clock | April 11, 2007As you know, the last several days saw quite a flurry of blog posts about framing science. I posted my thoughts here and I keep updating my post with links to all the new posts as they show up (except the expected drivel by William Dembski, some minor creaitonists and Lubos Motl). Some of the other bloggers ignored my post, many linked to it without comment, and many linked to it with positive commentary - with two exceptions.
One was Larry Moran (who probably skimmed it quickly, found what he did not like in it with his own frame of mind at the time, and used it as a starting point to…
clock | April 11, 2007How did I miss this!?
Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, one of my personal scientific idols, died on January 25th, 2007at the age of 92.
He has re-invented, or perhaps better to say invented, the field of comparative physiology (now often refered to as 'evolutionary physiology'). He wrote the standard textbook in the field - Animal Physiology: Adaptation and Environment, that he updated through several editions, from which generations of biologists (including myself) learned to think of physiological mechanisms as adaptations.
He wrote a definitive book on Scaling, as well as a wonderful autobiography…
clock | April 11, 2007Strange Maps
Dingo's Kidneys
Jim Davies: the Blog
Stranger than you can imagine
Omniorthogonal
Metroblog
The Anterior Commissure
Everything and more
Rabett Run
Only In It For The Gold
clock | April 11, 2007The Carnival Of Education: Week 114 is up on The Education Wonk.
Carnival of Homeschooling: Week 67 is up on Apollos Academy.
clock | April 11, 2007Evolution Of Symbiosis:
The aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum depends on a bacterial symbiont, Buchnera aphidicola, for amino acids it can't get from plants. The aphid, in turn, provides the bacterium with energy and carbon as well as shelter inside specialized cells. Such interdependent relationships are not unusual in the natural world. What is unusual, report Helen Dunbar, Nancy Moran, and colleagues in a new study published this week in the open access journal PLoS Biology, is that a single point mutation in Buchnera's genome can have consequences for its aphid partner that are sometimes…
clock | April 10, 2007....my father would have turned 86.
I'll have a shot of slivovitz in his honor tonight.
clock | April 10, 2007When my 'Scientific American' arrived the other day, I was excited to read the article about ravens by Bernd Heinrich, as I loved his book Mind of a Raven. I was also glad to see that new cool experiments have been done since the book came out. But I wondering how to blog about an article that is behind the subscription wall, so in the end, I abandoned the idea.
Now, Grrrlscientist comes to the rescues with an excellent summary of the article, that is well worth your time.
clock | April 10, 2007As you may have noticed, there is a vigorous debate going on in the blogosphere about framing science (all the links to all the relevant posts can be found if you click on that link).
For the uninitiated, this may look as a big dust-up and bar-brawl, but that is how blogosphere works, ya know, thesis + anthithesis and all. Dialectics, that's the word I was looking for! Does not mean that Larry Moran and I will refuse to have a beer with each other when he comes to Chapel Hill next time!
The sheer quantity of responses, the passion, and the high quality of most posts, thoughtful and…
clock | April 10, 2007...or blog post, or any non-fiction for that matter. Dave Munger explains. As one of his commenters notes: "
Actually, this fantastic post is like a DSM entry for diagnosing crappy science writing. "Must exhibit 7 of 9 symptoms for 200 pages."
Print it out and put it next to your computer. Check it out next time you start writing something...
clock | April 10, 2007Tenth Edition of International Carnival of Pozitivities is up on Transcending Gender
clock | April 10, 2007Some Bottlenose Dolphins Don't Coerce Females To Mate:
Mating strategies are straightforward in bottlenose dolphins, or are they? Much of the work carried on male-female relationships in that species to date show that males tend to coerce females who are left with little choice about with whom to mate. This explains the complex relationships we observe in male bottlenose dolphins, which are only paralleled by human social strategies: the formation of alliances and alliances of alliances, also called coalitions. These alliances and coalitions are then used to out-compete other male bands to…
clock | April 9, 2007Real Life (as well as the framing science debate) took too much of my time and energy and attention so I never got to posting this very inportant notice. I will just copy what Sharp Brains put up, but feel free to write your feedback both to me and to Alvaro:
What is the Brain Essay Student Contest?
A real-life experiment to connect high-school students and teachers of biology and psychology with science and psychology bloggers.
What will happen?
1) Essay submissions by May 10th, 2007: students (or teachers, with students' consent) can use the form below to submit 400-800 word essays on the…
clock | April 9, 2007Do the survey for this week and let me and John know how you answered and why:
Most likely reason a scientist will leave research?
Can't find a permanent position
Desires to earn a higher salary
Sees no correlation between hard work and eventual success
Wants to make a greater impact on society
Feels love of science could be better expressed in another career