Life Sciences
jrosenhouse | October 14, 2007Philosopher Jerry Fodor offers up the latest example of a familiar genre: essays declaring the forthcoming demise of natural selection, coupled with very little in the way of supporting argument. He is writing in the London Review of Books. There's quite a bit I find wrong with Fodor's essay. In this post, however, I will focus solely on what I take his main argument to be, and explain why I find it inadequate.
Fodor writes:
In fact, an appreciable number of perfectly reasonable biologists are coming to think that the theory of natural selection can no longer be taken for granted. This is…
petnoyer | October 14, 2007We don't mention it often, but Craig and I publish regularly outside Deep Sea News, in the public arena of peer-reviewed scientific literature. Craig authors ~3 scientific journal articles per year since 2004. I author ~2/yr. The last two years were above average for both of us. This is amazing to me, because we spend so much time writing for DSN. Either our cups runneth over, or the glacial pace of scientific publishing obscures the impact of our extra-curricular reporting activities here at DSN. I tell you this so you know we are contributors to the field, not only journalists. We make the…
tetrapodzoology | October 14, 2007
So what was the mysterious beast shown in the photo? As usual, the Tet Zoo readership proved too clever to be fooled by such a rubbish trick. That white blurry streak in yesterday's photo was...
.... not a fox, lynx, marten, white carrier bag, draft excluder, house cat, tree trout, rhinogradentian, dormouse, slug, ent, iguana, arboreal monitor lizard, tree octopus, kitten, raccoon, tree-eel, kite skeleton, nor, sadly, a late-surviving, modern-day, dwarf arboreal gorgonopsian (wow - an impressive list of in-jokes there). It is nothing more than, as some of you correctly guessed, a lowly Grey…
laelaps | October 11, 2007When I was first becoming acquainted with dinosaurs during the latter half of the 1980's, the standard "rule" for theropod dinosaurs was that as they grew bigger through the course of time their heads became more robust and their arms grew smaller. Just comparing the Jurassic predator Allosaurus with the Cretaceous Tyrannosaurus rex (numerous pictures of both filling the books I constantly begged my parents to purchase for me) seemed to confirm this, but there was always one very special set of fossil remains that seemed to contradict the prevailing trend. Hung up in the corner at the…
tetrapodzoology | October 7, 2007
So I've told you all about the Wellnhofer pterosaur meeting (three links), and I've told you all about the 55th SVPCA (here and here). But there was a third conference I attended recently (August 17th-19th) that I have yet to write about - it was that cryptozoology one. As some of you might recall, I'm going to avoid using the name of the meeting: it's not that there's anything wrong with the name... it's just that it doesn't exactly do the whole subject of cryptozoology any favours. But, anyway, here are my assorted thoughts. As usual, I'm not going to cover everything, just the…
evolvingthoughts | October 6, 2007
I found this interesting and still surprisingly modern essay by David Starr Jordan in 1897, at William Tozier's blog, where he had scanned it from a journal called The Arena. They had some good public discussion journals at the time.
So I took his scan and OCR'd and corrected it, and put it here. It is amazing how well Jordon managed to avoid the usual errors, and correct those that are with us still, so long ago.
The essay is beneath the fold. I left the headers in.
THE ARENA.
Vol. XVIII.AUGUST, 1897.No. 93.
EVOLUTION: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT.1
BY DR. DAVID STARR…
clock | October 5, 2007Fossil Data Plugs Gaps In Current Knowledge, Study Shows:
Researchers have shown for the first time that fossils can be used as effectively as living species in understanding the complex branching in the evolutionary tree of life.
Cilia: Small Organelles, Big Decisions:
Johns Hopkins researchers say they have figured out how human and all animal cells tune in to a key signal, one that literally transmits the instructions that shape their final bodies. It turns out the cells assemble their own little radio antenna on their surfaces to help them relay the proper signal to the developmental…
clock | October 3, 2007
Huge New Dinosaur Had A Serious Bite:
The newest dinosaur species to emerge from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument had some serious bite, according to researchers from the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.
New Species Of Frog Discovered: Smallest Indian Land Vertebrate:
The India's smallest land vertebrate, a 10-millimeter frog, has been discovered from the Western Ghats of Kerala by Delhi University Systematics Biologist, S D Biju and his colleagues.
No Faking It, Crocodile Tears Are Real:
When someone feigns sadness they "cry crocodile tears," a phrase…
clock | October 2, 2007There are 37 new articles on PLoS ONE today, breaking the 1000 barrier! Yes, there are now more than a thousand papers on ONE. And this week is again an embarassment of riches - so many bloggable papers! And here are some of my quick picks for this week - read them, rate them, annotate them, blog about them:
Composition and Hierarchical Organisation of a Spider Silk:
Albeit silks are fairly well understood on a molecular level, their hierarchical organisation and the full complexity of constituents in the spun fibre remain poorly defined. Here we link morphological defined structural…
tetrapodzoology | October 2, 2007
As discussed in previous articles on the 55th SVPCA, I've decided to publish a version of my talk here on the blog. Some time ago I published a collection of theropod images (go here), some of which might have seemed a bit random or unconnected. As we'll see here, those images are indeed connected, sort of, and now all will be revealed...
