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On modular complexity and reverse engineering the brain
The Forbes columnist Matthew Herper has a profile of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen who has placed his bets on a brain institute whose goal is to to map the brain...or at least the visual cortex. His...
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Outa our gourds
The summer of 2012 was one of the hottest and driest in many decades and many crops, OK, mostly its maize around here, suffered in central Lincolnland. There are crops that like hot and tolerate dry,...
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A more powerful but less sensitive explosive
Pharmaceutical companies exploit a process called co-crystallisation to optimise the physical properties of drugs. Now scientists developing new explosives have done the same. As I report in The...
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The rising tide of religious protectionism in the West
In the West these days we're used to a familiar narrative about growing rise of non-belief. Poll after poll has been clear: most countries in Europe, as well as Australasia, are either largely...
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400 varieties of Squash
According to the experts domesticated squashes including pumpkins all belong to one of four species of Cucurbita. Domestication involves selection for desirable traits resulting in different...
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Most attractive squash
When you have more than 400 varieties of squash, some are more plain and utilitarian than others, some more attractive than others, in fact some are not just excellent squash, some are quite...
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Brine Fairies
The once-ubiquitous 'sea monkey' advertisement. Take a very good look at the words in the lower margin. Readers of a certain age (or readers who have perused the comic books once belonging to readers...
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Private Life of Plants - Part II?
AoB Blog reports that Richard Attenborough is producing a new program on the "fascinating world of plants" using the latest in high-resolution photography and the like. No doubt it will be interesting...
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The Hubble Extreme Deep Field
Almost a decade ago when astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at an apparently featureless patch of the sky they were rewarded with a spectacular image. The was the Hubble Ultra Deep Field....
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Some impressive facts about the internet!
Gamers solving an AIDS protein problem in 15 days, there are more devices connected to the internet than people on Earth! This is some impressive information/numbers about the internet and the power it...
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Ethical problem?
Students bring the Phactor lots of things; mostly problems. However every now and again students bring you gifts and many such little items decorate my office. The latest gift came from a fellow with...
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Ivano Bertini
Bertini with Harry Gray at Caltech (Image: NSMB) I thought I should take note of the unfortunate fact that Ivano Bertini has passed away. I first heard of him when I came across the famous textbook on...
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Are chemistry bloggers journalists? Eat the fruit, don't count the trees
There is an updated version of this post on my Scientific American blog so you may want to read that instead. Comments are of course welcome at both sites. In his parting editorial for C&E News,...
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Favorite war movies
A list of Shawn Ryan's favorite war movies was quite revealing; TPP agreed with him on 7 out of 10, and that's quite surprising. OK so here's our mutual list: Apocalypse Now (still gives me chills...
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Subconscious religious predjudice in children
We know that religious affiliation is one among many markers of group identity. But if you ask typical adults, they will insist that they are not prejudiced against members of other faiths. However,...
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The Faithfulness of the Coyote (and Other Urban Animals)
Greeting card companies are scrambling, no doubt, to fire entire departments of artists who draw lovebirds in cages and replace them with artists who draw scrappy wild dogs. That's because the new...
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Predicting my h-index
A new article in Nature presents a model for predicting a neuroscientist's future h-index based on current output. For those who don't know, the h-index is the largest N such that you have N papers...
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The Phytophactor gets interviewed
A very nice lady named Emma Springfield interviewed The Phactor a week or so ago, and that interview now is posted at the Nature Center Magazine, clearly a publication with some discriminating taste or...
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Genotype-phenotype maps and mathy biology
I'm reading a book chapter by Peter Stadler from 2002 called Landscapes and Effective Fitness [1]. It has this absolutely gorgeous figure: I love it. But just before this figure he has this equation:...
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A New Ctenosauriscid from Eastern Europe, Bystrowisuchus flerovi May...
This paper describes a new ctenosauriscid archosaur from the Early Triassic of Europe. Bystrowisuchus flerovi is based upon a series of fragmentary cervical vertebrae and a partial right ilium. It...
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