Environment
clock | July 11, 2009This is the second in a series of posts on the analysis of entrainment, originally written on April 10, 2005.
The natural, endogenous period of circadian rhythms, as measured in constant conditions, is almost never exactly 24 hours. In the real world, however, the light-dark cycle provided by the Earth's rotation around its axis is exactly 24 hours long. Utility of biological clocks is in retaining a constant phase between environmental cycles and activities of the organism (so the organism always "does" stuff at the same, most appropriate time of day).
Thus, a mechanism must exist to…
oracknows | July 9, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas anxiously waiting for The Amazing Meeting to start. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2007.
"What do you think about second hand smoke?" he asked me. I sensed…
clock | July 8, 2009The Science Café for July (description below) will be held on July 21st at Tir Na Nog. This is the season when our utility bills begin to skyrocket. Our costly electric bills often bring into focus the high demand our community has for energy, as well as questions about where electricity will be coming from in the future as North Carolina's population grows. This will be the subject of our next cafe. We will be meeting Dr. David McNelis from UNC-Chapel Hill's Institute for the Environment. Dr. McNelis will give us information about options that we have for energy production in our…
grrlscientist | July 8, 2009tags: Antarctica, Humpback Whales, Krill, David Attenborough, Planet Earth, BBC, streaming video
This beautifully done video shows breathtaking images of how Humpback Whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, hunt Krill, Euphausia superba, in Antarctic waters. This is a video clip from BBC's natural history masterpiece, Planet Earth. [3:50]
Quark Expeditions is searching for an Official Blogger to join a voyage to Antarctica. Their goals, according to an email I received from their official spokesperson, Prisca, are to have their official blogger write a daily blog entry in English about their…
hrynyshyn | July 7, 2009
Unscientific America:
How scientific illiteracy threatens our future
by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
209 pages,$24 (US) Basic Books,
I wish I'd written this book. Its subject matter is exactly the thing that gets me going. The tension between science and irrationality was the original inspiration for this blog. There are a few elements that I would have approached differently, of course<> But my quibbles are minor and none detract from the the book's primary strength: solid, concise writing that wastes no ink or paper (just 132 pages, not counting endnotes) getting to the heart…
clock | July 7, 2009This post from February 03, 2005 covers the basic concepts and terms on entrainment. This is also the only blog post to date that I am aware of that was cited in a scientific paper.
Let's now continue our series of Clock Tutorials with an introduction to some phenomena (and related terms and concepts) observed in the laboratory in the course of doing standard circadian experiments. Such experiments usually involve either the study of properties of freerunning rhythms (check the old tutorials, especially CT2 and CT 4 for clarification of basic terms and concepts), or the analysis of…
illconsidered | July 6, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Sipping from the internet firehose... July 5, 2009 Chuckle, Top Stories:Carbon Tariffs, G8, G8 Rankings, Meetings Galore, IRENA Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Methane, Education, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Climate Refugees, Wacky Weather,…
clock | July 4, 2009 This post is a modification from two papers written for two different classes in History of Science, back in 1995 and 1998. It is a part of a four-post series on Darwin and clocks. I first posted it here on December 02, 2004 and then again here on January 06, 2005:
II. Darwin on Time
There is a season for everything
And a time for every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die:
A time to plant and a time to reap.... (Ecclesiastes)
In this section I will attempt to evaluate from Darwin's writings what he thought about the selective role of environmental periodicities…
clock | July 3, 2009This post about the origin, evolution and adaptive fucntion of biological clocks originated as a paper for a class, in 1999 I believe. I reprinted it here in December 2004, as a third part of a four-part post. Later, I reposted it here.
III. Whence Clocks?
Origin, Evolution, and Adaptive Function of Biological Clocks
The old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed. (Heinlein 1973)
Now darkness falls.
Quail chirps.
What use Hawk eyes?
(Basho)
Local/temporary and global/universal environments. In the study of adaptive functions, usually the question…
clock | July 2, 2009This post, originally published on January 16, 2005, was modified from one of my written prelims questions from early 2000.
EVOLUTIONARY PHYSIOLOGY OF BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS
"Circadian clocks allow organisms to predict, instead of merely react to, cyclic (predictable) changes in the environment". A sentence similar to this one is the opening phrase of many a paper in the field of chronobiology. Besides becoming a truth by virtue of frequent repetition, such a statement appeals to common sense. It is difficult to imagine a universe in which it was not true. Yet, the data supporting the above…
gregladen | July 1, 2009From a NASA Press Release: NASA and Japan released a new digital topographic map of Earth Monday that covers more of our planet than ever before. The map was produced with detailed measurements from NASA's Terra spacecraft.
