Tag Archives: dovdox blog

One of the big problems facing whole-genome research efforts these days is archiving. A single experiment can generate a terabyte or more of data, and while it’s all conveniently stored on hard drives in the short term, that’s a poor … Continue reading →

A report from Hawaii describes “mysterious pink organisms” washing up on beaches. They look like immature arthropods of some kind to me. Do any Dovdox readers want to hazard a guess? Pink creatures found on Hawaiian beaches: what are they?

This story strikes a chord with me on several levels: The commercial paper industry’s plans to plant forests of genetically altered eucalyptus trees in seven Southern states have generated more cries from critics worried that such a large introduction of … Continue reading →

Science Insider provided an update today on the fiasco at UNESCO: UNESCO has halted preparations for a controversial $300,000 award in the life sciences named after Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, until after an Executive Board … Continue reading →

Geology isn’t my field, but I was nonetheless intrigued by an opinion piece that Nature is publishing online today. As everyone has now heard, there’s a bit of an oil problem in the Gulf of Mexico, and one of the … Continue reading →

Biodiesel is almost competitive with regular diesel fuel these days, but there’s broad agreement that it isn’t a complete answer to the world’s energy problems. One of its biggest drawbacks is that in order to produce biofuel, one generally starts … Continue reading →

In the latest issue of the AAAS’s Science Express, genome cowboy Craig Venter has reported his newest trick: synthesizing the genome of a bacterium and putting it into a different species of bacterium. Why did it take me so many … Continue reading →

In work being presented right now at the American Thoracic Society meeting in New Orleans, researchers found that the much-touted Google Flu Trends system, which was supposed to provide more accurate forecasts of influenza outbreaks, actually didn’t do as well … Continue reading →

In a perfect world, candidates for political office would campaign by having informed discussions about substantive issues of public policy. When science came up, they would demonstrate a firm grasp of the subject. Instead, we get this: In Alabama, a … Continue reading →

When I quit Facebook, I promised my friends (as well as my more numerous “friends”) that I would set up another conduit for the continuous stream of witty content to which they’d become accustomed*. Now I’ve fulfilled that promise, with … Continue reading →