Have a festive FSMas!

post from Pharyngula on 16 December 2006 11:19:51 AM. © Pharyngula

This is the way to decorate for the season.

(via UTI)

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_fsmas.php

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World's First Cloned Housecat has Kittens

post from Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) on 16 December 2006 11:12:41 AM. © Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Copy Cat, the world's first cloned cat had three kittens (pictured) in September -- and she even did it the natural way. Copy Cat was cloned by Texas A&M University researchers in 2001. Mother and kittens are doing well, said Duane Kraemer, an A&M veterinary medicine professor who helped clone her and has been taking care of her since.

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Design a mission, win $50k

post from Ponderfodder - Because Great Minds Discuss Ideas | Community Blog on 16 December 2006 10:53:50 AM. © Ponderfodder - Because Great Minds Discuss Ideas | Community Blog

Description:

The Planetary Society is conducting a competition to design a mission to rendezvous with and "tag" a

...

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End of term textbook assessment

post from Pharyngula on 16 December 2006 09:57:45 AM. © Pharyngula

One of those things we professors have to struggle with every year is textbook decisions. Your standard science textbook is a strange thing: it's a heavily distilled reference work that often boils all of the flavor out of a discipline in order to maximize the presentation of the essentials. What that typically means is that you get a book that is eminently useful, but isn't the kind of thing you'd pick up to read for fun, and then we hand it to our undergraduate students, who may be in our class for only the vaguest of reasons, and tell them they must read it. Finally, of course, at the end of the semester most of the students take that expensive reference work down to the bookstore buy-back and get rid of it (not me, though! I've still got my undergraduate developmental biology text on my bookshelf).

The other thing that goes on is that as textbooks age, they get denser and denser. Gilbert's Developmental Biology^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)} is probably the best book in the field, and I certainly love my copy, but it's also been accreting great stuff for years with many new editions. That's good for me, but I worry that it may be too much for undergraduate students, most of whom want a general introduction and aren't necessarily planning to go on to do anything specific in development. That's why I went with Wolpert's Principles of Development^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}—it's good, but it's also a little lighter and a little less intimidating than Gilbert's.

The other thing I try to do is to toss in some supplemental reading: lighter fare with a narrower theme and, with any luck, a narrative and a more personal insight. That's sometimes harder to find, but the advantage is that these are books you can imagine someone picking up at a bookstore and reading for enjoyment, so maybe even my students who go on to become doctors or dentists or lab techs or insurance salesmen might continue to browse the science shelf at the Barnes and Noble and keep up with the topic.

This year, I assigned Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)} and Zimmer's At the Water's Edge^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)} as the supplemental reading (in past years, I've used Brown's In the Beginning Was the Worm^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}, but two is about the limit of what we can handle with discussing a few chapters a week; it might come back in the future). I've always felt a little bit of trepidation about using At the Water's Edge, just because my course is on development, and I could imagine some student complaining that there's an awful lot of paleontology and physiology in there—but personally, I think a broader integrative view is important, too.

Anyway, I asked my students their general opinion of the books this week, and I also asked them to post a brief comparison to the web. You can read them all here:

I was greatly relieved to learn that my students like the more popular science supplements. Carl will be relieve to learn that his book was the unanimous favorite of everyone in the class. Carroll's book is good and more tightly focused on the subject matter of the course, but I think great writing wins every time.

Now next Fall I'll be teaching a general neuroscience course. I'm thinking the two extra books I'll be using are Soul Made Flesh^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)} (Zimmer again! I'll stick with a winner) and Weiner's Time, Love, Memory^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}.

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Options improving for patients with acromegaly,
gigantism

post from Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet. on 16 December 2006 09:20:45 AM. © Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet.

Scientific, technological and medical advances made in the past two decades are leading to more definitive diagnoses, earlier and more effective treatment options and better outcomes for patients suffering from a condition called acromegaly, according to an article published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and authored by a specialist in endocrinology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

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FRAM memories - performance and cost comparision

post from CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries on 16 December 2006 09:03:58 AM. © CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries

Ramtron FRAM memories and FRAM MCU can retain data without power and without of erasing and rewriting. However these parts are still developing and fo...

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Sea Slug Photo Gallery

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 16 December 2006 08:54:00 AM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

Nudibranchia Gallery: Nudibranchs belong to sea slugs. As all other gastropods, they are slow moving bottom dwellers. They have soft bodies and most of them lack an external protective shell. Their secondary gills are exposed outside, as reflected by their neo-latin/greek name “nudibranch” meaning “nude/naked gills”… To protect themselves from predators many [...]

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Baseball Pitch Designed in the Lab

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 16 December 2006 08:48:00 AM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

Pitch PerfectFive years ago, computer scientist Ryutaro Himeno was testing super-computers by modeling the fluid dynamics of airflow around baseballs. Himeno’s deconstruction of existing pitches led to a strange new one?whirling clockwise as it flew forward, the virtual ball curved as abruptly as its closest relative, the slider, but without sinking. Himeno met with Kazushi [...]

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Bi-directional Stainless Steel Ball or angle
valve for Transfrmr Oil Tank drain

post from CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries on 16 December 2006 04:54:53 AM. © CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries

I have few 20 years old Oil Transformers in our plant. Its drain valve have been damaged and we are going to replace all old drain valves. We w...

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Cavitation and electrolysis

post from CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries on 16 December 2006 04:35:32 AM. © CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries

Has anyone investigated the possible combination of cavitation under extremely high pressure (1Kbar+) in combination with high-current passing thru wa...

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