Life Sciences
pharyngula | October 24, 2006
Warren sent me link from The Indigestible, wondering if I was interested in these kinds of speculative questions about the existence of alien life. Why, yes I am...and even wrote something along the same lines a few years ago, coming to the same conclusions: I think intelligent extraterrestrials are unlikely.
My reasons are below the fold. Of course, I will retract my opinion immediately when Klaatu lands.
DarkSyd asks a question:
The Fermi Paradox is a conundrum proposed by pioneer physicist Enrico Fermi that questions the likelihood of Intelligent Extraterrestrial life. It begins with the…
bcohen | October 24, 2006Adam Gopnik writes in the Oct. 23rd New Yorker about Darwin's writing period after the Beagle and before Origins (which is to say, roughly through the 1840s and into the later 1850s). His essay is more or less an appreciation for Darwin's literary skill, that skill being that he could present his points in Origins in just the right way. Such a task was not trivial. With Gopnik's appreciation - which, I don't know entirely why Adam Gopnik, who generally writes about other stuff (you know, like France and stuff) is writing this, but be that as it may - you get a nice feel for the importance…
clock | October 19, 2006I just got the teaching schedule for Spring, so I decided to follow up on last week's post by putting, under the fold, a series of short posts I wrote when I taught the last time, musing about teaching in general and teaching biology to adults in particular. These are really a running commentary on the course. The actual lecture notes are here:
Biology and the Scientific MethodLab 1Cell StructureProtein Synthesis: Transcription and TranslationCell-Cell InteractionsCell Division and DNA ReplicationLab 2From Two Cells To Many: Cell Differentiation and Embryonic DevelopmentFrom Genes To Traits…
loom | October 18, 2006Flowers, flagella, feathers. Life is rife with complex features--structures and systems made up of many interacting parts. National Geographic magazine asked me to take a tour of complexity in life and report on the latest research on how it evolved. What struck me over and over again was how scientists studying everything from bacteria to humans are drawn back to the same concepts--making new copies of old parts, for example, or borrowing parts of one complex trait to evolve a new one. And in each case, complexity opens up the way to diversity, because something many parts can be rearranged…
clock | October 18, 2006This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question is:
A reader asks: Is severely regulating your diet for a month each year, as Muslims do during Ramadan, good for you?
There is no way I can get out of this one! As far as I know, I am the only one here who actually did research on fasting! Mind you, it's been about 5 years since I last delved deep into the literature on the effects of fasting and feeding on various body functions, mainly body temperature and circadian rhythms, but I can try to pull something out of my heels now.
I'll try to somehow systematize this, by breaking the problem down…
loom | October 18, 2006This fall we've had some rude visitors out by the front door. One morning a strangely foul smell wafted through the windows. When we looked outside for a dead animal, we found nothing. But we noticed some downright obscene growths foisting themselves out of the flower beds. Thus I got my first introduction to the stinkhorn.
Stinkhorns are pornographic mushrooms. They form large underground webs of threads, which feed on dead and dying plant matter. At scattered points in the stinkhorn network, white rubbery spheres grow. Inside each of them is a pre-formed stinkhorn, which can then spring…
clock | October 18, 2006Have Traits, Will Travel: Some Butterflies Travel Farther, Reproduce Faster:
Researchers have uncovered physiological differences among female Glanville fritillary butterflies that allows some to move away from their birth place and establish new colonies. These venturesome butterflies are stronger fliers and reproduce more quickly compared to their less mobile female relatives. The study, to be presented at Comparative Physiology 2006, is a window to how genetic differences influence behavior and how the environment influences genetic change.
Organic Farming Has Little, If Any, Effect On…
stcynic | October 16, 2006And it's from Michigan, from a blog that calls itself The Local Area Watch, run by William and Bridget Tingley (who have given each other funny titles like "executive director" and "editor". And they're not too happy with the school board's decision. Darwinism Isn't Science, they declare, and then proceed to show that they know next to nothing about the subject (which is hardly surprising to anyone who pays attention to anti-evolutionary screeds). The nonsense begins almost immediately:
There is a great deal confusion about evolution. For instance, what does the word mean? If evolution…
jstemwedel | October 13, 2006
Pictured above: Not anything to do with Pokemon, but rather an imagined scene from Okami, in which, as far as I can gather, a solar-powered wolf battles a garlic bulb.
Dr. Free-Ride: Can you explain some stuff about Pokemon to me?
Elder offspring: Sure! How much time do you have?
Dr. Free-Ride: Look, I don't want to get into the issues of which ones are best in a battle or anything like that. I'm just trying to understand what kind of critter they're supposed to be.
Elder offspring: OK, we'll talk about battles another day.
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah ... we'll do that.
