Life Sciences
chaoticutopia | July 27, 2006I love trees, but trees covered in insects aren't usually my cup of tea. 'Till now.
One of the reasons I chose my house was the giant maple tree by the front porch. The foliage provides shade and privacy in the summer and a terrific Halloween backdrop in the fall. So, a few weeks ago, when I noticed the tree was infested with something, I was a bit concerned. Ok, maybe that's putting it lightly. I threw science out the window and freaked out. "The tree's covered with insects! It's gonna die! Ew!! Call somebody! Quick!"
The homeowner's association sent out an arborist to take a look, and I…
pharyngula | July 26, 2006
People, scientists included, are always looking for simple, comprehensible explanations for complex phenomena. It's so satisfying to be able to easily explain something in a sound bite, and sound bites are so much more easily accepted by an audience than some elaborate, difficult collection of details. For example, we often hear homosexual behavior reduced to being a "choice," the product of a "gay gene," a "sin," or something similarly absolute and irreducible…suggesting that it is part of a diverse spectrum of sexual behaviors with multiple causes and that different individuals are…
clock | July 25, 2006Elephants Avoid Costly Mountaineering:
"Using global-positioning system data corresponding to the movements of elephants across the African savannah, researchers have found that elephants exhibit strong tendencies to avoid significantly sloped terrain, and that such land features likely represent a key influence on elephant movements and land use. On the basis of calculations of energy use associated with traversing sloped terrain by such large animals, the researchers found that this behavior is likely related to the fact that even minor hills represent a considerable energy barrier for…
oracknows | July 25, 2006Alright, now they've gone too far.
I thought I'd seen every specious and fallacious argument and example that creationists could throw out there to annoy scientists and be gobbled up by the credulous, but I was wrong. They're muscling in on my turf now! No, they're not making fallacious arguments about how chemotherapy resistance says nothing about evolution. Been there, done that, and I doubt I'd bother if I were to see yet another such post. No, they're not twist the fact that cancer is often due to mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressors regulating cell growth and differentiation as "…
hrynyshyn | July 24, 2006Time was when I wouldn't have cared much if my alma mater had invited a New Age quack to give a lecture on the university's dime. That was then. This is now. Under the very clever headline of "Pitching Woo-woo," Vancouver's online newspaper, The Tyee tells us that the University of British Columbia last week provided a platform for Rubert Sheldrake, he of the "sense of being stared at" theory of telepathy.
How sad is that?
The thing that really gets my goat is that UBC is trying very hard to be a top-rate research school. Its new tag line is "Canada's Leading Edge." The university has…
jrosenhouse | July 21, 2006How bad have things gotten for the ID side? Completely unable to make good on their promise to generate any ID based research, they have now taken to outright lying about the work done by real scientists. Okay, so maybe they've been doing that for quite some time. Still, William Dembski's latest blog entry strikes me as even more brazen than usual.
Dembski writes:
Here is an ID research paper published in PNAS. Note that some important principles of evolutionary theory are criticized in the abstract. This research shows how ID is capable of being applied in biology.
PNAS refers to the…
oracknows | July 21, 2006Alright, I admit it.
I went a little overboard with last week's edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo. This feature was intended to be a light-hearted look at whatever particular woo target that catches my fancy on a given week, as opposed to the more serious discussions of alternative medicine I like to do at other times. However, it's a fine line between believing in a bit of strange altie woo and possibly being a disturbed individual, and I fear that last week's targets (the guy who wanted to sell the secrets of Jesus on Ebay and Alex Chiu, who claims to have figured out how humans can be…
pharyngula | July 20, 2006I occasionally put up some of the wackier/more obnoxious e-mail I get from creationists and other deluded True Believers, but I don't want to give the wrong impression—I also get lots of friendly and supportive email. I just don't think any of it is quite as entertaining as the crazy stuff. Anyway, for balance, and because he was nice enough to give permission to post it, here's a message from the sane side.
Dear Prof. Myers,
I wanted to write you a thank you letter, for a couple of reasons. I understand that you must be a busy man, what with the students and family and all, so I hope you…
clock | July 19, 2006Evolution of Female Orgasm is one of the ever-recurring themes on blogs. This post was first written on June 13, 2005. There were several follow-ups as well, e.g.,here, here and here. Under the fold.
The discussion about the recent studies on female orgasm, first about its adaptive function and later about its genetic component, has been raging around the blogosphere for a while now. It was spawned by the publication of Elizabeth Lloyd's book on the topic (it is on my wish-list), and by a paper in Biology Letters about the genetics of female orgasm based on a survey of twins. For instance…
pharyngula | July 19, 2006Every time I talk to creationists, I'm always stunned at the depth of their misconceptions. There are always the same old boring arguments that are ably dismissed with a paragraph from the Index to Creationist Claims, but there are also occasions when they get, errm, creative, and unfortunately they always take your gape-mouthed I-can't-believe-you-are-so-stupid-that-you-said-that reaction as a triumphant vindication that they must be right.
