Gibberlins - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Is this still a matter of debate? (Score 1) 212

by Gibberlins on Tuesday April 04, 2006 @03:53PM (#15060957) Attached to: Cockroaches Make Group Decisions?

Bees are thought to communicate by using "dances". They fly around in certain patterns that other bees can recognize. In particular, their dances can tell other bees where to go look for food. How they perfrom the dance can give an indication of the direction and distance of the food. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_learning_and_comm unication.

Bacteria Eat Styrofoam 253

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:46PM from the just-like-a-tasty-steak dept.

chaosmage42 writes "Scientists at the University of Dublin have found a way to break down styrofoam, the bane of recyclers/composters everywhere. This could be a great step towards sustainability, but it does require the styrofoam to be heated first."

Designer Mice Made to Order 382

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday March 07, 2006 @05:53PM from the time-to-start-a-mouse-farm dept.

blackbearnh writes "CNN is reporting about the world of designer mice. No, not the kind you click, the kind that scamper around and eat cheese. An effort is underway to produce mice with each of the 20-25,000 individual mouse genes "knocked out", which could lead to novel new treatments for humans. It turns out that after fully sequencing the mouse genome, the little fellas are almost identical to humans. From the article: 'A mouse with arthritis runs close to $200; two pairs of epileptic mice can cost 10 times that. You want three blind mice? That'll run you about $250. And for your own custom mouse, with the genetic modification of your choosing, expect to pay as much as $100,000.'"

When A Blogger Meets Public Relations 193

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday March 07, 2006 @12:15PM from the protons-and-anti-protons dept.

fermion writes "The New York Times is running a story on the evolving relationship between PR departments and bloggers, specifically between the Wal*Mart PR people and sympathetic bloggers. The interesting thing in this story is not so much the astroturfing, which is old news, but the transformation of blogging from a personal statement to a corporate bullhorn. The bloggers mentioned in the story, who presumably are able to articulate their own opinions, received Wal*Mart email and began to simply copy the PR text into the blogs. What is the use of a blog if bloggers are just going to copy sentences and sentiments from the puppetmaster's email?"

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