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Heads up on some important molecular genetics
Sometimes you wonder what if any benefit certain research programs will produce. Not to criticize because TPP's research has never been focused on application. But this is certainly useful and...
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Woo-hoo!! A hypothesis proved correct!
Last spring I came up with a far-fetched hypothesis to explain the phenotypes of two of our competence-gene knockouts,HI0569 (competence eliminated) and HI0660 (normal competence). I proposed that...
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Book review: Benoit Mandelbrot's "The Fractalist"
"My life", says Benoit Mandelbrot in the introduction to his memoir, "reminds me of that fairy tale in which the hero finds a hitherto unseen thread, and as he unravels the thread it leads him to...
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Science for Students - Matching Dollars
Want to help teachers in low income communities bring great science to students? Consider donating to the plant focused projects at the link below. Use the match code SCIENCE when you donate and...
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Pretty ironic, pretty funny - Ark damaged by flooding
Production of a new movie "Noah" (I always hear "This is the Lord, Noah!" spoken in Bill Cosby's voice.) was halted in Oyster Bay, NY, because of, yes, you guessed it, flooding! Apparently their 405...
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Heritage apples
TPP wishes he'd thought of titling an article about heritage apples, Core Values. This link shows some great old color illustrations and some nice notes about some famous varieties of apples, and TPP...
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Math-Phobes Experience Arithmetic like Bodily Pain
If subtraction makes you sweat, division gives you diarrhea, and the Pythagorean theorem inspires panic attacks, you might be afflicted with math anxiety. Others may not always be sympathetic to your...
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Boston University Conference on Language Development: Day 1
This year marks my 7th straight BUCLD. BUCLD is the major yearly language acquisition conference. (IASCL is the other sizable language acquisition conference, but meets only every three years; it is...
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The value of medicine
Drug discovery is a long, arduous and expensive process. Is it worth it? “One minute I was looking at death. The next, I was looking at my whole life in front of me,” said Suzan McNamara, a patient...
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Grade exams or plant bulbs
This is not really much of a choice, but actually both have to be done. The end of daylight savings time has provided the false sense of having some time to think about this. The main problem with...
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Prototaxites Revisited
Reconstruction of Prototaxites by Richard Bizley, used with permission. Richard Bizley has been kind enough to allow me to reproduce the above painting, which he produced in response to the discussion...
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HIV in High-def
Plaque outside Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's old house in Delft The dark age of microbiology existed in the years preceding Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's most famous microscopic study of Delft's canal water and...
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Why we want to believe chocolate makes us smarter
Eat chocolate, win Nobel Prize? The New England Journal of Medicinepublished a study two weeks ago showing, amazingly, that eating chocolate might make you smarter. To be precise, the author, Franz...
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the HI0660 'toxin' doesn't affect cell growth or survival
My last experiment showed that HI0660 encodes a 'toxin' of some sort, which prevents transformation when induced in the absence of the antitoxin encoded by HI0659. So yesterday I did detailed growth...
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Lack of good political choices
Bronco Bama has been a rather disappointing president, but TPP must consider the alternative. Would the use of drones or the status of unofficial wars (only congress can declare war) improve by...
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Boston University Conference on Language Development: Day 3
This post continues my series on this years' BUCLD. While conferences are mostly about networking and seeing your friends, I also managed to attend a number of great talks.Autism and homophones Hugh...
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The Prostigmata: Endless Forms
Water mite, possibly Piona coccinea, photographed by Roger Key. Some groups are just so diverse that it is difficult just to know where to start in introducing them. My topic for today, the mites of...
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Faces, faces everywhere
Of all the many human irrationalities, our hyperactive drive to pick out faces in the world around us is one of the most fun. There are whole blogs devoted to it. Like most abilities, this one varies...
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Language fact of the day
The name that appears most often in Genesis is "Jacob", followed by "Joseph". In other news, the most common word in Moby Dick is "the"; the most common noun (excluding pronouns) is, not surprisingly,...
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From one species many varieties - colewort
It always comes as a surprise to my students that all of these vegetables: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, are actually just varieties, genetic variants, of one single...
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