Author Archives: Bora Zivkovic

Blogrolling: E

Continuing down the alphabet, under the fold. Please add suggestions in the comments.

Continue reading

SBC – NC’07

NCSciBlogging.jpg
Michael McCarthy of The Lancet is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag:

Ferenc Puskas, RIP

ferenc_puskas.jpgFerenc Puskas died last week. One of the greatest of all times!

EnviroBlogging of the week

The latest edition of the Carnival of the Green is up on Organic Researcher.

MedBlogging of the Week

Grand Rounds – Volume 3 number 9 is now up on Doctor Anonymous

Israel to recongize gay marriage

If I understood this correctly. Can someone explain what the procedure may be in Israel?

Darwin in Serbia

Darwin in SerbiaTwo years ago, there was quite a brouhaha in the media when Serbian minister for education decided to kick Darwin out of schools. The whole affair lasted only a few days – the public outrage was swift and loud and the minister was forced to resign immediately. I blogged about it profusely back then and below the fold are those old posts:

Continue reading

SBC – NC’07

NCSciBlogging.jpg
Richard Lane of The Lancet is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag:

Rise of the Effectiveness of the Political Blogosphere

Mahablog has two excellent posts analyzing (and linking to other good analyses) of the changes the Left and Right blogosphere experienced over the last several years and explains why the Right blogs were more powerful in the beginning and why the Left is much more effective today:
Under the Radar
Old Dogs

Watch a horse explode!

This is a Pinto that has evolved by natural (and a little bit of artificial) selection:
pinto%20colt.JPG
This is a Pinto that was intelligently designed:
pinto-74.jpg
Casey Luskin does not understand the difference.
Although, apparently, even the designed Pinto is always evolving:
pinto-anuncio.jpg

John and Elizabeth Edwards…

…liveblogging on DailyKos right now. Go say Hi and ask questions.

Child Medicine Blogging of the Week

Pediatrics Grand Rounds #16 are up on Aetiology.

Thursday is not dead, after all

The%20End.jpgThe snake and the apple tree. The benevolent dictatorship and the tyranny of peer pressure. A floating library and a deadly fungus. The saga of the Baudelaire triplets has come to The End. Some loose ends are tied. Some mysteries remain. The atmosphere is not as treacherous, dangerous and heart-stopping as the previous twelve books, but that comes as a relief! Makes you think more instead of cowering for your life. Even with the final resolution, enough remains open-ended for Snickety to start a whole new series.

Clock in the primate adrenal

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research

Clock in the primate adrenalOften a press release inflates the meaning of a research paper. Here is one example of it (from May 23, 2006):

Continue reading

NeuroBlogging of the week

Encephalon #11 is up on The Mouse Trap.

My picks from ScienceDaily

Children’s Sleep Difficulties: Reports Differ From Children To Parents:

Elementary-school-aged children commonly experience sleep problems, but little research has addressed the reasons behind this phenomenon. A new study finds that children of this age say they have sleep difficulties much more often than their parents report such problems.

Sleep Apnea Patients At Higher Risk For Deadly Heart Disease; Arrhythmia Found To Increase During REM:

People with sleep apnea could also be at risk for a particular kind of deadly heart arrhythmia, finds Saint Louis University researchers. They presented the findings this week at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago.

Sleep Apnea Treatment Curbs Aggression In Sex Offenders:

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) affects up to 20% of men in western cultures, 5% of whom experience significant physical symptoms. A study published in Journal of Forensic Sciences finds that sex offenders who suffer from OSA experience more harmful psychological symptoms than do sex offenders with normal sleep patterns.

Does Natural Selection Drive The Evolution Of Cancer?:

The dynamics of evolution are fully in play within the environment of a tumor, just as they are in forests and meadows, oceans and streams. This is the view of researchers in an emerging cross-disciplinary field that brings the thinking of ecologists and evolutionary biologists to bear on cancer biology.

Pressured By Predators, Lizards See Rapid Shift In Natural Selection:

Countering the widespread view of evolution as a process played out over the course of eons, evolutionary biologists have shown that natural selection can turn on a dime — within months — as a population’s needs change. In a study of island lizards exposed to a new predator, the scientists found that natural selection dramatically changed direction over a very short time, within a single generation, favoring first longer and then shorter hind legs.

