Brain and Behavior
pharyngula | April 16, 2011Hey, it's all about evolution. This is the session labeled as being about evo-devo, but I've been thinking about evolution in all of the talks, so I guess here we're just making it more explicit.
08:00-09:30 Session 5: Evolution of Development (Chair: Elaine Seaver [Univ. Hawaii])
  08:00-08:30 Brad Davidson (Univ. of Arizona) "Microenvironmental cues refine inductive signaling during Ciona intestinalis heart development"
Ciona heart is a simple system: only two precursors! Inductive response to FGF is dependent on cell adhesion. Cool confocal work on cell behavior.
  08:30-08:50…
jgoldman | April 6, 2011
You know that old phrase, "monkey see, monkey do"? Well, there might be something to it, except that chimpanzees aren't monkeys. (Sadly, "ape see, ape do" just doesn't have the same ring to it.) A new paper published today in PLoS ONE has found evidence that chimpanzees have contagious yawning - that is, they can "catch" yawns from watching other chimpanzees yawning - but (and here's the interesting part) only when the chimp that they're watching is a friend.
At first, scientists thought that contagious yawning was the result of a releasing mechanism - in other words, seeing someone yawn…
pharyngula | April 6, 2011I have a request to all of you. Some of you hate me, so you'd enjoy this, but it's more important that those of you who have a mild and distant affection for me take a stand, too. If, sometime in the future, when the billions of dollars role in, if you learn that I'm flying in children for sex, I don't want you to defend me. Don't use friendship as an excuse, just come out loud and clear and denounce my behavior, with no qualifiers. Please. There aren't any justifications or rationalizations possible.
I am not planning to turn into a leering old degenerate, but you never know…I could suffer…
jgoldman | April 2, 2011
I was reading Christie's excellent post (and you should too) on GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons' elephant killing incident (is it too early to be calling this #ElephantGate?)
Although I don't know quite enough about what is going on in Zimbabwe, I tend to err on the side of not intentionally killing elephants because - as I argued for the case of chimpanzees - they are very likely self-aware.
I wrote:
There is another important cognitive capacity that unites animals with high encephalization quotients (the ratio of brain to body size - I recommend going back to read my earlier post for the context…
bioephemera | April 1, 2011
It's the very last installment of Zombiefest - one more book review, this time for one I heartily recommend!
Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts, prefaces his new book about zombies with an unexpected vignette - a visit to Graceland:
By the time my tour hit the Jungle Room, it was obvious that the thirty-odd people walking through Elvis Presley's mansion fell into two groups. The first contingent was thoroughly, utterly sincere in their devotion to all things Elvis. They were hardcore fans, and Graceland was their Mecca, their Jerusalem, and their Rome. . . the…
neurophilosophy | March 25, 2011THE human gut contains a diverse community of bacteria which colonize the large intestine in the days following birth and vastly outnumber our own cells. These intestinal microflora constitute a virtual organ within an organ and influence many bodily functions. Among other things, they aid in the uptake and metabolism of nutrients, modulate the inflammatory response to infection, and protect the gut from other, harmful micro-organisms. A new study by researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario now suggests that gut bacteria may also influence behaviour and cognitive processes such…
drorzel | March 23, 2011
News: Tabloid Science - Inside Higher Ed
"The Sex Life of the Screwworm -- a silly subject for federally funded research, no?
Some members of Congress thought so: they singled out the project about 30 years ago as the nation's top symbol of wasteful spending -- and later apologized when, upon further review, they realized the research was actually incredibly useful. Now, at a time when Congressional scrutiny of science spending (supposedly silly and otherwise) is rising, the other side of the debate is reviving the symbol of the screwworm to bring attention to its cause, through a method…
dr. dolittle | March 17, 2011
Elaborate courtship displays in birds are not uncommon and can be as simple as having fancy plumage to performing acrobatic acts to try to attract birds of the opposite gender. In male birds, testosterone binding to androgen receptors is a driving force for these courtship displays. It was unknown, however, whether testosterone is able to directly act on muscle tissues.
Researchers Feng et al., studied the expression pattern of the androgen receptors in the muscles of golden-collared manakins, a bird with very athletic courtship behaviors as seen in this video. They compared the manakins to…
pharyngula | March 15, 2011
About 600 million years ago, or a little more, there was a population of small wormlike creatures that were the forebears of all modern bilaterian animals. They were small, soft-bodied, and simple, not much more than a jellyfish in structure, and they lived by crawling sluglike over the soft muck of the sea bottom. We have no fossils of them, and no direct picture of their form, but we know a surprising amount about them because we can infer the nature of their genes.
These animals would have been the predecessors of flies and squid, cats and starfish, and what we can do is look at the genes…
jgoldman | March 10, 2011
Welcome to the third installment of Animal Territoriality Week. See part 1 here, and part 2 here.
In 1994, a disease called sarcoptic mange swept through Bristol's fox population, severely crippling the population and killing most of the individuals. Professor Stephen Harris of the University of Bristol, who had been studying the movements and territories of those foxes, noticed that as the animals in one territory died, neighboring foxes were able to colonize the vacant areas in 3-4 days. He suspected that this was because the scent marks of the foxes remained active for 3-4 days, but didn'…
jtoney | March 4, 2011
Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has made quite an extraordinary observation about the controversial actor Charlie Sheen - did you know that Mr. Sheen is "is scientifically more literate than most"?
