Well, it didn’t LEAVE, but it did become far less common after 1500. Why? Was it leprosy? Or was it us? Or was is something else? I’m at SciAm blogs today talking about a brand new study on the genetics of leprosy bacteria. Head over and check it out!
Sings: *but that’s why birds do it, bees do it, little fishies in the seeeeeas do it, let’s do it…* Let’s come together. Into groups, schools, herds, flocks. Prey animals all over the world do it. We know why prey animals tend to clump together. More animals means more eyes to spot predators. More animals […]
…but it’s not quite simple. 🙂 I’m at Scientific American blogs today discussing a recent paper recording mouse songs, and using them to find kinship patterns among mice. You can even listen to the mice sing to the their ladies! CUTE! Head over and check it out.
Today I’m at SciAm. I am NOT in fact talking about Paleolithic diets. What I AM talking about is tuna. Fished by people 42,000 years ago! I’ll go over the evidence and why it might be surprising (hint, no fish hooks). Go over and check it out!
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 […]
When it comes to mating, most species of animals have one sex that does all the work. Stereotypically, we think of the male putting in most of the effort, whether it’s with extreme ornamentation like peacocks or with extreme effort like dung beetles. But it’s not always the case, and sometimes females take the initiative. […]
Sci usually blogs about things related to health, being a biomedical scientist as she is. But this, this is AWESOME. COMPLETELY AWESOME. It’s people. Tossing snakes. From towers. And it made me think so forcibly of the Snake Fight Portion of One’s Thesis Defense (which is brilliant and should be required reading for every grad […]
Having heard about this book almost from the very beginning, I was of course totes excited to finally get a copy of it in the mail!! I dug in, and just now finally closed it, with the sigh of satisfaction I usually give when I complete a good history or a good story. And in […]
So we are now headed off to a new, shiny server which will hopefully make us all happy and responsive again! And what better way to start it off than with a paper that BLOWS MY MIND?!?! I’ll admit that Ed actually blogged it before me (though I had intended to blog it for a […]
So far, it’s been about three months since Sci’s dissertation. During that time, she has: – defended her dissertation – moved to New Huge City – started a post-doc(!) – been sending out paper to beef up her little CV – been learning large numbers of new, difficult, cool techniques – been awesome – completely […]