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We sailed from Bahia. A few days afterwards, when not far distant from the Abrolhos Islets, my; attention was called to a reddish-brown appearance in the sea. The whole surface of the water, as it appeared under a weak lens, seemed as if covered by chopped bits of hay, with their ends jagged. These are minute cylindrical confervae, in bundles or rafts of from twenty to sixty in each. Mr. Berkeley informs me that they are the same species (Trichodesmium... Read more
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All the fireflies, which I caught here, belonged to the Lampyridae (in which family the English glowworm is included), and the greater number of specimens were of Lampyris occidentalis. I found that this insect emitted the most brilliant flashes when irritated: in the intervals, the abdominal rings were obscured. The flash was almost co-instantaneous in the two rings, but it was just perceptible first in the anterior one. The shining matter was fluid and very adhesive: little spots, where
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While reading through the Voyage of the Beagle I stumbled on some of Darwin’s interesting observations of animal behavior which I will share with you in the upcoming blog posts. What I will not do is to comment on Darwin’s observations or explain the animal’s behavior. I will deliver the pieces raw and uncut to put the reader in the shoes of a scientist. In this way I hope to spark the interest and the curiosity of the reader to... Read more
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Pharmaceutical companies develop drugs to treat diseases and at best to cure them. Currently, most drugs are developed and tested in Europe and North America, where they are licensed with efficacy rates as low as 30%. Drugs are usually marketed worldwide without any idea of how effective or safe they are in different population groups, and certainly without any regard for differences in SNP patterns or of other genomic variation that may correlate to differential drug responses between these […]
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The yellow press is known for stirring the emotions of the reader – good and bad - not so scientific journals like Nature. But once in a while a nature paper is published whose wider implications are not well received in certain circles and which makes a lot of people angry - for different reasons. Therefore the first author or the senior author finds him- or herself in the eye of the storm. Let's look into in an article that... Read more
