The Archives

A trypanosome and a tsetse walk into a bar…
12.18.08 | Permalink | Comment?

Well, neither the tsetse nor the trypanosome actually “walk” per se… Anyway…
A while back I posted a brief “howsyourmother” on a PLoS ONE article discussing the role of trypanosomes in an extinction event on Easter Island during the late 19th century. As it turns out, in 2007, also in PLoS ONE, an article was published [...]
Life in the U.S.A.
11.13.08 | Permalink | Comment?

The US maps from a recent PLoS Medicine research article (Ezzati, et al. e66) show not election returns, but disparities in life expectancy. In this month’s Editorial (e208), the PLoS Medicine Editors argue that fixing injustices in the US health care system will require actively prioritizing health over financial gain.
The Reversal of Fortunes: Trends in [...]
The appetite of natural selection
11.07.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

An open access paper [pdf] published recently in PNAS delves into one of the most integral questions to the understanding of energetics and evolution. According to the abstract, “A fundamental but unanswerable biological question asks how much energy, on average, Earth’s different life forms spend per unit mass per unit time to remain alive.” Unanswerable? [...]
Extinction and disease in mammals
11.05.08 | Permalink | Comment?

An article that just came out in PLoS ONE is the first to uncover a correlation between pathogen introduction and an extinction event in a mammalian species.
According to Wyatt et al., in 1899 black rats were introduced to Easter Island via the S.S. Hindustan, and with them a pathogenic protozoan by the name of Trypanosoma [...]
Why does Open Access matter to you?
10.14.08 | Permalink | 3 Comments

Why does Open Access matter to me?
Open Access matters to me,
because inviting walls into wide open spaces,
gives information claustrophobia.
And the information I seek,
needs room to breathe.
Open Access matters to me,
because my creativity depends,
on the creativity of others.
And the creativity on which I feed,
should never leave me hungry.
Open Access matters to me,
because ideas have wings,
and closed [...]