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Researchers ‘cure’ HIV infection in a baby
On Sunday, U.S. researchers reported that a baby girl has been effectively cured of HIV infection with the use of standard antiretroviral drugs. This is an exciting development giving hope that AIDS,...
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Uh oh! Missed my anniversary!
No, TPP isn't in trouble because it wasn't THAT anniversary for which there are usually many hints. The Phytophactor blog was started on February 12th in 2008, so it's 5th anniversary just passed....
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The Evolution of Humans and Lice in 13 Reality TV Titles
Humans and our lice are even closer travel companions than Kourtney and Kim when they took New York. The parasites cling to us more tightly than Paris Hilton's new BFF. They've been such cozy...
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First they came for the bloggers and I didn't speak up because...
Here's a breath of fresh air. I keep on thinking about Planck's quote about scientific revolutions not occurring until old generations die and new ones take their place and here's something of that...
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Yahoo Can Do Better
Dear Yahoo, When you post an article about 'nightmare bacteria' I suggest not using a picture of someone holding a petri dish covered with mold. Just sayin'. Best, Lorax
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Cancer drugs: Refusing to die
Suicide is a part of life. Whenever any of the 100 trillion or so cells that make up the human body malfunction, which happens all the time even in healthy tissue, they are programmed to provoke their...
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Someone's Irish will be up
Oh, gee! TPP really messed up this time! Some things take time; they can't be done over night or even in a week. Somehow February just disappeared before doing all the things you're supposed to do...
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Help with plant identification
Arjhay, a reader, needs help identifying a plant, actually just a plant image, a not very good image, so why expect flowers, and it's an exotic ornamental to boot, so it could be from anywhere. Oh,...
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Solomon Snyder on academic publishing: ask for adequate, not exhaustive,...
Image: Corpus CallosumRenowned neuropharmacologist Solomon Snyder has a thought-provoking take on what seems to be one of the two evils that has plagued modern academia: publication (the other one is...
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March 2013 Desktop Calendar
Apologies for the delay in the March calendar. I have been busy working in the lab getting my moss cultures started! They are currently at the filamentous protonema stage and are growing nicely as you...
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TLDR: Two incredible things about bees and flowers
First: Bees can sense which flowers are "open for business" based on their electric fields. Although animals have been known to be able to detect electric fields, this is a first for an insect. The...
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Friday Fabulous Flower - a screwpine
Although most tropical plants are day neutral, and although most of the plants in our glasshouse are tropical, an great deal of flowering occurs now as the days begin to get longer again. Here's and...
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PT technology failure
Some technological failures are just so obvious. This particular PT technology of no great reknown was adopted to save money; the old tri-fold paper towels were just too expensive, but you only had to...
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Rats Sniff to Communicate, Not Just to Smell
There's more to a pair of rat noses than meets the eye. Like tiny, leashless dogs, rats like to sniff each other all over when they meet. Yet not all of this sniffing is aimed at gathering scents....
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Quantum computing so close or so far?
Quantum computing so close or so far? The following promotional video is quite optimistic, but it does a decent job of explaining the most basic workings and potential of quantum computing so I thought...
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Bye, bye, bunnies!
Our wildlife friendly yard is so friendly it harbors a remarkable number of fox squirrels and rabbits. Foxes do frequent the yard every so often, and so do Cooper's hawks, but they are primarily bird...
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Teaching botany to physicists
Physicists are pretty bright guys, but they really don't have a clue about biology. In the USA science curricula do a weird thing. If you study biology, you generally have both a chemistry...
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TLDR: Sunstones may not have been a myth
The Vikings were fabled to have owned a crystal that helped them navigate the seas. This was, of course, before magnetic compasses were invented. Few believed the tale. Now researchers in France...
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With so much good writing, is it worth struggling to write some more?
An editor at The Economist once remarked, as advice to me on how to write: “Aim to write a piece that gets featured on The Browser.” Edited by Robert Cottrell, The Browser is a website that recommends...
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Calvinists can wait, but Catholics live for the moment
OK, here's the deal. I'll give you £5 right now - but if you can wait till next week, I'll give you £6. Which offer would you take? It's the sort of dilemma that mirrors a host of real life problems,...
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