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A Spoonful of Lemba
Lemba or hill coconut Curculigo latifolia, from here.The south-east Asian plant known as lemba has been referred to briefly on this site before, as a member of the family Hypoxidaceae. As noted in that...
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Biological research funding
This AM on public radio there was a story about the lack of research grant money and what a difficult time biomedical researchers had keeping their research labs going. Now here's the thing, these are...
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Soggy September weather
Usually September is a fairly dry, fairly nice weather month. August had above average rainfall, so things entering September were not too dry. TPP made the observation 3 days ago that some rain would...
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Ice Cream 101
Can any university claim to be a distinguished, quality institution of higher learning if they do not have decent ice cream in their student center/union? Clearly an absurd question to which the...
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I am a botanist
Just a couple of days ago, TPP explained that he was a botanist. This was because the Botanical Society of America started a campaign for its members to loudly (?) proclaim themselves botanists. If you...
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Friday Fabulous Flower - paper art
Every now and again TPP likes to present you with a bit of culture in the form of botanical art. This floral image is made of paper, the product of Yulia Brodskaya, a very talented artist. Your first...
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Brief 3.8 million year history of plants
Here's the front and back covers of a brand, spanking new book about plant diversity. Armstrong writes OK and he knows his stuff pretty well, in my opinion. Most importantly this book wasn't written...
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Experiments with inertia
a coulpe of home experiments about #inertia from Science Comics #2
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Antipatharia: The Black Corals
The black coral Antipathes, copyright Jez Tryner.One piece of trivia I've learnt while looking stuff up for this post: the genus name Antipathes, from which the whole group of the Antipatharia derives...
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Should we test all women for breast cancer-causing mutations?
In this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, famed geneticist Mary-Claire King argues that all women over age 30 should be tested for cancer-causing mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2...
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Happy Birthday to the man with five brains
Today is Murray Gell-Mann's birthday. John Brockman calls him "the man with five brains, each one of which is smarter than yours". We are thankful he is still with us and holding forth on a variety of...
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Always looking for bargains
There are certain things in life that you continue to seek, for example, an excellent wine under $10 a bottle and great bargain plants. This is the time of year when big box stores heavily discount...
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Happy Birthday to the man who found life slipping away from his fingers
“In my quest for the secret of life I started my research in histology. Unsatisfied by the information that cellular morphology could give me about life, I turned to physiology. Finding physiology too...
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Keeping good records - A is for Aster
Late summer flowering in Mrs. Phactor's perennial garden runs largely to the color pink but in a wide variety of plants. Here and there a little white and pale blue sneaks in. In the ongoing quest for...
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Evidence of Trophic Interactions Among Apex Predators in the Late Triassic
Let's get back into the swing of things Chinle with this new paper that shows how badass phytosaurs were. I'd love to see someone recreate this fight scene for a film.Drumheller, S. K., Stocker, M. R.,...
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No, no, no, no, no - Goldenrod doesn't cause hayfever!
The fall allergy season is here, almost. The harvest season kicks up lots of dust and mold spores, and ragweed comes into flower soon. The local newspaper had a nice sidebar article about allergies and...
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How slippery is a banana peel? Very basic, award-winning research
Everyone has seen the slip on a banana peel gag in cartoons or old slap stick movies, but what kind of an inquisitive mind decides to actually measure just how slippery a banana peel is? Well, here's...
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Early fall lawn grooming tips
Ah, the smell of freshly mowed creeping Charlie in the morning; nothing quite like it. Although the Phactors have extensive gardens, so big is our city estate that enough lawn remains to more than...
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I love gadgets but here’s why I’m immune to the temptations of new devices
Despite my love for new technology, I’ve become averse to adopting it right away. This may be a reflection of having conservative parents who worked as retailers in the tech industry. Even though my...
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Idiosyncratic Thinking: a computer heuristics lecture
http://t.co/7JB3CPaQt9 #Feynman Richard Feynman, Winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, gives us an insightful lecture about computer heuristics: how computers work, how they file information, how...
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