gregladen | November 10, 2007Are you aware of Kaguya (Selene)?
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA) launched "KAGUYA (SELENE)" by the H-IIA Launch Vehicle at 10:31:01 a.m. on September 14, 2007 (JST) from Tanegashima Space Center. The major objectives of the "KAGUYA" mission are to obtain scientific data of the lunar origin and evolution and to develop the technology for the future lunar exploration. "KAGUYA" consists of a main orbiting satellite at about 100km altitude and two small satellites (Relay Satellite and VRAD Satellite) in polar orbit. The orbiters will carry instruments for scientific investigation…
gregladen | November 10, 2007Have a look at this:
Did you notice that "miracle" and chlorophyll" are rhymed? So, maybe there is no word other than "miracle" that rhymes with "chlorophyll." But I doubt it. (See below.)
One could, and many will, argue that this is an innocent use of an innocent phrase and one should not think twice about using this video in an American public school classroom. But those who are in the trenches on this issue know that if you tell the students in a 10th grade biology classroom (for instance) that a particular process is "a miracle" that you have opened a very nasty can of worms. Many…
gregladen | November 10, 2007Kentuckians can be less embarrassed starting soon. This from the NCSE ... it's a bit old, but it had slipped past in a flurry of other emails, and I think it is really interesting.
FLETCHER LOSES KENTUCKY GOVERNORSHIP
Kentucky's incumbent governor Ernie Fletcher (R) was soundly defeated in the November 6, 2007, election, by Steve Beshear (D), a former lieutenant governor of the state, who took 59% of the vote. A Baptist minister, Fletcher was perhaps the most outspoken supporter of creationism to serve as a governor anywhere in the country in recent years. He expressed disappointment about…
gregladen | November 9, 2007This is the question asked in a current paper from PNAS that is available to you as an Open Access article.
Peaking profiles for achieving long-term temperature targets with more likelihood at lower costs
Abstract
How can dangerous interference with the climate system be avoided? Science can help decision-makers answer this political question. Earlier publications have focused on the probability of keeping global mean temperature change below certain thresholds by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at particular levels. We compare the results of such "stabilization profiles" with a…
gregladen | November 9, 2007Chinese made toys, now under recall, contain a substance that metabolizes into gamma hydroxy butyrate, the "date rape" drug. There is apparently enough of the substance to actually drug kids who ingest the toys.
A young boy in the U.S. state of Arkansas is believed to be the latest child to fall ill after ingesting a popular, Chinese-made toy containing a chemical that turns into a powerful "date rape" drug when eaten.
Shelby Esses said Thursday that her 20-month-old son Jacob fell and went limp after getting into his older sister's Aqua Dots set, which was recalled Wednesday by the…
gregladen | November 9, 2007
Hierakonpolis is a site famous for its many "firsts," so many, in fact, it is not easy to keep track of them all. So we are grateful(?) to Max Brooks for bringing to our attention that the site can also claim the title to the earliest recorded zombie attack in history
....
Recent work at Hierakonpolis has, however, revealed compelling evidence that zombies may have been problematic already in Predynastic Egypt (ca. 3500 B.C.).
This zombie work has been going on for some time but mostly very hush hush. Finally, we have a detailed report to sink our teeth into, over at Archaeology.org.
Click…
gregladen | November 9, 2007How do you avoid having sex with your close relatives? Well, not you, specifically, but how is it done generally, or perhaps among mammals in particular?
One obvious way would be to use a part of the genome that seems to evolve rapidly, and that would be able to distinguish between even moderately closely related individuals. For instance, the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) is big, diverse, and changes rapidly. If two potential mates could somehow compare their MHC's, they could estimate their degree of relatedness, and thus avoid inbreeding.
An article just out in Current Biology…
gregladen | November 9, 2007
... well, OK, maybe that is a slight exaggeration.
You know about giardia. Giardia intestinalis. It causes a nasty gut infection, and you get it by drinking water pretty much anywhere in the US (potentially). It is very hard to get rid of.
Giardia adapt to immune system attacks (of their host) in a way that passes that adaptation down to their offspring without genes. It is a Lamarkian process. Giardia have no mitochondria, yet many of the genes known to be in mitochondria in eukaryotes are found in the giardian nucleus. So, ancestral giardia probably had mitochondria, but all those…
gregladen | November 9, 2007Ever since I started to learn about brains, back in the mid 1980s, from some really brainy brain experts like Terry Deacon and Joe Marcus, I always knew that glial cells were important. But I now read in current material in Nature Neuroscience, that "A decade ago, glia were the neglected stepchildren of neuroscience. Although glia outnumber neurons by about ten to 1 in the adult human brain, providing support for neurons has traditionally been viewed as their primary function. Glial biology has come into its own recently, as researchers have shown that glia are critical for the development…
gregladen | November 9, 2007A child with Melanoma, a mother tossed in jail, radio talk show hosts, ranting bloggers. It's a good story.
