Environment
aardvarchaeology | August 3, 2007As an archaeologist you get a funny perspective on time -- occupational hazard. For years I've been musing about what traces our era will leave to last into the far future. I've been thinking about six-lane highways with their cuttings through hills and their earthen banks across depressions. In my mind's eye I've seen my housing area as a pasture, sheep grazing across gridded grass-covered rectangular mounds of building debris.
Journalist Alan Weisman didn't stop at musing about all this. He went out and talked to a bewildering number of people around the world about it. The result is a fine…
clock | August 3, 2007 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 | August 2, 2007This 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…
angrytoxicologist | August 2, 2007The last of the ELF (Earth Liberation Front) arsonists was sentenced yesterday for the burning down of a Redmond OR horse slaughterhouse in 1997. Thank goodness. I'm concerned abou the environment and I guess I would classify myself as an environmentalist but I certainly don't want to be associated with these guys. They are like the distant cousin that everyone hopes doesn't show up at the family reunion, get drunk, and pick a fight with Aunt Ellie.
Actually, ELF is more like George Bush. That analogy should really burn those guys up.
-No rational thinking; It conflicts with my ideology, darn…
clock | August 1, 2007This 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…
hrynyshyn | July 31, 2007James Hansen isn't satisfied with an audience limited to those that read his peer-reviewed scientific papers and the odd Congressional hearing attendee. In this essay, NASA's top climate scientist takes the substance of a recent paper that discusses the "reticence" of some climatologists to make their fears about dangerous climate change public and gives his argument a more accessible treatment. The New Scientist version is gripping stuff, right from the first paragraph, which also appears in almost identical form in the Environmental Research Letters original.
I find it almost inconceivable…
clock | July 28, 2007Electronic Eggs Used To Help Save Threatened African Bird:
This is an important summer for kori bustards at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. Four chicks of this threatened African bird have hatched in June and July. Along with the bumper crop of baby birds is a bumper crop of new information for scientists working to preserve the species, thanks to an electronic egg that transmits real-time incubation data from the nest.
Reef Corals: How To Structure A Complex Body Plan:
Phenotypic flexibility enables multicellular organisms to adjust morphologies to variable environmental challenges. Such…
revere | July 26, 2007In my early to mid career it fell to me to teach large lecture courses that surveyed all of environmental health. Everything. Air polllution. Wastewater. Food sanitation. Radiation protection. Over the years I learned a lot beyond my particular specialty (environmental epidemiology) and it has stood me in good stead in many ways. Students seemed to enjoy learning about it, too, and one of their most frequent reactions was surprise at how suddenly newspapers had all sorts of stories about environmental topics. Of course those stories had always been there. They just never noticed them. I am…
oracknows | July 25, 2007Yesterday, when I wrote about a death in Arizona caused by a homeopath doing liposuction, what amazed me the most was that homeopaths are licensed in Arizona. Although I alluded to it only briefly in yesterday's post, I was truly astounded at what homeopaths are allowed to do in Arizona. It piqued my curiosity--and horror. Consequently, I decided to delve a bit more deeply into the website of the Arizona Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners.
There are more horrors in there than I thought. Those of you who live in Arizona should be afraid--very afraid!--about what these quacks are permitted…
hrynyshyn | July 25, 2007Among the most common questions that follow my presentations of Al Gore's climate change slide show is "What about vegetarianism?" I usually respond that eating less meat will probably be a consequence of climate change, due to the enormous water and energy costs associated with raising livestock, rather than a significant mitigation strategy. But I'm going to reconsider the situation, in the light of this paper in Animal Science Journal.
"Evaluating environmental impacts of the Japanese beef cow-calf system by the life cycle assessment method" (doi: 10.1111/j.1740-0929.2007.00457.x) takes a…
bcohen | July 25, 2007This is the third of three parts in our Wilderness series interview with Kevin Marsh, by Michael Egan (Part I; Part II).
All entries in our author-meets-bloggers series are here.
Continuing from Part II...
