Neuroscience
A True Fruit Fly - Tephritidae (via Myrmecos Blog)
Bjoern Brembs has written extensively about the latest anti-science commentary by VP candidate Sarah Palin, who said...
via Bjoern Brembs
...because the public good is better served by astronomical deficits and defense spending.
- A New Approach To Help Those Who Hear Voices
When it comes to the ‘positive’ symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hearing voices, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has mostly be used to help reduce the distress and burden that they can cause. But now Jerome Favrod and colleagues in Switzerland...
- "tabloid Language" In Nature Neuroscience
Disco Drosophila By now, everyone has read about the so-called "homosexual" (actually bisexual) fruit flies (Grosjean et al., 2007):1 Study finds gay gene in fruit flies SUMMARY: Scientists have found that a gene can turn on and off homosexual impulses...
- Tampax Begins New Marketing Campaign
Now here's something unexpected... Fruit bats discovered to have menstrual cycles Scientists have discovered that a type of fruit bat menstruate in a similar way to women They say their findings – published in this month's issue of key journal...
- Ted Talk: Gero Miesenboeck
TED Talk: Gero Miesenboeck reengineers a brain July 2010 Watch the talk here "In the quest to map the brain, many scientists have attempted the incredibly daunting task of recording the activity of each neuron. Gero Miesenboeck works backward -- manipulating...
- Evo Devo Explained
A book review in the Oct. 24, 2005 issue of the New Yorker by H. Allen Orr explains a bit about “evo devo” (evolutionary developmental biology), and finally clarifies for me what “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” means. Last things first: the...
Neuroscience
The Trouble With Tephritidae
A True Fruit Fly - Tephritidae (via Myrmecos Blog)
Bjoern Brembs has written extensively about the latest anti-science commentary by VP candidate Sarah Palin, who said...
Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not....in a series of blog posts, including this one:
Who needs to know about bears, planetariums or fruit flies anyway? To hell with science!Myrmecos Blog informs us that Drosophila is not a Fruit Fly:
In the beginning, there was bear DNA. Then the projector for the quintessential planetarium experience. Last Friday it was research on fruit flies. Which research project a semi-educated Republican politician doesn't understand will be next?
I guess California's olive industry has little or nothing to do with the public good...Fruit flies are a family, Tephritidae, containing about 5,000 species of often strikingly colored insects. As the name implies, these flies are frugivores. Many, such as the mediterranean fruit fly, are agricultural pests.
Drosophila melanogaster, the insect that has been so important in genetic research, is not a true fruit fly. Drosophila is a member of the Drosophilidae, the vinegar or pomace flies. They are mostly fungivores, and their association with fruit is indirect: they eat the fungus that lives in rotting fruit...
I bring this up because the confusion between fruit flies and vinegar flies entered into U.S. presidential politics this week when Sarah Palin attacked Fruit Fly spending as wasteful...
. . .Palin was referring to a project to fund studies of the olive fruit fly, a true tephritid and a major threat to California’s olive industry.
via Bjoern Brembs
...because the public good is better served by astronomical deficits and defense spending.
- A New Approach To Help Those Who Hear Voices
When it comes to the ‘positive’ symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hearing voices, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has mostly be used to help reduce the distress and burden that they can cause. But now Jerome Favrod and colleagues in Switzerland...
- "tabloid Language" In Nature Neuroscience
Disco Drosophila By now, everyone has read about the so-called "homosexual" (actually bisexual) fruit flies (Grosjean et al., 2007):1 Study finds gay gene in fruit flies SUMMARY: Scientists have found that a gene can turn on and off homosexual impulses...
- Tampax Begins New Marketing Campaign
Now here's something unexpected... Fruit bats discovered to have menstrual cycles Scientists have discovered that a type of fruit bat menstruate in a similar way to women They say their findings – published in this month's issue of key journal...
- Ted Talk: Gero Miesenboeck
TED Talk: Gero Miesenboeck reengineers a brain July 2010 Watch the talk here "In the quest to map the brain, many scientists have attempted the incredibly daunting task of recording the activity of each neuron. Gero Miesenboeck works backward -- manipulating...
- Evo Devo Explained
A book review in the Oct. 24, 2005 issue of the New Yorker by H. Allen Orr explains a bit about “evo devo” (evolutionary developmental biology), and finally clarifies for me what “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” means. Last things first: the...