A Little More Land

In a stimulating and spell-binding lecture on a number of papers by Michael Faraday Friday, Ryan Tweney, emeritus professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University, led the audience in an exciting journey covering acoustic surprises, optical illusions, excruciating experiments and thrilling conjecture. It was difficult to gather, except on rare occasions of lucidity, until [...]

A recent ScienceDaily article summarized a July 18 paper in the journal Science that described the mechanism by which a type of RNA is able to regulate gene expression in some bacteria. It was already known that this RNA, cyclic di-guanosine monophosphate (di-GMP), was a so-called second messenger molecule in bacteria. Basically, di-GMP is generated [...]

Phylogenetic trees are tree-like diagrams showing the relationships among a group of creatures, often with their most recent common ancestor serving as the base of the trunk (rooted versus unrooted). They illustrate how groups of organisms originated, divided, and endured or died off over time. An example of a very low resolution (i.e. only showing [...]