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Virtual shock
The Raspberry Pi computer sat innocently in the glove box. This particular glove box was military-grade, enclosed on all sides except one by an inch of reinforced steel, with a narrow porthole made...
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Old fashioned cocktails
As TPP has mentioned before one of his favorite cocktails is an Old Fashioned, and he is not particularly impressed by supposed new fangled twists on this cocktail using tequila, or gin & Campari,...
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New Spider from the Upper Triassic of Italy
Regardless of the higher taxonomic uncertainty, the Triassic record for spiders is poor and just got a little bit better.Dalla Vechia, F. M., and P. A. Selden. 2013. A Triassic spider from Italy. Acta...
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How to Cross the Deep Sea: Stepping Stones of Mollusk Poop
The seafloor has no shortage of spiky wildlife or hairy mysteries. One such mystery is logistical: where do the animals that live around deep-sea vents and cold seeps come from? On the black and...
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Passing of William J. Breed
Museum of Northern Arizona geologist and Distinguished Fellow William J. Breed passed away in Flagstaff Arizona on January 22, 2013 after a long and accomplished career predominantly studying the...
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No idle hands around here!
Part of TPP's job is to keep students from being idle. Students learn about science and how to do it, how to become a biologist, by basically apprenticing with masters, the faculty. Fortunately, my...
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Andrew Grant
Andrew Grant's name may not be known to everyone, but he was a well-known computational chemist who made some very original contributions to the field. For most of his career he worked at AstraZeneca....
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Grades: Do They Mean Anything Anymore?
Alright. I'll do it, but I'm not happy about it.....ok, I'm a little happy about it. I mean I'm not happy to have to call out my profession, but I am a little happy to cause some well deserved...
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Remarkable Saturday
Remarkable! The Phactors actually don't have anything particularly pressing, no actual, events or appointments or anything on their calendar. What a Saturday! It's also a quite nice day for January,...
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The art of the Higgs boson
by the Zim & Zou design studio for the french magazine Le Monde - via Lucia Marino | io9.com
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In Iran and the USA, the "religious person" has a similar personality
There have been quite a few studies over the years into personality differences between the religious and non-religious. They tend to use the well-known "Five-factor" model of personality, and they...
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Misunderstanding science in Louisiana
In a recent hearing on science education, Louisiana state Sen. Mike Walsworth was questioning a science teacher about the teaching of evolution. He asked if there was an experiment that would prove the...
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Fungal fruit mummies
While having dinner and drinks with friends, TPP was shown this image, on a little cell phone screen, and asked, "What is this?" This question has been asked, and answered, before, but at the time the...
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11 People Trace Synesthesia to One Set of Alphabet Magnets
Most people with synesthesia can't tell you exactly why they perceive the letter M as purple and not orange, or a high C-sharp as bright yellow and not blue. For one group of synesthetes, though,...
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IOM to Public: Childhood Vaccine Schedule is Safe
Hey parents: if you've been taken in by anti-vaccine discussions on the internet, you might want to look at the newest report from the Institute of Medicine. After a lengthy and thorough review of...
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The Mites of the Incas
Diagnostic views of Haplozetes similis, from Gil & Subías (1993) as 'Lauritzenia (Incabates) sinuatus'. The oribatid mite genus Incabates was first established by Marie Hammer in 1961 for a species...
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Consult a botanist - we're cheap!
How much would it cost people to be botanically correct? The magic of many movies has been ruined by recognizing a plant that does not and could not grow where the scene is allegedly taking place....
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Today's Laboratory - Survey of algae
Surveys, breadth without depth, are hardly ideal, but watcha gonna do? TPP's classroom is over 800 miles from seawater at a public university that cannot afford stools for students to sit on let alone...
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Domestic cats are mass killers
The Oatmeal got it right. How much do cats kill? Too. Damn. Much. A study just published in Nature Communications estimates that, in the US alone, domestic cats (owned and un-owned) could kill up to...
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New Volume on Triassic Archosaurs/ New Cranial Material of Poposaurus gracilis
There is a new volume coming out that is sure to be of interest to all Triassic aficionados. It's titled "Anatomy, Phylogeny and Palaeobiology of Early Archosaurs and their Kin" edited by Sterling...
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