Sci is off on vacation for a few days this time of year (to my credit, I really think I earned it). Unfortunately, on the VERY FIRST DAY, I went and took a massive fall (which is what happens when you go running with an inexperienced Golden Retriever, who is very sweet, and was VERY […]
Wow. 4 years now of posting lists of my read books, in my eternal quest to become a well read (and hopefully well educated, though I suppose those don’t always go together) person. At this point, I mostly post them to a) keep track of what I’ve read, cause I forget, and b) get recommendations […]
Sci is at SciAm today, talking about the latest “wastebook” a book released to point out “ridiculous” public spending, and which singled out many STEM projects this year, including one on cocaine…and risky sex habits in quail. At SciAm, I’ll talk about why we need these research projects, and why pointing it out in a […]
I haven’t shared a cheap eating recipe in a long while. This is a sad thing. While Sci is no longer a starving grad student, I AM still a post-doc, and we don’t get paid much better. And living in a Big Honkin’ City is no financial treat, either. This recipe, which I snagged from […]
Sci saw the PR announcement for this paper, and I TOTALLY wanted to cover it. Unfortunately, I was prevented by severe Katsaridaphobia. Luckily, I contacted the Fantastic Bug_Girl, who was VERY pleased to take this on for me! Many kudos to Bug_Girl, esp since I only had to start freaking out when I uploaded the […]
Well, at least, the only thing THESE birds have to fear is fear itself. This is one of those studies that, when you lay it out, seems really…simple. Clear layout. Clear results. But it challenges a lot of the things that we once assumed about predator:prey relationships. Most particularly, it overturns the idea that the […]
Sci is over at Scientific American today, talking about a new study in PNAS on ocytocin receptor gene variants and how people respond to social stress. And it turns out only some people may respond best when their friends are around. It’s a very cool study, go check it out!
I saw this last week, and while the world may have moved on, I CANNOT let the ostrich penis rest. So now it is time to talk about the ostrich, and about the head of the ostrich that never gets buried in the sand, if you know what I mean. I mean, the debate was […]
In the wrapup of the recent Nobel ceremonies (always much less feted than the actual announcement of the winners, but there you go), there was a panel, talking to young scientists, from Nobel Prize winners, about what it takes to succeed (or at least to end up as a Nobel Prize winner). A write up […]
Every time I do a post on ANYTHING concerning space, I have to reference this: Also, I have to put in a plug for Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars, which is the weird science of space. It’s awesome. There’s POOP in space, you guys. Anyway. Gravity, or the lack thereof, changes a lot of things […]