Posts

May 17, 2013

The end of the school year has me thinking about summer vacations and I have just added a new location to my vacation wish list. The Cape Horn region of southern Chile and Argentina sounds like an amazing place to visit! The area has high levels of bryophyte diversity and a beautiful landscape of waterways and islands. Unfortunately my summer vacation plans do not include the Cape Horn this year. Instead I have been reading a book all about ecotourism of the miniature forests and imagining […]

4:05 AM | Working our Fingers to the Bone (Layer)

On Wednesday we each returned to our holes we had dug the day before and started the bone searching right away. Unfortunately, I dug in my little unit of dirt all morning and never came across a single fossil. It can be rather disheartening to realize that you just spent the past 4 hours chiseling […]

3:30 AM | The Haemopoietic Stem Cell

Reblogged from All About Blood: The Discovery of Haemopoietic Stem Cell Blood was regarded as an important tissue, but till the mid 1800s it was not known how blood cells were made. Three discoveries lead to the modern concept of haemopoietic stem cell. Neumann and Bizzozero separately, in 1868, proposed that the bone marrow […]

1:57 AM | Dark Night of the Scarecrow : after 30 years of nightmares

Have you ever been haunted by an old movie existing in the shadows of your mind? Something you shouldn’t have seen? Perhaps hiding behind the couch when your parents thought you were in bed sleeping? I can think of several films I saw that way when I was young. Films that gained special power because […]

1:00 AM | Pitfalls Associated with Cell Contamination, Misidentification,...

Pitfalls Associated with Cell Contamination, Misidentification, and Authentication Cultured cells are used extensively in research, manufacturing, and for therapeutic purposes. Unfortunately, a large number of cell lines are mislabeled, contaminated, and misidentified, leading to results that are non-replicable, data that is erroneous, and conclusions that are faulty. These problems have often gone unnoticed and unchecked, costing labs a significant amount of time, money, and labor. The […]

12:00 AM | “The Future of Skepticism” - TAM 2012 JREF president...

“The Future of Skepticism” - TAM 2012 JREF president D.J. Grothe moderates this panel discussion with Jamy Ian Swiss, Barbara Drescher, Tim Farley, and Reed Esau about the future of skepticism as an approach to exploring claims and as a movement to advance that approach. Duration: 48:50 via JREF Video.

May 16, 2013

11:34 PM | Angelina no longer has them. Does that mean I should get rid of them too?

We love them and yet we hate them. They get censored, augmented, reduced, replaced, covered, exposed. They get grilled, occasionally, but those are not the ones I'm talking about. We want to see them and yet we pretend we don't. We criticize them and yet we forget what they are made for, the most beautiful thing of all: nourish a new life.Yes, I'm talking about breasts. Angelina Jolie's breasts have been extensively discussed this week, more now that they are reportedly gone than when they were […]

Hall, J., Lee, M., Newman, B., Morrow, J., Anderson, L., Huey, B. & King, M. (1990). Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21, Science, 250 (4988) 1684-1689. DOI: 10.1126/science.2270482

Bernstein, L. (2008). Identifying population-based approaches to lower breast cancer risk, Oncogene, 27 DOI: 10.1038/onc.2009.348

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11:00 PM | Point of Inquiry | Jared Diamond: How Immigration and Diversity...

Point of Inquiry | Jared Diamond: How Immigration and Diversity Can Help Your Brain Are there cognitive benefits of diversity? Being bi- or multilingual can affect the brain in important ways, says Jared Diamond. This is an excerpt from a special episode of Point of Inquiry hosted by Chris Mooney and Indre Viskontas and featuring guest Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles and […]

10:00 PM | Why All The Bees Are Dying Bee population around the world have...

Why All The Bees Are Dying Bee population around the world have collapsed. Now scientists are scrambling to find out why. Anthony has a list of the possible causes, and the threat this poses to food supplies worldwide. via DNews Channel.

9:02 PM | Does Loss of DNA Methylation and Hydroxymethylation in the Brain Lead to Loss of Memory?

