Life Sciences
clock | October 30, 2007Another Tuesday night, another embarrassment of riches on PLoS ONE (yeah, yeah, I work there, OK). There are 35 new articles published today and it is hard for me to pick and choose as so many are interesting to me, including a couple I may have to write separate posts about (and test the new BPR3 icon). If any of these, or any of older ONE articles (or any of yet-to-be-published articles - ask me by e-mail) are in your area of interest/expertise and you would like to volunteer your group (research lab group, graduate seminar, honors class, whatever counts as a "group" of scientists) for a…
clock | October 29, 2007Big Fossil 'Raptor' Tracks Show Group Behavior:
Everyone knows that "raptor" dinosaurs walked with their deadly sickle-shaped foot claws held off the ground and that they moved in packs ... right? After all, it was in "Jurassic Park." But until now, there was no direct evidence of either of these things. Now, an international team of Chinese, British, American and Japanese paleontologists reported fossilized footprints made by two different kinds of "raptors" from 120 million year old rocks in Shandong Province, China.
Resistance To Thoughts Of Chocolate Is Futile:
A research project carried…
grrlscientist | October 29, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Falconer Geoff Clayton with eight-year-old golden eagle Shirko as they attend the Inter-Governmental Conference on Migratory Birds of Prey in Loch Lomond.
Image: PA [larger view]
Birds in Science
The ability to ramp up testosterone levels drives certain male sparrows to mate, but also makes them bad dads, a new study suggests. Researchers had thought that the total amount of testosterone might determine the mating habits and aggressive tendencies of male dark-eyed juncos, a type of sparrow. But the new study of juncos…
laelaps | October 29, 2007A little more than a week ago, scientist James Watson made a complete idiot of himself with some despicable and racist comments about the intelligence of white people and black people, and Greg Laden justifiably kicked his arse over the ill-founded statements. I was certainly surprised, then, to visit the official Rutgers University newspaper (The Daily Targum) website and see an opinion article by a freshman named Brad Pironciak who apparently has no idea what natural selection is, his piece being an idiotic espousal of Social Darwinism (although he didn't use the phrase that pays, "survival…
oracknows | October 29, 2007I was half-tempted to e-mail this one to P. Z. or Larry Moran, but my inherently merciful nature got the better of me. Because it was so idiotic, I was afraid that, after P. Z. and his regular readers got through with it (or even worse for this poor ID advocate, Larry Moran), there wouldn't be anything left other than a hint that there may have been a smear on the pavement where he had been. And, as much as this particular ID advocate and woo-meister has gotten on my nerves in the past outing me and all on at least three separate occasions, even I didn't want to see that. Besides, why should…
tetrapodzoology | October 28, 2007
Welcome back, err, me! And, while I could have started with 'here are the things I saw on holiday', I became concerned that my list of bats and raptors might seem a bit mundane in comparison to what certain of my friends have encountered (wait until you see what Carel got to see). Anyway, to business. Tet Zoo regulars will know that I've had a thing about anurans (frogs and toads) recently (go here, here or here); the reasons for this will become clear soon enough. And to make things easier in the articles that will follow, I thought it might be a good idea to produce a short article on…
neurophilosophy | October 28, 2007
A new paper about the reproductive behaviour of the spiny anteater, to be published in the December issue of American Naturalist, makes for fascinating - if slightly disturbing - reading.
The spiny anteater (Tachyglossuss aculeatus) is a primitive mammal with an unusual four-headed penis. The animal is difficult to observe in the wild, and does not readily copulate when in captivity, so exactly how the male uses its penis was a mystery.
Stephen Johnston of the University of Queensland and his colleagues obtained a male spiny anteater which regularly produced erections when handled during…
clock | October 27, 2007Same-sex Attraction Is Genetically Wired In Nematode's Brain:
University of Utah biologists genetically manipulated nematode worms so the animals were attracted to worms of the same sex -- part of a study that shows sexual orientation is wired in the creatures' brains.
Secrets Behind Butterfly Wing Patterns Uncovered:
The genes that make a fruit fly's eyes red also produce red wing patterns in the Heliconius butterfly found in South and Central America, finds a new study by a UC Irvine entomologist.
Ancient DNA Reveals That Some Neanderthals Were Redheads:
Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones…
neurotopia | October 26, 2007It's not a good millenium to be a monkey.
GENEVA (AFP) - Nearly a third of all non-human primates could be wiped out, threatened by illegal wildlife trade, climate change and destruction of their habitat, a new report warned on Friday.
Twenty-nine percent of all monkeys, apes and gorilla species are now in danger of going extinct, according to the report by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN).
A complete shame because we have so many close relatives on our family bush that can teach us about evolution, how our brains work, and generally what it means to be human.
It highlighted…
clock | October 25, 2007Travelling delayed me a little bit, but as you already learned to expect by now, new articles get published on PLoS ONE on Tuesday afternoons. Before I showcase the papers I personally find interesting, first let me remind you to join in the discussion on our ongoing Journal Club on the article Parts, Wholes, and Context in Reading: A Triple Dissociation: read, rate, annotate, comment, blog about and send trackbacks if your software supports them. Now, to this week's wealth of papers - 24 appeared this week and here are those I like the best:
Analysis of the Trajectory of Drosophila…
grrlscientist | October 24, 2007tags: book review, biotechnology, biomedicine, stem cells, ethics, Cloning: A Beginner's Guide, Aaron Levine
Would you drink milk from a cloned cow?
