Posts

April 01, 2013

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7:44 PM | How species are like pornography: Species concepts and the fossil record

Recently I helped name a new species, an animal we think is the oldest dinosaur found to date—if not, it’s the closest cousin to dinosaurs we know of (Nesbitt et al. 2013). It was the first time I’ve …

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3:45 PM | Do You Shout? Why That May Not be Especially Helpful in Communicating

Do you find yourself shouting at people? The problem with shouting is that it isn’t really communicating — it’s being aggressive and intimidating. That clearly is not the best way to forge relationships. You may not think that you’re being aggressive, or acting unhealthily — but you are. And you’re not doing yourself or anyone [...]

February 19, 2013

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3:24 AM | Why Paleontology Is Relevant

In these times of budget cuts and belt-tightening, you might wonder why our government, universities, and museums should fund paleontological research. After all, there are bridges to repair, children to educate, and fires to put out. Few would disagree the …

January 25, 2013

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10:38 AM | How many neurons do we have? And does it matter?

The estimates of the number of neurons in a human brain vary considerably; between 10 billion and 1 trillion (Williams & Herrup, 1988, p. 423). The most cited figure is 100 billion or 100 000 000 000. For example, the authoritative text “Principles of neural science” states that “The human brain is a network of [...]The post How many neurons do we have? And does it matter? appeared first on cogpsy.info.

December 31, 2012

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1:34 PM | So You Wanna Be a Paleoecologist? Part 1

For the better part of the past three decades, stable isotope geochemistry has become an increasingly common tool vertebrate paleontologists use to find out more about the biology and ecology of extinct organisms. The diet and ecology of an animal …

November 28, 2012

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3:08 PM | We Are. . .The Integrative Paleontologists

Nowadays, news stories about paleontology–the study of Earth’s past life–often focus on ”new tools for old bones,” or any other number of oft-used phrases. The fact of the matter is that many technological approaches to the science are no longer …

August 14, 2012

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3:25 PM | Key Questions to Ask When Choosing a Therapist

Background and credentials aren’t the only things to consider when hiring a therapist. There are other key factors to take into account. These factors center on an important piece of the therapeutic puzzle: having a good fit between client and therapist. “A therapist who is effective and compatible with one person may not be with [...]

July 09, 2012

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12:00 PM | Society and the personal genome

Those of us involved in genomics research spend a lot of time thinking about how scientific and technological developments might influence personal genomics. For instance, does the falling cost of sequencing mean that medically useful personal genomics will likely be based on sequence rather than genotype data? (Yes.) At the Sanger Institute we’ve recently launched [...]

December 31, 2011

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7:00 AM | Cerrado ecosystems and the Meskal Daisy on the cover

The third in a series of videoblogs from AoBBlog.com about the background pictures used on Annals of Botany covers. The Youtube link is here, and it is best watched in HD/1080p resolution. An outline of the text is below the video insert below, and the text includes some extra links. A shrubby tree, Plumeria ?rubra [...]

March 22, 2011

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3:25 PM | How Well Do You Multitask Between the TV and the Computer?

Many of us do it and think it doesn’t hurt anything — we multitask between watching television and working on the computer, whether it’s surfing the web, posting an update to Facebook or Twitter, or uploading our latest photos to Flickr. We multitask on the computer, with the TV on in the background, and believe [...]