Now on ScienceBlogs: Oxytocin: Starting with the basics
Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC getting a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. He holds a BS and MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. If a volcano were to erupt Pompei-style in Central Park, his body would be preserved in a scoliotic posture over his lab desk. Archeaologists would later conclude that he spent most of his day training rats to perform tricks, until he went blind building electrical equipment by hand using a dissecting microscope. But, still, he died happy...because science is cool.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision-making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments I currently attend or attended in the past.
Category: Evolution
I don't have much to say about the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. I have always accepted the notion of evolution as a precondition to all other understanding in biology. Without evolution, all the patterns and apparent unity in life...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 1:40 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Evolution
To celebrate the 200th Anniversary of Darwin's birth, the NYTimes has a video of singing Darwin scholar, Richard Milner. Check it out....
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 1:16 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Philosopher Thomas Nagel, writing in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs, criticizes the exclusion of Intelligent Design from science classes on the grounds that evolutionary science too rests on an assumption: the naturalistic assumption. He argues that both evolution based...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 4:29 PM • 25 Comments •
Category: Learning and Memory
This is a cool story, but not for the reason the authors are attributing. Researchers at Princeton showed that bacteria can evolve to anticipate future environmental changes. Here is the coverage in Science: Researchers already know that microbes can mount...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 11:40 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Wow. I just saw the Expelled TV ads start on CNN of all places....
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 11:16 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Evolution
As a research studying maternal behavior, I come across a lot of sex & reproduction research. As a (very) general rule of thumb, most small mammals are either sexually receptive or parentally responsive - your sex circuits remain on until...
Posted by Kate at 11:10 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Don't believe in evolution? Just look to the weeds in the sidewalk: Like other members of its family, Crepis sancta produces two types of seeds. Heavy seeds fall into the grass below the plant, whereas lighter seeds with feathery tails...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 11:46 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Evolution
I was distressed to read this at Wired because usually I feel like they are more on top of things. This is by Thomas Hayden: Even worse, those same cortexes that invented science can't really embrace it. Science describes the...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 9:18 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Evolution
There is a really cool paper in Current Biology about the how even an animal's sensory apparatus adapt to their particular evolutionary niche. Greiner et al. looked at four closely-related species of ants from the genus Myrmecia. (As you can...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 1:55 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Erez Lieberman et al. at Harvard are looking at the rate of change in words to see if words evolve: Lieberman was struck by this idea when he learned that the ten most common verbs in English (be, have, do,...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 1:29 PM • 1 Comments •
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