Money: It’s More Than An Incentive According To University Of Minnesota Researcher:

Why are some people more self-sufficient than others? Why are some people more willing to volunteer or help out than others? What makes some people seem stand-offish, while others move right in and help?

Young Children Don’t Believe Everything They Hear:

Childhood is a time when young minds receive a vast amount of new information. Until now, it’s been thought that children believe most of what they hear. New research sheds light on children’s abilities to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Scientists Regenerate Wing In Chick Embryo:

Chop off a salamander’s leg and a brand new one will sprout in no time. But most animals have lost the ability to replace missing limbs. Now, a research team at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has been able to regenerate a wing in a chick embryo — a species not known to be able to regrow limbs – suggesting that the potential for such regeneration exists innately in all vertebrates, including humans.

NC blogging of the week

Tar Heel Tavern #91 – Last Minute Edition is up on Slowly She Turned

Repeat this mantra every day: McCain is not a moderate maverick

As John said right after the last election:

Besides picking our candidates and races, I think the most valuable thing most of could do is to help shape the conventional wisdom. We blog, we write letters to the editor, we talk up our relatives, neighbors, and co-workers. We should try to take down the straight talking St. McCain and the weak-on-defense Democrats narratives. It’s never too soon to start casting doubt on the Republicans we plan to target; broken promises are the most effective critique. And, of course it’s never too soon to start talking up the candidates we support.(bolding mine)

Yes, explaining that McCain is just as nutty wingnut as the rest of them is important because many liberals still believe that he is somehow a “moderate”.
Amanda agrees this is an important media construct to demolish and gets started:

So, here’s the action item on McCain, because, as Marc points out, spreading the truth about McCain is the big task for the next two years for genuine progressives. Find out who you know that is generally liberal and still has some weird affection for John McCain. And here’s the three things to tell them to clarify what a nightmare he is:
1. John McCain is to the right of all Democrats in Congress and many of the Republicans.
2. He is an anti-choice extremist with a 0% rating from NARAL.
3. His campaign finance “reform” amounted to banning the money the parties get for raising awareness of issues, getting out the vote, and registering people to vote. In other words, McCain banned the money that made elections about the issues while protecting the right of lobbyists to buy individual politicians.
Three simple talking points that make is super-clear that John McCain’s reputation as a “maverick” is a media myth that has no basis in reality. We’ve got two years to spread the word. (Read the whole excellent post for more detailed information)

Start spreading the word!

Blogrolling: D

Here (below the fold) are some blogs whose titles start with D. As always, let me know if I am missing an important/good blog, or if yours starts with D (or one of the previous letters), or if you have any questions (e.g., why on Earth did I include that horrible blog you hate!)….

Continue reading

SBC – NC’07

NCSciBlogging.jpg
Faith McLellan of The Lancet is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag:

This one is for PZ

cephalopod.jpg
(via)

SEED

Brummell continues to review the last issue of Seed Magazine. Part III is here and Part IV is here. You can read most of the articles online now – just go to the very bottom of my blog and click on the links on the bottom bar.

The ecology of religion

Imagine an ecosystem in which all the players are groups defined by their religion: fundies, liberal believers, apathetics, atheists, etc. Then, use the ecological and evolutionary priniciples, e.g., competitive exclusion, niche-construction, arms-races, parasitism, camouflage, symbiosis, etc. to model the interactions between these entities (“populations”).
Amanda made a first stab at it. Can you do more?
How do Unitarians fit in that environment? Or Humanist Jews? How does the US ecosystem differ from that of other countries (island biogegraphy?)? What are the lessons for atheists from this excercise? How can we do our own niche-construction and modify the environment in a way that makes it more hospitable for us and less hospitable to the fundies? What would be the evolutionary response of the “moderates”?

Pelosi

Of all the coverage of the Murtha-Hoyer duel and what it means for Pelosi, the only one that put into words the way I felt about the episode is Mary Beth. Of course the Kewl Kidz of the media got it upside down (but they have their own sinister motivations for it). I am not worried for her at all.

SBC – NC’07

NCSciBlogging.jpg
Nick Greene is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag:

Quick update

You may have noticed that the posting lately has been reduced mainly to quick links and reposts. I’ve been busy (in a good way). I will try to produce something longer soon. The review of The God Delusion is forming in my mind and just needs to be spilled onto the virtual paper – perhaps some time next week. And a few more posts are in a similar semi-baked state. Soon.
In the meantime, if you have a couple of bucks go see Grrrl and hit her PayPal button. I am broke, but she is more broke and in much more dire situation and if you can help her, please do.

