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Whale Turns Down Its Hearing When Expecting Loud Sounds
We can knit sweaters for oiled penguins, but it's harder to protect whales and dolphins from the harm of having us as neighbors. Loud underwater sounds from activities like sonar and drilling may...
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Mosses in the Arctic
When you think about the arctic what do you imagine? Things that come to mind for me are northern Canada, Siberia, flat, cold, caribou, reindeer, polar bears, and mosses. Yes, there are a lot of mosses...
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This week's lab - quad spring field trip
Today and yesterday have been the first two days this semester when you could actually conduct some out door instruction and not be cold or wet, or both. One of the problems with lab instruction is...
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May 2013 Desktop Calendar
I think that this moss covered rock looks a lot like a large turtle shell, or maybe a tortoise. It was about the size of the hood of a small car, so a lot larger than a turtle, but you get the...
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Findings: The Role of World Knowledge in Pronoun Interpretation
A few months ago, I posted the results of That Kind of Person. This was the final experiment in a paper on pronoun interpretation, a paper which is now in press. You can find a PDF of the accepted...
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End of the semester for good or bad
Semesters end, for good or bad, and TPP has seen this happen for the past 40+ years. The worst aspect of semesters' ends is that they are hectic, rushed, cramped, and just plain ugly what with...
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National day of unreason
Today is actually the national day of prayer here in the USA a day when that one religious segment of the country, albeit a majority, gets some pseudo-official sanction as the one true religion of this...
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Carnival of Evolution #59 is up
The 59th edition of Carnival of Evolution is now up at DNA Barcoding.Letter from the Doctor. CoE needs hosts for the next editions, and you could host the 60th one! It's a thoroughly rewarding...
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Splenda and - wait for it - DDT? You've got to be kidding me
Just when you think the perpetrators of chemophobia (actually this particular case makes chemophobia look like a knight in shining armor) cannot outdo themselves, someone seems to hit a new high.This...
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TMI Friday: An Unusual Rectal Injury
The year was 1953, it was the fifth of November and a 24 year old man stumbled into Beckett Hospital complaining of abdominal pains. He told the doctors that it was a regular occurrence, that he had...
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Friday fabulous flower - yellow-flowered wild ginger
The warm weather this week pushed a great many spring plants into flower; many of them had been in a swollen bud stage for a couple of weeks held back by the unseasonal cold weather. Oh, yeah, like...
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Tone-Deaf Birds Disrupt Society, Are Easier to Get into Bed
While male birds are singing elaborate arias and flashing their feathers, it's easy to imagine their female counterparts are unimportant actors. Duller and quieter, all a lady bird has to do is hold...
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Hear those crispy rice grains calling for help? Snap! Crackle! Pop!
New scientific findings are often fun and interesting, but how some "journalists" write about such things is annoying to the nth degree. Xylem consists of a series of cellulosic tubes and during water...
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Provincialization of Terrestrial Faunas Following the End-Permian Mass...
Sidor, C. A., D. A. Vilhena, K. D. Angielczyk, A. K. Huttenlocker, S. J. Nesbitt, B. R. Peecook, J. S. Steyer, R. M. H. Smith, and L. A. Tsuji. 2013. Provincialization of terrestrial faunas following...
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Mob scene turns ugly!
Mobs can be pretty ugly; unruly mobs even more so. When they all surge in the same direction their energy is like being caught in a tsunami. Kids, senior citizens, small electric vehicles, all get...
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Elasticity of the air
Text extracted from "The magician's own book, or The whole art of conjuring" (1862) by George Arnold This can be shown by a beautiful philosophical toy which may easily be constructed. Procure a glass...
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Osteoderm Microstructure of “Rauisuchian” Archosaurs from South America
Cerda, I. A., J. B. Desojo, T. M. Scheyer and C. L. Schultz. In Press. Osteoderm microstructure of “rauisuchian” archosaurs from South America. Geobios (accepted manuscript) doi:...
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A quiet, seldom-seen woodland wildflower in these parts - blue cohosh
In over 3 decades of botany here in the upper midwest, TPP has seen blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) in the wild exactly twice. As the specific epithet suggests, the thrice compound foliage...
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Religion doesn't seem to protect against depression.
In most countries, religious people tend to be happier and less depressed, and it's often suggested that religion somehow provides a happiness boost and protects against depression. Maybe, so the...
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Riroriro
The grey warbler or riroriro Gerygone igata, photographed by Peter Bray. The eighteen recognised species of the genus Gerygone are an assemblage of small, drab-coloured birds found mostly in the...
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