The 2nd Giants' Shoulders

So hello and welcome (slightly later than planned due to a roof-leak emergency) to the 2nd edition of The Giants' Shoulders. Uniquely for 2008, this edition comes a full 31 days after the last, and 31 days before the next. Isn't that interesting? No? Well maybe these bloggers will be. Presented in date order, here are the best recent(ish, since we're in the early days of the carnival still) posts on historical(ish) peer reviewed research, in no particular order other than by date.

1865: SciCurious, the enigmatic self-confessed nerd, geek, and dork, takes us to see Broca's description of the seat of language in the brain, which he cunningly if unimaginatively named "Broca's Area". Although to be fair, that name is better than "the pars triangularis of the inferior frontal gyrus", which frankly is just taking the piss. Anyway, in doing so she wins the award for earliest paper - well done SciCurious, have a cookie :)

1880: Catatau presents a somewhat gruesome sounding 19th century work on the history of monstrosity.

1884: Completing our trio of 19th century works, Epicanis gives us probably the most important German paper of 1884, "Ueber die isolirte Faerbung der Schizomyceten in Schnitt- und Trockenpraeparaten", the origin of the ubiquitous Gram Stain.

1926: Martin, the awesome author of this blog with an odd penchant for complimenting himself in the third person, presents a review of a review of a journal that seemed like a good idea at the time: The Annals of Eugenics.

1931: Maggots are usually associated with zombie films, and dead rabbits, but inspired by scenes he witnessed in WWI, William Baer pioneered their use in medicine, as described by a handsome fellow by the name of Martin.

1952/56: M P Gururajan tells us about the Neumann-Mullins law, describing the evolution of crystal shapes.

1958: After Crick and Watson figured out the structure of DNA, the next step was to actually prove it. Naturally, this the problem ended up being sorted out by hard-working grad-students, as John Dennehy describes

1962: Veteran bloggeer (i.e., doing it for more than 6 months) GrrlScientist takes time out from living the scientific life and shows us the work of ornithologist William Dilger, who tackled the question of whether the behaviour of LoveBirds comes from nature or nurture?

1982: Winawer at Mild Opinions tells us about "ideal free ducks", and their consequences in competitive foraging as sketched out in the 60s, in a link that mysteriously deleted itself when I posted this.

1973: From Skulls in the Stars, the illustrious owners of the carnival, comes a fascinating history of the science that made CAT scans - and therefore, House - possible.

1974: Writing papers isn't an exact science, and sometimes they can be both right and wrong at the same time. Greg Laden peaks inside the underwear drawer of human evolution, and digs out the dirty yet oddly fragrant underpants of Stephen Jay Gould.

1986: From the annals of the obscure.. well, Curving Normality, comes a review of "Move histories and socio-economic position", which makes the evolution of neighbourhoods in the Netherlands far more interesting than it has any right to be.

1987: There are a lot of things you don't hear about in school, and science bloggers often feel the need to plug these gaps in our education. In that spirit, Steve Higgins explains to us not just how to sex chicks, but the psychology of it as well.

1996: And finally, squeezing in just outside the 10-year cut-off point for TGS, SciBling and all-round man of activity Nick Anthis gives us the most comprehensive answer yet to the burning question, what's for dinn why are veins blue?

And so that concludes this, the second edition of The Giants' Shoulders. The third edition will be at Entertaining Research on September 15th - get blogging! Martin out.