The latest installment from the Portal Project Blog on the watch for Banner-tailed Kangaroo Rats

How did we get those daily pics of the desert turning green in a week? Meet Portal’s new toy: the Phenocam.

We have a new paper out! This post is to explain what it’s about. Cancer cells often have gene fusions . This happens because the DNA in cancer cells is really messed up. Sometimes, chromosomes can break and get reattached to a different one in a strange way. This means you get a fusion between one gene and another which makes a new gene, called a gene fusion.

Ever wondered how fast the desert can turn green when the rains get going? There’s a Portal blog post on that (with pics)!

A guest post from last week on the Portal Blog about studying Kangaroo rat placentas!

We have a modest sized group of current folks at ESA this week presenting on all the cool things they’ve been doing. We’re also around and always happy to try to find time to grab a coffee or just a few minutes to chat science. Our schedule for the week is: Monday Get a double dose of rapid change in ecological communities from the Portal Project with Morgan Ernest and Erica Christensen. 02:50 PM – 03:10 PM in C120-121.

The Portal Project turns 40 this year! In celebration, we will be regularly posting about the history of the site, new things going on, natural history of the desert, and other fun things over at the Portal Blog.

Our lab is looking for a PhD student interested in the molecular mechanisms of operant self-learning, a form of motor learning.

We have a new paper out! You can access it here.

The Problem You’ve probably heard the joke about the two people camping in the woods who encounter a hungry predator. One person stops to put on running shoes. The other says, “Why are you wasting time? Even with running shoes you’re not going to outrun that animal!” The other replies, “I don’t have to outrun the animal, I just have to outrun you.” For me this joke highlights a problem with the way some people argue about climate change.