5-methylcytosine (5-mC) and 5-hydroxymethycytosine (5-hmC) are two major epigenetic modifications of DNA. Dynamic changes in 5-mC and 5-hmC levels are tightly regulated and impact neural cell development, differentiation, and other biological functions. Deregulation of 5-mC and 5-hmC has also been implicated in various human diseases. However, whether 5-mC and 5-hmC are involved in aging-related neurodegenerative ...

Chouliaras L, Mastroeni D, Delvaux E, Grover A, Kenis G, Hof PR, Steinbusch HW, Coleman PD, Rutten BP & van den Hove DL & (2013). Consistent decrease in global DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation in the hippocampus of Alzheimer's disease patients., Neurobiology of aging, PMID: 23582657

Mastroeni D, McKee A, Grover A, Rogers J & Coleman PD (2009). Epigenetic differences in cortical neurons from a pair of monozygotic twins discordant for Alzheimer's disease., PloS one, 4 (8) PMID: 19672297

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9:00 PM | CICADAS ARE COMING! via scishow: Cicadas have developed an...

CICADAS ARE COMING! via scishow: Cicadas have developed an amazing strategy for growth, survival, reproduction, and overcoming predation by…doing nothing. They do nothing for years (except sip at the juice excreted from root structures) before emerging in huge, simultaneous swarms. The swarm is so huge that predators can’t consume even a fraction of it, but so rare that predator populations can’t sustain themselves between emergence events. Clever little things!

8:14 PM | "Complex Logistics"

"We are planning to artificially inseminate elephant Batir next week. A lot of complex logistics are involved in this." [David M. Jones, NC Zoo Senior Staff Meeting Notes]One would think!

8:00 PM | Archae-Facts: Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble! Welcome to...

Archae-Facts: Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble! Welcome to Archae-Facts, the place to find bite-sized chunks of Archaeological Trivia! Today, we hear of a Shakespeare play which really brought the house down! via Archaeos0up.

8:00 PM | Hard at work against the hardening of arteries

Sanford-Burnham researchers identified a potential drug target to prevent the hardening of arteries in patients with atherosclerosis. The gene Dkk1 encodes a protein that plays a key role in increasing the population of connective-tissue cells during wound repair, but prolonged Dkk1 signaling in cells lining blood vessels can lead to fibrosis and a stiffening of artery walls.

Cheng, S., Shao, J., Behrmann, A., Krchma, K. & Towler, D. (2013). Dkk1 and Msx2-Wnt7b Signaling Reciprocally Regulate the Endothelial-Mesenchymal Transition in Aortic Endothelial Cells, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, DOI: 10.1161/ATVBAHA.113.300647

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7:37 PM | Cultured Skin Fibroblasts in Storage Disorders

Electron microscopic studies were performed on cultured fibroblasts from patients with metachromatic leukodystrophy, Fabry’s, Gaucher’s, Niemann-Pick’s (Type A and C),...

7:00 PM | Magical Medicinal Maggots via scishow: Although it may sound...

Magical Medicinal Maggots via scishow: Although it may sound crazy, many doctors use maggots today to clean wounds of dead and infected tissue. This process, called debridement, is important for preventing the spread of infection in a world of increasing antibiotic resistance. Hank has more details on the marvelous maggot in today’s episode of SciShow. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/scishow Tumblr: http://scishow.tumblr.com

6:50 PM | Thrifty Thursday: The Digital Herbarium

Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500. [HP deskjet F4280 printer/scanner - $150] This week’s inexpensive photo project makes use of a desktop scanner to translate a living plant into a digital specimen. Creating virtual natural history collections is an activity well-suited for elementary school science classrooms, for children old enough [...]

6:38 PM | Red bud fracking instead of hydraulic fracking

Hydraulic fracking is quite an issue just now in Lincolnland. One of the key issues is how much water must be used to fracture deep sediments. This is one of those things where industry wants to pretend the resource is free, the water is free, without an environmental cost. It would be nice if there were an alternative to using water to fracture those deep sediments. Then came this idea. Plant red buds, lots of them over the sediment you wish to […]

6:00 PM | Ladybird Invader Carries Deadly Parasite as Biological Weapon

When Europeans arrived in the New World, they brought devastating diseases like smallpox, which killed more native Americans …

6:00 PM | Archaeoscoop: Does My Bum Look Big in This? Welcome to...

