A lot of strange things have happened since August. Texas AM, after making some hints over the summer, left the Big 12 for the SEC. Over the last 24 hours, the university has dismissed its football coach and its athletic director; Bill Byrne followed Mike Sherman out the door this afternoon. Pittsburgh and Syracuse are heading to the A.C.C., West Virginia to the Big 12, eventually. The Big East will soon feature teams from Texas, if not San Diego. Two SEC teams two that met in the regular season will meet for the national title.

A quarterback from Baylor might win the Heisman Trophy. Michigan beat Ohio State. Boise State lost at home. The two best teams in the Sun Belt might be Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette.

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A 40-year search for a gene that causes some one-celled sea creatures to flash at night and is also found in others that produce deadly red tides, has been successfully culminated by a group of scientists led by Thomas E. DeCoursey, PhD, professor of biophysics and physiology at Rush University Medical Center.

The gene, discovered in a tiny marine organism called a dinoflagellate (Karlodinium veneficum), controls voltage-gated proton channels, which, in addition to triggering luminescence in certain single-cell sea creatures, activate many important biological mechanisms in other species, including humans.

Results of the study by DeCoursey, Susan M. Read full post…

Former Sheldon High School basketball star Darius Nelson, one of the area’s most prolific scorers, has decided to transfer from UTEP, where he was a freshman.

The 6-foot-6 Nelson, The Bee’s 2010-11 Player of the Year, arrived at the El Paso campus this fall with much fanfare and high expectations. But after scoring 19 points, grabbing six rebounds and finishing with four assists in a team scrimmage, Nelson decided coach Tim Floyd‘s program wasn’t a fit.

Nelson is no longer on the team and will officially transfer following this semester, one in which he has compiled a 3.4 grade-point average.

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We are signing off for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will not be posting new entries until Monday, November 28.

All of us at the School of Medicine wish our readers and their families a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Last Saturday, a group of volunteers and I worked at a family’s home in Fleischmanns, N.Y., Hurricane Irene had caused massive damage to the houses and buildings in this town.

In several locations, trees were ripped from their roots leaving large gaping holes in many front lawns. Additionally, the high water flooded the basements of many of the residents’ homes. Insulation was ripped out and large deposits of mud and sand were formed in these basements, disrupting mechanical equipment like water heaters.

We shoveled dirt out of the cellars and transplanted it into the holes in the lawn.

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Salons #1 Sexiest Man for 2011 is Gregg Breinberg,the choir instructor for PS22 in Staten Island, whose renditions of pop songs have appeared on YouTube and pretty much everywere else. Alas, the work has stifled Breinbergs love life. As he reveals in this interview the brown-eyed 38 year old is single. Thanks to DA for the tip.