Half-time or Half-life

Half empty or half full?

Synaptic Vesicles: Half Full or Half Empty?

The regulation of quantal size through pre- rather than postsynaptic mechanisms has recently received considerable attention as a potential mechanism for plasticity. Vesicular transporters catalyze the filling of synaptic vesicles with transmitter and are thus potential substrates for such presynaptic regulation. In this issue of Neuron, Prado et al. pursue this line of investigation and show t...

Half full or half empty VATS?

Cardiothoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. Tom Treasure is responsible to the society for the collection and collation of these data and has a mandate from the society’s annual general meeting of its members to disseminate information based on the data. Contributors: AS, TT, and JvdM were responsible for study concept and design. TT and AS were responsible for acquisition of the data...

Ecological character displacement: glass half full or half empty?

Ecological character displacement (ECD), the evolutionary divergence of competing species, has oscillated wildly in scientific opinion. Initially thought to play a central role in community assembly and adaptive radiation, ECD recovered from a 1980s nadir to present-day prominence on the strength of many case studies compiled in several influential reviews. However, we reviewed recent studies a...

Idle Oil Wells: Half Empty or Half Full?

There are hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells across North America that are not currently producing oil or gas. Many of these wells have not been permanently decommissioned to meet environmental standards for permanent closure, but left in a inactive state that enables the well to be more easily reactivated. Some of the wells have been temporarily inactive for more than sixty years which...