Orac takes a right-wing idiot to task, and I don't need to jump in—he's done a fine job dismantling him—but I made the mistake of actually reading the…
tsmith | July 18, 2006 I've mentioned previously the role, or potential role, that bats play in disease transmission. They have long been suspected, and recently identified, as hosts for the Ebola virus. (Whether they're the main reservoir species and what--if any--role they play in transmission of the virus to humans remains to be determined). They've also been implicated in the emergence of SARS and Nipah virus, and of course, have long been associated with the maintenance of rabies virus. A new paper reviews the role of bats in the maintenance and emergence of novel viruses.
Bats represent a huge portion…
jlynch | July 17, 2006This story in the Times of London (breathlessly titled "How man's best friend overcame laws of natural evolution"*) has been linked to by Dembski over at his blog and by a number of other creationists around the web. I guess they think it somehow disproves evolution or problematizes natural selection. It discusses an article in Genome Research which used mtDNA analysis to examine selection in dogs and wolves and notes (according to the article) that natural selction
was relaxed when dogs became domesticated. Living with people allowed harmful genetic variations to flourish that would never…
clock | July 17, 2006David Ng of Science Fair is asking an informal AskThe ScienceBlogger question:
Are there any children's books that are dear to you, either as a child or a parent, and especially ones that perhaps strike a chord with those from a science sensibility? Just curious really. And it doesn't have to be a picture book, doesn't even have to be a children's book - just a book that, for whatever reason, worked for the younger mind set.
MarkCC and Janet have responded with their choices. And you should definitely look up David's reviews of several science-related children's books here, here, here, here…
chaoticutopia | July 15, 2006Would the tadpole, undergoing transformation from pollywog to froglet to frog, be astonished at our changing world? The metamorphosis of the tadpole is probably quite unremarkable--to the tadpole.
A budding froglet, (Rana catesbeiana) giving me a suspicious glare. Is he aware that he is growing up in the wrong habitat?
Why is it those of us who find this so utterly fascinating, often struggling with external change, feel so nonchalant about our own metamorphosis?
"He had not pictured his father like this as he was standing there now; admittedly he had been too preoccupied of late with his…
retrospectacle | July 14, 2006
I'm instituting a new Friday *special* here at Retrospectacle: Friday Grey Matters. While readers might think this have to do with neuroscience (and it does in a way) I'm actually going to be talking about African Grey Parrots, of which I am the proud owner on one! Sometimes it may just be observations about what Pepper does (behaviorally and linguistically) and sometimes research from the literature on these amazing birds. The first episode of Grey Matters will be an introduction to these birds, who are the best mimics in the animal kingdom. (More below the fold....)
African Grey, as their…
clock | July 14, 2006More adventures in China - new snakes, new local customs...
More miscellaneous locations
(Dalongtan, Muyu, Bantong)
Sorry for the delay, my internet access has been fairly sparse recently, and I have been backed up on my writing (ever since meeting Vanessa and Emma, I've been doing more hanging out than I have writing in my journal on a boring day).
So last I left off I believe I had just returned from Qianjiaping, and on the 6th the Stanford family, Xue, and Dr. Li all left Muyu. The day was fairly slow, most of my day was spent airing out my sleeping bag and all my clothes that were still…
clock | July 13, 2006Kevin sent three new reports. This is the first one. Next one tomorrow and the third on Monday. All exactly at noon!
Qianjiaping Report
(tian-jia-ping)
30 June
There were rumors that Dr. Li and Dr. Stanford and Emma were arriving later this afternoon. They were expected around 6:30pm. By the time 7pm rolled around and no one showed up. Vanessa and I decided to get some food at a new restaurant (what we are calling the Red Lantern Restaurant). The restaurant was one of the more scenic restaurants in town. You have to cross a bridge in order to get to it, and due to all the rain, the river…
purepedantry | July 12, 2006Ronald Bailey from Reason Magazine has an article covering one of the more pernicious arguments against genetically modified foods:
Long time anti-biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin has come out in favor of a biotechnology technique. Should beleaguered biotechnologists break out the champagne and start celebrating? Not hardly. Earlier this week, Rifkin wrote an op/ed in the Washington Post in which he declared his support for marker assisted selection (MAS) for use in plant breeding. So far, so good.
MAS is a molecular technique in which researchers identify sections of DNA in a plant or animal…
loom | July 12, 2006It was eight years ago that some computer programmers got together and issued a manifesto for something they called open source software. Conventional software development--kept hidden behind walls of intellectual property, copyright, and secrecy--was clumsy and slow. It would be far better, the open source advocates declared, to make software open to all. It would foster the growth of a vast decentralized community of developers and consumers who could work together to create better software together. Individuals would grab software created by others, tinker with it, and then make it…
clock | July 7, 2006This post is really ancient - from September 24, 2004 - but it was fun to write, I remember. In the meantime I learned that it is actually official - as an atheist I cannot get elected for any office in North Caroina (and a dozne or so other states). That is written in the state law. Only people who believe in fiary tales (or are good at lying about it) can get elected here. Under the fold....
I will never be elected a dogcatcher. I'd never run for that office as I happen to like dogs and would have a problem with taking them to the pound. Even if I ran I would never get elected for a…