ME: Moving into the twenty-first century, where are wilderness politics now, and where do you see them going?
KM: It's an interesting time of transition and renaissance in wilderness politics. After relatively little action in the 1990s (many debates over roadless lands had moved in to the court system, such as with the spotted owl controversy) Congress in recent years has passed some…
bcohen | July 23, 2007This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.*
A Mouse, a Bird, a Cat and a Girl Hold Forth. A Provocation, with Digressions.
"An object never goes into its concept without leaving a remainder."
Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics
So, this quote by Adorno, ever since I encountered it several years ago, has almost ceaselessly rattled around in my brain. The meaning of the quote itself can be parsed quite finely. But I am more interested here in the implications. What of the remainder? That is, if we assume that scientific knowledge seeks to articulate a clear understanding of the…
clock | July 21, 2007Number Of Published Science And Engineering Articles Flattens, But US Influence Remains Strong:
A new National Science Foundation (NSF) report finds the number of U.S. science and engineering (S&E) articles in major peer-reviewed journals flattened in the 1990s, after more than two decades of growth, but U.S. influence in world science and technology remains strong.
Art And Music For The Birds:
Nature is a valued source of inspiration for artists. But what have artists offered the natural world? Would a bird even like rock and roll? Conceptual sculptor Elizabeth Demaray, an assistant…
hrynyshyn | July 19, 2007Before you read anything else about the Chilean sea bass served Al Gore at his daughter's wedding rehearsal party, read Deltoid's thoroughly researched review of how lazy journalists and bloggers once again did their best to undermine the world most popular climate change campaigner, and a guy who's just trying to be nice. Given how much unfair grief Gore received recently over his electricity bill, shouldn't we all be bit more careful before casting aspersions on his sincerity?
The bottom line is this: Gore was attending a private function, at which his future in-laws served him a dish that…
tlambert | July 19, 2007David Roberts shows Your media at work:
People magazine reports that Al Gore's daughter Sarah just got married, revealing in the course of the article that Chilean sea bass was served at the rehearsal dinner.
In the Daily Telegraph, Australian Humane Society Rebecca Keeble writes that "only one week after Live Earth, Al Gore's green credentials slipped." Why? Because Chilean sea bass is endangered.
ABC politics columnist Jake Tapper, smelling the kind of vapid, gimmicky story upon which his profession thrives, asks, "could this be seen as the environmentalist version of Sen. David Vitter's…
jjacquet | July 17, 2007Al Gore's daughter got married last week and apparently the event was so sacred it called for eating one of the world's most endangered fish: Chilean sea bass (which is not actually a 'bass'). Now Gore is justifiably under scrutiny by the media and charged with eco-hypocrisy.
The D.C.-based National Environmental Trust launched the Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass campaign in 2002. Maybe Gore was still busy treating the wounds after the ill-fated 2000 campaign, but really: how can someone so in tune to the problem of global warming be so in the dark about Chilean sea bass?
Even Randy I'm-…
tlambert | July 17, 2007John Quiggin details how the ABC made lemonade from the lemon that is the Great Global Warming Swindle. You can see the video of Tony Jones' questioning of Martin Durkin here, or read the transcript here. Durkin was unable to offer any defence of his misrepresentation of the science.
David Jones, Andrew Watkins, Karl Braganza and Michael Coughlan have a paper in the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society on the Swindle:
In summary the documentary is not scientifically sound and presents a flawed and very misleading interpretation of the science. While giving the…
clock | July 17, 2007This 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 16, 2007"What do you think about second hand smoke?" he asked me. I sensed ulterior motives behind the question, but I wasn't sure. I suspected that he was just looking for an argument.
"It's bad," I joked.
"Some have told me that the studies don't show any health problems from second hand smoke," he replied.
"I'm sure 'some' have," I retorted somewhat sarcastically.
"No, really, is there any evidence," he replied. "I'm open-minded about this topic."
Somehow I doubted this, but I figured, what the heck, and did a little reviewing. It makes for some interesting reading.
The question of whether second…
clock | July 16, 2007This 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…