Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist and science communicator. His research has covered North American prehistoric and historic archaeology and African archaeology and human ecology. He is an OpenSource and OpenAccess advocate. Greg's wife, Amanda, is a High School biology teacher, his daughter Julia is a world traveler and his son Huxley is 2.
Popular Mechanics (one of those magazines that genteel people refuse to admit they read, but that is actually a blast) has published a thing called "Geek the Vote." According to an email from PM, this is:
...an online guide to all the candidates' stances on issues related to science and technology…
Homo floresiensis more widely known as the "Hobbit," may have had arms that were very different from those of modern humans.
A paper in the current issue of the Journal of Human Evolution explores the anatomy of H. floresiensis. To explore this we first have to understand the concept of "…
I'm putting this bit of human biogeography under the "species coming and going" category:
Greenland DNA could hold key to migration mysteries: researchers from PhysOrg.com
Danish researchers are to sieve through human and skeletal remains on Greenland in a quest to explain an enduring enigma…
Dec 18
Konrad Zuse died in Hünfeld, 1995. Zuse was an engineer and a pioneer in the computer field. He developed the world's first functional program-controlled computer, the Z3, in 1941. He also designed the first high-level programming language, Plankaklul in 1948, although the langauge…
Statistically, atheists have a higher intelligence than people with a strong religious faith. The difference is 5.8 points, according to a new study by the Danish professor of developmental psychology, Helmuth Nyborg.
Read all about it here.
Before I sign on to this, I want to know what happens when the vehicles become self aware and take over the planet:
Vehicles That Talk to Each Other Know What Lanes They're In from PhysOrg.com
A standard GPS receiver has an average 2D-positioning accuracy of about 13 meters. While this precision…
I wanted to point out two interesting posts both having to to with the nature of knowledge, or as we call it here in Minnesota (where the "k" in "Knute" is proudly pronounced).
The first is The Problem with Google's Knol Initiative (aha, you see, there's that "k" again...). This is about Google's…
You will recall this story about a woman raped in Saudi Arabia and convicted of her crime of being a victim.
There is an update.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has pardoned the victim of a gang-rape whose sentencing to 200 lashes caused an international outcry, a Saudi newspaper said on Monday.
The…
From Scientific American, a piece on the "Cooking Hypothesis" (which yours truly helped develop some years back).
Our hominid ancestors could never have eaten enough raw food to support our large, calorie-hungry brains, Richard Wrangham claims. The secret to our evolution, he says, is cooking…
Pursuant to a discussion here regarding the use of the word "evolution" in various scholarly contexts, consider the article in PLoS: Evolution by Any Other Name: Antibiotic Resistance and Avoidance of the E-Word
The increase in resistance of human pathogens to antimicrobial agents is one of the…
OK, so you are vacuuming the house, and along the way, you suck up a couple of spiders, some spier eggs, a beetle or two, and as the cat or dog walks by, you figure you're probably sucking up some fleas and flea eggs, and so on and so forth.
SO you know all these cooties are now in the vacuum…
The good news is that the object that hit the earth at Tunguska 1908 was much smaller than previously thought. The bad news is that the object that hit the earth at Tunguska 1908 was much smaller than previously thought. In other words, if such a small object can do so much damage, then the…
Owing to public presure, the BBC iPlayer is now going to support Linux. But if you are a student in Newville, Pennsylvania who is into OpenSource, you may serve detention! (or NOT, see update below)
From Slashdot:
After previously limiting their iPlayer to only the Windows platform ... the BBC's…
I knew there was something holey about this road that I drive on every day. And all this time I thought it was the potholes. (see this for earlier post on this topic)
You understand, right, that this video proves that religion is not only very kooky and sometimes amazing, but also, that it is…
Every few years a paper comes out "explaining" short stature in one or more Pygmy groups. Most of the time the new work ads new information and new ideas but fails to be convincing. This is the case with the recent PNAS paper by Migliano et al.
From the abstract:
Explanations for the evolution…
Your Christmas is Most Like: How the Grinch Stole Christmas
You can't really get into the Christmas spirit...
But it usually gets to you by the end of the holiday.
What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?
A small group of US experts stubbornly insist that, contrary to what the vast majority of their colleagues believe, humans may not be responsible for the warming of the planet Earth.
3,000 experts, including several renown US scientists, jointly won the award with former US vice president Al Gore…
The new Anthronotes is available, here
This is a Smithsonian publication. This issue has, among other things, a very nice article on the Flores Hobbits and a piece on teaching Human Evolution. Teachers should take special note of this, the material in this publication is usually perfect for 10th…
The Minnesota Citizens for Science Education Teddy Bear!
I know you want one...
I personally have a mug, a tee-shirt and a hat. Hey, they should add bumper stickers.
Prawns (shrimp) behavior is exploited by sticklebacks in the quest for food.
The fish ...
... use prawns to determine the best place to be. Prawns, it seems however, don't have the same aptitude to use the sticklebacks for their advantage
[According to researcher] Paul Hart, "It is a common…
McKesson Provider Technologies is a health care industry software vendor. A few years ago, they began to search for ways to cut costs for the hospitals and medical offices that make up their customer base. Switching to Linux was the obvious solution.
Today, McKesson, a San Francisco-based…
Planarian worms can regenerate new body parts (well, I know they don't look like "parts" but you get what I mean). How do they do this? No one was quite sure until now.
An MIT research team led by Peter Reddien has discovered a gene that apparently produces a product that facilitates this sort of…
