Clik here to view.
Video abstract: Experimental demo of an invisibility cloak
a post by @ulaulaman via @NJPhysics A little video about the paper Experimental demonstration of a broadband array of invisibility cloaks in the visible frequency range by V N Smolyaninova, I I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Happy Birthday to Me
On the 27th of May 2007, I made my very first post on Catalogue of Organisms. It wasn't very good. But I persevered, and that mediocrity has become a proud tradition. CoO is five years old today! I'll...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nobel laureate joins the autism cranks at AutismOne conference
If you're reading this from anywhere but Chicago, you just missed the Autism One conference, which ends today. This conference, run by Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue, purports to tell parents...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The evolving carnival
The CoE blogger thinks Carnival of Evolution is evolving. Doofus! There's no population, no real inheritance, and not even a genetic code to be transmitted. All it amounts to then is akin to memes, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Just like a Monday, Monday
Memorial Day is just like a Monday because actually it is a Monday. It started with a loud crack at about 2 AM, and it was very loud because it woke me up and the windows were closed because we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Lace Web Weavers
Male of the Madagascan Ambohima sublima, with enlarged inset of the clasping apparatus of metatarsus I, from Griswold et al. (2012). The Phyxelididae, the lace web weavers, are one of the families of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Flowers Use Velcro Cells to Keep Bees from Blowing Away
When a pollinator is at your front steps about to come in for a drink of nectar, you'd be foolish to let a gust of wind blow her away. That's why most flowers have installed velcro doormats. Pointy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Publications update
This morning we got an email from Nucleic Acids Research with provisional acceptance of the postdoc's manuscript on Haemophilus influenzae uptake specificity. The reviews were short and favourable so...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dry, dry, dry
Some things are meant to be dry: wine, towels, gin, martinis, gun powder, humor. Gardens are not in that category, and now the early heat, the lack of seasonal rain, and the minimal winter...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An almost-Nobelist's lesson to his daughter
Last year's physics Nobel Prize was awarded to a group of three people who discovered one of the most significant recent facts about our universe; the fact that its expansion is accelerating. It turns...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Future/Proof
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
HI0659/HI0660 update
My clever strategy for making a double knockout of the HI0659 and HI0660 genes has been derailed by the absence of plasmid in one of the E. coli strains and the absence of the SpcR resistance cassette...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gumming up the works
There are lots of plant products that you have almost daily contact with of which you are largely unaware, and one of these is plant gums used mostly as thickeners and emulsifiers. So unless you are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
And now for something completely different
You see a lot of different things wandering around college campuses, and a few enter into the area of strange, but you get used to different. So it was this morning while wheeling along between the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Genomic studies confirm the tomato is a fruit. Duh!
Really? Genomics confirms that the tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable? No, probably just Gisela's lame attempt at humor. There are a lot of good reasons for genomic research, comparing one genome to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
North Carolina takes new approach to global warming - make it illegal.
States and countries with significant coastlines should be quite concerned as Greenland's ice cap melts because low lying areas along their shore lines will be submerged, although NC is luckier than...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mosses at Trout Brook Valley
I led a moss walk at the end of April at Trout Brook Valley, which is part of the Aspetuck Land Trust in southwestern Connecticut. Unfortunately we had a pretty dry April and the mosses were a little...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Black Queen Hypothesis
In the game of Hearts, the object is to not get certain cards. The most vile of them all is the dreaded black queen of spades, which is as bad as all the other bad cards put together. In a recent...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Religion boosts self control
Kevin Rounding (Queen's University, Ontario, Canada) has run a series of experiments which suggest that religious beliefs can actually boost your ability to stay focussed and resist temptation. For...
View Article