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Instinctive thinkers more likely to believe in a personal god – and less...
Late last year some fascinating research revealed that people who take a more deliberative approach to problem solving – rather than just going with their instincts – are also less religious. Now some...
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Don't need no stinkin' Obamacare?
Then try the private option, and all that it entails, if you can afford it. HT to the Pump Handle.
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Ah, yes, the purported GOP alternative for healthcare
This just in, and what fool expected anything else other than a tax cut and privatize "solution"?
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Hippy Mulch
The people over at the Garden Rant blog are far too nice about hippy mulch. Has your mulch faded my friends? Is it looking a bit dingy and dull? Are your neighbors looking over the fence and...
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Would Ron Breslow's dinosaurs be typing this post?
Much has been written about a recent perspective in JACS written by Ronald Breslow on the origin of homochirality during the origin of life. There's excellent commentary on the topic from See Arr Oh...
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Discriminating examination
If you really want to find out how good students are, how well they are learning, how well they are mastering the material, all you have to do is push them just past their comfort zone, stress the...
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GILDA or the future of the financial resources for italian research
GILDA is an italian beam line based on Grenoble, France. It has some financial problems, and the two responsibles (and the only researchers that work on the experiment in this moment) write a letter to...
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The cost of getting the flu
I've come across this neat infographic that explores the cost of influenza infection to the individual and to the country as a whole (here's the WHO factsheet on flu for more info). It really sends...
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Has India's new anti-malarial drug really been 'indigenously' developed?
I woke up to the news that Ranbaxy India has launched it's first indigenously developed drug: Synriam. A drug for malaria treatment, it is a combination consisting of arterolane maleate 150 mg and...
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Baby Corn Plants Recruit Helpful Bacteria Posse
When you're a newly sprouted corn seedling, all alone in the dirt, you need any advantage you can get. After all, you can't pick up your roots and travel to find resources or avoid pests. That's why...
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Friday Fabulous Flower - Purple Trillium
Among the denizens lurking in the shadier wooded recesses of our gardens are several species of Trillium. They flower over quite a range of the spring time and some are showier than others. This...
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A flat torus in three dimensional space
Vincent Borrelli, Said Jabrane, Francis Lazarus and Boris Thibert realize for the first time the image of a 3d flat torus. But, what is a flat torus? In a mathematical point of view is a torus without...
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How to run a University - coaches (rhymes with roaches)
A long time ago, the Phactor thought there were three member classes that composed a university: students, faculty, and administrators, of which only the first two are absolutely essential. Now with...
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A Jedi and vaccination
Last week was World Immunisation Week, celebrating and raising awareness for one of the greatest medical interventions known to mankind: the vaccine. But vaccination has a lot of problems, one being...
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The story behind Ranbaxy’s new anti-malarial drug
From the previous post about Ranbaxy’s new anti-malarial drug, we know that Synriam is a fixed-dose combination of two known molecules, arterolane maleate and piperquine phosphate. The highlight of...
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Interaction effects in uptake bias and in the genome
Well, the postdoc and I continue to struggle with our revisions to his manuscript about the sequence bias of the Haemophilus influenzae DNA uptake machinery. Quite a bit of the struggle is with each...
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Are secular alternatives to religious gatherings any good?
It's often suggested that religion benefits people by bringing them together and helping to create and bind communities. Since most humans are highly social, having a mechanism to strengthen social...
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Plant this weed - Sure!
There are plants that just should not be planted. The Phactor has already warned you about plume poppy and presently is struggling to eradicate Houttoynia crodata, the newest addition to my...
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On math and magic
I've been on a kick lately of re-reading my old favorite fantasy novels. I started with some of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, and am now going back through Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy....
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The Surprisingly Mysterious Eels
European eel Anguilla anguilla, photographed by Ron Offermans. The eels are, without a doubt, one of the more distinctive groups of bony fishes, with their elongate snake-like bodies and linearised...
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