Social Sciences
edyong | May 17, 2008As far as humans are concerned, sexually-transmitted infections are things to avoid. But imagine if these infections didn't cause death and disease, but gave you superpowers instead. It may sound like a bizarre fantasy, but it's just part of life for aphids.
Aphids mostly reproduce without sex, giving rise to many all-female generations that are exact copies (clones) of their parents. They only have sex once in autumn, the only time when mothers give birth to males. Asexual reproduction makes sense for aphid mothers since they pass on all of their genes to their daughters. If they…
clock | May 16, 2008'Mitochondrial Eve' Research: Humanity Was Genetically Divided For 100,000 Years:
The human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have caused and maintained the separation.
Simple Artificial Cell Created From Scratch To Study Cell Complexity:
A team of Penn State researchers has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and…
jjacquet | May 16, 2008Today is Endangered Species Day, a resolution introduced by Maine Senator Susan Collins and California Senator Dianne Feinstein to help increase awareness about threats to endangered wildlife, fish and plants.
In celebration, let's look at this article in the BBC about how wildlife populations are plummeting.
Between a quarter and a third of the world's wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to data compiled by the Zoological Society of London.
Populations of land-based species fell by 25%, marine by 28% and freshwater by 29%, it says.
Humans are wiping out about 1% of all other species…
jstemwedel | May 15, 2008After what has felt to me like a cooler than usual April and beginning of May, we seem finally to be changing seasons here. (OK, changing seasons with a vengeance -- apparently our temperatures yesterday were record highs.)
Of course, in this part of California, we have two seasons: the green season and the gold season (which some insist on calling the brown season). The winter, and the winter rains, are over. Now it's time for things to dry out.
This, as Michael O'Hare notes, means that water districts are trying to work out what to do about anticipated water shortages. He writes:
The…
gregladen | May 14, 2008
The Hofstra University Library, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Hofstra Cultural Center present a conference:
Darwin's Reach examines the impact of Darwin and Darwinian evolution on science and society in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin and the sesquicentennial of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859).
The central theme of this academic conference is an exploration of how Darwin's ideas have revolutionized our understanding of both the living world and human nature.
Papers exploring diverse topics on…
scientificactivist | May 14, 2008On Monday, I attended an interesting lecture sponsored by the 21st Century School here in Oxford entitled "What Is Science For?". You can see a discussion on the event here and read a pdf summary of it here. The lecture was co-presented by scientist John Sulston and philosopher John Harris, and it was introduced by Richard Dawkins, who also moderated the Q&A afterward. As the summary focuses on, the event was partially a debate on the purpose of science, with Harris proposing a utilitarian view and Sulston defending a focus more on the intrinsic value of inquiry and discovery (and…
purepedantry | May 14, 2008Not Exactly Rocket Science has a great post showing that sloths in the wild may be slow, but aren't actually that sleepy:
Rattenborg captured three female brown-throated three-toed sloths in the Panamanian rainforest and fitted them with the recording cap, a radio-telemetry collar to reveal their locations and an accelerometer to record their movements. After several days of monitoring, the recorders revealed that the sloths slumbered for only 9.6 hours every day, more than 6 hours less than the data from captive animals would have us believe. REM sleep made up about 20% of total sleep, a…
tetrapodzoology | May 13, 2008
I have a lot on at the moment, so getting this finished wasn't easy - but I managed it. Here we are with the rest of my recollections from 'Dinosaurs (and other extinct saurians) - A Historical Perspective', held at Burlington House (home of the Geological Society of London) on May 6th and 7th (part I here). This time round we look at the second day of talks, as well as the posters and whatever else I can think to write about...
So, the day kicked off with Phil Currie's talk on the history of dinosaur hunting in Asia. Yes, Phil Currie. After talking about the AMNH expeditions of the 1920s,…
jrosenhouse | May 13, 2008Ed Brayton has an interesting post on one of my favorite subjects. It is based on remarks made by two of Ed's commenters. Let's have a look.
Commenter Sastra begins with the following:
I suspect that ID advocates haven't bothered to condemn Stein's statement because they have all intuitively translated it into what Stein actually meant. They translate everything into their own idiom, because they are fighting a different war. It's not about the science.
“Science leads to killing people” doesn't really mean what it appears to say. Instead, it means:
“If you base your world view only on…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2008In a recent post, I referred readers to a comment that had been left on another post. In the ensuing comment thread, I received a complaint that this was "only anecdotal evidence" . I should have cited some relevant literature to go along with it. That I needed to have "some science" in my post.
One of the many reasons for the existence of this blog is to tell stories about what happens in real women's lives - naming experience. Telling stories and naming the experience are worthwhile endeavors in and of themselves. It drives me nuts the way some people use "anecdote" as if it were…
omnibrain | May 12, 2008Right now I'm about to, or already am, standing at a podium to give a talk at the Vision Sciences Society annual meeting (better known as VSS) in Naples Florida.
Wish me luck!
