Life Sciences
jgoldman | November 26, 2010There are only FIVE DAYS left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people's archives and submit!
Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries
The list is growing fast - check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art.
The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are entries so far - almost 700 of them, with more coming in each day.
The instructions for submitting are here.
You can buy the last four annual collections…
drorzel | November 23, 2010I've probably gotten a dozen pointers to Gregory Petsko's open letter in support of the humanities, addressed to the President of SUNY-Albany, over the last couple of weeks (the link is to a reposting of the letter at Inside Higher Ed; it was originally on Petsko's own blog). I haven't linked to it or commented on it here, mostly because while I'm broadly sympathetic with his position, after the second use of "[Famous Writer] said [interesting thing] which I'm sure your department of [humanities field] could tell you about, if you hadn't eliminated them," my reaction had shifted significantly…
tlambert | November 22, 2010Brian Dunning's Skeptoid does an excellent job of debunking pseudoscience, so his podcast on DDT is profoundly disappointing. Dunning claims that DDT use did not have a large impact on bird populations, that elitist environmental groups were killing brown children by blocking DDT use and that DDT is effective even if mosquitoes are resistant. None of these claims are true, as I will detail in this post. But first, why did a sensible fellow like Dunning get it all so badly wrong? Well, his primary source for information about DDT was Steve Milloy's junkscience.com. One commenter…
dolittle | November 21, 2010
Most people probably only think of turkeys as the delicious main course served with gravy, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce (among many other items) at Thanksgiving. I too have mainly been concerned with how best to prepare them for dinner and have admittedly not given much thought to their anatomy or physiology. So, with Thanksgiving literally right around the corner, let's discuss turkeys.
In many species, young birds do not display external sexual characteristics, like differences in feather color. However, knowing the gender of a young bird is very important to poultry breeders to…
jgoldman | November 15, 2010
Have you ever been at a party with lots of people chatting away, when for some unexplainable reason you felt compelled to turn and look at the front door of your friend's house...and just as you were looking, someone was just coming in from outside and closing the door? You couldn't have heard the door open since there was so much noise already inside - more likely you noticed that other people were looking at the front door. All of this probably happened without any explicit intention or awareness. If several others are all directing their attention at a specific point in space, there might…
jgoldman | November 11, 2010Only twenty days left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people's archives and submit! I've already started to contact potential judges for this year's anthology. We're ready to roll!
Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries
The list is growing fast - check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art.
The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are entries so far. The instructions for submitting are here.
You can buy…
gregladen | November 9, 2010As global warming progresses, habitats change in their suitability for various life forms. It may be that moose will not be able to live in Minnesota in the future; Of the two resident moose populations, the one that lives in the area more affected by global warming has pretty much died out probably due indirectly to the effects of increased temperature. There are regions of the rockies where entire forests are dead because of temperature changes. And so on.
Imagine a large flat landscape. As one moves north vs. south, average annual temperature changes, as does the number of days of…
jgoldman | November 9, 2010
This week marked the release of Brian Switek's (blog, twitter) first book, Written in Stone. I got my hands on a review copy a few weeks ago, and I have nothing but good things to say about it. (Disclaimer: I was provided with a free review copy of the book, without any expectation that I'd review it on my blog or elsewhere.)
Written in Stone is a highly-accessible, engaging book which takes the reader simultaneously through the story of vertebrate evolution and the story of the scientists who - quite literally - uncovered it. The book's main success might be in its seamless transition back…
jgoldman | November 3, 2010There is only one month left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people's archives and submit! I've already started to contact potential reviewers for this year's anthology. We're ready to roll!
Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries
The list is growing fast - almost FIVE HUNDRED posts have been submitted so far! Check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art.
The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are…
cwilcox | November 1, 2010One of the toughest concepts to grasp about evolution is its lack of direction. Take the classic image of the evolution of man, from knuckle-walking ape to strong, smart hunter:
We view this as the natural progression of life. Truth is, there was no guarantee that some big brained primates in Africa would end up like we are now. It wasn't inevitable that we grew taller, less hairy, and smarter than our relatives. And it certainly wasn't guaranteed that single celled bacteria-like critters ended up joining forces into multicellular organisms, eventually leading to big brained primates!…
tetrapodzoology | October 30, 2010
There are about 3800 lizard species living on the planet today; accordingly, it can sometimes be a bit difficult to keep track of them all. Furthermore, new species are described on a very regular basis, and there's little doubt that many more species await discovery. Matty Smith (from New Zealand) recently encountered the lizard you see here while in Tonga, and he's been having trouble identifying it.
Ever one to take on a tetrapod-themed identification challenge, I had a go at identifying it, and I'd be interested in your opinion should you be able to help.
