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Friday Fabulous Flower - Little things in small packages
Nice little things come in small packages, but we often over look the small flowers around us because so many of our ornamental plants have been chosen and selected to have big flowers. Here's a...
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Post 9/11, high religious beliefs predict more distress
In the two months following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Daniel McIntosh, a psychologist at the University of Denver, and colleagues ran an internet survey of 890 people to gauge their happiness,...
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Who cares about ebola?
Allow me to play the Devil's advocate: Ebola has struck again in Uganda, and to date, at least 15 people have died from it and a further 32 are in isolation in the country. This is the most recent...
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Hybrid F1 produce
The first summer produce obtained from TPP's kitchen garden this week amounted to a small hand full of cherry tomatoes and a 4 inch long cucumber. The combination of heat, drought, and herbivores has...
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Should women ask for more, or are we punished for being 'greedy'?
A short paper in the Lancet (Bedi et al) compares the sizes of grants awarded to women and to men by the Wellcome Trust, from 2000 to 2008. Male applicants get, on average, £44,735 more than women....
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A Beautiful Day
Today is a beautiful summer day, an occurrence that has been in short supply this year. Last night after being missed by the first round, a second set of thunderstorms delivered 1.75" of rain to our...
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A Curious Night
COUNTDOWN CLOCKSI was too young to appreciate (or be aware of) the moon landings. After that was the space shuttle generation. I can appreciate the space shuttle, but when all is said and done, and it...
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Exogone sexoculata, a Worm of the Interstitial
Drawings of head and representative chaetae of Exogone sexoculata, from San Martín (2005). The sort-of-randomly chosen subject of today's post is the marine annelid worm Exogone (Parexogone)...
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Mom's Genes Make Males Die Sooner
Men who make it to adulthood without succumbing to the male habit of dying in accidents shouldn't congratulate themselves too soon: their life expectancy still doesn't match a woman's. In...
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How many wooden nickels do you need to buy this motorcycle?
TPP has long had a strange fascination with wood. Technically wood is secondary xylem, and it's what makes trees possible. Unfortunately it happens to be very good for building and making lots of...
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Moss Identification Success
Introducing Jaffueliobryum wrightii! Finally I finished up my moss identifications from my field trip to Missouri and Kansas back in March. This is why I don't do much collecting. My collections tend...
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100 followers
Mileposts are nothing really but reminders of how far we've come and how far we have to go. Sciatic Pain has just become the 100th Phactor Phollower, and although the nickname is not very auspicious,...
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Mail from alternative universes
Not everybody is happy with the idea of exporing other planets for evidence of life. Everything about cosmological biochemistry suggests that life at the simplest level is going to be pretty common in...
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The perfect hamburger, spoiled
20 years ago, we cooked hamburgers the way we liked them. If you wanted your burger medium rare, well, good for you. A thick, juicy burger, seared on the outside and just a bit pink on the inside,...
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Schmallenberg virus hits Europe again but should we be worried?
Lambs, don't worry. I's not all that bad. I wrote back in February this year (2012) of a worrying outbreak of disease spreading across North-Western Europe, starting in Germany and ending up in the UK...
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Lawn chair tree
No sooner had the wooden motorcycle post gone out than a colleague called my attention to these people ("Pooktre") who grow furniture and trees that look like people. TPP has always had a fascination...
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Planning a symposium in Louisiana
Next summer the botanical meetings will be held in New Orleans, and TPP is looking forward to the food and music, oh, and the botany. Good planning, go to Louisiana in the summer, but probably that's...
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New ICS International Chronostratigraphy Chart Uses the Long Norian
The base of the Norian stage is set at ~228 Ma on the new chronstratigraphy chart of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Still needs further support and eventially a golden spike, but this...
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Mary Frances Winston
posted by @ulaulaman about #MaryFrancesWinston #mathematics #JudyGreen #Gottingen #FelixKlein Mary Frances Winston was the first women mathematicians from United States who obtained the PhD in...
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How to Unstick a Gecko
During a downpour in the rainforests of Southeast Asia, one sound you will not hear is the patter of geckos hitting the ground. Their sticky feet keep them adhered in habitats all over the world, from...
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