Here's the exciting abstract:
Popping in and out of existence: The effect of gradual and abrupt occlusion on object localization.
J. Stephen Higgins1,2, Daniel Simons1,2, Ranxiao Wang1,2
1Department of Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2Beckman Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The human visual system typically tracks the position of objects as they move. However, when disruption…
laelaps | May 7, 2008
Mr. Bergh to the Rescue
THE DEFRAUDED GORILLA: "That Man wants to claim my Pedigree. He says he is one of my Descendants."
MR. BERGH: "Now, Mr. Darwin, how could you insult him so?"
This cartoon was published in Harper's Weekly in 1871, the year Darwin's The Descent of Man was first published. The "Mr. Bergh" being referred to is Henry Bergh, who founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866. As for the gorilla, the great ape prominently featured in political cartoons and satire as the public was fascinated with them, and some naturalists placed them…
nisbetmc | May 5, 2008
This week's On the Media spotlights Rushmore Drive, the new search engine marketed to African Americans (audio above). As the program describes, the search engine uses a unique algorithm to find those sites that are most heavily trafficked by blacks and to return them at the top of the search results. From host Bob Garfield's interview with CEO Johnny Taylor:
JOHNNY TAYLOR: The algorithm, it's one of the few places where the black community becomes the majority for purposes of producing results. In all of the mainstream search engines, the majority's behavior is what detects how the results…
gregladen | May 5, 2008I woke up to an icky world this morning. After painfully clearing my lungs and scarfing down some medication, I scanned the TV channels for news. and the blogosphere for inspiration. The TV was giving me mainly god, while the blogosphere was giving me measles, pandemics, murdered sea lions, and this poor eagle with its beak snapped off.
TV land was still in it's pre-day stage (which runs an hour later here in the Midwest). Therefore, fully half or more of the stations were busy peddling Christianity. I learned that it was easier to accept faith and know that God has a plan than to…
oracknows | May 5, 2008That's the message that Ben Stein has been pushing lately, namely not just the hated "Darwinism" but science itself inevitably leads to political philosophies such as Nazi-ism and Stalinism (but especially Nazi-ism, given its emphasis on racial hygiene and eugenics), including the mass murder that resulted from them. As a result, Stein has been correctly and deservedly excoriated not just by science bloggers, but even by fellow conservatives such as Instapundit, who characterized Stein as "totally having lost it," and John Derbyshire, who correctly characterized Stein's lies as a blood libel…
petnoyer | May 3, 2008a special guest post by John Guinotte, Marine Conservation Biology Institute
The answer is uncertain as very few manipulative experiments have been conducted to test how deep-sea corals react to changes in temperature, seawater chemistry (pH), water motion (currents), and food availability. It is likely that the effects of climate change will not be positive for deep-sea corals, because they are highly specialized and have evolved under very stable (cold, dark, nutrient-rich) conditions. Temperature, salinity, seawater chemistry, and light availability control calcification rates in shallow…
hrynyshyn | May 3, 2008It wasn't easy keeping my 18-month-old son out of trouble in the crowd that had gathered yesterday to hear Hillary Clinton speak. But it was worth it, if for no other reason than the opportunities to hear presidential candidates deliver their message unfiltered and unedited are rare out here in western North Carolina. Of course, I was disappointed with what I heard on Hendersonville's Main Street. But the little guy didn't do any damage to himself or anyone else, or anyone else's dog, and I did come away with something to think about.
I was disappointed because I'm one of those tree-hugging…
oracknows | April 30, 2008
I may have joked a bit about certain surgeons whom, because they say such dumb, pseudoscientific things with alarming regularity, I consider embarrassments to the noble profession that is surgery. Usually, it's been surgeons who reveal an astonishing ignorance of the science of evolution as they parrot long discredited and debunked canards about evolution while spouting creationist nonsense. You know about whom I speak: surgeons like neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor and general surgeon Dr. Henry Jordan. But, as mind-numbingly dumb as some of the things that, for example, Dr. Egnor has said…
hrynyshyn | April 30, 2008It's hard to say just when humanity stopped trying to prevent climate change. Some say only a few prescient individuals ever really took the threat seriously until the dramatic events of 2012. But by then, of course, it was too late to do anything about it. Still, if we have to pinpoint a specific time that the public conversation began to switch from how to avoid catastrophic global warming to learning to live with the consequences, 2008 would be as good a candidate as any.
It had only been a couple of years since almost-president Al Gore had awoken the American people from their slumber…
sa smith | April 30, 2008Its no secret I hate PETA.
They want to kill my best friend.
So I wasnt surprised that in a recent article highlighting the issue of animal shelter euthanasia, PETA was there to dance on about how they are for shelter euthanasia, but but against using dogs for life saving research, but against the KKK, but for killing dogs based on their breed (Arnie is a Jew dog! Yay!), blah blah whatever. Theyre idiots.
What I was surprised to read was The Humane Society another fringe group like PETA, the 'Humane Society of the United States' backing up PETAs idiotic stance:
"No-kill is a noble goal,"…