A rare day job related post, a couple of recent high profile Science papers have reinforced for me my decision oh so many years back as a starting grad student to focus on studying olfaction, or the sense of smell.

The first study by Jan Born's group, shows that odours specifically seem to enhance consolidation of declarative (more factual) ( Read more... )

Being scooped really is like this:


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The annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, is typically everything the name suggests - a pretty staid affair with a room full of senior suited scientists, enjoying a drink or three, occassionally talking science - but mostly catching up on the gossip, with a lot of mutual back-scratching - hardly the venue for a ( Read more... )

This post comes to you from Cold Spring Harbour - where I've been hob-nobbing for the past few days with fellow fly neurobiologists.At five days the meeting's just a little too long too, there's only so long that you can keep up a 7:30am - 2:00am schedule.. I'm too tired to bother making this sound coherent, so pardon the jumbled thoughts ( Read more... )

The Guardian reports that researchers have created a transgenic mouse that carries an entire human chromosome - chromosome 21 {Original article in Science magazine here - subscription required though}. Trisomy, or three copies, of chromosome 21 causes Down's Syndrome. As a model to study Down's Syndrome, this mouse model is going to be invaluable, ( Read more... )

July 1st was Science magazine's 125th anniversary, so to celebrate they had their editors draw up a list of 125 big questions facing science over the next 25 years. I think it's a great State of the Field address as it were highlighting the gaps in our understanding of the world, spanning everything from the stuff that makes up the universe to the ( Read more... )

Apparently Stephen Hawking now says black holes aren't quite so black, after all.. As I understand it (which is not very well) his old theory was that once anything (matter / energy) crossed the event horizon and entered the black hole, you could pretty much kiss it goodbye, the black hole would release what has since been called "Hawking radiation ( Read more... )

Think again. That clip is from here (courtesy of drglam), they even discuss strategies and things, cool stuff.. If I ever graduate, I think I'm going to do a post-doc on behaviour..