Ok, so, the talk was titled The large theropods Becklespinax and Valdoraptor from the Lower Cretaceous of England. I might get into the habit of publishing other talks that I give or, at least, I might in those cases where there's a script or pile of notes…
clock | October 1, 2007
Saber-toothed Cat Was More Like A Pussycat Than A Tiger:
In public imagination, the sabre-toothed cat Smilodon ranks alongside Tyrannosaurus rex as the ultimate killing machine. Powerfully built, with upper canines like knives, Smilodon was a fearsome predator of Ice-Age America's lost giants. For more than 150 years, scientists have debated how this iconic predator used its ferocious fangs to kill its prey. Now a new Australian study, published recently in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, hopes to lay the arguments to rest. And the results will put in dent in Smilodon'…
clock | September 30, 2007Does The Victim Affect Snake Venom Composition?:
A snake's intended prey might affect the type and evolution of toxins in their venom, research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology shows. In snakes, venom composition varies both between species and within a particular species. Land snakes feed on a range of animals and birds, so scientists think that these snakes need a diverse array of toxins in their venom. Sea snakes, on the other hand, tend to have a more restricted diet, feeding only on fish. The toxins in these snakes have now been shown to be less diverse than those in terrestrial…
evolgen | September 29, 2007Most of us are so used to the male+female=baby system of reproduction that we practice that it doesn't even occur to us that there are other options. Sure, there's the occasional instance of parthenogenesis in some megafaunal species, but that seems like the exception rather than the norm. And we do recognize that a lot of the microbes that make up the majority of life on Earth reproduce asexual. But, when it comes to sex, we're stuck on male+female=baby.
Kurt Vonnegut thought otherwise. In his classic novel Slaughterhouse Five, he introduced the Tralfamadorians and their understanding of…
bushwells | September 27, 2007I mentioned in my previous entry the sense of transcendence I feel when I observe the green light passing through a tree's leaves. My neighborhood woods on Princeton Ridge is full of tall trees, including beeches which are my favorite arboreal species. Part of that sense of wonder stems (har) from my knowledge of the inter-relatedness of the tree and myself, my lack of chlorophyll notwithstanding.
John Stiller of East Carolina University contends that we humans are more closely akin to plants than we are to fungi. The following article from ABC Science (that's the Australian Broadcasting…
clock | September 27, 2007Solving A Dragonfly Flight Mystery:
Dragonflies adjust their wing motion while hovering to conserve energy, according to a Cornell University study of the insect's flight mechanics. The revelation contradicts previous speculation that the change in wing motion served to enhance vertical lift.
Mice Teeth Explain The Troubles With Human Wisdom Teeth:
During evolution, many of a species' properties are shaped by ecological interactions. This is readily evident in mammalian teeth, whose many features closely reflect what each species eats. However, for a long time scientists have suspected that…
clock | September 26, 2007This was Anton's idea, at the dinner the other night, but I will get it started here anyway.
An interesting animal I had
I never owned an unusual species of animal. As a little kid I had small turtle named Aeschillus. Later I had two horses, half-brothers, whose names meant the same in two different languages - Meraklija in Serbian and Kefli in Hebrew both mean "one who truly enjoys life and good things in life". My wife was a better namer of horses - her last one, the one she brought into the marriage, she named Double Helix and his barn nickname was Watson. A cat and a dog also became "…
aardvarchaeology | September 26, 2007
Welcome everyone to Aardvarchaeology and the 89th Tangled Bank blog carnival. Aard is strictly focused on whatever strikes the fancy of its archaeologist proprietor. The Tangled Bank provides a leafy warren for all little furry bloggers with an interest in the life sciences. We have good stuff here, so dive in!
Beasties
RPM at Evolgen offers some taxonomic insights apropos of a giant web spun by a diverse gang of distantly related spiders.
Grrlscientist at Living the Scientific Life reports on research into embryo manipulation that would allow common fish species to spawn endangered ones.…
voltagegate | September 26, 2007WWF is running their latest holiday animal adoption campaign, and have some interesting critters up for adoption just in time for Halloween, including the hellbender, octopus and of course, the vampire bat. Cute idea, and I love the teasers, but... THERE'S NO CANDY IN THE BAG???
Guess I'll have to stuff that little orange bag full of Endangered Species Chocolate myself.
clock | September 25, 2007Steve Irwin's last paper is not the only exciting article to appear on PLoS ONE today - there are 40 more, and here are a few I am excited about - a veritable embarassment of riches! When am I ever going to find time to read them all!
Oxytocin in the Circadian Timing of Birth (hey, it's by Erik Herzog, so you know I'll blog about this paper in a separate post later):
Very little is known about the molecular components that determine the timing for birth in mammals. This study compares the timing of births between mice with and without the chemical oxytocin (OT) when exposed to shifts in the…
clock | September 25, 2007
If You Want More Babies, Find A Man With A Deep Voice:
Men who have lower-pitched voices have more children than do men with high-pitched voices, researchers have found. And their study suggests that for reproductive-minded women, mate selection favours men with low-pitched voices.
Spaceflight Can Change Bacteria Into More Infectious Pathogens:
Space flight has been shown to have a profound impact on human physiology as the body adapts to zero gravity environments.
Making Bicycles That Balance Better:
For nearly 150 years, scientists have been puzzled by the bicycle. How on earth is it…