From the Natural Solutions Foundation Web Site:
There is a developing story from California that involves a mother with a 17 year old child who HAD melanoma. The mother, chose to go against her allopathic (conventional) doctor's orders (to have surgery and chemotherapy) - and instead try advanced natural medicine first - since she understood that supporting the body's ability to heal is more effective than destroying it as chemotherapy does.
Not surprisingly this approach worked! This…
gregladen | November 8, 2007Lots of people are talking about this latest paper on HIV. It is an "open access" paper in the PNAS, and you can get it here.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that can cause AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). It is a member of a larger group of viruses (the Smian immunodeficiency viruses) which are generally thought to be of African origin. There are two types of HIV (HIV-1, and HIV-2), with HIV-1 being the more virulent and, in human populations, most widespread.
There are several theories as to the origin of HIV. When I was in Zaire in the mid 1980s, people in…
gregladen | November 8, 2007You roll your head, hoping to loosen the knots in your neck, and shut your eyes. After rubbing them you settle back into staring, hunched inches away from the computer screen. Despite the brief reprise your vision remains cloudy, causing the words on the monitor to blur. At this point, you need to know: With each further click on the keyboard, video watched on YouTube, and e-mail sent--are you damaging your vision?
The answer? It depends. Go here to find out.
Thanks, Scott, for the tip.
gregladen | November 8, 2007When discussing global warming (and more broadly, climate change), especially here in the Great White North, it is often quipped that a little global warming is not necessarily a bad thing. So what if cold regions get warmer? That would be good for growing more food, having a warmer winter, and so on. Also, when we note the very large "natural" climate changes and contrast this with what is happening now, some people conclude that human-induced global warming is small change and therefore unimportant.
There are two reasons why this is wrong.
The first reason, which we can discuss another…
gregladen | November 8, 2007How the brain works ... what it does, how it does it, and how well it does it ... is a matter of how neurons are arranged in relation to each other, in circuits. But that is only part of the story. These neurons also need to function properly, and the connections between them need to function properly. For instance, it is thought that Einstein's brain (he was a smart-guy, we assume) was not especially large, but it is though the had a somewhat better than average setup for keeping his neurons happy.
A protein called postsynaptic density-95 (PSD-95) acts as a structural element around…
gregladen | November 8, 2007
Ten years ago, thirteen lucky lemurs were taken from Duke's primate center and the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, and other facilities, and let loose in their native lands in Madagascar.
These were black and white ruffed lemurs, Varecia variegata variegata. They are rain forest dwellers native to Madagascar.
Several were almost instantly eaten by predators, which is not at all surprising because the Predator IQ is pretty much determined by environmental factors in primates (as is intelligence in general). Of the original 13, three survive today.
Lemurs being lemurs, there was also…
gregladen | November 7, 2007Bill Wenmark, a member of the Minnetonka School Board who supports the teaching of Intelligent Design in High School Cirriculum was ousted in yesterday's election.
Bill sent me an email that included a note to his constituents, and he and I have been discussing the possibility of me posting it here. Now that the election is over, I doubt that will materialize. In any event, he sent me the email to clarify his position on ID, and I'll pass my interpretation of that on to you. He can certainly add comments to this if he feels more clarification is in order.
My understanding is that Bill…
gregladen | November 7, 2007[Reposted without revision from gregladen.com]
This is obviously true, and i've been saying this for a long time. And I'm not talking about the butt-slaps and sharing chewing tobacco and stuff.
To a certain extent, digit ratios seem to be a reasonable indicator of the kinds of hormonal environment in which a person develops in utero. It turns out that the indicator of homosexuality is the same as the indicator of athleticism, only turned up even more. In other words, a certain kind of hormonal environment in which a male fetuses develops can result in a higher likelihood of that person…
gregladen | November 7, 2007[Repost with minor modifications form gregladen.com]
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As indicated in a press release by the National Center for Science Education, the National Council for the Social Studies has released a position statement on Intelligent Design.
...There have been efforts for many decades to introduce religious beliefs about the beginning of life on Earth into the science curriculum of the public schools. Most recently, these efforts have included "creation science" and "intelligent design." Following a number of court decisions finding the teaching of creationism and intelligent design…
gregladen | November 7, 2007[A repost from gregladen.com, unmodified]
There is a ceremonial burial in Britain .. ceremonial because it has some red stuff smeared on bone ... that has now bee dated to a few thousand years earlier than previously thought (to ca 25,000 years old).
Age of earliest human burial in Britain pinpointed from PhysOrg.com
The oldest known buried remains in Britain are 29,000 years old, archaeologists have found - 4,000 years older than previously thought. The findings show that ceremonial burials were taking place in western Europe much earlier than researchers had believed.
[...]
Some have…
gregladen | November 6, 2007I think this is a great teachable moment:
Scientists complete genome sequence of fungus responsible for dandruff, skin disorders from PhysOrg.com
Scientists from P&G Beauty announced that they successfully sequenced the complete genome for Malassezia globosa (M. globosa), a naturally occurring fungus responsible for the onset of dandruff and other skin conditions in humans. Results of the genome sequencing are published in today's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
[...]
I mean, think about it. Kids in biology class have a hard time relating to size and…