Now on ScienceBlogs: Bronze Age Mortuary Cult In Viborg
Sleep clears the mind And speaking of milestones, the Harvard Science in the News Flash - a student written and student edited writing series just posted their 100th article: Sleep clears the mind: How sleep prepares the brain for new learning Despite the fact...
What Steve Jobs did really well Jobs is stepping down from his leadership role at Apple, as has been all over the news for the last several days, and I had to say that he's someone I've really admired. Not just as a fully committed...
How to Engage an Undergrad? It's mid-August, and the school year is nigh. On Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurðsson provides a blueprint for a successful academic term, and yes, you should take notes. Steinn writes, "Ideally, the primary teaching delivery would be a wise person...
The Neighborhood Project: Putting Evolution to Work in the Real World My new book, The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time, was published by Little, Brown last Wednesday and featured on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition today. My main objective in writing the book...
Bat Maps It turns out that the saying "blind as a bat" doesn't really apply to these furry flying mammals. "Birds'-eye view" might be more like it.
Tiger Mothers, Depression Moms and Reasonable Expectations I didn't expect to like _Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother_ - in fact, I expected to hate it. Instead, I found it funny, charming and moving - and give Amy Chua a lot of credit for having the overies to expose herself I didn't just like the book, I loved it.
When Swans Don't Make Way for Ducklings: The Video Edition Enough depressing current events. Let's look at duckies...with SWAN-INDUCED TERROR!!!
Choprawoo metastasizes into video games Now this is some seriously funny stuff. Anyone who's been reading this blog a while knows my opinion of Deepak Chopra. Basically, he's the quackiest of the quantum quacks, the godfather of quantum woo, the one woo-meister to rule them...
The Meaning of My Mugs My wife Anne and I have accumulated an assortment of mugs that occupy a shelf of our kitchen cabinet. All of them perform the same function of holding hot liquid, but we seem to have developed a complex system for...
Beer and Science 2 Over beer or coffee, even a straightforward, frontal presentation becomes informal; listeners feel free to laugh, ask questions and join in discussions.
My own cognitive dissonance, unresolved There's this NPR show I really like called "On the Media," and I've listened to just about every episode for the past 8 years through the podcast. As it's name implies, the show is about the media, and is a...
Eyes, Brains and Latitude Two things have been known for some time now: Human brains get bigger as you go north, and the volume of the primate eye and the primate brain are correlated. This COULD mean, and this may not be true, that as you go north in...
Not seeing any new posts? I'm at Scientific American Blogs! If you didn't catch the message, this blog has moved! You can find The Thoughtful Animal over at the new Scientific American Blogging Network! Please remember to add or change the link to my blog in your blogrolls. The new...
Interview: Susan Greenfield on the internet-fed brain Professor Susan Greenfield believes the internet may be harming young brains. Is she right? An exclusive interview.
Ever wonder...? Did you ever wonder just how it can be possible that the same, thousand times debunked, climate "skepticisms" keep re-emerging, month after month, year after year? Obviously, there are those individuals (like Singer and Soon), organizations (like HeartlessLand), and media...
Maybe This Is Why the Authorities Are Worried About 'Bath Salts'? Tasers don't work.
Science Is Stupid, And Getting High Scientists apparently hope to use this discovery to make drugs that could help prevent people from overeating. This is why science is stupid.
What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part One I'm back! Did I miss anything? The big summer vacay turned out to be much harder work than what I was doing in Virginia prior to leaving, but it was tons of fun nonetheless. Far too much to report on...
Angie Varona, Grace Kelly and Scrambling your mOFC Beauty can be everlasting, ephemeral {internet sensations} and above all else, in the eye of the beholder. Poets and artists have explored this mystery for centuries, but can science reveal new insights?
Cure For The Itch Pain masks the itch. Is it a cure?
Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism Behaviors are not caused by genes. There is not a gene that causes you to be good, or to be bad, or to be smart, or good at accounting, or to like bananas. There are, however, drives. "Drives" is a nicely vague term that we...
Goodbye Scienceblogs, Hello Scientific American Blogs! In March 2010, I was invited to leave behind the relative obscurity of my wordpress blog for the warm community (and increased visibility) of ScienceBlogs. What a tremendous honor and opportunity that was! But there comes a time in...
Casting Memory in Doubt It seems that our brains are surprisingly willing to exchange a true memory for a false one, just on the basis of friends' claims.
Editor's Selections: Computer as Therapist, Nicotine and Body-Mass, and Another DSM-5 Proposal - Gambling Addiction Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week. To start us off this week, Neuroskeptic discusses a new study that attempted to use a computer to translate therapists' notes into psychiatric diagnoses. Could it be that certain language...
Psychopaths in the Boardroom? Not all psychopaths are in prison. Some are in the Boardroom. True?
“The average Russian male, however, seems to be vacillating between wanting to be with with the Russian female and wanting to be with the Italian male, while the Russian female is slowly moving away from him...This graph is 'dancefloor, viewed from above', right?” Phillip IV on Another Reason for the Russian Bride Phenomenon
Orac 03.08.2012
Ethan Siegel 03.07.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
Jason Rosenhouse 03.02.2012
Ed Brayton 09.28.2011
Latest science stories | More at nytimes.com
Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
The Loom January 31, 2008
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006