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Rethinking the information revolution
Written with Alex Flint Beyond all the needs that it fulfils, all technological innovation is underpinned by a common driving force: how to make information flow more efficiently. From when the first...
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Need the Time? Ask a Rooster
"The connection with the sun coming up is a misconception," asserts an article in the rural lifestyle magazine Grit. "Roosters crow all the time." Some roosters in Japan would like to loudly disagree....
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Today's lab - water ferns
The water ferns are so-called because of their aquatic or semi-aquatic habitats. There are two families the free-floating mosquito ferns, Azolla and Salvinia, and the rhizomatous clover ferns,...
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Forcing some spring
It's definitely a late spring here in the upper midwest of the USA. There isn't much you can do about it, but this may help. Try forcing some flowering shrubs into bloom. This time of year it's...
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futuristic city bicycle
What a cool concept bicycle! Look at this thing! In particular the rim drive makes for spokeless wheels for such an unusual look. It's just great to see so much creativity in bicycle design. No...
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Gadzooks! Another bamboo bicycle!
The intertubes are just alive with cool vehicles today! Here's a bamboo tricyle actually, but boy, are you going to get noticed arriving at the office in this baby! Love the way this trike looks!...
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Maryland legislature scores one for science
Just one month ago, I wrote a post entitled "Naturopathic shenanigans in the Maryland State legislature," about the efforts of naturopaths to get a new law passed in the state of Maryland that would...
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First day of spring - hardly!
The calendar is telling us today is the first day of spring; the weather is not. It was blustery and in the low 20s (-6 C) this morning, and the walk to the coffee shop and then to campus just about...
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Pierre Deligne and the Weil conjectures
posted by @ulaulaman about #PierreDeligne #AndreWeil #AbelPrize2013 #mathematics Pierre Deligne, a belgian mathematician, wins the Abel Prize 2013for seminal contributions to algebraic geometry and for...
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Obama scores a point
TPP isn't a huge fan of our president, e.g. drones, habeas corpus, secrecy ,and more, but he's certain that Mittens and Eddie Munster would have been a great deal worse. So given much of TPP's...
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Acervulinids: Reef Forams
Regular readers of this site will know that, contrary to common belief, not all representatives of the vaguely defined category of organisms known as 'protozoa' are too small to be seen with the naked...
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New Data Linking the End-Triassic Extinction with the Central Atlantic...
Out today in Science Express. This study also provides support for the accuracy of the astrochronologically tuned time scale proposed for the Late Triassic Newark Supergroup sequence.Blackburn, T. J.,...
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Water, water, everywhere - NOT!
As part of a regular exercise to make biology students think a bit about bigger pictures, public concerns, TPP asks them to identify and try to decide about an increasingly scarce resource. They do a...
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Play Along as Sub Discovers Sunken Whale Bones Crawling with New Life Forms
Forget a needle in a haystack. For that search you'd be allowed light and air—and when you held the needle in your hand at last, it wouldn't be unrecognizably coated in bone-eating worms. Looking for...
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Nature coming into balance
Small mammals sometimes have their highest populations in urban areas; human habitations provide food and shelter, and few of their predators do well in urban areas. So it was with this in mind that...
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Pre-season training
Today, a Saturday, is a typical enough late March day, just a bit cool, but OK to do some pruning; still too cold to actually plant anything. The forecast for tomorrow is a winter storm that could...
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Tiny Plants Creating Big Rocks
Often enough the rocks determinate the presence and distribution of plants (as shown in the wonderful blog "In the Company of Plants and Rocks"), but sometimes it's the plant shapingthe rocks. Plate...
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In West and East, it's easier to remember things that are a bit weird
Look around the world, and you'll find that most gods and magical entities are surprisingly similar to regular people, but with one or two magical powers. The same goes for most works of fiction - your...
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Snow Day
Snow day! Whoda thunk it? It's been so long since our university had a snow day TPP can't remember the last. The usual reason for the snow day is the time it takes to clear parking lots, or a lot of...
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A breakthrough cure for acute leukemia?
This week a group of scientists from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center published what may be a genuine breakthrough in the search for a cure for cancer. The simple word "cancer" disguises what is...
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