ScienceBlogs

Life Science

• February 9, 2012

• Greg Laden's Blog

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  Traditional Inuit Knowledge meets Science When I was a kid, I saw a photograph in an old Life magazine of a man standing on the ice somewhere in the Arctic, and a killer whale breaking trough the ice, much of the whale's body out of the water, a very short...

• erv

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  XMRV Update: The science Even though XMRV has joined the choir invisible (rather than the list of human pathogens), scientists all over the world have still been publishing on it. Some of these studies were started before XMRVs demise, some were initiated to figure...

• February 8, 2012

• Life Lines

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  Birds "fed" snails for the afterlife The image above shows a mummified ibis from ancient Egypt that was packed with snails after death. Other mummified ibises were found packed full of grains or small fish. These findings are the first evidence that the ancient Egyptians...

• Greg Laden's Blog

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  Breatkthrough at Lake Vostok Rumors have been in the air for days, but we now think it confirmed that Russian Scientsts have penetrated the liquid part of Antarctica's Lake Vostok. The lake has been frozen over for something like 20 million years. Certainly there was life in it at...

• Greg Laden's Blog

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  Global Warming Affects Albatross Ecology At the moment, the Wandering Albatross of the Southern Ocean is getting a free ride; Changes in wind patterns due to Global Warming seem to enhance the efficiency of foraging of this pelagic bird. However, as Global Warming continues, this rare case of a positive...

• USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog

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  Festival Featured Author Sean Connolly Shares his Excitement for the Festival! What a difference a digit makes! There I was preoccupied with making my own eggnog, checking page proofs, and It's a Wonderful Life on television. Then along comes January 1, and with it that odometer switch from "1" to "2" at the end. Suddenly 2012 is this year.

• Life Lines

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  Talk about jumbo shrimp! Check out this new species of shrimp-like amphipods that was discovered in an ocean trench off the coast of New Zealand! The biggest one found was 11 inches long. Yum... Image: National Geographic While reading this article, I could not...

• February 6, 2012

• Pharyngula

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  There Will Be Blood? I was on Skeptically Speaking this week, weirdly and uncomfortably talking about the evolution of menstruation. I barrelled ahead anyway, even though I've got a Y chromosome and am not a member of the club. Fortunately, they also had Kate...

• February 4, 2012

• Life Lines

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  New Experimental Technique Developed for Treating Bone Cancer At Texas A&M University, researchers are testing a new treatment for bone cancer (osteosarcoma) in dogs that may one day help to treat similar cases of osteosarcoma in children. The new technique involves injecting radioisotopes directly in the tumor...

• February 3, 2012

• Pharyngula

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  Friday Cephalopod: Feasibility trial successful Next step: lasers mounted on squid mantles. You puny humans are so screwed. (Also on FtB)...

• February 2, 2012

• Pharyngula

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  One Carnival of Evolution, coming right up I've been naughty and neglecting to announce these things, so let's start correcting that: here's the 44th Carnival of Evolution. (Also on FtB)...

• Page 3.14

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  Fresh Meat, Fresh Data Posted to the homepage on January 20, 2012 On Aetiology, Tara C. Smith shares the results of her latest study into methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. She and her team "looked at not only conventional meats, but also 'alternative' meat products" labeled...

• February 1, 2012

• Pharyngula

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  Botanical Wednesday: Walking? No way (Also on FtB)...

• Life Lines

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  Fruit Fly Genome in 3D Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are actually used frequently in genetics research. They are a popular model organism because they reproduce very quickly and, since their genome is known, researchers can quickly study the effects of manipulating gene sequences (among other...

• Dean's Corner

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  New Anthrax Scare in Pakistan Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph shows splenic tissue from a monkey with inhalational anthrax; featured are rod-shaped bacilli (yellow) and an erythrocyte (red) Credit: Arthur Friedlander A university professor has allegedly mailed anthrax to the Pakistani prime minister's office in...

• January 31, 2012

• Tomorrow's Table

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  Plant Physiologist Helen Stafford leaves Reed College Biology Dept. $1M what I learned that day, 33 years ago, would trigger a grand curiosity about the natural world and draw me into the greatest scientific puzzle of my career

• Greg Laden's Blog

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  Berry Go 'Round Jessica M. Budke has the Berry Go Round carnival up at her site. Have you heard about the plants that eat nematodes? Solar powered sea slugs? Have you considered covering your house instead of painting it? Go here to find out all about these amazing...

• Greg Laden's Blog

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  Parallel Evolution "Parallel Evolution" is not really a kind of evolution, but rather, an observation we make about the pattern of evolution in particular cases. Many species have a "woodpecker adaptation" by which a hard sharp thing is used to get at grubs and other insect (or...

• January 30, 2012

• Pharyngula

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  Mary's Monday Metazoan: the only angel I believe in Aside from Mary, that is. (via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)...

• Greg Laden's Blog

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  Senate Resolution Number 92 I remember the first time I visited a penguin colony. It was not hard to find. Penguin colonies smell really really bad. Here's why:...

• Pharyngula

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  True Science for Boys Ah, the 19th century…when mad scientists were really mad, and not only that, they were popular at parties. In 1818, Dr Ure and Professor Jeffray obtained the freshly killed corpse of Matthew Clydesdale, only an hour from the hangman's...

• Greg Laden's Blog

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  How do you know when to stop squeezing? If you are a snake. And, what causes some island dwelling boas to be smaller than the mainland variety? If you want to know the answer to these two burning questions, click here and visit Smithsonian's Surprising Science where I'll be guest blogging for a...

• Pharyngula

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  Darwin on the Palouse Time is whipping by, I can tell — Darwin Day is next week! I'm going to have to whip up a talk for this event real soon, I think: it's Darwin on the Palouse, and I'll be talking at Washington...

• USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog

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  Tinker and Change the World Tinkering -- that hands-on, garage-based tradition which sparked inventions ranging from the airplane and electric light bulb to the Apple computer -- is making a comeback among average Americans, promising to change our lives for the better on several fronts.

• Respectful Insolence

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  Thanks, CWRU, for forcing me to get the paper bag out again It's rare that I have much in the way of reluctance to leap into writing about a topic. Any regular reader of this blog should know this to be true, given the topics I regularly take on and how often...

Synthetic Biology

Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:

Pharyngula May 30, 2007

“Playing God”

The Loom January 31, 2008

"Frankenstein Was Here": Synthetic Biology as Graffiti

Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006

Build your own virus