RECENT POSTS 
Another day of testing in the ape house. Sebastian, Shona’s assistent for this day, prepares a new set of grapes. The first round with Kofi and Lobo, two young male chimps, went fairly well. They were excited and engaged in the task and not the least bit flustered by their repeated failure to get to the grapes. The second round with Swela and Corrie was quite the opposite. Both chimp ladies weren’t terribly interested in the whole grape thing to... Read more
19 June 2013 |
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Is it "math" or "maths"? In this video from the excellent Youtube channel Numberphile, Lynne Murphy examines the linguistic roots of the word "mathematics", and the reasons why people say it differently as a function of their cultures: So it seems the debate is hardly settled, at least in English. What about other languages? In German, the subject is called die Mathematik, which is shortened to die Mathe, although in many cases the article is dropped entirely. For example, "I... Read more
19 June 2013 |
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Forget the myth of the lone genius: science is a collaborative enterprise, requiring cooperation within large teams of people. Often, this is both a joy and a necessity: many hands make light work in the lab or the field, and collaborations massively extend the scale of research questions we’re able to address. More and more, however, writing of papers, reports and funding applications is becoming collaborative too, and that’s seldom so pleasant; the best writing is personal, and writing by... Read more
19 June 2013 |
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Vaccination is a hugely important public health intervention, perhaps the biggest in the history of mankind. While many childhood diseases are now effectively controlled by immunisation programs (as long as parents vaccinate their kids), there is still no effective vaccine for other serious infections like adult tuberculosis (TB). Most adult TB vaccines under development focus on boosting the "adaptive" immune response to generate highly activated immune cells to fight off M. tuberculosis bacteria. New research has now revealed that it's... Read more
19 June 2013 |
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Rodolphe and Matthis are now very well into their task of tracking apes and other wildlife in the Congolesian rainforest, but they have yet to see their first bonobo. Most of the time, they are dealing with indirect signs of their presence: sleep nests, dung, or chew marks like this: It is still early days, but everybody is quite excited to find out how many bonobos really live in the area. The whole ecocamp idea that is intended to provide... Read more
18 June 2013 |
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It may be a jungle out there, but it’s no less a jungle in here as well. Fungal organisms, although technically not plants, are hardy little buggers that are abundant in the environment everywhere, a veritable fungal jungle – even if you can’t always see them. As a group, they can survive almost anywhere – some better than others, of course – under extremes of conditions; they are capable of drawing their nutrition from the soil and dead/decaying organic matter,... Read more
18 June 2013 |
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“They say it's your birthday, it's my birthday too, yeah; They say it's your birthday, we're gonna have a good time; I'm glad it's your birthday, happy birthday to you” from Birthday by Lennon-McCartney Happy 50th Birthday Greg Kinnear! Fifty years. Five decades. Half a century. Whatever way you look at it, in a human lifespan, the fiftieth birthday is a major milestone. A time for celebration, and perhaps more than a little reflection. Undoubtedly, you are spending some time... Read more
17 June 2013 |
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SUMMARY: A witty and engaging children's book that tells the true story of an internationally famous cockatoo who changed the way scientists think about dancing. "If life doesn't give you fruit, you can always eat nuts. And if you don't like nuts, at least you can throw them on the floor, which is highly entertaining." ~Snowball the dancing cockatoo (p. 14). A couple years ago, Snowball the dancing cockatoo burst upon the scene after one of his YouTube videos went... Read more
17 June 2013 |
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Many of us will have had the experience, at some point in our lives, of sitting in a doctor's office feeling bewildered and, quite possibly, scared. We've come to the doctor in need of answers. "Am I ill? How sure are you of what I have? How would it affect me if we left it untreated? What can you do about it, and how will that treatment affect me? Will I have to change my lifestyle, will the treatment change... Read more
17 June 2013 |
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For a long time, I avoided promoting embargoed research findings as much as possible. Now I don’t. Now I use embargoes. I still don’t like them, mind you, but I learned that I have to use them – if only in self-defense. First off, a definition. In a scicomm context, an embargo is when a journal, researcher or public information officer (PIO) gives reporters a copy of a journal article before the article is published – but bars those reporters... Read more
17 June 2013 |
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Below are questions and answers related to the Research Techniques Made Simple article from the July 2013 issue of JID, entitled "North, South,or East? Blotting Techniques" by M.W. Nicholas, M.D., Ph.D.1 and Kelly Nelson, M.D.2 1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Dermatology and 2Duke University Department of Dermatology. Questions (correct answer is underlined) 1. The target molecule type for Southern blotting is: A RNA B DNA C Protein D Lipids 2. Limitations... Read more
15 June 2013 |
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Marie is back in the cleanroom. She is testing a new method for cleaning up ancient DNA. It's the second day of her protocol, the first time with 'real samples' instead of artificial test sequences, and it’s a very long day. The ancient DNA-snippets need to be attached to tiny magnetic beads, then washed, washed again, replicated, fitted with more adapters and more – plus the new step, the actual experiment, the attempt to remove even more of the contaminating... Read more
15 June 2013 |
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Every weekend, I publish a roundup of the week’s SciLogs.com blog posts along with some reactions from the comment feeds and social media. To keep in touch with SciLogs.com, you can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, circle us on Google+ or subscribe to the network’s RSS feed. Enjoy! -- Blog to watch this week: We have a new blog about the history of science! And it’s off to a superb start. Blogger Annelie Wendeberg begins her tenure... Read more
15 June 2013 |
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Every day we provide you with #SixIncredibleThingsBeforeBreakfast to nibble away at. Here you can fill your brain with the most intellectually stimulating “amuse bouches” from the past week – a veritable smorgasbord for the cranium. They’re all here for you to load up your plate – this week’s “Morsels for the mind”. Enjoy! **** Feather, fur & fin – birds, beasts, fishes, and the things they do Captivating cat-a-log. Ever wonder what cats do with themselves as they hang out... Read more
14 June 2013 |
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As I travel and meet new people inside and outside of academia, I often get this question. It is a good one, but that I can never seem to answer it in a sufficiently concise answer or one-liner. IS there a simple answer to this question? One simple answer might be: teach. The common and traditional thinking involves earning a Ph.D. in a particular subject in order to teach that subject to future undergraduate and/or graduate students. For example, once... Read more
14 June 2013 |
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