Elder offspring: Pokemon…
stcynic | October 13, 2006Good ol' Hans Zeiger's illogic appears to know no bounds at all. One wonders if he writes papers for his professors at Hillsdale that are as rife with irrational statements as those he writes for the Worldnutdaily. His latest column makes the ridiculous argument that because scientists have said false things in the past, we must dismiss any claims of science he doesn't like. After being informed by a biologist that his claims about "manliness" in a previous column were scientifically ignorant, he responds:
I am aware of the science, and I am also aware that science cannot explain everything.…
razib | October 12, 2006In my post below I mooted the issue of conflating race & religion. There were many interesting comments, and Ruchira Paul has offered her own response. I would like to elucidate a few points here and frame the issues in their proper context (or at least the context in which I meant to explore them). I have spoken of the various faces of gods before. My own personal interest is the cognitive level since that is the one which I believe is fundamental, the layer of religious experience with makes it nearly inevitable that supernaturalism will be the 'default' human modality, the necessary…
purepedantry | October 12, 2006There are intruders invading from our Southern border! No, not illegal immigrants -- jaguars. Having not been seen in the Southwest for some time, some of them have started to filter in from Mexico. The NYTimes reports:
Using the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers, male jaguars are crossing into the United States from Mexico.
Four of the elusive cats have been photographed in the last decade -- one as recently as last February -- in the formidable, rugged mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
And while no one knows exactly how many jaguars are here, or…
retrospectacle | October 12, 2006I'm headed to Atlanta, for the Society for Neuroscience meeting. I don't have a poster (just presented one in France!) so I'll just be a tourist. And, hoping to run into a few neuro-bloggers like Evil Monkey, Jake of Pure Pedantry, and the Neurocontrarian.
Here's how the UM Neuroscience PhD students are representing, though. If you're going, check them out.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Talks
1:00 pm - 4:30 pm Slide 14. Sleep Georgia World Congress Center: Room C301
1:00 pm - 1:15 pm 14.1. Sleep and fatigue during chronic viral infection M. D. OLIVADOTI, M. R. OPP
Posters
2:00 pm - 3:…
bushwells | October 10, 2006We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell - Oscar Wilde
A recent Sunday found my kids and me careening through the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey as participants in the local "Run with the Devil" MiniCooper rally. Yes, I own one of those goofy little automobiles, and my little devil car has struck me wild-eyed and drooling with car lust, causing me to seek congregation with likeminded enthusiasts. The rally was organized by a charming Empire-type couple, complete with accents from somewhere in the UK or its territories, who are very much into things Gothic. Last year's…
clock | October 9, 2006Kevin is back from China and busy with school, work and herping in the Sandhills so it took him some time to put together this last installment, covering the last few days in China, the last-ditch efforts to ID some of the mysterious frogs, and the glorious return.
We have yet to get together for a beer, but if he decides to continue writing on his own blog, I'll let you know.
Conclusion
13 September
We arrived back in Beijing around noon. It was a good two hours until we finally made it back to the institute of zoology. Emma wasn't getting off work (she was teaching English at an…
clock | October 9, 2006Red Is For Hummingbirds, Yellow For Moths:
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that the future of red and yellow varieties of a San Diego wildflower may depend on the fates of two different animals. They report in the current issue of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology that monkeyflowers have two different animal pollinators. The red form, common along the coast, is strongly preferred by hummingbirds, while yellow monkeyflowers, found east of I-15, are favored by hawkmoths.
Study Suggests Earlier Crop Plantings Could Curb Future Yields:
In an ongoing bid to…
pharyngula | October 9, 2006Sometimes a plan just comes together beautifully. I'm flying off to London tomorrow, and on the day I get back to Morris, I'm supposed to lead a class discussion on the final chapters of this book we've been reading, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. I will at that point have a skull full of jet-lagged, exhausted mush, and I just know it's going to be a painful struggle. Now into my lap falls a wonderful gift.
There was a review in the NY Review of Books that said wonderful things about Carroll's work, and in particular about the revolutionary nature of evo-devo. This prompted Jason Hodin, an evo…
clock | October 4, 2006From November 01, 2005, a review of a review...
Here is a nice article in Washington Post - Ecological Niche May Dictate Sleep Habits - about the adaptive function of sleep.
It addresses some of the themes I am interested in.
First, the unfortunate fact is that sleep was initially defined by researchers of humans, i.e., medical researchers. Inevitably, the (electrophysiological) definition of sleep was thus saddled with unneccessary anthropocentric elements that for decades hampered the study of evolution of sleep.
I was present at the meeting (here in Biotechnology Center in RTP) several…
loom | October 2, 2006This morning it was announced that two American scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and or Medicine, for their 1998 discovery of a hidden network of genes. It may seem odd that a network of genes could lurk undiscovered for so long. But the cell is very much a mysterious place. In the 1950s, scientists established the basic model for how genes work. A gene is made of DNA, the cell makes a single-stranded copy of a gene in a molecule called RNA, and it then uses the RNA as a template for building a protein. This so-called Central Dogma proved to be correct for many thousands of genes…
revere | October 2, 2006Does the Bush administration always have to blame someone else? Does a bear shit in the woods? The Washington Post asks the second question and answers it with the first (hat tip Lindsay at Majikthise).
Here's the alleged problem. Some major rivers in the DC area, like the Anacostia and Potomac, don't meet EPA standards to be clean enough to swim in. Now work from Virginia Tech reveals that a lot of the enteric bacteria in these rivers that contribute to their non-attainment status come from local wild life, like deer, geese and raccoons, our co-habiting species in the modern suburb. Who is…