Archaeoscoop: Does My Bum Look Big in This? Welcome to Archaeoscoop, the place to find heritage and archaeology related news stories from around the world! Today, I’d like to bring to your attention an article about bustles: 1) “Does my bum look big in this?” FAQs on wearing a bustle: http://archaeosoup.com/does_my_bum_look_big_in/ via Archaeos0up.

5:00 PM | 400 Parts in a Million: The World’s Biggest Experiment For...

400 Parts in a Million: The World’s Biggest Experiment For further information: 400 ppm official reference - http://dft.ba/-400ppm NOAA - http://www.climate.gov UK Met Office - http://metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change Climate Central - http://climatecentral.org Real Climate - http://realclimate.org IPCC FAQs - http://dft.ba/-IPCC US Global Change Research Program - http://globalchange.gov This episode was made possible by the generous support of Science Alert - […]

5:00 PM | Classing it up

Those of you out there who went to graduate school, try to think back to the early days….I know the PTSD makes it difficult, but try to remember the beginning of graduate school. Do you remember the required classes that … Continue reading →

4:01 PM | Sick Science! #143 - Candy Science M&Ms have the slogan of...

Sick Science! #143 - Candy Science M&Ms have the slogan of melting in your mouth, but not in your hands. You wanna know something cool? The special melting property is totally scientific. The results are an amazing phenomenon that we call Floating Letters. To Discover Why This Happens: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/floating-letters via Steve Spangler Science.

4:00 PM | You are probably going to be ok

Vaughan Bell penned an insightful piece for The Guardian about psychologically recovering from disasters. Evidence and expert opinion from world leading health agencies supports the statement that the vast majority of people who experience a “disaster-level” trauma recover, psychologically, on … Continue reading →

4:00 PM | Conspiracy Theory

""I just don't see where there is enough violations for this to happen, I guess I would call it a conspiracy," said Betty White. "The Department of Wildlife, USDA, and the Humane Society have joined together to put me out of business."" [San Francisco Chronicle]The U. S. Department of Agriculture [USDA] has revoked the Collins [Miss.] Zoo's exhibitor license and "the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks seized tigers, cougars, leopards, a monkey, and some […]

3:14 PM | "Fool Me Twice, Shame on ME," Says Sea Slug

"Simple" is often a compliment in the human world, used to describe low-fuss dinners or closet solutions. When scientists use "simple" to describe an animal, they mean something more like, "That sac of goo has no business acting clever." An especially simple creature—a sea slug—recently demonstrated that despite its humble resources, it can learn from experience and form new hunting strategies. Smaller goo sacs, beware. Despite its squishy stature, the sea slug Pleurobranchaea […]

Noboa, V. & Gillette, R. (2013). Selective prey avoidance learning in the predatory sea-slug Pleurobranchaea californica, Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.079384

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3:00 PM | Old Maps, Ingenuity, and the Internet

I love old maps. Many are wildly inaccurate. Many are fanciful. Many are surprisingly well done. In our era of Google Maps and GPS, it is easy to forget that early mapmakers could not easily see what they were drawing … Continue reading →

3:00 PM | Enormous Galactic Halo Seen Around Colliding Galaxies The...

Enormous Galactic Halo Seen Around Colliding Galaxies The Chandra X-ray Telescope has spied a gas cloud with the mass of ~10 billion Suns and spans ~300,00O light years. The system called NGC 6240 is the scene of two milky way-sized galaxies merging. Credit: NASA/CXC/J. DePasquale via Video From Space.

2:00 PM | Taking Cancer Data to the Cloud

The Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud project helps cancer genetics researchers avoid reinventing the big data wheel.

2:00 PM | Morning After Pill IS Safe for Teens There is lots of debate...

Morning After Pill IS Safe for Teens There is lots of debate about the so called “Morning After Pill” being released to teens without a prescription. Laci Green takes a look at the debate and breaks down the issues as only Laci can. via DNews Channel.

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