Today’s Sunday Funny is funny mostly because of the title of the paper. It’s a perfectly serious paper about physics, but it’s got Sausages, and Kinks. And Jeans. Phys Rev Lett. 2011 May 13;106(19):191103. Epub 2011 May 13. Sausage and kink oscillations in astrophysical disk configurations. Griv E. Source Department of Physics, Ben-Gurion University of […]
I’m going to start with an upfront declaration. This paper is awesome for three major reasons: 1. It is interesting science. 2. It utilizes Dungeons and Dragons. 3. The first author is in middle school. Yes. That last bit is correct. He’s 14, and he just might be better published than you (he is, perhaps, […]
Some of us like to think that we think better under pressure. Maybe under the pressure of a deadline, but when it comes to severe stress and times of crisis, well, cognitive performance tends to crumble. We know that part of the cause of this is because of increases in dopamine released into the prefrontal […]
Sci has scheduled a talk! A talk at a bar!! It should be fun, and I hear I at least get one beer free. If you’d like to make sure I get more than that, however, you should come hear Sci give a talk at National Mechanics in Philadelphia, as part of Science on Tap! […]
Sci is at SciAm Blogs today, talking about the recent backlash against neuro-hype (which I am ALL in support of, obviously), highlighting the excellent work of Neuroskeptic and The Neurocritic, and asking…does neuroscience need a Newton? I personally think the question, especially now, is pointless. Newtons aren’t the way science works anymore, and with the […]
I think the fine folks at NCBI ROFL covered this one recently, but it’s too good not to share. Have you ever been in a terrible mood, and someone tells you to smile? It usually doesn’t make your mood any better to be TOLD to smile, but what if you actually DO smile? Does […]
Last night, while doing the classic late night science (timepoints happen to us all), I saw a conversation around the topic of getting a PhD…to become a science writer. It turned out that the conversation was based around this post over at SciLogs, where Jalees wrote that getting a PhD, in order to become a […]
Since writing about a pharmacology crowdfund, which raised money to look at localization of amphetamine inside neurons (and which got funded!), I have received emails asking me to “advertise” other crowdfunds. I decided to use this latest opportunity to ask the willing scientists some questions about how, exactly, they came across crowdfunding, whether it was […]
At SciAm Blogs today, I’m proud to present the first Scicurious Guest Writer, Nicole Baganz. She’s writing about the possible link between sickness behavior and mental illness. In the case of infection, sickness behavior is a normal response to halt the spread of the bug and help the organism get better. In the absence of […]
From SciAm Blogs: I would like to announce the beginning of my own Scicurious Guest Writing series! If you are a young (or old!) scientist, interested in trying science writing, and wanting to find out how to begin, this is for you! I would like to lend some of my “expertise” (well, at least I’ve […]