NIH Reform bill in the house

According to a brief report in ScienceNOW, Joe Barton (R-TX) introduced a bill, which would give the NIH a 5% annual increase each year for two years (most likely in 2008 and 2009). The bill will not be voted on until congress gets back to work after the 6 week election break. The other tie-up in this process is that the Senate will also need to introduce an accompanying bill, and then the House and Senate have to come to a compromise. I remember reading about how Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) was a big supporter of the NIH, and maybe he would sponsor the bill in the Senate. We'll see if I get some free time, I'll email him, and post what I find out on the blog.

Grazrified blog

I found a new widget, Grazr, which works pretty well with Blogger. It creates a simple and efficient rss feed viewed right on the blog. Every month we can feature an RSS feed we use on a regular basis. Not sure about Grazr's opml capabilities, but this little sidebar dealy looks pretty good. Feel free to test it out and post comments.

GSA election results

Congrats to the winners of these elections even to those uncontested. Your mere presence must intimidate.

Campus Affairs Officer - Joel Beutel
External Affairs Officer - Kandice Grote & Corinne Townsend
Academic Affairs Officer - Lizbeth Duran & Kristi Imberi
Treasurer - David Hambley
Secretary - Open until filled
Public Relations/Community Outreach Officer - Gyami Shrestha & Martha Acevedo

Infant macaques learn to imitate facial expressions in a few days

New Scientist has a story about a study by a group at Parma where the infact macaques showed that they learned to imitate the facial expressions of the researcher after about 3 days. There are links to a few videos and to the article in PLoS.

Comics about scientists

I just finished reading this really great book on Niels Bohr, and went looking for other novels from the team that put it together called GT Labs. They have a new book out called Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards, which is about paleontology in the US in the late 1800s. Looks good. If anyone has suggestions for recreational reading, then please put it up on the blog.

Someone actually analyzed this

From the University of Chicago comes a short essay on the science of B-Movies. If anyone knows about a study on time-travel in B-Movies let me know. Did he get a grant to look into this!?!

link via slashdot