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Vaccine to protect against staph infections in rabbits Researchers have created a vaccine that has the potential to prevent pneumonia caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, including Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in an animal model. The vaccine targets toxins secreted by the staph bacteria, preventing it from causing serious infections. Results may explain why human trials have […]

For any animal, the real world is an ever-changing environment. Continuously, even then they are just remaining in a peaceful, awake state, animals receive multiple sensory signals encoding different features of their surroundings, or even carrying information about their own internal state (orientation, body movement, or internal temperature, for example). Some of these signals might […]

Since the emergence of the microscope in the early seventeenth century, many claimed its invention, but many more have tried to improve it. Many problems have been resolved on the way, allowing us to poke directly with our own eyes about the heart of the living or inert matter as far as optical physics allows […]

Unique shrub provides insights into flowering plants’ evolution The genome of the shrub Amborella trichopoda has provided researchers with clues about how flowering plants have evolved, according to a study published in Science. The shrub is known to grow natively on the island of Grande Terre in the South Pacific and nowhere else, and is […]

This article summarizes a review of the literature presented in Sacerdote (2011) . I thank Ricardo Mora for bringing it to my attention. The simplest model of behavioral genetics assumes that child outcomes (Y) are produced by a linear and additive combination of genetic inputs (G), shared environment (F) and unexplained factors (S). For instance […]

Much attention has been payed lately to the novice comet C/2012 S1, more widely known as comet ISON. At the crest of the wave, it was even said that the integrated brightness of the comet after the perihelion could exceed that of the full moon. It was nicknamed “the comet of the century” and everybody […]

Proportional symbol maps (also known as graduated symbol maps) are used in Cartography to visualize quantitative data associated with specific locations. For a given point on a geographic map, a symbol (usually a disk or a square) is scaled such that its area is proportional to the numerical value associated to the point. This scaled […]

Crocodiles, alligators use lures to attract prey Alligators and crocodiles use lures to entice prey, the first reported use of tools by reptiles. Researchers surveyed alligators and crocodiles at four sites in Louisiana for a year, noting that the creatures balancing twigs and sticks on their snouts to lure birds during nesting seasons. “Use of […]

Jabberwocky is the title of a famous poem by Lewis Carroll[1], a poem very much liked by linguists because it beautifully illustrates the crucial role that function words play in language. Function words are the little words no one pays much attention to, although they are the true keepers of grammar. In fact, language cannot […]

The first known application of modern economic techniques to solving epistemic problems in science was very explicit in describing the value of a scientific theory as the difference between ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’. I’m referring to Charles Sanders Peirce’s ‘Note of the Theory of the Economy of Research’, published in 1879, less than a decade after […]