Society of Systematic Biologists

Make of that post title what you will, but it’ll make sense once you watch this promo for the Christmas programming on BBC:Cool. Looks like they’ve made a Christmas special I’ll be happy to see! I was not thrilled with the last one (the Space

Doctor Who comes out of the Cybercloset at Bad Astronomy Blog : Make of that post title what you will, but it’ll make sense once you watch this promo for the Christmas programming on BBC:Cool. Looks like they’ve made a Christmas special I’ll be happy to see! I was not thrilled with the last one (the Space

 I was asked to write an op-ed about patient satisfaction for the current issue of Virtual Mentor which focuses on Hospitalists and Patient Care.  In my op-ed I focus on the challenges and opportunities that hospitalists face - Securing Patient SatisfactionHospitalists

Securing patient satisfaction at DB's Medical Rants :  I was asked to write an op-ed about patient satisfaction for the current issue of Virtual Mentor which focuses on Hospitalists and Patient Care.  In my op-ed I focus on the challenges and opportunities that hospitalists face - Securing Patient SatisfactionHospitalists

With lots of great stuff, from pretty much all over the Plant Kingdom. Enjoy!

Berry Go Round # 11 - Berries, and more than just Berries at Catalogue of Organisms : Welcome to the eleventh edition of Berry Go Round, the monthly celebration of all things photosynthetic. Time to take a stroll through the blogging garden, and see what is showing itself this month.First off, consider where it all began. The Phytophactor takes

Associated PressNew York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress (right) arrives with unidentified man for arraignment at Manhattan Supreme Court. Who didnt call the cops? Thats what New Yorks Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the citys Deputy Police Chief Paul Browne would

NY Hospital Draws Mayors Ire Over Plaxico Burress Gunshot Wound at WSJ.com: Health Blog : Associated PressNew York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress (right) arrives with unidentified man for arraignment at Manhattan Supreme Court. Who didnt call the cops? Thats what New Yorks Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the citys Deputy Police Chief Paul Browne would

One great feature of the open access movement is that it’s democratized the act of reading a scholarly paper: you don’t need a subscription or an academic appointment, just access to a computer and a web browser.But perhaps the OA folks have overly

Chris Patil (ouroboros) on the Campisi lab's new PLoS Biology paper: cellular senescence, protein secretion, and the aging/cancer paradox at Terra Sigillata : I've kept a passing interest in senescence (cellular, not personal) over the last 20 years or so because I've always felt that attempts to increase longevity in a multicellular organism would also increase the risk of cancer (more seasoned readers may recognize

jage2 writes "Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing,

2,700 Year Old Cannabis Excavated in China at PhDiva : The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.Researchers high on ancient pot find - Canada Press.Apparently it was the high THC variety

World's Oldest Marijuana Stash Found at Slashdot: Science : jage2 writes "Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly 'cultivated for psychoactive purposes,' rather than as fibre for clothing,

jage2 writes "Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing,

2,700 Year Old Cannabis Excavated in China at PhDiva : The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.Researchers high on ancient pot find - Canada Press.Apparently it was the high THC variety

What are the differences between the two generalist fields? Academic internist Robert Centor gives his perspective, highlighting differences in philosophy, focus, program rigor, and the involvement of obstetrics and pediatrics.I found the observation about

Should you choose internal medicine or family practice? at Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog : What are the differences between the two generalist fields? Academic internist Robert Centor gives his perspective, highlighting differences in philosophy, focus, program rigor, and the involvement of obstetrics and pediatrics.I found the observation about

Ali Chamseddine and Alain Connes have a new paper, The uncanny precision of the spectral action,which argues that under some assumptions they find worth considering, two terms in an expansion of an action give the correct initial 6820 decimal places of an action.It's

Spectral Actions Imprecisely at atdotde : A post from Lubos triggered me to write a post on non-commutative geometry models for gravity plus the standard model as for example promoted by Chamseddine and Connes in a paper today.Before I start I would like to point out that I have not studied this paper

The New York Times raised some interesting psychological issues in an article published on Saturday by Kate Zernike about the ability to appear calm - a skill many people have recognised and praised in President Elect 'No Drama Obama'.Calmness is linked with

Finding the right balance between calmness and anxiety at BPS Research Digest : The New York Times raised some interesting psychological issues in an article published on Saturday by Kate Zernike about the ability to appear calm - a skill many people have recognised and praised in President Elect 'No Drama Obama'.Calmness is linked with

Alan Stern, former associate administrator in charge of the NASA Science Mission Directorate from 2007 to 2008, has an editorial in the NYT on NASA's self-imposed problem of routine cost inflation.And the Mars Science Laboratory is only the latest symptom of

Obama Team Considers Cancellation of Ares, Orion at Slashdot: Science : HanzoSpam sends us this story from Space News, which begins: "US President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking US space agency officials to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew

Obama Team Considers Cancellation of Ares, Orion at Slashdot: Science : HanzoSpam sends us this story from Space News, which begins: "US President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking US space agency officials to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew

