Stories by Jason G. Goldman

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week: DJ Busby of the Astronasty blog writes, “2 to 3 billion people, about half the world’s population, have a brain parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which causes a disease called toxoplasmosis…The parasite’s main host are cats, but infects many warm blooded animals.” I always knew cats [...]

King of all blogmemery Drugmonkey has started another one this week. The rules for this blog meme are quite simple. Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

I’ve got an article that appeared in this week’s Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles about recent research from Hadassah University on the neurobiology of bilingual (English-Hebrew) reading.

Eric M. Johnson and I spent about 45 minutes discussing “evolutionary psychology beyond sex” last night, which you can see today on Bloggingheads “Science Saturday.” Or just watch it here:

On Wednesday I posted the full list of the almost 900 posts submitted to Open Lab. As part of the process that I’m using to distribute the posts to my awesome reviewers, I’ve assigned each post a primary category.

If we wish to make an argument that some animals possess at least some sort of proto-gratitude, or the cognitive building blocks required for them to feel and express gratitude, we first have to decide what gratitude really means.

And it is over! The submission deadline has just passed. No more submissions will be accepted for the 2010 edition of the Open Laboratory. I have lined up an impressive list of reviewers who will immediately start receiving their first judging lists and the complex process of winnowing down almost 900 entries into the final [...]

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week: Ready for some more Thanksgiving science? Brad Walters of Cortical Hemming and Hawing asks what football can tell us about decision-making: Why you should always go for it on 4th and short.

A fun talk about sex, death and evolution at LA’s Natural History Museum. It’s free and ticketless — so please bring friends and colleagues!

There are only FIVE DAYS left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people’s archives and submit! Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries The list is growing fast – check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own [...]

Ah, Thanksgiving. A day full of turkey, cranberries, pie, and, of course, SCIENCE! After you fill your stomach with gravy and stuffing, stuff your mind with all this great Thanksgiving science.

Even still, we tend to think of the turkey as a fairly unintelligent bird, skilled at little more than waddling around, emitting the occasional “gobble,” and frying up golden-brown-and-delicious.

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week: Sleep is really important for health and cognition among other things.

In one of a series of stories on animal intelligence, Anderson Cooper went to see Kanzi, probably the most famous bonobo in the world, and primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who has worked with Kanzi almost his entire life.

Nearly one-third of the world’s amphibian species are at risk of extinction. The rescue project aims to save more than 20 species of frogs in Panama, one of the world’s last strongholds for amphibian biodiversity.

Scientists thought they had a pretty good handle on the social interactions of bottlenose dophins (Tursiops). They’ve used the term fission-fusion dynamics to describe dolphin (and non-human primate) society and so far it has served researchers well.

You may have noticed that I’ve stopped doing linkfests. I decided that the time put in to their curation (i.e. the ‘cost’) outweighs the value of doing so (i.e.

This amazingly clear 3D ultrasound image of an elephant fetus was taken just three months into its 22-month-long gestation period. The little guy, now named George, was born nineteen months later at ZSL’s Whipsnade Zoo.

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week: According to the Neurocritic, “Most everything you’ve read about the Doctors Prescribing ‘Tetris Therapy’ study is wrong.” Find out why.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s Donors Choose Science Bloggers for Students campaign. Twenty-two readers from this humble blog donated a total of $524, affecting a total of 904 students!

Have you ever been at a party with lots of people chatting away, when for some unexplainable reason you felt compelled to turn and look at the front door of your friend’s house…and just as you were looking, someone was just coming in from outside and closing the door?

Only twenty days left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people’s archives and submit! I’ve already started to contact potential judges for this year’s anthology.

This week marked the release of Brian Switek’s (blog, twitter) first book, Written in Stone. I got my hands on a review copy a few weeks ago, and I have nothing but good things to say about it.