Clik here to view.
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: Alternation of Generations in Plants
Dr. Friedman uses the analogy of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde to describe how plants have two different generations in their life cycle in this Science, Perspectives article.Friedman, W. (2013). One...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Speaking of snow - and soccer - and Costa Rica
TTP has spent a lot of time in Costa Rica doing research and teaching, and every now and then just being a gringo tourista. Snow days here in the upper midwest are no big deal really. But some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Descent into Madness
I enjoy the NFL, college hockey and basketball, and a little NASCAR to pass a lazy Sunday afternoon on the couch. However, I'm not a huge follower of any particular sport. I'll watch a fair amount of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Final Hurdle
I'd pretty much done everything at this point. Through struggle and sweat and 263 pages of thesis, I found myself edging closer to the finish line. In theory, anyone can write a long thousand page...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Play the game with the Higgs boson
In the mid-March at Moriond 2013ATLAS and CMS presented the last results about the research of the Higgs' boson. While CMS reduced the excess for the $H \rightarrow \gamma \gamma$ decay channell, ATLAS...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Snow day - Student interpretation
University campuses are a great place to work, to spend your time, because there's always something going one: mad things, crazy things, zany things, serious things, nothings, etc. Yesterday was a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Today's lab - Cycads
Cycads are one of TPP's favorite groups of organisms. Cycads are the dinosaurs of the plant kingdom, the oldest living lineage of seed plants with a history stretching back to the late Permian, real...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Good Coot Parents Let Kids Starve, Make It Up to Them Later
Too many mouths to feed? Just make your babies fight each other to the death! That's a strategy some bird parents have been using since even before TheHunger Games was popular. It means the strongest...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chemical compounds from mouthwash may target cancer cells
Apoptosis or programmed cell death is one of the great truths of cellular life, an essential process that’s not only required to make way for new cells but to prevent old cells from going haywire. When...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Who took the preserved ginkgo?
Specimens are always a problem, and how can you teach students about organisms if you can't put the organism, or at least significant pieces thereof, into their hot little hands? Let's say you want...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Ten things I can do now I have a PhD
Ten Things I can now do with a PhDI can introduce myself as the "lu-uurve" doctor to members of the opposite gender.I can finally publish a book about the "Lint" diet , and have it fester on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A tiny bit less colorful
This morning was really quite lovely with a promise, a true promise, of spring in the air, but perhaps just a tad less colorful than it was. By strange coincidence, on the way to my coffee shoppe, TPP...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pollen is not plant sperm
Anything plant related, no matter how crazy, gets directed to TPP. So it was that TPP finds himself being interviewed about seasonal allergies. Right? Actually having talked to a bunch of allergists,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rain clouds: From dust to lawn
Clouds turn to rain when water droplets and ice crystals that make them up get too big to resist the pull of Earth’s gravity. This is often caused by particles that disturb the maelstrom of droplets...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Highlighting sexy scientists and their sexy research: Damaging or justified?
Adam Ruben has a very entertaining as well as thought-provoking post on Science Careers in which he explores the "sexiness" of scientists and their research. Ruben's motivation is an article published...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aakash is no silver bullet
The Indian government needs to open its eyes and realise that the technological utopia it envisions in the low-cost tablet is no cure for poor education, poverty or inequality The last few days have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Spring flowering - 2012 & 2013
Spring 2012 was quite bizarre, and while spring 2013 is decidedly late, it's closer to the norm than was 2012. Yesterday's post snow storm warming resulted in late crocus, aconite, and Iris reticulata...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Composer and the Cassowary: Why Mistakes Are Awesome
High in a church balcony last weekend, waiting to perform a solo for Palm Sunday and trying not to panic, I thought about cars being hit with hammers. I'm not sure this is the kind of visualization...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A fool's bet
A creationist kinesiologist named Mastropaolo is getting his 15 minutes of fame by publically challenging“evolutionists” to bet $10,000 with him that they can’t disprove Genesis, and a hand picked...
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 things we need to find out about the #NCoV
Following a conversation on twitter on NCoV-EMC, I quickly realised that I did not know enough about this virus. But then I realised that it is that NOBODY knows a lot about it. There are very little...
View Article