Daniel Mietchen

Good talk in principle, but some annoying inaccuracies: mirror neurons were discovered by EEG, not MRI. Mirror recognition comes about a year earlier than at 2.5 years in humans, and the story of mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam is a bit more complicated too. - Daniel Mietchen

excellent video nonetheless! - !lker yoldas. )°(

Model organisms are used in many branches of the life sciences in order to render the study of particular structures or mechanism more amenable to experimental manipulation. Zebra finches have helped to address research loads of research questions related to … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

On December 14, we got a glimpse of the Northwest Crown Fire Modeling Experiment, one of the most detailed studies of forest fires. Today, we return to the subject of forest fires: pyrophilous insect species like the beetle Melanophila acuminata lay their eggs … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Axin is a regulator of Wnt signaling, and a mutation in the axin gene can lead to cloned mice differing in the kinkiness of their tail, as shown in today’s Open Access File of the Day.     Fig. 1 of the feature Human Epigenome … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

For some reason, I had forgotten to mention here the three reports that I had put into This Month in GLAM for January (available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License or compatible). So I will paste the one on Open … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Today’s Open Access File of the Day takes us to a mountainous area in northwestern Yunnan, China, which is the habitat of some of chaos theory’s most famous mascots – butterflies, specifically of the species Phengaris atroguttata and Phengaris xiushani. The latter was recently described, and the … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

I like the happy sunflower staged in the background. - Andrew Lang

I was waiting for them to jump into the picture behind. - Noel O'Boyle

In light of the ongoing debate around the Research Works Act, universal access and the role of publishers in research communication, some images – like the suckling pigs on December 21 or today’s Open Access File of the Day - may take on a special meaning: just imagine … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Today’s Open Access File of the Day comes straight from the Main Page of Wikispecies: the rove beetle Dalotia coriaria. Fig. 46 of the article New Staphylinidae (Coleoptera) records with new collection data from New Brunswick, Canada. I. Aleocharinae, published in 2009 by Reginal … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Have you ever thought of yourself as a vector? To some life forms, you certainly are. Amongst them is the pepper mild mottle virus that transits your digestive tract before reaching target plants like pepper. In today’s Open Access File of the Day, … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Lice can be tremendously useful. For instance, the high but not perfect specificity of several different species of lice allows to use information about their phylogeny to infer some information about the phylogenies of their host species. Some of the … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Yesterday, I came across a post by Stuart Shieber, in which he highlighted a quote and linked to a blog post about an interview that Richard Poynder had done with Jan Velterop, in which the latter had said the following: … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Wolbachia is one of the favourite model systems in evolutionary biology and theoretical biology, as it has such a wide range of effects on the hosts it resides in. When the first Wolbachia genome was published in 2004, the paper was … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Few places on our planet are as remote as Gough Island in the Southern Atlantic, yet even there, invasive species are not uncommon, as pointed out in a feature article in PLoS Biology, from which today’s Open Access File of … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Over on Foundation-l, an interesting thread has been developing today on the Research Works Act, Open Access pledges and any potential role therein for Wikimedia. I just posted some thoughts on the matter, quoted in full below the fold.   … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Nahuatl is the language spoken by the Aztecs. It is also one of the languages in which a Wikipedia exists, and on December 22 last year, Marrovi started its entry on Pāpalōmōyotl, the blood-feeding sandfly scientifically known as Lutzomyia longipalpis (no English-language Wikipedia … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

On January 14, the entry about Francis Crick on the Sanskrit Wikipedia was expanded, and the article now includes a photo of him in his office. The image was originally published in an obituary and is the first file from … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

<3 (== love) - Bob.Draco

As explained on Saturday, Wikimedia Commons has three files (WebCite) categorized both under IUCN Critically endangered species and Open access (publishing). Following in the footsteps of Camarhynchus heliobates.png and Gyps bengalensis PLoS.png, today’s Open Access File of the Day shall thus be Taudactylus eungellensis.png.   Fig. 1 of the synopsis (presumably by Liza Gross) of … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

Hackspace Jena had been existing for a while already, but today, it was formally established by around 20 founding members. There are lots of ideas on how to move forward, but for today, I’ll leave it with a view out … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

As explained yesterday, Wikimedia Commons has three files (WebCite) categorized both under IUCN Critically endangered species and Open access (publishing). Following in the footsteps of Camarhynchus heliobates.png, today’s Open Access File of the Day shall thus be Gyps bengalensis PLoS.png.     Fig. 1 of the synopsis by Liza Gross … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen

By definition, endangered species consist of low numbers of individuals, which also affects the probability of being able to take good images or recordings of the species, or to find such materials if they already exist. Wikimedia Commons has the … Continue reading → - Daniel Mietchen