As visitors to the Cottage are aware, we like to get dirty. Another thing we like is the potential that crowdsourced science has to rapidly improve our knowledge. Here's an opportunity to combine the two. The Natural Products Discovery Group is offering free soil collection kits, which they will then analyze for fungal compounds that... Continue Reading →
Awe-full
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them - the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” -Immanuel Kant Have you ever been awestruck? It's a truly palpable feeling, hence the bolt-of-lightning idiom often associated with it. Awe is often accompanied... Continue Reading →
Organizing Life
Linnaeus probably couldn't have guessed that we would one day be able to classify organisms by sequencing and comparing large chunks of their genomes (since he didn't know what a genome was). That's what phylogenomics does, and it's leading to rapid advances in our understanding of how life evolved. In the late '90s, my dad... Continue Reading →
Passenger Pigeons: Why Extinction Matters
I had a dream last night that I was keeping dodo birds the way one might keep chickens. They had been resurrected, phoenix-style, through DNA lab work. I was excited to tell my stepmom - this would be a great bird to add to her life list. In the category of birds that have run afoul of man's... Continue Reading →
Poppa's Cottage 