Alan Stern, former associate administrator in charge of the NASA Science Mission Directorate from 2007 to 2008, has an editorial in the NYT on NASA's self-imposed problem of routine cost inflation.And the Mars Science Laboratory is only the latest symptom of

Obama Team Considers Cancellation of Ares, Orion at Slashdot: Science : HanzoSpam sends us this story from Space News, which begins: "US President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking US space agency officials to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew

The Case of El Naschie [1] who has published more than 300 papers in an Elsevier journal for which he is the founding editor, has been in discussion in the blogs recently [see the note in [1] for links to source-blogs]. With an evenly worded title, Self-publishing

Questions on reviewing standards as editor retires at Peer-to-Peer : Nature's 27 November issue (456, 432; 2008) carries a News story about the planned retirement of the editor of a theoretical-physics journal, who was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself. According to

A recurring theme has been the decline of journalism as it loses its monopoly of news and transitions to fashion, gossip and politics. Journalism has always been mostly about such ephemeral things, and now it is becoming solely about them. One of the things

Climate change is only part of the great acceleration at Resilience Science : While accepting a journalism award, American environmental journalist Andrew Revkin was asked “Obviously climate change is the biggest story on your plate right now, but looking ahead what do you see?” he replied:My coverage has evolved. Climate

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and the Creation Museum have made a joint marketing agreement and are selling "combo tickets" to get into both attractions for one price.The Cincinnati Zoo is promoting an anti-science, anti-education con job run by

Boo hoo at Pharyngula : We have made Ken Ham very sad. Yay, bonus!"We are disappointed with the zoo's decision and its impact on the families and visitors to the region who would have enjoyed taking advantage of this opportunity to make this a truly memorable Christmas," said Answers

Shame, Shame, Shame on the Cincinnati Zoo at Afarensis : Shame on the Cincinnati Zoo. You can find out why here. The short version is that they have teamed up with the the Creation Museum to create a combo ticket for the holidays. Read the comments on this post...

The Buzz: Cincinnati Zoo/Creation Museum Promo Halted at Page 3.14 : When the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and the Genesis and Creation Museum announced a combined admission offer November 30, protest erupted in the blogosphere. "I believe the Cincinnati Zoo has betrayed its mission and its trust in a disgraceful way by

Victory in Cincinnati? at Pharyngula : We have a couple of comments from people who phoned the Cincinnati Zoo that suggest that the shameful pairing of the zoo with the Creation Museum is going to be revoked. I suspect that this was a case of an overzealous person in the marketing department grabbing

Shame on the Cincinnati Zoo at The Panda's Thumb : The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and the Creation Museum have made a joint marketing agreement and are selling "combo tickets" to get into both attractions for one price.The Cincinnati Zoo is promoting an anti-science, anti-education con job run by

In the past I've expressed concern about creeps and cranks politicizing biochar since that would polarize society and create opposition. It's the proposed policies that they oppose, but it plays out as opposition to biochar itself. Here's an interesting item

La Nia may be returning at Lubo Motl's reference frame : La Nia, a Pacific atmospheric phenomenon that ended during the summer, to be replaced by ENSO-neutral conditions, shows some signs of life again.Click the picture above for more maps. The weekly status (click PDF or PPT) indicates that the ENSO region 1+2 has

Michael Mann and Gavin SchmidtMuch in the spirit of the Fraser Institute's damp squib we reported on last year, S. Fred Singer and his merry band of contrarian luminaries (financed by the notorious "Heartland Institute" we've commented on previously) served

La Nia may be returning at Lubo Motl's reference frame : La Nia, a Pacific atmospheric phenomenon that ended during the summer, to be replaced by ENSO-neutral conditions, shows some signs of life again.Click the picture above for more maps. The weekly status (click PDF or PPT) indicates that the ENSO region 1+2 has

It started with Henry who was bored with the simplicity of the "pick the nearest book" meme and decided to make it really hard!Mike picked it up and tagged a few people, including me and Wilkins.So, what are the rules? Hey, Henry came up with this, so feel

Five Fifty-Six: A New(ish) Meme. at The Questionable Authority : Blame Henry. He just twisted an old meme a little bit, and it's hard for me to resist doing the same. There's a meme that's been wandering around facebook for a while now - take the first book you see, open it to page fifty-six, transcribe the fifth sentence,

Five-fiftysix meme at Evolving Thoughts : Mike Dunford, who is still trying to get me to pay for that time he put me up in Hawaii when his wife was on active service in Iraq (if I knew what I'd have to pay, both in climbing horrific rainforested slopes to release wallabies, and this meme, I'd never

Here's another one from the mail that is worth sharing with you readers:Hi Gloria, In commemoration of World Aids Day this year (December 1), I wanted to let you know that a number of high-res photographs from I AM BECAUSE WE ARE, a powerful new work of photojournalism

AIDS Day 2008 at Acronym Required : The Presidential Universe of Me Another year passed. Today's World AIDS Day finds us with many of the same struggles as last year, however there's also incremental progress. This year saw Bush's PEPFAR program for drugs and prevention increase. Bush had said

