There was quite a spike in our traffic to UsefulChem today. The fact that Alicia's masters thesis "Synthesis of Diketopiperazines, Possible Malaria Enoyl Reducatase Inhibitors Using Open Source Science" is being written on a wiki was noted by Pharyngula,

In 1976 a research cruise in the Gulf of Alaska recorded the sighting of "brown penguins."

How was it that birds that swim rather than fly and live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere turned up deep in the Northern Hemisphere? Did they migrate more than 5,000 miles from Peru?


Humboldt penguins are native to the Southern Hemisphere, but North America was home to these Humboldts when they lived at Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C. Credit: Dee Boersma

Recent research shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) can offer a new – and completely free – way to prevent fever-related epileptic seizures. The discovery was made by the NordForsk-financed Nordic Centre of Excellence on Water Imbalance Related Disorders (WIRED)

In the cover story of this month’s BioScience journal, leading tiger experts warn that if tigers are to survive, governments must stop all trade in tiger products from wild and captive-bred sources, as well as ramp up efforts to conserve the species and their habitats.

The paper, “The Fate of Wild Tigers,” describes the wild tiger's population decline as "catastrophic" and urges international cooperation to ensure the animal's continued existence in the wild.


Courtesy: www.tigertrust.info

Researchers of the Group of Recent Prehistory Studies (GEPRAN) of the University of Granada, from the department of Prehistory and Archaeology, have taken an important step to determine how life was in the Iberian Peninsula in the Bronze Age.


Credit: Motilla del Azuer archaeological site -- Bronze Age.

Weather models are not good at predicting rain. Particularly in hilly terrain, this can lead to great damage arising from late warnings of floods, or even none at all. From June 1 to September 1, 2007 Delft University of Technology is participating in a major international experiment in Germany’s Black Forest, to learn more about what causes rain. Aircraft and an airship are to be used alongside ground-based observatories and satellites.


TARA at its homebase in Cabauw, Holland. Credit: TU Delft

The most comprehensive study of its kind has found that violence costs the United States $70 billion annually, a figure that rivals federal education spending and the damage caused by hurricane Katrina.

Phaedra Corso, lead author of study and associate professor of health policy at the University of Georgia College of Public Health and health economist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the study illustrates how much money can be saved by investing in programs that decrease interpersonal violence and self-inflicted violence such as suicide. For comparison, the federal Department of Education has an annual budget of $67.2 billion and hurricane Katrina caused an estimated $80 billion in damage.

It might be time to change some history books.

Prehistoric Polynesians, not European voyagers, may have brought chickens to the Americas, according to new research from The University of Auckland’s Department of Anthropology.


Fancy artwork courtesy of University of Auckland

Imagination refers to holding in mind a representation that may not be (yet) 'true' and does not necessarily reflect the facts about the external world or the Reality as of now. The act of imagination may use previous memories and a general knowledge of the world to recreate past memories or to imagine novel future events.

University of Colorado researchers will scan Venus during a spacecraft flyby this week using an $8.7 million instrument they designed and built for NASA's MESSENGER Mission, launched in 2004 and speeding toward Mercury.

Built by CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the instrument will make measurements of the thick clouds and shrouded surface of Venus during the June 5th flyby, said LASP Senior Research Associate William McClintock, a mission co-investigator who led the CU-Boulder instrument development team.


An artists rendition of NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which will make its first flyby of Mercury in 2008.