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1866 Mississippi River map
Here's an 1866 map of the Mississippi River and you can scroll along its whole length. This is pretty cool, and TPP would like to see the real map. For 15 or so years the Phactors owned a cabin on a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Return to the Down's Quarry
The Placerias Quarry outside of St. Johns, Arizona is one of the best known vertebrate fossil localities in the Chinle Formation. The nearby Downs Quarry is not as well known. Named for the late Will...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Garden death list
This was the worst winter in 30 years and a lot of plants took a beating. Here's the obits so far. Two species of beauty berry (2 bushes of each), one well established, one new last year. Status: to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Date by which 100 plants flower fluctuates wildly
Yesterday was lovely, and the Phactors ate dinner on the patio with friends. The center piece was a Caesar salad with fresh romaine lettuce and a dynamite home made salad dressing (a Sheila Lukins...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Arthropods in the Precambrian?
The Ediacaran animal Spriggina floundersi, from here.The Ediacaran biota has been touted as one of the great mysteries of palaeontology. Comprising the latest part of the Precambrian era, the Ediacaran...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Plant "eats" heavy metal
First, TPP hates any science "news" article that says plants "eat" anything. What a stupid thing to say. Plants don't "eat" carbon dioxide either although they do absorb it. That being said, here's an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Women can keep the vote!
About this time last year I wrote about an interesting study that found that single women were less religious when they were most fertile, while women in a relationship were more religious. Christine...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Climate Change Reconsidered - again
TPP is honored to have selected to receive a copy of a Summary for Policymakers, Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts(2014), a publication from NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Friday Fabulous Flower - bear with me
Oh, yes, you've all seen TPP's tree peonies before, but do bear with me. These marvelous flowers are only around for a brief time and they are so fabulous that TPP just cannot help himself, and while...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Friday fabulous fungi
This is terrific stuff. Fungi don't often get the attention they deserve, and this photo essay is just great. Some of these images are just fantastic, wait, TPP means fabulous. The very first image...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Not dead yet: When do we give up on an idea?
Guest post by Carina Baskett written in response to Angela Moles and Jeff Ollerton's post on Dynamic Ecology: Is the notion that species interactions are stronger and more specialized in the tropics a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Analytical Institutions in Four Books
about #MariaGaetanaAgnesi According to Dirk Jan Struik, Agnesi is "the first important woman mathematician since Hypatia (fifth century A.D.)". The most valuable result of her labours was the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Starry starry night
Go here for a bit of a mind-boggling view of the stars as you look toward the center of the Milky Way. That's quite a few stars! Quite a view for residents of a planet way out here in the boondocks of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jellyfish are the most energy efficient swimmers, new metric confirms
Even though a blue whale is much heavier than a tuna, the mammal consumes less energy per unit weight than the fish when they travel the same distance. For years, these sort of comparisons have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How the woman got her period
Guest post by Suzanne Sadedin. This is reposted from Quora.Suzanne got her PhD in biology from Monash University, and has done postdoctoral research at Monash University, University of Tennessee,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From space with love
One year later, Chris Hadfield uploaded a video of his version of Space Oddity performed on the International Space Station. David Bowie had him a permission of one year and so, a couple of days ago,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Importance of Genitalia
Take a look at the figure above (taken from Mauriès 2003). What you're looking at is the intimate business of a male millipede, in this case a Bosnian millipede called Fagina silvatica. And if you ever...
View Article