One of the highlights, if you can call it that, of working in Cambridge was the not infrequent chance to visit the now-defunct Synchrotron Radiation Source at Daresbury. Although I spent many hours in one or other of the experimental hutches, coaxing diffraction patterns from reluctant crystals, I never got to see inside any of…
If you’ve been keeping up with us on Facebook and Twitter, you might have seen a discussion on the concept of ecosystem-based fishery management, which includes a dissent from Nando Boero and response from the original evaluator, Chris Kennedy.
Professor Geoffrey Burnstock proposed the purinergic hypothesis, describing what is probably the most primitive (oldest) signalling pathway in the body. He cloned the first purinergic receptor in the early ’90s, and is now excited about the pathophysiology of these receptors, and especially their application to potential treatments for many diseases, including epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and cystic…
Please join us in congratulating two F1000 Members who have been awarded a 2011 Canada Gairdner Award. This award recognizes and rewards “the achievements of medical researchers whose work contributes significantly to improving the quality of human life.” Both were recognized for ground breaking discoveries and definition of the family of Toll like receptors and…
Few would dispute that good communication is essential to a happy and successful relationship. Even arguments might not necessarily be a bad thing–an air-clearing argument need not be destructive, and is probably more healthy than sullen silences. But recent work reported in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy now suggests that what partners discuss,…
My overriding memories of music lessons in school are of a teacher making us hold our breath and ‘deflate like a popped balloon’ every time we were about to sing. Needless to say, it wasn’t my favorite lesson of the day, but then I have never been very musically adept. Thankfully, the use of music…
What can a clam-like creature tell us about eye evolution? Quite a bit, as it turns out. We ran a news article at the beginning of the month, on the finding that brachiopod, or lamp shell, embryos have eyes that are more closely related to those of vertebrates, than of their spineless cousins. I caught…
Pavlov’s cockroach: classical conditioning of salivation in an insect is a paper from 2007, in PLoS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.0000529. And, yes: it describes the classical Pavlovian response, but not with dogs (or cats), but in everybody’s favourite Blattidae, Periplaneta americana. The authors conditioned cockroaches to salivate in response to an odour associated with a reward. This, they…
The student was at the board, hands covered in chalk, mixed with a bit of sweat. He was in the middle of his oral prelim exam, and being grilled about his hypothesis. How would he design his experiments to test it? Did he have the proper controls in place? Would his measurements be within the…
The last thing I’d want to do when visiting the rather lovely looking Lorne (Victoria, Australia) is spend my time talking about cancer (beach please!). Nonetheless, some good folks with more willpower than me managed to do just that at February’s Lorne Cancer Conference–and what a good job they did.
