Environment
nisbetmc | April 19, 2008
Despite record amounts of media attention and ever certain science about threats to the environment, Americans' commitment to taking environmentally sustainable actions remains little changed over the past eight years. In the first of their annual Earth Day survey reports, Gallup finds that only 28% of Americans say that they have made major changes in their lifestyles to protect the environment. This proportion is little changed over the 31% in 2000.
As for the actions that Americans' consider major lifestyle changes, a strong plurality (39%) report the relatively simple activity of…
clock | April 19, 2008This 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…
nisbetmc | April 18, 2008
Back in the spring of 2006, Time magazine ran the cover at left warning Americans to "Be Worried, Be VERY Worried" about global warming. As I've written in different places (summary), this type of packaging for coverage of climate change is representative of the Pandora's Box frame of catastrophe.
By focusing in on specific dramatic environmental impacts such as melting polar ice, sea level rise, the threat to polar bears, or the possibility of more intense hurricanes, advocates and journalists seek to dramatize a technical issue and provoke public concern and attention. As Ellen Goodman…
pharyngula | April 17, 2008The email below the fold is a fairly typical rant from a creationist who has a teeny tiny bit of information, and therefore thinks he has uncovered an irrefutable disproof of evolution. In this case, he has noted that different species have differing numbers of chromosomes, and therefore, because he believes variation in chromosome number is an absolute barrier to fertilization, evolution could not have occurred.
He's missing a few key pieces of information. One is that, contrary to his belief, variation in chromosome number is not a barrier to reproduction, although it can reduce fertility.…
gregladen | April 16, 2008 Several thousand intelligent beings have surrounded two funny looking blue trees. On some planet. Elsewhere. [Image source] Back in the old days, when Carl Sagan was alive and at Harvard, there was an annual (or at least frequent) debate between Sagan and my adviser, Irv DeVore. The debate was about the possibility of intelligent life having evolved on other planets.
You already know Sagan's argument: There are billions and billions of Galaxies, each with billions and billions of stars, so there are billions and billions and billions and billions of stars. Even if the probability of…
jjacquet | April 15, 2008Plastic bags have some desirable traits. They require less energy and water to make than paper bags. Their impermeability means that they won't become a gooey, soggy mess over a little rotten egg. But the very thing that makes plastic bags so attractive must also make them an environmental catastrophe.
The problem with plastic bags is that they are made of plastic, which can take more than 1,000 years to biodegrade, has a number of ill effects on human health, and, as litter, can kill seabirds and other marine life. Plus, there are just too many of them (check out this bibliography on…
illconsidered | April 15, 2008 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) Top Stories:Food Crisis, Melting Arctic, Vulcan & Hestia, Huaynaputina, Late Coverage Hurricanes, GHG Stats, Temperatures, Paleoclimate Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration Journals, Misc. Science, Hansen Kyoto-2, Fifth IPCC Report, Carbon Trade, Carbon Tax, Optimal Carbon…
clock | April 15, 2008This 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…
grrlscientist | April 14, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
"Thy Fearful Symmetry"
Male greater Prairie-chicken, Tympanuchus cupido.
Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU. [larger view].
More of Dave's Greater Prairie-chicken images.
Birds in Science
Seven feathers that either belonged to a non-avian dinosaur or an early bird have been discovered encased in amber in a remarkably vivid state of preservation, according to a recent Proceedings of the Royal Society B study. The 100-million-year-old amber, excavated from a Charente-Maritime quarry in western France, was found near the…
cmooney | April 14, 2008I just did my latest Daily Green item about Tropical Storm Erin--the last 2007 Atlantic storm to have its definitive report (PDF) emerge from the bowels of the National Hurricane Center.
Suffice it to say that the delay seems well justified--meteorologists still don't really have a clue what Erin was. I mean, we're talking about a storm that barely attained tropical storm status over the Gulf, but that developed an eye, 995 mb central pressure, and 50 knot winds over Oklahoma!
Read here for more on this very, very wacky weather phenomenon....
clock | April 12, 2008 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…
gregladen | April 11, 2008
It is said that scientists involved in the Manhattan Project to engineer and implement the first nuclear bombs seriously considered the possibility that such a bomb could initiate a chain reaction that would destroy the Earth. Now it is being claimed that the production of miniature black holes by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland could do the same. The LHC is scheduled to go on line in June.
This thought occurred to me the first time I heard that the LHC might be able to produce tiny black holes.
Apparently someone else had the same thought. Walter Wagner and Luis…
clock | April 11, 2008This 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 | April 11, 2008Massive Study Of Madagascar Wildlife Leads To New Conservation Roadmap:
An international team of researchers has developed a remarkable new roadmap for finding and protecting the best remaining holdouts for thousands of rare species that live only in Madagascar, considered one of the most significant biodiversity hot spots in the world.
Flowers' Fragrance Diminished By Air Pollution, Study Indicates:
Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new…
clock | April 10, 2008This 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…
clock | April 9, 2008
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…
jjacquet | April 7, 2008Holy Macaroni (and I don't mean tuna noodle casserole)--this blog is one year old today! On April 8th last year, Randy Olson moved the Shifting Baselines blog to Scienceblogs and, for its launch, we staged a debate on whether or not to eat seafood. One year later, our seafood debate is still raging and relevant so I thought I would re-post our thoughts (but don't miss out on the original comments here).
SHOULD WE CONTINUE TO EAT SEAFOOD?
YES, SAYS RANDY OLSON: Until There Is Effective Leadership, There Is Little Point in Making Sacrifices
I say we should not be expected to stop eating…
illconsidered | April 7, 2008 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) Top Stories:Bangkok UNFCCC Conference, BC Cap & Trade, Otway, Food Panik Melting Arctic, Pielke & Co., GCMs, No Link, IMF, World Bank, Short Takes & Late Comments GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration,…
gregladen | April 4, 2008A very important and truly wonderful paper in Nature described a tour-de-force analysis of the Mammalian Evolutionary Record, and draws the following two important conclusions:
The diversification of the major groups of mammals occurred millions of years prior to the KT boundary event; and
The further diversification of these groups into the modern pattern of mammalian diversity occurred millions of years later than the KT boundary event.
The KT boundary event is the moment in time when a ca. 10 km. diameter object going very fast hit the earth in the vicinity of the modern Yucatan,…
nisbetmc | April 2, 2008
Over the summer I addressed by video conference a meeting by the National Academies on state science policy advice. They've now produced a report based on that meeting and it is free as a PDF download.
Chapter Five of the report focuses on the communication of science advice at the state level and provides a fairly detailed overview of the Framing Science thesis generally. Below the fold you can read that section of the report. The narrative follows closely the article that I published at The Scientist last year with Dietram Scheufele (PDF) and the presentation that I have been giving on…