Nations Mark 20th World AIDS Day, Face Different Challenges at WSJ.com: Health Blog : We’d feel remiss if it didn’t mark World AIDS Day todayEstablished 20 years ago by the World Health Organization, the event was intended to raise awareness about the global AIDS epidemic. At the time of the day’s inception, fear and ignorance

Agrobiodiversity and HIV/AIDS at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog : On World AIDS Day, it would be nice to be able to point to how agrobiodiversity can help the more than 40 million people living with HIV around the world. Not easy, alas. There’s an FAO strategy-type document from 2003. And what looks like a project from

HIV/AIDS In the U.S. By the Numbers at Science Progress : In recognition of World AIDS Day, our colleagues at the Center for American Progress have prepared a set of stats on the ongoing epidemic in the United States. They also provide recommendations for the next administration to develop a National AIDS Strategy.

World AIDS Day roundup at In Sickness and In Health : Today December 1st is World AIDS Day. As many as 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and there are 80,000 people with HIV in the UK. The aim of World AIDS Day is to raise awareness of the challenges and consequences of the epidemic - ultimately

World AIDS Day roundup at In Sickness and In Health : Today December 1st is World AIDS Day. As many as 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and there are 80,000 people with HIV in the UK. The aim of World AIDS Day is to raise awareness of the challenges and consequences of the epidemic - ultimately

World AIDS Day 2008 at Dr Petra Boynton I Blog : Today (1 December) is World AIDS Day and this years theme is Respect and Protect a message designed to get us thinking about ways to reduce the spread of HIV and reduce discrimination against those with HIV. Problems of leadership (or the lack of), discrimination

bloggers-unite at ScienceRoll : December 1 is the World AIDS Day so it’s time to dedicate a post to this important disease. From Wikipedia:Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a set of symptoms and infections resulting from the

World AIDS Day: How Far We've Come...and Still How Far There is to Go at blog.bioethics.net : Today marks the 20th World AIDS Day. In these last 20 years, medical research has sparked marvelous breakthroughs in the treatment of HIV/AIDS around the world--even in developing countries where for many years since the outbreak of this once-deadly, now...

ommemorating World Aids Day: Share these moving portraits of African lives touched by HIV/AIDS at Straightfromthedoc : Here's another one from the mail that is worth sharing with you readers:Hi Gloria, In commemoration of World Aids Day this year (December 1), I wanted to let you know that a number of high-res photographs from I AM BECAUSE WE ARE, a powerful new work of photojournalism

Here's another one from the mail that is worth sharing with you readers:Hi Gloria, In commemoration of World Aids Day this year (December 1), I wanted to let you know that a number of high-res photographs from I AM BECAUSE WE ARE, a powerful new work of photojournalism

AIDS Day 2008 at Acronym Required : The Presidential Universe of Me Another year passed. Today's World AIDS Day finds us with many of the same struggles as last year, however there's also incremental progress. This year saw Bush's PEPFAR program for drugs and prevention increase. Bush had said

Nations Mark 20th World AIDS Day, Face Different Challenges at WSJ.com: Health Blog : We’d feel remiss if it didn’t mark World AIDS Day todayEstablished 20 years ago by the World Health Organization, the event was intended to raise awareness about the global AIDS epidemic. At the time of the day’s inception, fear and ignorance

Agrobiodiversity and HIV/AIDS at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog : On World AIDS Day, it would be nice to be able to point to how agrobiodiversity can help the more than 40 million people living with HIV around the world. Not easy, alas. There’s an FAO strategy-type document from 2003. And what looks like a project from

HIV/AIDS In the U.S. By the Numbers at Science Progress : In recognition of World AIDS Day, our colleagues at the Center for American Progress have prepared a set of stats on the ongoing epidemic in the United States. They also provide recommendations for the next administration to develop a National AIDS Strategy.

World AIDS Day roundup at In Sickness and In Health : Today December 1st is World AIDS Day. As many as 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and there are 80,000 people with HIV in the UK. The aim of World AIDS Day is to raise awareness of the challenges and consequences of the epidemic - ultimately

World AIDS Day 2008 at Dr Petra Boynton I Blog : Today (1 December) is World AIDS Day and this years theme is Respect and Protect a message designed to get us thinking about ways to reduce the spread of HIV and reduce discrimination against those with HIV. Problems of leadership (or the lack of), discrimination

World AIDS Day: How Far We've Come...and Still How Far There is to Go at blog.bioethics.net : Today marks the 20th World AIDS Day. In these last 20 years, medical research has sparked marvelous breakthroughs in the treatment of HIV/AIDS around the world--even in developing countries where for many years since the outbreak of this once-deadly, now...

ommemorating World Aids Day: Share these moving portraits of African lives touched by HIV/AIDS at Straightfromthedoc : Here's another one from the mail that is worth sharing with you readers:Hi Gloria, In commemoration of World Aids Day this year (December 1), I wanted to let you know that a number of high-res photographs from I AM BECAUSE WE ARE, a powerful new work of photojournalism