Jenny Morman

Amazing shot! - Janice

"Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie. The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia." - Jenny Morman

really?geez. - Anna Lynn M.

I love Some Grey Bloke :) Have you seen the rest of the videos? - Eivind

No I've never seen them but am planning on doing so now. Great link Eivind! - Jenny Morman

You're in for a treat :) - Eivind

"Scientists have been skeptical of claims of mathematical abilities in animals ever since the case of Clever Hans about 100 years ago. The horse, which performed arithmetic and other intellectual tasks to delighted European audiences, was in reality simply taking subconscious cues from his trainer. Modern examples, such as Alex the African grey parrot, which could count up to six and knew sums and differences, are seen by some as special cases or the product of conditioning. Recent studies, however, have uncovered new instances of a counting skill in different species, suggesting that mathematical abilities could be more fundamental in biology than previously thought. Under certain conditions, monkeys could sometimes outperform college students." - Jenny Morman

This is not my idea of food porn... - Eivind

That looked so good I was tempted to lick the screen to see if I could taste it. - Rick Kaiser

thats a bit unusual - Bill Rawlinson

chocolate is the way to a man's heart! - Headstone Hollow

"Regular yoga practice is associated with mindful eating, and people who eat mindfully are less likely to be obese, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center." - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

LOL @Dave - Mark

"The more time college students spend on Facebook, the more likely they are to feel jealous toward their romantic partners, leading to more time on Facebook searching for additional information that will further fuel their jealousy, in an escalating cycle that may become addictive, according to a study reported in CyberPsychology & Behavior." - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

So true. So true. - Meryn Stol

I'd love to hear about the hike Dave. - Jenny Morman

"Challenging the status quo is what I do for a living. Either that or encourage other people to do it. But there are two ways to do it, and one of them is ineffective, short-sighted and threatens the fabric of the tribe. The other seems to work...If you want to challenge the conventional wisdom of health care reform, please do! It'll make the final outcome better. But if you choose to do that, it's essential that you know more about it than everyone else, not less. Certainly not zero. Be skeptical, but be informed (about everything important, not just this issue, of course). Screaming ignorance gets attention, but it distracts us from the work at hand." - Jenny Morman

"At one time or another most of us wonder where we came from, where our parents or grandparents and their parents came from. Did our ancestors come from Europe or Asia? As curious as we are about our ancestors, for practical purposes, we need to think about the ancestry of our genes, according to Cecil Lewis, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. Lewis says our genetic ancestry influences the genetic traits that predispose us to risk or resistance to disease." - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

"A complete understanding of this research depends on a very important population genetic process called the “founder effect.” The geographic region with the most genetic diversity is characteristic of the initial or “parent” population. For example, a group of people leave a parent population and become founders of a new daughter population in an uninhabited geographic region. They typically take with them only a small set of the parent population’s genetic diversity. This is called a founder effect." - Jenny Morman

"A founder effect provides an opportunity for dramatic changes in the frequencies of genetic traits. Genetic alleles or traits may be rare in a parent population, but because of the founder effect they can become common or even lost in the daughter population. These traits include those that may predispose for a risk or resistance to disease." - Jenny Morman

Okay, hungry now and it isn't even lunch time - Janice

"Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and their colleagues in 30 laboratories worldwide have released a new set of standards for graphically representing biological information — the biology equivalent of the circuit diagram in electronics. This visual language should make it easier to exchange complex information, so that biological models are depicted more accurately, consistently, and in a more readily understandable way. The new standard, called the Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN), was published in the August 8 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology. " - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

Jim: The diagram actually represents the robot dance. ;-) - Ruchira S. Datta

"As mathematics continues to become an increasingly important component in undergraduate biology programs, a more comprehensive understanding of the use of algebraic models is needed by the next generation of biologists to facilitate new advances in the life sciences, according to researchers at Sweet Briar College and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech." - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

In undergraduate biology education, mathematical models/descriptions are lightly covered and often treated as 'black box' tools. Ecology, as a subdiscipline of biology, may be the exception to this as it has long been a highly mathematical area in biology. - Jason Miller

"Researchers may be able to predict how people will respond to particular drugs by analysing their urine samples, suggest scientists behind a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

"In today's study, researchers from Imperial College London and Pfizer Research and Development showed that it was possible to predict how different individuals would deal with one drug by looking at the levels of different products of metabolism, known as metabolites, in their urine before they took a dose of the drug." - Jenny Morman

"Ladies and gentleman, I am honored to introduce you to the ChefStack Automatic Pancake Machine. Yes, it's a whopping $3500, but makes pancakes all on its own -- you thrown in the batter pouches, it pops out as many 4-inch diameter pancakes as it has batter. No mess, no muss, no fuss, no fucking effort involves at all." - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

Nooooo :D - Jenny Morman

"A detailed examination of the wrist bones of several primate species challenges the notion that humans evolved their two-legged upright walking style from a knuckle-walking ancestor. The same lines of evidence also suggest that knuckle-walking evolved at least two different times, making gorillas distinct from chimpanzees and bonobos." - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

What I find compelling about the theory is the connection with how the human body stores fat, which is more similar to aquatic mammals than the purely land-dwelling mammals. Also, our bodies seem adapted to fish and fowl more so than meat. That suggests an arboreal to aquatic transition to me. Critical articles don't disuade me because new theories often garner that reaction, even when they are ultimately proved right. - Rick Kaiser

Jemm usually beats me to posts about Fiery skies. Where is he? =P - vijay

Perfection :) - Bicentennial (Franc)

"A tropical fungus has adapted to infect ants and force them to chomp, with surprising specificity, into perfectly located leaves before killing them and taking over their bodies" - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

Finally, a role model. I've been looking for a while now :) - Lo

"University of Utah scientists developed a new kind of "molecular condom" to protect women from AIDS in Africa and other impoverished areas. Before sex, women would insert a vaginal gel that turns semisolid in the presence of semen, trapping AIDS virus particles in a microscopic mesh so they can't infect vaginal cells." - Jenny Morman from Bookmarklet

""Due to cultural and socioeconomic factors, women often are unable to negotiate the use of protection with their partner," says Julie Jay, the study's first author and a University of Utah doctoral candidate in pharmaceutics and pharmaceutical chemistry. So the researchers developed a vaginal gel that a woman could insert a few hours before sex and "could detect the presence of semen... more... - Jenny Morman

Incredible stuff, eh? - Jenny Morman