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Dark Money
The very rich are trying to buy elections secretly and this certainly jeopardizes our democracy as an obscene amount of undisclosed contributions (aka Dark Money) not only buys elections it buys...
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Live blogging the Northeastern Drug Discovery conference
So I figured that since I am attending the drug discovery conference at Northeastern University I might as well jot down a few thoughts about the talks.Leroy Hood: Institute for Systems Biology...
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Boston University Conference on Language Development: Day 2
This year marks my 7th straight BUCLD, the major yearly language acquisition conference. See previous posts for my notes on Day 1 and Day 3.Verbing nouns Many if not all English nouns can be turned...
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A new twist on the fraction-competent problem
On Sunday I attempted to measure what fraction of the cells in some cultures were competent (able to take up DNA fragments and recombine them into their chromosome). I've previously written about this...
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November 2012 Desktop Calendar
I was hiking in Hubbard Park in Meriden, CT this past weekend and came across this Polytrichum piliferum. It was growing on some rock at the top of the outcrop near Castle Craig. I thought that the...
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He takes after me!
Here's a photo of my nephew's science project. He represented the features of the eukaryote cell using cake and candy. The nucleus is a peanut-butter cup, with a jaw-breaker nucleolus. He got a mark...
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New Experiment: Ignore That!
**UPDATE Apparently the examples below didn't display correctly on some computes. I think this is now fixed.** It can be very hard to ignore irrelevant information. I personally can't work when there...
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Election cactus totally misses with its prediction
For the past two months, TPPs election cactus has listened to nothing but political rhetoric, pundits, and predictions. The point was to distill all of this input and indicate the outcome of the...
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How women at the top change the game
Over 100 nations have adopted gender quotas in politics, giving women leading roles in society. Even beyond these reserved spaces, it has helped bring more women into the work force. This may be good...
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Belly Button Safari: Who's Living in There?
"We are covered in an ecological wonderland," declares Rob Dunn, a man with a strange idea of a wonderland. In the wild bacterial jungle that is our skin, Dunn has been studying an especially dark...
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Berry-go-round #56 - plant blog roundup for October
Hey, plant lovers, the latest plant blog carnival has been posted over at Seeds Aside. Click the link and go have a look at all the goodies you may have missed or not known about. No question about...
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Hurricane Chemistry: Renovating Butter
Hurricane Sandy left us without power for several days and while a basement chest freezer remained solidly frozen, thermal equilbrium was unfortunately reached by our refrigerator and kitchen, at...
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Who's afraid of Big Bad Thermodynamics?
George Whitesides, in what seems to be a trademark outfit.In a talk at Northeastern University yesterday, George Whitesides asked the students in the audience if they had ever studied thermodynamics....
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Berry Go Round #56
The newest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round has been posted at Seeds Aside. There are some fun plant posts in the line up that you should definitely check out. I especially like the post...
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New Petunia Record
A couple of window boxes sit just below our front, 2nd story windows, and as the house is white, trailing petunias, usually in a nice bright pink-red color are planted there to add some color. As of...
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Sad news; glad news
Naked, hungry, and miserable. That's what we'd be without plants, or at the very least fur-clad carnivores. Dreadful thought! Nothing contributes more to our "happiness" than caffeine, facing the...
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Looking through an opaque material
posted by @ulaulaman about #JacopoBertolotti #physics #optics #opaque #matter I am proud to publish a feature article about the research word of a Wikipedia's friend like Jacopo Bertolotti. The work...
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Caffeine Helps Us Recognize Positive Words
Does anyone still say "full of beans"? The phrase is supposed to describe someone who's upbeat and energetic. Maybe we can revive the expression by attaching it specifically to coffee beans, as in, "I...
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Does modern day college and graduate education in chemistry sacrifice rigor...
This is what I love about blogging; it's the classic "one thing leads to another" device. The previous discussion on the paucity of thermodynamics in college coursework led to a more general and...
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Garden challenge of terrible difficulty
Not much fall color is left by the time you get to early November, and actually, it's quite surprising that any is left at all. This is the northwest margin of the Phactors' estate. Can you find the...
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