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Congress passes a colossally bad idea for science funding
When was the last time anyone in Congress passed a truly good idea? I can’t remember.But they do manage to come up with bad ideas, and sometimes these ideas make their way into laws, causing no end of...
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Botany 2015 -Monday
Botany 2015 is huge for a botanical meeting, around 1800 people attending from a dozen or so different scientific societies; this is about double our usual annual meeting. The meeting is taking place...
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Botany 2015 - Tuesday
The fatigue of almost non-stop meetings and talks is beginning to set in. From the street level, the meetings are taking place on three lower levels. There are 130 steps from the top to the bottom, and...
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Ancient Stories Provided An Early Warning About Potential Seattle Earthquakes
Oral tradition played – and still plays – an important role in many societies. The subjects of these stories range from fantastic fairy tales to myths, tales based on real persons, places or historic...
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FieldNotes: In a grip of the legs of a snake
Why We Were Totally Wrong About How Boa Constrictors Kill by Jason Bittel at National Geographic: Boa constrictors were long thought to kill their prey by suffocation, slowly squeezing the life out one...
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Botany 2015 - Over and done
Exhausting. Nothing else describes scientific meetings like these. So many things to do in such a short period of time. Skipped the last lecture and some awards to eat dinner with some friends. One of...
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August 2015 Desktop Calendar
A crispy patch of Gemmabryum mosses from the 2015 SO BE FREE moss foray in the San Bernardino mountains. 1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly...
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How Charles Darwin Classified His Minerals And Rocks
In an autobiographic note Charles Darwin remembers a childhood wish:“It was soon after I began collecting stones, i.e., when 9 or 10, that I distinctly recollect the desire I had of being able to know...
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Home again travel and pre-wedding Monday blues
Friday was the travel day. Up at 3 am in Edmonton; home by 3 pm, almost exactly 12 hrs. Driving would take 24-25 hrs so air travel is at least twice as fast as driving. In neither case do you get fed....
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Once again, the problem is not synthesis, it's design
University of Illinois chemist Martin Burke who recently got a lot of press for his automated robotic molecular synthesizer has an interview in C&EN in which he says that his and similar other...
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Summer garden assessments
As always, the garden is a combination of the good, the bad, and the ugly; what keeps you gardening is that it's never the same. Here in the upper midwest, the very wet June and July zapped many...
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Hadromeros: A Trilobite Survivor
Reconstruction of Hadromeros subulatus, from Kielan-Jaworowska et al. (1991).Trilobites of the genus Hadromeros were widespread in the Late Ordovician and Early Silurian of Eurasia and North America....
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Bird interactions
It's a beautiful summer day here in the upper midwest, as nice as they get. With a high in the mid-80s, it's probably a bit warm for some people, but with lows in the mid-60s, the house stays very...
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Birth control pills have dramatic anti-cancer benefits
Women now have a surprising new reason to go on the pill.Birth control pills have been around since the 1960s, when they offered women a revolutionary degree of control over their reproductive...
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FieldNotes: Cecil and grief
Do Birds Grieve? by Becca Cudmore at Audubon: It’s hard to imagine what a mourning bird would look like. But forced to guess, I would say the footage of two female Emperor Penguins huddled around a...
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The enduring legacy of Leo Szilard, father of the atomic age
70 years ago on this day, a flash above Hiroshima silenced a hundred thousand voices and heralded the beginning of a new Faustian relationship between man and his machines. But one man had seen the...
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Naked ladies at a wedding
Now that's a click bait title, so don't be disappointed that this is just a Friday Fabulous Flower. Wednesday it began with a trickle, yesterday was a steady stream, and today it will be a raging...
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What's in a name? - Mineralogy
It may seems strange, but Romans didn´t know minerals, despite various mines date back to these times, but so they didn´t know mines. Roman naturalist used the term "metallum", derived from the Greek...
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Buckets of flowers
Isn't this pretty? Buckets of flowers for the bride and bride's maids all sitting together keeping fresh. Garden came through with the flowers when needed. It's a bit humid and some light showers are...
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First Record of a Lagerpetid Dinosauromorph from the Late Triassic of Argentina
Martínez, R. N., Apaldetti, C., Correa, G. A., and D. Abelín. 2015. A Norian lagerpetid dinosauromorph from the Quebrada del Barro Formation, northwestern Argentina. Ameghiniana (future issue)...
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