It's clearly a skink (as…
pharyngula | October 29, 2010Our university library is having a book sale today, one of those unfortunate but necessary events where they purge old or duplicate items from the collections to make room for new books, and I had to make a quick browse. What did I discover but an old children's book that startled me with fearful and powerful remembrances — this is a book that I checked out from the Kent Public Library when I was ten years old.
That's the Golden Guide to Mammals by Herbert S. Zim and Donald F. Hoffmeister, copyright 1955. It features "218 ANIMALS IN FULL COLOR", with maps of their distribution and short…
gregladen | October 28, 2010 This barking dog is not very smart. But it could make a good Republican. The only thing harder to understand than Michele Bachmann is the Republican Party. Bachmann is hard to understand in this way: How can a person with her mind be an elected member of congress?!?!??? The Republican party is hard to understand in this way: How can a party that is trying to become more rather than less relevant keep putting Michele Bachmann on the podium in places like the National Party Convention and, most recently, at CEPAC??!?!?!?
~ A timely repost ~
I can't explain any of this, but I can at…
dolittle | October 27, 2010Fifty-two years ago the average American home cost $30,000, Elvis Presley wooed listeners with Hard Headed Woman, and the hula-hoop was introduced. That same year, 1958, a team comprised of a groundbreaking engineer -- Dean Franklin -- in concert with two exceptional physicians -- Drs. Robert Rushmer and Robert Van Citters - was laying the foundation for what would eventually become a radical new approach to health care: the noninvasive imaging and treatment of the heart. The discoveries of these pioneers would eventually lead to a doctor's ability to see the heart without cutting open the…
jgoldman | October 27, 2010Meet Rio.
Rio is a California Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus). She was born in captivity at Marine World in Northern California, and due to insufficient maternal care from her biological mother, she was transferred to the Long Marine Laboratory at UC Santa Cruz when she was just a few days old. There, she was raised by a human surrogate mother, in the context of an imprinting study. She's got a pretty good life. She gets all the fish she could want, and has 3 other pinniped (seals, sea lions, otters) friends at the lab. There's Burnyce, a female Northern elephant seal, Sprouts, a male…
tetrapodzoology | October 27, 2010
I really must get this series on pouches, sacs and pockets finished. Last time, we looked at baleen whales (and then I got distracted by Caperea): in these animals, a large, inflatable laryngeal sac is used in producing loud, resonating noises (though roles in gas storage or the mechanics of exhalation have also been suggested).
Another ventrally located laryngeal sac is present in the Reindeer Rangifer tarandus [photo above, by Karen Laubenstein, from wikipedia, shows an Alaskan reindeer with wonderfully elaborate antlers]. The sac originates from the trachea close to the epiglottis, is…
bioephemera | October 26, 2010
Wildlife of Vietnam, by Brendan Wenzel
This bundle of exotic animals by Brendan Wenzel is whimsical, yet unsettling. On the one hand, it would be perfect for a children's book; I imagine a tale in which the animals overcome their natural animosities, cooperate to free themselves, dump a hapless and ineptly nonthreatening poacher in the river, and return safely to their various homes, in the happiest of ecological endings. But we all know that's not how the story really goes.
Wenzel, a New York illustrator who until recently lived in Vietnam, says his work was inspired by the worsening…
pharyngula | October 24, 2010Sophisticated is not a synonym for true.
Probably the most common dodge used by defenders of religion against atheist critics is the magic word "sophisticated," as in, "You only attack the crudest forms of religion, but avoid the more challenging, sophisticated forms of faith." It's an invalid defense in two ways: one, those crude forms of religion are the most common and the ones promoted by the rascals in power, so it's perfectly reasonable to address the most dangerous kinds of religion, especially since the theologians so rarely do so (although they seem to have plenty of time to attack…
jgoldman | October 22, 2010
Last night, I was a guest of the National Geographic Channel at the historic Saban Theater in Beverly Hills for the United States premiere of Great Migrations, which airs internationally on Sunday, November 7.
Great Migrations is a 7-part TV "event," paired with an issue of National Geographic magazine, a set of kids' books, iPhone apps, and so forth. The mini-series, narrated by Alec Baldwin, focuses on the movements of animals across the earth in an effort to find food, to mate, and to survive. The first hour, which was screened for us, featured the migration of the monarch butterfly from…
dolittle | October 21, 2010Blair Wolf is an associate professor of biology at the University of New Mexico. Research in the Wolf lab focuses on the natural history and ecophysiology of desert animals. He agreed to blog with Dr. Dolittle on the topic of birds. Here are excerpts from their exchange.
Dr. Dolittle: What made you interested in studying the effects of Australian heat waves on bird populations?
Dr. Wolf: Australia has a very challenging environment, with a great expanse of hot desert and seems to be THE poster child for the bad things that are associated with climate warming. The continent has recently…