Should we clone extinct or endangered species?
Are we justified in using stem cells to develop cures?
When will we clone the first human?
Ever since Dolly the sheep was born, questions like these have been part of the public consciousness, and now, cloning is poised to revolutionize medicine, healthcare, and even the food we eat. Regardless of what certain politicians do to slow the progress of scientific research, cloning is here to stay, and…
tsmith | October 23, 2007It's only taken 30 years, but information about Ebola in nature is finally starting to snowball. First, after almost 15 years of disappearing from the human population, Ebola returned with a vengeance in the mid 1990s, causing illness in 6 separate outbreaks in Gabon, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and South Africa (imported case) between 1994 and 1996. As doctors and scientists rushed in to contain the outbreaks, they were also able to collect viral samples, and trap animals and insects in the area, searching for a reservoir for the virus. In this decade, there have been…
grrlscientist | October 22, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
A pair of Moluccan Red Lories, Eos bornea rothschildi (upper right and lower left (upside down)), and a pair of Rainbow Lorikeet, Trichoglossus haematodus haematodus (center; one bird is hanging upside down), near the north coast of Seram, Indonesia.
Image: Kevin Sharp [wallpaper size].
Birds in Science
The ability to ramp up testosterone levels drives certain male sparrows to mate, but also makes them bad dads, a new study suggests. Researchers had thought that the total amount of testosterone might determine the…
laelaps | October 22, 2007
An artist's reconstruction, released by the National Museum of Brazil, of the paleoecology inhabited by Futalognkosaurus (left). It is being menaced by Megaraptor, now known to be a tetanuran theropod.
For quite some time it was thought that after the Jurassic period the massive sauropods that roamed North America were all but extinct, a radiation of ankylosaurs, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, and other ornithischians becoming the primary herbivores in place of the massive long-necked saurischians. At least one genus did hang on until the Late Cretaceous, the titanosaur Alamosaurus sanjuanensis…
tetrapodzoology | October 18, 2007
As per bloody usual, I'm going to struggle to get a 'proper' post finished today, so yet again I'll have to settle for posting something short and sweet (PS - I failed miserably). Who am I kidding anyway - 95% of the bloggers in the blogosphere routinely produce articles that are shorter than my 'short' posts. I'm sure Tet Zoo readers know how lucky they are :) I'm reading a lot about obscure frogs and toads at the moment, hence the adjacent image. But more on that in a moment. Let me start by saying a very belated congrats to Brian Switek - better known as Laelaps - for hitting the big time…
clock | October 17, 2007Dawn Of Animal Vision Discovered:
By peering deep into evolutionary history, scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered the origins of photosensitivity in animals. The scientists studied the aquatic animal Hydra, a member of Cnidaria, which are animals that have existed for hundreds of millions of years. The authors are the first scientists to look at light-receptive genes in cnidarians, an ancient class of animals that includes corals, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
Ecologists Discover City Is 'Uber-forest' For Big Owls:
Charlotte has a spooky secret: the North…
loom | October 17, 2007[Update 10/18 8:30 am: Honestly, when I wrote this post last night, I could only access the first couple paragraphs of the op-ed in question. But now the link takes you to the full text. Could it be that my cries were heard?? Doubt it, but open access is always nice.]
In today's Wall Street Journal there was a very provocative op-ed by ecologist Daniel Botkin. He argues that the evidence of potential harm from global warming is overblown. Here is what you can see for free...
Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life -- ours and that of all living things on…
cortex | October 17, 2007Hendrick Hertzberg takes on the Navy sonar technology which is killing whales:
Whales live in a world of sound. A large part of their brains, which in many species are larger than ours, is devoted to processing sound. We don't know how they subjectively experience the processed sound, but it is reasonable to speculate that their experience of hearing is comparable in depth, detail, and complexity to our experience of vision. (They may be able, for example, to "see" inside each others' bodies, giving them an analogue of the nonverbal communication of emotion for which we use gesture and facial…
cmcclain | October 17, 2007I am concerned about comments on a few websites and in the press over the last year. Most disheartening is a EU memo entitled "Questions and Answers on Destructive Fishing Practices"
When scientists talk about vulnerable marine habitats in the context of the deep sea, they are referring to structures such as cold-water corals, hydrothermal vents, sea mounts or deep sea sponge beds. Not a great deal is known about such structures, but two things are already clear from the research that has been conducted to date: 1. that they function as concentrators of biodiversity in what are otherwise…
grrlscientist | October 16, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, blue feathers, Tyndall scattering, Rayleigh light scattering, schemochromes, white feathers
A pair of hyacinthine macaws, Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus.
Image: The Guardian.
Most avian plumage colors are the result of different types of pigments that are deposited into feathers while they are regrowing after moult. However, pigments alone do not produce all avian feather colors. Blues, such as those seen in hyacinthine macaws, Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus, and white, such as the snowy color of Bali mynahs, Leucopsar rothschildi, typically result from small changes…