The new global digital elevation model of Earth was created from nearly 1.3 million individual stereo- pair images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or Aster, instrument aboard Terra. NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, known as METI, developed the data set. It is available online to users…
clock | July 1, 2009
This is the third in the series of posts designed to provide the basics of the field of Chronobiology. This post is interesting due to its analysis of history and sociology of the discipline, as well as a look at the changing nature of science. You can check out the rest of Clock Tutorials here.
It appears that every scientific discipline has its own defining moment, an event that is touted later as the moment of "birth" of the field. This can be a publication of a paper (think of Watson and Crick) or a book ("Origin of Species" anyone?). In the case of Chronobiology, it was the 1960…
bioephemera | June 30, 2009Last Friday, in my post on Nature's comprehensive coverage of science journalism, I mentioned the recent Nature Biotechnology conference paper on science communications co-authored by scibling Matt Nisbet. I also said I'd come back to one of the points in it that bothers me.
As I said yesterday, most of the material in this paper (the issues of media fragmentation, framing problems, incidental exposure, etc.) has been expressed elsewhere. I agree with the majority of it, and it's nice to see it all in one place. But I have to take exception to a small piece of the paper - an example that I've…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009This book review was originally posted by GrrlScientist on Living the Scientific Life.
tags: book review, Sleeping Naked is Green, green living, environment, Vanessa Farquharson
Carbon footprints, global warming, green living -- are these phrases an inconvenient truth that keep you awake at night, wondering how you can live in a more environmentally friendly way? For many people, merely contemplating these things is enough to make them give up trying to help the earth before they even start! But before you allow yourself to become discouraged, there is a book out there that will inspire you…
illconsidered | June 29, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News June 28, 2009 Chuckle, Top Stories:Waxman-Markey, MTR Coal Protests, Repression Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, MEF, Sarychev, Carbon Tariffs, 140 Million Year Cycle, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Corals,…
grrlscientist | June 28, 2009tags: book review, Sleeping Naked is Green, green living, environment, Vanessa Farquharson
Carbon footprints, global warming, green living -- are these phrases an inconvenient truth that keep you awake at night, wondering how you can live in a more environmentally friendly way? For many people, merely contemplating these things is enough to make them give up trying to help the earth before they even start! But before you allow yourself to become discouraged, there is a book out there that will inspire you to make changes in your life that are beneficial to the earth; Sleeping Naked Is Green:…
hrynyshyn | June 22, 2009James Lovelock hates wind turbines, likes nuclear power and generally makes it difficult for anyone who wants to pigeonhole him in the pantheon of environmental heroes. But there's little point in denying that few earth scientists have a better grasp of the big picture when it comes to planetary ecology, so it's always worth asking him for his take on the climate crisis. His most recent pronouncements seem a little less bleak. Relatively speaking.
Here's Lovelock in 2006, on the occasion of the release of his book, The Revenge of Gaia:
We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by…
grrlscientist | June 22, 2009tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Gyrfalcon chicks in 2500 year-old nest in Greenland. Gyrfalcons are the largest species of falcon in the world.
Image: Jack Stephens.
This edition of Birds in the News is dedicated to Bob, Asa, Neil and Biosparite in honor of their kind $upport. I deeply appreciate your generosity and thoughtfulness.
Birds and Science
Why aren't birds larger? Fifteen-kilogram swans hold the current upper size record for flying birds, although the extinct Argentavis of the Miocene Epoch in Argentina is estimated to have weighed 70…
illconsidered | June 22, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Sipping from the internet firehose... June 21, 2009 Chuckle, Top Stories:Solstice, UKCP09, USGCRP, Synthesis Report, GLOBE, Chapman, DB Clock, Desertec Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Honisch, Sol, Sarychev, Late Comments on Bonn Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Aerosols, Paleoclimate, Glaciers,…
gregladen | June 18, 2009I just got this massive continental plate sized press release from JPL. Below the fold.
- - - - - the fold - - - -
NASA Gives California's San Andreas, Other Faults a 3-D Close-up
When a swarm of hundreds of small to moderate earthquakes erupted beneath California's Salton Sea in March, sending spasms rumbling across the desert floor, it set off more than just seismometers. It also raised the eyebrows of quite a few concerned scientists. The reason: lurking underground, just a few kilometers to the northeast, lays a sleeping giant: the 160 kilometer (100 mile) long southern segment…