gregladen | November 13, 2007The one on the right:
Photos by GTL. Location: Pilanesberg, South Africa
gregladen | November 13, 2007Spontaneous Generation (Live Blogging)
I did not like the verbiage ... the wording ... of the pre-show intro at all. Listening to it by itself, ID and "Darwin's Theory" sound like they are of similar import. It really is not necessary in this day and age to pretend that there is actually a debate. Especially on PBS, for crying out loud.
I resent and object to the idea that an issue is not real unless you can show the cover of time with that issue depicted on it.
In the reconstruction, the actors looked better than the originals for the most part.
I wonder if people outside the Northeast…
gregladen | November 13, 2007Question: In science, in reference to probability, how come what you predict is not always what you get?
Answer from 12 year old:
Because experimental and theoretical probability are not the same.
Answer from Hight School student:
Because everyone has their own opinions, views,concepts, and interests, and no one wants to believe they are wrong about what they are saying. Well, what these many people have to say forms into predictions. Then, someone who is a couple of steps higher in level and who actually studies the topic can tell you the actual answer.
...
What is going on here is…
gregladen | November 13, 2007For I and the Bird, send your posts to me RIGHT NOW.
(Or really soon. Technically the deadline is tonight.)
For Oekologie, send them over to Mike, here.
gregladen | November 13, 2007A team of researchers has figured out that that certain bacteria can tell the difference between light and dark, and become ten times more virulent when exposed to sunlight...
This not a really new story, but i think it might interest you.
This is the first time light has been shown to change the course of a bacterial disease. And these particular bacteria are probably not alone: As many as one-third of other bacterial species may react to light by producing physiological or chemical changes.
Brucella, the bacteria that cause the infectious disease brucellosis, and more than 100 other kinds…
gregladen | November 13, 2007My daughter, Julia, is named after two people. One of them is Julia Child. I happen to think Julia Child has had more influence on American society than most other people, by helping to make varied and interesting cuisine part of American culture.
One day when Julia was a very young child (my Julia, not Julia Child), I was out walking her in her carriage. I turned the corner around the Van Serg Building on the Harvard Campus and practically ran into Julia Child, who was walking in the other direction on her daily constitutional.
"Oh, what a cute child," she said. (And she was a cute…
gregladen | November 13, 2007(Santa Barbara, Calif.) - A team of political scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of New Mexico, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Notre Dame has completed a groundbreaking survey that explores how race and gender is changing the political landscape of the United States. The scholars presented their findings today at a press conference at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
The Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project is, to date, the most comprehensive multiracial, multi-office national survey…
gregladen | November 12, 2007New Fossils, Ancient Candy, and Cute Owls
Md. Scientists Monitor Saw-Whet Owls from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- The high-pitched, staccato mating call of a northern saw-whet owl pierces the night and lures birds into a gossamer net that researchers have strung along the Appalachian Trail.
[...]
Rare great ape fossil challenges evolutionary theory: study from PhysOrg.com
Archaeologists have discovered the ancient jawbone of what appears to be a new species of ape that was very close to the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans, a study released Monday said.
[...]
CentrAm…
gregladen | November 12, 2007Many years ago a couple of researchers (Hatley and Kappleman) suggested omnivory, including eating of roots, to be a common theme in the adaptations we see in bears, humans, and pigs. Some years later, Richard Wrangham and I independently and for different reasons came to the idea that roots are potentially important in human evolution, so we collaborated on a paper suggesting this. Subsequently, bits and pieces of data have been accumulating to support this hypothesis (the "root hypothesis"). And here, Jim Moore of San Diego, is reporting on living chimps eating roots in a relatively…
gregladen | November 12, 2007I find it absolutely fascinating that scientists often bother to estimate the effects of diet by feeding controlled quantities of food, especially plant food, to rats to see what happens.
For example, there is a common substance in cooked food that, if fed in even modest quantity to rats, causes the rats to get cancer and die in no time. This raises concerns for humans because, well, the rats died. So the substance must be "bad for you."