World Science

* Monkeys using perfume? Study investigates:
Some wild spider monkeys dab on a chewed-leaf paste that may act as a sort of cologne, researchers say.
* Red wine ingredient found to boost endurance:
A substance earlier linked to long life in animals, also “re-programs” muscle to double endurance, a mouse study indicates.
* Neanderthal DNA partially sequenced:
Scientists have preliminarily mapped out when the stocky human cousins diverged from our species.
* ‘Dark energy’ an age-old phenomenon, study finds:
A weird force pushing our universe outward has existed since near the beginning, astrophysicists report
* Exotic new particles reported found:
Scientists have reported discovering two new subatomic particles, rare but important relatives of the common­place proton and neutron.

On the Bosnian Pyramid in English

If you are interested in the saga of the Bosnian pyramid, it may be difficult for you to follow it as the members of the Anti-Pyramid Webring write mainly in some version of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian language. But now, they have started a new, central blog for posts in English – the APWR Central. Contributors are needed.

SBC – NC’07

NCSciBlogging.jpg
Citizen Will Raymond is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag:

Obligatory readings of the day – on the Media

Glenn and Dave on eliminationist rhetoric and the complicity of the media in it. So, what to do with the media? Glenn describes, Sara prescribes.

Fear And Self-Loathing at Cornell

Remember Amanda Doerty, the so-called Hot Abercrombie Chick? Just one of many bloggers to be shown to be a hoax?
Now, do you think that this Rachel Brenc is real? I’d rather believe that this is a man in disguise. I hope no young woman really thinks the way she does. Zuska, Janet and John explain why, so I don’t have to. The child of privilege, despising everyone under her, self-assured of her own success because her self-professed attractiveness will help her nab a husband who can step into her father’s shoes and continue protecting her white, conservative privilege.

The Wonders of the Blogosphere

First – great news! Jennifer and Sean are getting married! They found each other online, blogging physics. Now, I know they are not the first people to find each other online and get married, but, to my knowledge, this is the highest-profile pair of bloggers to do so. And the first I know in the specifically science blogosphere. Is that true? Anyway, go say Hi to both of them. Congratulations!
Second, after a very long hiatus (but I kept checking often, always hopeful), everyone’s favourite artist of extinct mammals and other charismatic megafauna, Olduvai George is back to blogging again, giving us all a new set of great pictures every Tuesday and Friday. And he re-started the blog with something unusual for him – pictures of fish.

Exciting new online science journal

Have you ever read a paper in your field and wondered “how’d they done it?!” You read the “Materials and Methods” closely, again and again, and still have no idea how exactly was the procedure done. You want to replicate the experiment, or use the same technique for your own questions, but have no clue how to go about it.
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and I guess that a video is worth a thousand pictures. So, learn the experimental techniques by watching videos of people actually doing them. You can do that on the brand new journal, just starting November 30th:
Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), FREE journal publishing video-protocols:

JoVE is a newly founded online research journal that publishes video-articles on biological experiments (video-protocols). Video-articles include step-by-step instructions on experiments, and short discussions by experts describing possible technical problems and modifications.
JoVE invites article submissions in all areas of biology. Its editorial board includes a number of distinguished scientists, leading experts in their fields. JoVE employs the OPEN-SOURCE model: submission is free, and all video-articles published are freely available online.
A video-based approach is employed to allow for explicit demonstration on “how experiments are really done”, which remains unclear or misinterpreted from traditional publications in print. This is to increase reproducibility and decrease the traditionally high failure rate of biological studies. This approach can be especially important for scientific fields where experimental procedures are highly sensitive and difficult for standardization, e.g. neurobiology or stem cell biology. The JoVE’s approach is also expected to facilitate adoption of new technologies, e.g. genomics and proteomics, and thus lead to significant savings in time in resources in the academic and industrial research.

Update: Pimm has more details.

