Clik here to view.
Friday levity: 'Nature' discusses ghosts.
One of the pleasures of thumbing through old issues of science journals is the opportunity to accidentally discover articles or letters that make you do double takes, often followed by face palms. As I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Update on DuoLingo
I have been using Duolingo for a few months to brush up my Spanish. I have generally found it to be pretty useful and a significant improvement over my strategy was to listen to the news in Spanish. So...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Spring garden assessment
This wasn't a particularly bad winter except the coldest weather was not accompanied by snow cover, so plants were quite exposed. Now that spring growth is beginning some assessment of winter damage...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Response to comments on the Aakash Op-Ed
On March 29th I wrote an Op-Ed in The Hindu, a national newspaper in India, on the Indian government's plans to hand out $35 tablets to poor students. It attracted a number of comments and emails. I'm...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Happy Easter with a (fake) Dozen Dinosaur Eggs
Roy Chapman Andrews was not only an intrepid explorer and palaeontologist, but also a gifted promoter. The Central Asiatic Expeditions in search of fossils of mammals and dinosaurs were accompanied by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Prunophobia? Don't stand too close!
The single most common gardening mistake TPP observes is poor pruning, including none pruning. Knowing how plants grow is essential, but you can learn most of what you need to know by careful...
View ArticleClik here to view.
#Microtwjc: The Evolution of Virulence
A long time ago, a bacterium noticed the odd behaviour of its cousins. It had noticed that they had formed a group, and were spending a lot of time together. An unsettling amount of time together. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why Fish Raise Foster Kids (and Give Up Their Own)
A fish swims along a sandy lake bottom, carrying one of its babies in its mouth. It approaches the nesting cave of another family of fish. With a furtive "ptooey," it leaves the baby behind for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Triassic–Jurassic Mass Extinction as Trigger for the Mesozoic Radiation of...
A new study that contrasts that of Brusatte et al. (2008), who had found a significant dropoff in pseudosuchian disparity through the end Triassic extinction.Toljagić, O., and R. J. Butler. 2013...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Non-green gardening - giving up peat
Peat is the partially decomposed remains of plants from peat bogs, primarily the Sphagnum, i.e., peat moss. As such peat bogs are long-term repositories of carbon. When that peat is "mined" and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New Occurrences of the Controversial Late Triassic Plant Fossil Sanmiguelia
New paper extending the biostratigraphic range of the enigmatic Late Triassic plant Sanmiguelia. These new finds also alter the plant-based biostratigraphic scheme proposed by Ash in 1980. Ash, S.R....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Laying to rest an old myth about Chinese
I just got back from my second research trip to Taiwan in three years (with another planned soon!) and fourth trip overall. As always, I had a great time and ate as much beef noodle soup as I could...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Today's laboratory - Conifer identification
Oh, this is so much fun! Most people, and my students are no exception, except for a couple of the horticulture students, commonly think several incorrect things about conifers. 1. All conifers are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Berry Go Round - March 2013
The newest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round is up at the blog In the Company of Plants and Rocks. There are some good plant posts in the line up that you should definitely check out. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
March 2013 Berry Go Round
Hey, folks, the March Berry-go-round plant blog round-up is here, over at the Plants and Rocks blog. Our thanks for a job well done, and for pointing the way to some plant blogs that TPP had missed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nosybelba: A Uniquely Madagascan Mite
Dorsal and ventral views of the main body of Nosybelba oppiana, from Mahunka (1994). Why yes, it's another random oribatid! Nosybelba oppiana was described from Madagascar by Sándor Mahunka in 1994;...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Morphology and Diversity of the Mandibular Symphysis of Archosauriforms
Excellent study that demonstrates changes in mandibular symphyses through individual clades; changes that appear to be influenced by changes in dental morphology, which presumably reflect differences...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Crap! Student finds a way to ruin my day.
Grading exams has always been TPP's least favorite academic activity, unless you can use it as an excuse to get out of a faculty meeting, and then you had to grade them anyways, but at least that way...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kids Learn Better When Teachers Wave Their Hands
Maybe it's no mistake that we talk about "grasping" new ideas. When we find our hands moving wildly as we try to explain something, maybe we shouldn't feel ridiculous. Research in math classrooms has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
300 dpi
300 dpi - 300 dots per inch; the minimum resolution limits for a publishable figure according to my publisher. The problem is that you can find a great many illustrations and images that look just...
View Article