Life Sciences
grrlscientist | March 19, 2008tags: Osteichthyes, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
This is a tropical marine fish species (which one?)
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the downtown-bound landing of the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
clock | March 18, 2008There are 41 new articles published in PLoS ONE tonight. Look around, rate, comment, and send trackbacks. Here are my picks for this week:
Song Diversity Predicts the Viability of Fragmented Bird Populations:
In the global scenario of increasing habitat fragmentation, finding appropriate indicators of population viability is a priority for conservation. We explored the potential of learned behaviours, specifically acoustic signals, to predict the persistence over time of fragmented bird populations. We found an association between male song diversity and the annual rate of population change…
clock | March 18, 2008
Hissing Cockroaches Are Popular, But They Also Host Potent Mold Allergens:
Their gentle nature, large size, odd sounds and low-maintenance care have made Madagascar hissing cockroaches popular educational tools and pets for years. But the giant insects also have one unfortunate characteristic: Their hard bodies and feces are home to many mold species that could be triggering allergies in the kids and adults who handle the bugs, according to a new study.
Tiny Wasp Used To Wipe Out Major Agricultural Pest In Tahiti:
A research team led by Mark Hoddle, a biological control specialist at UC…
pharyngula | March 18, 2008
You know how people can be going along, minding their own business, and then they see some cute big-eyed puppy and they go "Awwwww," and their hearts melt, and then it's all a big sloppy mushfest? I felt that way the other day, as I was meandering down some obscure byways of the developmental biology literature, and discovered the dicyemid mesozoa … an obscure phylum which I vaguely recall hearing about before, but had never seriously examined. After reading a few papers, I have to say that these creatures are much more lovable then mere puppy dogs. Look at this and say "Awwwww!"
Light…
laelaps | March 18, 2008The Cambrian "explosion," the enigmatic phenomenon in which many of the phyla existing on the planet appeared in a relatively short period of time (at least 20 million years), remains a difficult event to study. Fossils are rare, intricate, and often represent creatures that are difficult to fit into one group or another. There are fossils of earlier creatures (and there may have even been an earlier, Ediacaran "explosion"), but at present it is the Cambrian event that is the most famous radiation of diverse forms of life. A relatively recent paper published in the Annual Review of Earth and…
razib | March 17, 2008Why White People Like 'Stuff White People Like':
...Basically, this joke breaks down as "Congratulate a white person and they will feel smugly good about themselves." It's the perfect go-to punchline for Stuff White People Like, because it's really what the site is all about. Because if there's one thing white people really like, it's pretending to poke fun at themselves while actually being allowed to feel superior.
My friend Reiham Salam is not a fan. I have only read a few entries on Stuff White People Like over the past month. I don't have a visceral dislike of the site, but it is…
grrlscientist | March 17, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Male Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, in Central Park.
Image: Bob Levy, author of Club George. [larger size].
Birds in Science
In all three groups of birds with vocal learning abilities -- songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds -- the brain structures for singing and learning to sing are embedded in areas controlling movement, researchers have discovered. The team also found that areas in charge of movement share many functional similarities with the brain areas for singing. This suggests that the brain…
oracknows | March 17, 2008One of the greatest threats to the preclinical research necessary for science-based medicine today is animal rights activism. The magnitude of the problem came to the forefront again last month with the news that animal rights terrorists tried to enter the home of a researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) whose research uses mice to study breast cancer and neurologic disease while she and her husband were having a birthday party for one of their children and assaulted her husband, who had gone to the front of the house to confront them. This unrelenting attack on the use…
tetrapodzoology | March 16, 2008
Regular readers will know that I am an unashamed fan of non-standard theories, aka fringe theories or whacky theories, and of course we looked just recently at the haematotherm theory. Doubtless you've all heard of the aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH): that strangely popular notion which promotes the idea that modern humans owe their distinctive features to a marine phase. While it still seems conceivable that at least some fossil hominins foraged on shores and in mangroves, all of the evidence so far put forward to document our aquatic heritage is demonstrably incorrect and fails to fit the…
clock | March 16, 2008Funny...
Facebook: Community for Loners
Would You Prefer Stupidity Or Apathy With Your Incompetence? and Birth Of A Nation
Paralyzed
Bad Science Journalism: The Myth of the Oppressed Underdog and Statisticians are verifiably insane
Do periods of rest improve learning?
Barnacle sex.
Second Life exhibition about the pleasure of the table in Roma
Snakes versus newts - FIGHT!
Gas passings
Harmony between humans and animals created via Photoshop
Misleading headline of the day: sea level is falling!
NY Times: Kafka's cockroach real! (Really?)
