You probably saw Carl Zimmer's interesting story this morning about measuring consciousness; we all read Science Times. But did you see the story yesterday about the risk to kids from manganese in drinking water? Not unless you were following the CBC in Canada. Or how about the story on new research on the link between adenovirus 36 and obesity? That one was on the BBC.
You might have seen versions of these stories in other places, too, but one source I follow to keep up with these things is the Biopsychiatry mailing list, run by Marc Breedlove. Yes, I said mailing list--this is an old-fashioned, 20th-century style email list; no Facebook or Twitter here. Breedlove is the Rosenberg Professor of Neuroscience at Michigan State University, and he always seems to find a few stories I've missed. It's a daily update, and it's free. You can subscribe here, or, if you have trouble, by emailing Breedlove directly (breedsm@msu.edu).
Breedlove's links are also archived here, a useful place to look for that story about memory that you remember seeing but can't remember who wrote it or where you saw it. If you remember a word or two in the story, you might find it in Breedlove's archive. (I confess that this sort of thing happens to me all the time.)
Clever visitors to the site might notice that Breedlove is also a co-author of a textbook, Biological Psychiatry, published by Sinauer Associates. The site gently promotes the textbook, but that doesn't detract from the archive's usefulness. And I don't recall ever receiving a promotion for the textbook on the mailing list. Indeed, I didn't know Breedlove had written one until I first looked at the archive.
Breedlove collects stories from some familiar sources, such as Discover mag and New Scientist, but also from other sources you might not follow. If you cover neuroscience, you might want to add this subscription to your list.
- Paul Raeburn
