April 28, 2006
Category: Phylogenetics
Over at my old site, I lamented the apparent death of distance based tree building algorithms. Just as all of life on earth can be divided into three domains, phylogenetic methods can be split into three groups: distance based, maximum...
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Posted by RPM at 10:00 AM • 1 Comments
Category: Admin
Via Janet comes the ABC meme. To learn a bit about me, click through to below the fold....
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Posted by RPM at 7:50 AM • 2 Comments
April 26, 2006
Category: Molecular Evolution
Ian Musgrave has a good summary of genes appearing from non-coding DNA (ORFans) on the Panda's Thumb. I have written about ORFans here and here (dude's gotta link to himself sometimes). Ian's post is targeted at some claims made by...
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Posted by RPM at 5:32 PM • 0 Comments
Category: Genomics • Science Education
If you know anything about bioinformatics, you know that programmers love to come up with clever names for their applications. NCBI's BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) programs are some of the most used tools, but behind every successful program...
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Posted by RPM at 8:58 AM • 1 Comments
April 25, 2006
Category: Science • Science Education
Via BioCurious comes this article on ten "science question[s] every high school graduate should be able to answer." Read the list -- most of the questions are bullshit. Ok, they aren't bullshit, but they are trivia. "What percentage of the...
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Posted by RPM at 8:32 PM • 10 Comments
Category: Biology • Drosophila • Evolution • Molecular Biology • Molecular Evolution • Phylogenetics • Science Education
Bora has been pushing the idea of publishing original research (hypotheses, data, etc) on science blogs. This post is part of a series exploring the evolution of a duplicated gene in the genus Drosophila. Links to the previous posts can...
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Posted by RPM at 5:44 PM • 0 Comments
April 24, 2006
Category: Admin • Molecular Evolution • Science Education
Bora has been pushing the idea of publishing original research (hypotheses, data, etc) on science blogs. As a responsible researcher, I would need to obtain permission from any collaborators (including my advisor) before published anything we have been working on...
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Posted by RPM at 3:12 PM • 5 Comments
Category: Molecular Evolution • Phylogenetics
Via nodalpoint comes this UPGMA tree of sequence alignment algorithms from this paper. The first thing that comes to mind is that there are way too many sequence alignment methods. The second, it's kinda cool to see one method used...
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Posted by RPM at 12:27 PM • 1 Comments
Category: Evolution • Population Genetics
If you read evolgen, you've probably been following the race riots that Wilkins started. It's pretty much died down now, and it was more a debate about semantics rather than an actual scientific disagreement. This is usually the case in...
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Posted by RPM at 9:00 AM • 5 Comments
April 23, 2006
Category: Admin • Biology
Otherwise known as a choloroplast: The Chloroplast You scored 46 Industriousness, 54 Centrality, and 23 Causticity! You're the Chloroplast! Most of the Earth's energy comes from the chloroplast's ability to capture the energy of the sun and fix cabon dioxide...
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Posted by RPM at 5:36 PM • 2 Comments
April 22, 2006
Category: Academia
Janet has a post up on communications between students and faculty. My opinion -- as both a student who must communicate with faculty members and a teaching assistant with whom students must communicate -- is that it's most important to...
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Posted by RPM at 5:11 AM • 9 Comments
April 21, 2006
Category: Drosophila • Evolution • Genetics • Molecular Biology • Molecular Evolution
Pharyngula has a good summary of the new Sean Carroll Drosophila wing dot paper. Eventually Sean's gonna try to mess around with a hawaiin species and blow the roof off this mother....
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Posted by RPM at 8:03 PM • 0 Comments
Category: Phylogenetics
It's not the best way to kick of a new blog theme -- on Friday night with a half-hearted entry -- but I promised last week that I would begin Phylogeny Fridays today, so I need to deliver. For the...
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Posted by RPM at 7:37 PM • 3 Comments
Category: Academia • Evolution • Science
Nature has a news article on the resignation of Teri Markow from her position as president of the Society for the Study of Evolution. I don't know much about what happened other than the stuff in the Nature piece, but...
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Posted by RPM at 2:28 PM • 0 Comments
April 20, 2006
Category: Evolution
The evolution of John McCain: It was not random. It's further evidence of natural selection. The new form is more fit at tricking voters. But keep in mind, natural selection favors the phenotypes best adapted for a previous environment. This...
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Posted by RPM at 8:48 AM • 1 Comments
April 18, 2006
Category: Evolution • Science • Science Education • Science News • Science Policy
Read this article. It deals with scientific literacy, politics, and religion in the United States, focusing on stem cells and evolution. Here's a taste: To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human...
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Posted by RPM at 9:56 AM • 0 Comments