The Public Park Parable of Political Psychology

The Public Park Parable of Political PsychologyAnother one on psychology of political ideology (form April 08, 2005):

Continue reading

All the creatures big and small

The new edition of Animalcules, the microbiological carnival, is up on Baumhaus
For somewhat larger animals, visit Friday Ark #113 up on Modulator

SBC – NC’07

NCSciBlogging.jpg
Congogirl (yup, I know her real name but am not telling) is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag:

History Blogging of the fortnight

History Carnival XLIII is up on Axis of Evel Knievel

Protein Synthesis: Transcription and Translation

Protein Synthesis: Transcription and TranslationHere is the third BIO101 lecture (from May 08, 2006). Again, I’d appreciate comments on the correctness as well as suggestions for improvement.

Continue reading

SBC – NC’07

NCSciBlogging.jpg
My SciBling Zuska is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag:

2006 Weblog Awards

The 2006 Weblog Awards are now taking nominations in a variety of categories, including science blogs, medical blogs, liberal blogs, etc. Go make some nominations. This is a warm-up for Koufaxes next month!

Nursing blogging of the week

Change of Shift, Volume One, number Eleven is up on Life in the NHS.

Carnival of Citizens

There is a new carnival in town: Carnival of Citizens:

The public sphere is in disarray. Dominated by demagoguery, mudslinging, and dogmatic regurgitation of partisan talking points, there’s scant room left for fair-minded deliberation about the issues we care about. The Carnival of Citizens is a response to this challenge: it aims to foster genuine dialogue between bloggers of diverse perspectives, to bring us one step closer to the ideal of a healthier, more deliberative, democracy.
——–snip————
The Carnival of Citizens covers all topics of “public debate”, i.e. politics and applied ethics, very broadly construed. This may include issues of broader cultural interest – e.g. science, religion, and philosophy – insofar as they connect to public discourse or matters of general interest. We also invite “meta” discussion about the public sphere, rational discourse, and general civic issues.

The first edition will be held on Philosophy, et cetera. The entries are due by November 23rd:

Submissions are invited on any topic relevant to public debate. For example, suppose you have the attention of a friendly and reasonable “opponent”: what would you want to discuss with them? To advance your own view, what crucial insight or argument would you bring to their attention? To better understand their view, what would you like further explained?
Alternatively: you might write a post explaining why you deviate from the “party line” on some particular issue (as suggested by Tim). Or you may be able to think up other possible approaches that align with the carnival’s civic values — if so, go for it!

Tell your kids that medieval history is useful knowledge in the real world

For instance, you can work as a campaign manager and use your knowledge and insight to help a complete unknown win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives (and yes, I watched that Dean press conference in which he could not even remember her name).

Reverend William Paley’s Circadian Clock

Reverend William Paley's Circadian ClockAn oldie but goodie (June 12, 2005) debunking one of the rare Creationist claims that encroaches onto my territory.

Continue reading

SBC – NC’07

NCSciBlogging.jpg
Emile Petrone is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag:

EduBlogging of the week

The 93rd Carnival of Education is up on What It’s Like on the Inside.
The 46th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Sprittibee.

Is he going to do it again?

Back in 2003, John Edwards announced his presidential candidacy on The Daily Show with John Stewart. Well, he’ll be there again tonight – watch it! Will he do the same thing again?
Update: No, he didn’t. But he said to watch his website over the next few weeks.
Update 2: Apparently, the appearance on the show moved some people to like him more and pay more attention to him. Shakespeare’s Sister is one, which makes me very happy. Read what she said.

Abducted by Aliens! Fundie Aliens!

Yikes! This was here in my neighborhood, in Winston-Salem, NC! Poor guy – did he get an education! What does he think about America now?
My Half-Year of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists:

When Polish student Michael Gromek, 19, went to America on a student exchange, he found himself trapped in a host family of Christian fundamentalists. What followed was a six-month hell of dawn church visits and sex education talks as his new family tried to banish the devil from his soul. Here’s his story.

Read the whole thing – it is an incredible story. The family’s whole purpose in taking him in was to recruit him to work on the building of a Baptist Church in Poland! How brazen!
(Thanks to The Science Pundit for the tip)

Green Grounds

53rd edition of the Carnival of the Green is up on Triplepundit.
Grand Rounds – the Monty Python edition – is up on The rumors were true.

Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives

Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives, new book by Sen.John Edwards hit the bookstores today (I can’t afford it right now but it is on my wish list for later). You can read an excerpt here, check the dates and places for his booksigning tour, see the schedule for his media appearances (lots of them, including The Daily Show and Letterman) here and discuss it here.