Given that one of my primary goals is to enhance public literacy about science and technology, such a statement - well, bothers me. I'm not sure which to question first - the judgment of Neil DeGrasse Tyson or the "scientific literacy" of a troubled albeit talented comedian/actor. Where does one even begin?
From my colleague Sheril Kirshenbaum, author of "The Science of Kissing":
A Drug…
tfk | February 18, 2011Chris Schoen:
before we ⦠endorse Coyne's self-congratulation for never having "criticized an evolutionist, writer, or scholar in an ad hominem manner," it's worth taking a quick glance at his blog, where it's hard to find a post that doesn't devolve into ad hom (unless it's about kittens). Starting with the most recent example, earlier this week Coyne called Deepak Chopra (not someone I particularly admire, but a writer nonetheless) "Deepity Chopra," whose significant wealth he calls "an indictment of America."
Prior to this he suggests that the critiques ("tripe") of Phil Zuckerman--writer…
jhalper | February 7, 2011Three news items were posted on our site today. The first is on two papers by a group in Spain. Normally we don't publicize papers that are not written by Institute scientists, but these are a special case. They appear to have clinched the claims of a Weizmann scientist that one can treat stroke and head trauma without trying to get drugs into the brain. The treatment would consist of upping the levels of a naturally-occurring enzyme in the blood; one of these papers showed that levels of this enzyme in the blood tests of stroke patients were the best predictor of their chances of recovery.…
jrosenhouse | February 7, 2011Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers (here and here respectively) have taken note of a session at the upcoming AAAS Annual Meeting entitled: Evangelicals, Science, and Policy: Toward a Constructive Engagement. They object to this intrusion of religion into a science meeting. In the comments to their posts, Nick Matzke has been gamely trying to defend the session.
These sorts of discussions always remind me of the paleontology conference I attended in 2009. I reported on it here and here. The conference featured two sessions of interest. I was there to participate in a panel discussion on…
jgoldman | January 28, 2011If you're plugged into the science blogtwitosphere, then you surely know that the topic of women science bloggers has been written about extensively. Rather than re-hash what many others have said, I'll direct you to these posts by Kate Clancy and Daniel Lende. Then, late last night, Ed Yong wrote a post highlighting a handful of blogs he reads that happen to be penned (typed?) by science writers who happen to possess two X chromosomes. I also noticed that of all the names and blogs that Ed listed, only one was new to me. Perhaps this is because I'm well-plugged-in to the sciblogtwitosphere,…
pharyngula | January 28, 2011Dara O'Briain and Brian Cox aggravated a great many astrologers when they announced on a UK television program that "astrology is rubbish" and "astrology is nonsense". The Astrological Association of Great Britain was so incensed that they created a petition demanding that the BBC commit to "making a fair and balanced representation of astrology in the future" — which left me amusedly discombobulated that there is a formal Astrological Association of Great Britain, and that they don't realize that tossing their whole goofy discipline in the rubbish heap is a fair and balanced representation.…
pharyngula | January 27, 2011He has sent me a response to my criticisms of his criticisms of the New Atheism. Look below the fold for what he sent me.
A lot of online feedback is remarkably angry, hostile, and generally melodramatic. Every time I write an online piece I get an army of people calling me a "moron," or telling me I'm too smart for my own good, or I'm too stupid for my own good. People vent spleen and project all kinds of things onto the article and the writer. I find all this amusing and don't take it personally.
As a regular contributor to publications like SKEPTIC magazine, the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER and…
gregladen | January 26, 2011There are human universals. There, I said it. Now give me about a half hour to explain why this is both correct and a Falsehood. But first, some background and definition.
Most simply defined, a human universal is a trait, behavior or cultural feature that we find in all human societies. Men are always on average larger than women. All humans see the same exact range of colors because our eyes are the same. The range of emotions experienced by people is the same, and appears in facial expressions and other outward affect, in the same way across all humans.
The term "Human Universal"…
jtoney | January 21, 2011
Photo source.
Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.
{e. e. cummings}
Just in time for Valentine's Day! The Science of Kissing is Everywhere. {NPR, NBC's The Today Show, Time, Newsday...}
Kissing is one of the most intimate things we do. What does it mean?
This post is worth bringing back for Valentine's Day!
A private act, it embodies romanticism, friendship, parental safe harbor as a child drifts into sleep, a casual greeting or whimsical play. Kissing can have wildly different meanings, depending upon context, timing and the partners, ranging from innocent to illicit. Kissing is…
mikethemadbiologist | January 21, 2011Daniel Lende has been doing a fabulous job of discussing the difference between mental illness and the propensity to be violent. Lende writes (italics mine):
It would be easy to conclude that politics have nothing to do with what he did. This view is wrong. What Jared Loughner did was inherently political, even if not within the realm of "politics as usual," of fights between Democrats and Republicans...
Loughner attacked a politician at a political event. He targeted a woman, the youngest woman elected to congress, the first attempt to assassinate a woman politician at the highest levels in…