gregladen | March 22, 2008A common presumption is that behavior is part of phenotype, and since phenotype arises from genotype (plus/minus Reaction Norm), that there can be a study of "behavioral genetics." This is certainly an overstatement (or oversimplification) for organisms with extensive and/or complex neural systems, such as humans and mice. Neural systems probably evolved (not initially, but eventually) to disassociate behavior with the kind of pre-determined micro-management of behavior that a simple gene-behavior link requires. However, in organisms with neural systems the size of the period at the end of…
gregladen | March 22, 2008... and, gave positive results. I know you have been waiting in anticipation for the results of an experiment in which an astronaut was going to toss a boomerang in space to see if it came back.
Well, it worked:
Boomerang works in space: Japanese astronaut from PhysOrg.com
In an unprecedented experiment, a Japanese astronaut has thrown a boomerang in space and confirmed it flies back much like on Earth.
[...]
Whew, this one had me really worried...
gregladen | March 22, 2008
For the first time in ages, the sale of new PCs with Windows as a percentage of the PC market is declining sharply. The new winner is the Mac, but, while no one does a good job of tracking the still-new, pre-installed Linux desktop market, it's also clear that Linux is finally making impressive inroads into Windows' once unchallenged market share.
[source]
gregladen | March 22, 2008 .. according to a forthcoming article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Specifically, this paper argues for a trend in increasing morphological complexity, observed in several different parallel lineages of Crustacea.
From the abstract:
The prospect of finding macroevolutionary trends and rules in the history of life is tremendously appealing, but very few pervasive trends have been found. Here, we demonstrate a parallel increase in the morphological complexity of most of the deep lineages within a major clade. We focus on the Crustacea, measuring the morphological…
gregladen | March 22, 2008I and the Bird # 71 is here.
I am covering both Gene Genie and Berr Go Round, so please send me your gene and plant submissions over the next couple of days!
gregladen | March 22, 2008This little video, very nicely done, should be shown in all social studies classes in America, discussed at length, and it should be on the exam. From now on.
Source: Richarddawkins.net
Lord Privy Seals All The Way Down ... arf arf.
See also:
PZ Myers Expelled, Gains Sainthood
Expelled! The Movie To Be Pulled From Theaters Following Myers/Dawkins-Gate Screwup
gregladen | March 22, 2008More links have been added to the ever growing sampling of commentary on the Myers-Dawkins Expelled-Gate Event.
As e we move ever closer to the self destruction of the Intelligent Design Movement, I note that the Expelled Gate Even now is now competing for space in the Wikipedia Entry on Irony (but some help may be needed ... there seems to be some creationists there erasing themselves whenever the evolutionists add them in).
gregladen | March 21, 2008There once was a librarian who was an absolute horror, a bitch, a true shit of a person. Her name was Nancy. No one liked her, she liked no one else. Her employees suffered greatly, and the only people who could work with her for more than a few months were Morris and Igor (assumed names) because they were like her. One day an employee who was receiving chemotherapy once a week informed Nancy that she had to start taking chemo twice a week. Nancy fired her on the spot. That was what it was like every day working for her, but because she kept the library running very nicely, her…
gregladen | March 21, 2008And the winner for best music video: "Chocolate Rain." Tay Zonday morphed from an unknown musician to an Internet superstar who got booked on national TV shows after his song "Chocolate Rain" - an amateur clip of his baritone crooning - went viral last year. Now he's among the 12 winners of the second annual YouTube Video Awards, recognizing the top user-created videos of 2007.
[source]
gregladen | March 21, 2008Genie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education and author of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools, will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Science, from the University of New Mexico.
This will be her sixth honorary degree. Had she known that she would have been bestowed all of these doctorates, would she have bothered with the first, hard earned PhD????
(Probably)
Congratulations Genie!
Details here.
gregladen | March 21, 2008From the National Center for Science Education
The antievolution bills recently introduced in the Florida legislature continue to elicit opposition. The bills closely resemble a string of similar bills in Alabama -- HB 391 and SB 336 in 2004; HB 352, SB 240, and HB 716 in 2005; HB 106 and SB 45 in 2006 -- as well as a model bill that the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the institutional home of "intelligent design" creationism, recently began to promote. Asked by the Miami Herald (March 13, 2008) whether "intelligent design" constituted "scientific information" in the…
gregladen | March 21, 2008
Oceangoing sailing rafts plied the waters of the equatorial Pacific long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, and carried tradegoods for thousands of miles all the way from modern-day Chile to western Mexico, according to new findings by MIT researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
...
[This] supports earlier evidence documented by Hosler that the two great centers of pre-European civilization in the Americas--the Andes region and Mesoamerica--had been in contact with each other and had longstanding trading relationships. That conclusion was based on an…
gregladen | March 21, 2008The Third Congressional District from Minnesota, in which I live, has been a Republican seat since the districts around the Twin Cities were Jerrymandered some time ago. The Republican incumbent in this district is retiring this year, and there is a reasonable chance of flipping the district to a Democrat. Ashwin Madia is moving quickly towards attaining the DFL (That's Minnesotan for 'Democratic') endorsement. (I caucuses for him in the Senate Distract convention a couple of weeks ago). He's an excellent candidate, and will make an excellent member of congress. If you are a voter in the…
gregladen | March 21, 2008Many more comments and posts on Expelled, the Sequel.
On Richard Dawkins Net
PZ Myers gets Expelled
On Talk Origins.
I think in the end, the movie Expelled will have less written about it than The Day They Expelled PZ.
And, getchyer LOL PZ and Dawkins Pic's here!
Partial Loss of Face Recognition may be Associated with the ID(C) Locus: A Case Study
gregladen | March 21, 2008Please note that the Boneyard Web Carnival is looking for submissions RIGHT NOW. HURRY!
CLICK HERE
gregladen | March 21, 2008... according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study compares skull measurements of Flores material with a wide range of other hominid data and concludes that Flores cannot be clustered with Homo sapiens. This is the first published study that takes into account how size affects shape. By correcting for size, this study makes, the authors claim, a more valid comparison between measurements taken on the Flores material and other comparative data.
We show that whether or not the effects of its small cranial size are accounted for, the…
gregladen | March 21, 2008As you have undoubtedly heard, a group of evolutionary biologists and evolutionary biology supporters attended a showing of the movie Expelled, in the Twin Cities, last night. This group included the very famous Richard Dawkins and the only slightly less famous PZ Myers. PZ and Richard, in fact, were together in line, along with PZ's spouse, a daughter, and a future son in law. Other evolution supporters and at least one local evolutionary-type blogger were also in line.
While waiting in line and minding their own business, PZ was spotted by the Expelled! production staff, and EXPELLED…