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Entries written in October 2007

Here’s a new occasional segment that I’m going to run on Henry: The Stupid Science Terminology Award.  This week, the award goes to the National Geographic News, for inflicting upon us the nausea-inducing term “brainbow”:
In their effort to tease out the details of connections in the nervous system, Lichtman and his colleagues developed about [...]

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Written October 31, 2007 in chimpanzees, language, misc, people

2007’s been a bad year for animal research. First, Alex the parrot dies, and now Washoe, the first sign language chimp has brachiated off this mortal coil:
Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central Washington University’s Ellensburg campus since 1980. She had [...]

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Written October 31, 2007 in misc, science

Catriona J. MacCallum ponders when Open Access  is not Open Access:
Does the distinction between free and open access really matter if anyone can read the article for free? Isn’t open access just about making the literature available? Well, yes and no. Free access is certainly important, but it’s only the starting point. At least [...]

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Written October 29, 2007 in anthropology, psychology

Hmm… modelling the novelty of news stories on Digg?
The subject of collective attention is central to an information age where millions of people are inundated with daily messages. It is thus of interest to understand how attention to novel items propagates and eventually fades among large populations. We have analyzed the dynamics of collective attention [...]

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National Geographic & the world’s 25 most endangered primates.

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Written October 27, 2007 in anthropology, genetics

CBSNews has an interesting story on the Amish and genetic disorders:
It doesn’t get much more peaceful than the simple life among the Amish in rural Ohio. They have no cars, no electricity, no televisions.
But their children have medical conditions so rare, doctors don’t have names for them yet…

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Written October 24, 2007 in anthropology

Eric over at Primate Diaries has the latest Four Stone Hearth (aka “the Net’s best anthropology blog carnival”). It’s full of all sorts of fun links, so don’t miss it!

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