Sentencing Crack-down
Anyone have a spare Andy…
grrlscientist | March 16, 2008tags: fish, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Numerous species of fishes on the floor
as portrayed in tiles on the floors of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
After the orthopedic surgeon has finished making me scream for the day (hopefully, no surgery will be scheduled), I plan to visit the subway entrance at West 77th and Central Park West to capture more images to share with you. There are at least ten more images at that entrance, unless I photograph each and every one of…
edyong | March 16, 2008
Tropical parasitic diseases may lack the headline-grabbing power of bird flu or SARS and they may fail to grab the pharmaceutical industry's attention. But there is no doubt that they are a massive problem. Schistosomiasis, a disease that many people in Western countries will never have heard of, currently afflicts 3% of the world's population, a staggering 20 million people, and almost four times that number are at risk.
Schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia, affects people living across the tropics. It's caused by parasitic flatworms called blood-flukes, belonging to the genus…
neurophilosophy | March 15, 2008For the benefit of new readers, I've selected what I think are the best posts from this blog.
Wilder Penfield, Neural Cartographer: The patient lies on the operating table, with the right side of his body raised slightly. The anaesthetist sterilizes his scalp and injects it with Nupercaine to produce analgesia - the patient will remain fully conscious throughout the procedure. Behind the surgical drapes, three large incisions are made in his scalp. A large flap of bone is then cut from his skull, and turned downward to expose the surface of his brain. The ultraviolet lights which illuminate…
grrlscientist | March 13, 2008tags: insect, Hemiptera, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Since I am having trouble getting out to roam the city and take pictures, I thought I'd return us to the upstairs subway platform at AMNH for a couple days to look at a few pieces that I haven't yet shared with you.
A species of cicada, Magicicada spp.
as portrayed in tiles on the stairway leading down into the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
This is the other image that I've stared at often, wondering what it represented. After I took the…
tetrapodzoology | March 13, 2008
In the previous article (required reading) we looked at European leopards. But the leopard wasn't the only big spotted Panthera species that lived in Europe during the Pleistocene: it was joined by a second, far less well known animal: Panthera gombaszoegensis (originally Leo gombaszoegensis Kretzoi, 1938). This cat seems to have been very jaguar-like and in fact the name 'European jaguar' is often used for it. In fact, it may actually be a jaguar - that is, a member of the species Panthera onca - and some cat experts classify it as an extinct Panthera onca subspecies (Hemmer et al. 2001,…
edyong | March 13, 2008
Many animals have cunning ways of hiding from predators. But the larva of the sand dollar takes that to an extreme - it avoids being spotted by splitting itself into two identical clones.
Sand dollars are members of a group of animals called echinoderms, that include sea urchins and starfish. An adult sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus) is a flat, round disc that lives a sedate life on the sea floor. Its larva, also known as a pluteus, is very different, a small, six-armed creature that floats freely among the ocean's plankton.
A pluteus can't swim quickly, so there is no escape for one…
pharyngula | March 13, 2008Chris Hedges wrote a pretty good book on fundamentalism called American Fascists; at least, I thought it was pretty good, but now I have my doubts about his credibility. He has a new book, I Don't Believe in Atheists, and has an essay that summarizes his position. I could not believe how awful it is — it's basically a declaration that all atheists are exactly like Pat Robertson, and then it charges in with nothing but venom and accusations to defend his position.
Here's a perfect example.
These atheists share a naïve belief with these fundamentalists in our innate goodness and decency. They…
gregladen | March 12, 2008
The big, bad wolf could use a few friends. If western states remove the gray wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act--a decision currently under debate--consequences could be grave. Wyoming and Idaho announced they would reduce their populations of approximately 300 and 700 wolves, respectively, by 50 percent and 80 percent.
Amidst the debate, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) researcher Dr. Kim Berger is speaking out on behalf of an unsuspecting wolf ally: the pronghorn antelope, North America's fastest land animal. In a study published in the latest issue of the journal…
grrlscientist | March 12, 2008tags: North Island brown kiwi, Apteryx australis mantelli, endangered species, conservation, birds, National Zoo
The National Zoo welcomed a new North Island brown kiwi chick, Apteryx australis mantelli, on March 7, 2008.
The chick, whose sex has yet to be determined by DNA testing, is the third chick to ever hatch at the National Zoo. The first hatching occurred in 1975 and was the first to occur outside of New Zealand. Kiwis are endangered and are extremely rare to see in captivity -- only four zoos outside of New Zealand have successfully bred kiwis, and only three US zoos exhibit them…
tetrapodzoology | March 12, 2008
So, on to the contents of my BCiB talk (see previous article for preamble). We began by looking at Homotherium latidens, sometimes called the scimitar cat, scimitar-toothed cat or dirk-toothed cat. H. latidens is one of several Homotherium species that inhabited North America, Eurasia and Africa during the Pleistocene: the different species varied in body size, skull shape, the proportional length of the forelimbs, and in other features. It's repeatedly been suggested that H. latidens might have survived in Britain until as recently as 11,000 years ago (close to the start of the Holocene):…