If you’re anything like me, you’re worried about the potential for attacks by velociraptors. I am not alone.
Thankfully, FlashBang studios have released a beautiful simulation to help prepare your for the inevitable raptor invasion:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td0tKKcFZ28]
Andrew Pollack in the NYTimes reveals the secret message implanted in the recently announced synthetic bacterial genome.
You were expecting poetry perhaps? The secret messages hidden in scientist J. Craig Venter’s synthetic bacterial genome have now been revealed. They are — his name, and that of his research institute and co-workers.
[...]
Justin Barrett and Brian Malley have a rather intriguing paper out in the Journal of Cognition and Culture: A Cognitive Typology of Religious Actions (doi:10.1163/156853707X208486):
The rapid but disproportionate growth of the cognitive science of religion in some areas, coupled with the desire to meaningfully connect with more traditional, function-inspired classifications, has [...]
Said the little Eohippus,
“I am going to be a horse!
And on my middle finger-nails
To run my earthly course!
I’m going to have a flowing tail!
I’m going to have a mane!
I’m going to stand fourteen hands high
On the psychozoic plain!”
The [...]
Out in PNAS – Maternal traces of deep common ancestry and asymmetric gene flow between Pygmy hunter–gatherers and Bantu-speaking farmers (doi:10.1073/pnas.0711467105):
Two groups of populations with completely different lifestyles—the Pygmy hunter–gatherers and the Bantu-speaking farmers—coexist in Central Africa. We investigated the origins of these two groups and the interactions between them, by analyzing [...]
How cute, the creationists have started a journal just so they can be like real scientists. The toy journal, Answers Research Journal is run by the nuts at Answers in Genesis, and -
is a professional (sic), peer-reviewed technical journal (sic) for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific (sic) and other relevant (sic) research [...]
Not a particularly good start to the International Year of Languages – the last traditional speaker of the Na-Dené Eyak language died yesterday, making the language extinct.
I finally got sick of the ugliness that was the last henry theme, and since I don’t have time to make it prettier (countdown to the Ph.D hand-in in 2 months – eek!), I’ve picked an off-the-shelf theme to tart things up a tad.
The Guardian has an interesting, and rather damning article on the rise of personal DNA testing companies like 23andMe (tagline: “Genetics Just Got Personal”).
The service is likely to provoke controversy in the UK, where authorities have warned that genetic tests are often meaningless yet can provoke needless anxiety among those who [...]
