Social Sciences
gregladen | August 25, 2009Natural Selection is the key creative force in evolution. Natural selection, together with specific histories of populations (species) and adaptations, is responsible for the design of organisms. Most people have some idea of what Natural Selection is. However, it is easy to make conceptual errors when thinking about this important force of nature. One way to improve how we think about a concept like this is to carefully exam its formal definition.
In this post, we will do the following:
Discuss historical and contextual aspects of the term "Natural Selection" in order to make clear…
hrynyshyn | August 24, 2009There's a fascinating exchange between two of England's better minds, George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth, over at the former's blog/website under the rubric of "Should we seek to save industrial civilization?"
It begins with Kingsnorth's lament over the implications of all the exponential growth curves he's come across in recent times:
Sitting on the desk in front of me are a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each graph is identical: it represents time, from the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, human population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of…
palmd | August 23, 2009I'm really trying to understand this. Really. Why is the outcry against health care reform so much louder than the call for reform? I have a very hard time believing that a majority of people are against some sort of improvement in our system. Around here, people are losing their insurance right and left. But they sometimes seem more scared of reform than of remaining uninsured.
Those of us in favor of a single payer system are shut out of this one. "Medicare for all" is uttered only quietly among well-known co-conspirators. When people who oppose this plan, or even just oppose the…
ejohnson | August 21, 2009
Over the last few weeks, we've seen varied and thought-provoking answers to our first question:
The boundaries of science are continually expanding as scientists become increasingly integral to finding solutions for larger social issues, such as poverty, conflict, financial crises, etc. On what specific issue/problem do you feel we need to bring the scientific lens to bear?
From extending the length of human life to localizing and diversifying sources of energy, our Revolutionary Minds have no shortage of ideas as to how a scientific approach might benefit society. And we want to hear from…
oracknows | August 21, 2009If there's one form of pseudoscientific health care (if you can call it that) that rests on the most risibly implausible tenets, I'd have to say that it's homeopathy. Either that, or homeopathy and various "energy medicine" modalities would have to fight it out in a no woo barred cage match to the death for the title of most scientifically ridiculous medical "therapy." Unfortunately, because of its history, where in the 1800s it was often actually as good or better than the "scientific" medicine of the time (mainly because homeopathy is nothing more than water--in essence doing nothing--and…
clock | August 19, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 300 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post
A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…
awild | August 19, 2009
In case you were wondering, ants turn out to be ambidextrous.
Instead of favoring one side or the other as we humans do with our hands, ants show no preference for working with either mandible. That's the conclusion of a new study by Cassill & Singh:
Abstract: The elongation and sharp teeth of ant mandibles are considered important adaptations that have contributed to ants successful colonization of terrestrial habitats worldwide. In extant ant species, mandibles function as hunting and defense weapons, as well as multipurpose tools for excavating soil, cutting leaves, capturing and…
clock | August 18, 2009Two recent events put in stark relief the differences between the old way of doing things and the new way of doing things. What am I talking about? The changing world of science publishing, of course.
Let me introduce the two examples first, and make some of my comments at the end.
Example 1. Publishing a Comment about a journal article
My SciBling Steinn brought to our collective attention a horrific case of a scientist who spent a year fighting against the editors of a journal, trying to have a Comment published about a paper that was, in his view, erroneous (for the sake of the argument it…
zooillogix | August 18, 2009Who, I ask you, is the coolest human being on the planet? Well yesterday (continuing through today and possibly tomorrow) it was Beth F. for sending me this rocking shot glass from the Oakland Zoo.
Awesome things in this photo include: Oakland Zoo Shot Glassitude, my thumb, waffle-weave polyester couch.
Additionally, I also recently acquired a Honolulu Zoo shot glass. So that brings the collection up to 39! I'll tell you this... whoever supplies me with my 40th zoo or aquarium shot glass will get something really special. I won't divulge exactly what it is, but it will involve glitter and…
purepedantry | August 17, 2009The abstract says it all:
Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include…
ejohnson | August 17, 2009Below, Nick Matzke responds to the question:
The boundaries of science are continually expanding as scientists become increasingly integral to finding solutions for larger social issues, such as poverty, conflict, financial crises, etc. On what specific issue/problem do you feel we need to bring the scientific lens to bear?
Obviously there are hundreds of important problems that scientists need to work on. But if we are talking about prioritizing, the number 1 problem that the world needs to solve can be summarized in one word: nukes. It's the same problem we've had for 60 years.
The case…
drorzel | August 17, 2009
In a Queens Park, Duke Riley Leads a Battle on the Low Seas - NYTimes.com
"This was an art exhibition -- a term that perhaps conjures a more subdued event. But the art in this show, called "Those About to Die Salute You," involved humans in motion, boats on water and those tomatoes. It was the creation of Duke Riley, whose work skews aquatic and unpredictable: He once built a wood and fiberglass submarine, floated it too close to the Queen Mary 2 and was arrested.
His vision for Queens on Thursday night was a Roman-style staged naval battle among representatives of museums in four New York…
clock | August 17, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 300 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post
A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…
clock | August 14, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 280 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post
A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…
razib | August 13, 2009A helpful invasive species?:
Introduced species can wreak havoc on the ecosystems they invade. But what happens after they've been established for centuries? A new study in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society suggests that, in one case, an introduced species has actually become an important part of the native ecosystem -- and helps protect native species from another invader [$-a].
...
Recently a news article in Nature discussed ragamuffin earth [$-a] -- the idea that human interference in nature has so dramatically changed natural systems that it may often be impossible to restore "…
oracknows | August 12, 2009I hadn't planned on writing about this topic again. Really, I hadn't. The reason is mainly that politics is usually not my bag. I've said it time and time again: political bloggers are a dime a dozen, and I have no reason to suspect that my pontifications and bloviations on politics would be any more valuable or worthy of your attention than anyone else's pontifications and bloviations on politics. Besides, I've made quite the little niche for myself in the blogosphere writing about skepticism, critical thinking, and science in medicine, in particular how unscientific or pseudoscientific…
dsalo | August 11, 2009FriendFeed, now due to be absorbed into the Borg the Facebook empire, allowed me to lurk on the fringes of the scientific community Cameron Neylon mentions in his post on the takeover.
Insert all the usual clichés here: it was enormously valuable, I learned a lot, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. My humanities training wouldn't normally gain me entrée into such a circle, and neither would my professional identity. Insofar as I have professional ambitions in scientific data management, every bit of acculturation I can come by is priceless.
That community wasn't the only one I…
laelaps | August 11, 2009
The skeleton of an orangutan and a human compared. From Richard Owen's The Principal Forms of the Skeleton and of the Teeth.
I have developed something of a bad habit. Whenever I am reading a book, paper, or article and I spot a bit of unattributed "received wisdom" I immediately get the urge to track down the reference to see if the author is in error. The task might consume only a few minutes or it may take many hours, but I cannot help my compulsion.
An op-ed by Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk, co-creators of the Biologos website, set me to work this afternoon. The pair wrote;
But the…
clock | August 11, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 260 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post
A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…
oracknows | August 10, 2009
Remember the Hitler Zombie? He doesn't show up all that much anymore. The reason is not because a lot of brain dead Nazi analogies aren't being used to demonize political opponents. In fact, If I had a mind to, I could probably populate this blog with nothing other than people whose brains have obviously been eaten by the zombie, leaving so little intellectual firepower left that they actually believe that comparing President Obama to Hitler makes sense. Mainly, the reason that I don't do Hitler Zombie bits so often anymore is that the monster has chomped so many brains, producing so much…