Leading cause of dog injury in flight

picture by Roman Fleysher

OK, these dogs are living the good life. I'm not sure if they're strapped in or not, but that's not the kind of injury I'm thinking about.

Based on the reading I've done, which has not been systematic or exhaustive, the leading cause of dog injury in flight seems to be injuries sustained by pets trying to escape their kennels, and sometimes succeeding. petflight.com emphasizes the importance of zip tying your kennel closed after TSA inspection. I hadn't thought of that, but it sounds like a great idea.

Phone-operated pet feeder

I wouldn't have much use for it, but I love the design.

Sequences were mapped to opossum genome

The title is an addition to my collection of favorite excerpts from scientific publications.

Caveat: this picture is much cuter here than the spitting pig-aliens I usually see.




photo credit

N. R. Saunders, M. Wakefield, J. Ek, S. A. Liddelow1, J. Truettner, B. J. Wheaton, D. Dietrich. Rna-seq analysis of gene expression following transection in immature spinal cord of monodelphis domestica. Program No. 415.5. 2009 Neuroscience Meeting Planner. Chicago, Il: Society For Neuroscience, 2009. Online.

A study of electrically exploded wires

A Caltech thesis title from 1924. It produced not only that wonderful title, but this image:

Grammar check

Grammar and word usage are two things that web references can't really resolve. Looking up a definition in the dictionary isn't adequate to explain correct usage. I've started using site-specific searches of sites with high-quality, copy-edited writing to check usage. For example, the spelling of the phrase "doling out" looked strange enough to make me uncertain. Spell-check liked it, but it could have been the correct spelling of a different word. I ran this google search:

site:nytimes.com doling out

And got these results:

Bureau of the Public Debt, Doling Out America's I.O.U.'s
N.E.A. Faces Tough Task of Doling Out Limited Stimulus Funds
U.S. starts doling out funds to banks

Resolved.