But this approach to nutritional science, and the reasoning that goes with it, is deeply flawed.
Now, you may wish to jump in and say, "No, wait,…
gregladen | November 12, 2007"Evolution is the central organizing principle of all biological science, yet teaching evolution has become controversial in many states. When the National Science Teachers Association recently surveyed its members, 30 percent said they experienced pressure to omit or downplay evolution and related topics in their science curriculum. What would you do if someone objected to the teaching of evolution in your school or district?"
From the Briefing Packet for Educators.
From the Judgement Day Website:
In this program, NOVA captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania…
gregladen | November 12, 2007You can now read the Krause et al (2007) paper from Current Biology regarding the FOXP2 variant found in Neanderthals in an open-access on-line form at Current Biology Online.
Here is the summary of the article:
Although many animals communicate vocally, no extant creature rivals modern humans in language ability. Therefore, knowing when and under what evolutionary pressures our capacity for language evolved is of great interest. Here, we find that our closest extinct relatives, the Neandertals, share with modern humans two evolutionary changes in FOXP2, a gene that has been implicated in…
gregladen | November 12, 2007Things to notice in this video:
The scientific sounding languge.
The cool 3D graphics
The guy bloating up because he has not eaten his SKRMs yet. Then he eats the SKRMs and gets better.
gregladen | November 11, 2007It would be nice. Hey, a few years ago one of our local affiliates was bought by Fox. So one day you have Robin and Jeff doing a pretty darn good job of delivering the news, and the next day you have the same people ... Robin and Jeff ... screaming sensationalist crap into the news camera. Same stories, same actors, different tone. And, of course, Fox fed a different flavor of national feed into that local system for good measure.
(Well, OK, they weren't exactly screaming, but you get the point. Oh, and I do remember how uncomfortable they looked with their new edgy and sometimes over…
gregladen | November 11, 2007A mural-decorated temple that may date to 4,000 years old is being reported from the coastal desert region of Northern Peru.
Some of the walls of the 27,000-square-foot site - almost half the size of a football field - were painted, and a white and red mural depicts a deer being hunted with a net.
Alva said the temple was apparently constructed by an "advanced civilization" because it was built with mud bricks made from sediment found in local rivers, instead of rocks.
"This discovery shows an architectural and iconographic tradition different from what has been known until now," said…
gregladen | November 11, 2007Five ships have sunk, so far, in the vicinity of the Kerch Strait, linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, in an incredible storm. One of the ships was a Russian tanker carrying 1,300 tons of fuel oil. Claims are being made that this is one of the worst environmental disasters ever. One of the things that lends significance to this disaster, regardless of how bad the environmental effects are, is the large number of ships that have sunk or have been rescued, and the dozens of sailors that appear to have died. The catch is that this is a result of one of those extreme storms that we seem…
gregladen | November 11, 2007... I believe it even less than I did before, and I believed it not at all, of course.
This is an actual reconstruction from the Creation Museum in Kentucky, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
[hat tip: Pharyngula]
gregladen | November 10, 2007As you have surely heard, the Yellowstone Caldera ... the place where Old Faithful and the Geyser Basin reside ... has been undergoing increased "activity" including some earthquakes and a rising up of the land. Is this a big problem? Should the evacuate? Should those of us living only a few states away start wearing earplugs?
The paper reporting this, in the current issue of Science, concludes:
The caldera-wide accelerated uplift reported here is interpreted as magmatic recharge of the Yellowstone magma body. Although the geodetic observations and models do not imply an impending volcanic…
gregladen | November 10, 2007 JUDGMENT DAY PRAISED IN NATURE
From the National Center for Science Education ...
Judgement Day Praised in Nature
Reviewing Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial -- the new documentary about Kitzmiller v. Dover -- for the November 8, 2007, issue of Nature (450: 170), Adam Rutherford was impressed, not least with the way in which the filmmakers met the challenge of retelling the story. "The makers of Judgment Day inject tension with eyewitness accounts from the people of Dover," he writes, "and home-video footage of raucous school board meetings shows how passionate and divided this…