Posts

December 11, 2012

11:00 PM | The Strangest Thing You'll See Today: Air Pollution Represented By Nostril-Hair Length

Hairy nostrils will have to get waaaaaaay hairier to protect us from pollution! DreamstimeClean Air Asia creates a strange visualization of air pollution in Asian cities represented by the length of nostril hair. The colored balloons on this map of Asia represent current levels of air pollution, namely particulate pollution, which are at harmful levels for nearly 70% of developing Asian cities, according to Clean Air Asia. But the brightly colored dots on the map probably weren't what caught […]

1 Result

Sidebar

Filters

Posts with Citations

‘Is ‘cloning’ mad, bad and dangerous?’ – an argument revisited

Seven years ago, to mark the then tenth anniversary of the announcement of the birth of the folkloric Dolly the sheep, and in the still reverberating wake of the South Korean cloning scandal, I practiced my fledgling/intermittent/debatable/wanton science communication skills with the penning of an article on the issue of ‘cloning.’ It being an anniversary with a ’0′ on the end, combined with topical relevance, suggested I might be lucky enough to get it published. And I was thus very... […]

Tachibana, M., Amato, P., Sparman, M., Gutierrez, N., Tippner-Hedges, R., Ma, H., Kang, E., Fulati, A., Lee, H., Sritanaudomchai, H. & Masterson, K. (2013). Human Embryonic Stem Cells Derived by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.006

Citation

Homeostatic platsicity in a thorny situation

Synapses, the connections between neurons can strengthen and weaken depending on the specific activity at that synapse. This is called synaptic plasticity, and we've talked about it a lot on this blog (here, here, here and here).the strengthening and weakening of synaptic connections corresponds to the spine growing or shrinking (Matsuzaki 2007)However, there is another kind of plasticity that can occur at synapses. This is called homeostatic plasticity. And instead of the synapse strengthening […]

Lee KJ, Queenan BN, Rozeboom AM, Bellmore R, Lim ST, Vicini S & Pak DT (2013). Mossy fiber-CA3 synapses mediate homeostatic plasticity in mature hippocampal neurons., Neuron, 77 (1) 99-114. PMID: 23312519

Citation

Ocean heat puts pressure on poorest fisheries

The first evidence that climate change has affected fishing catches, revealed by William Cheung from the University of British Columbia and his team, shows tropical countries are set to be hardest hit.

Cheung, W., Watson, R. & Pauly, D. (2013). Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch, Nature, 497 (7449) 365-368. DOI: 10.1038/nature12156

Payne, M. (2013). Fisheries: Climate change at the dinner table, Nature, 497 (7449) 320-321. DOI: 10.1038/497320a

Citation

Darth DSM-5 and autism

Blue Harvest @ Wikipedia @ Family GuyI need to create a suitable atmosphere for this post, so try this music for size and think Blue Harvest...Right. The wait is over. The discussions / arguments / objections / agreements are all confined to history. Drum roll, spotlight centre-stage... enter DSM-5 and into unknown territory we all go, particularly with autism, sorry.. autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in mind.As you can see from the link above to the new diagnostic guidelines from the […]

Lai M-C, Lombardo MV, Chakrabarti B & Baron-Cohen S (2013). Subgrouping the Autism “Spectrum": Reflections on DSM-5, PLoS Biology, Other: Link

Citation

Ethnocentrism, religion, and austerity: a science poster for the humanities

Artem Kaznatcheev and I presented a poster on May 4th at the University of British Columbia to a highly interdisciplinary conference on religion. The conference acronym is CERC, which translates as Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium. Most of the 60-some attendees are religion scholars and social scientists from North American and European universities. Many […]

Kaznatcheev, Artem & Shultz, Thomas R. (2011). Ethnocentrism maintains cooperation, but keeping one’s children close fuels it., Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 3174-3179. Other: Link

Citation

Posts

December 11, 2012

Posts with Citations

User Activity