grrlscientist | April 18, 2007tags: cancer, chromosomes, aneuploidy
There is an article about cancer in this month's issue of Scientific American written by pioneering the virologist, Peter Duesberg. For those of you to whom his name sounds vaguely familiar, Duesberg became famous by claiming that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Fortunately, this article does not go into his radical ideas about HIV. Instead, this piece explores his more plausible hypothesis regarding the cause of cancer, which proposes that the source for many cancers is aneuploidy: a condition where the cell's chromosomes are scrambled -- duplicated, broken,…
grrlscientist | April 18, 2007
Cuban Tree Frog, Osteopilus septentrionalis from the photographer's back yard in Central Florida. The photographer writes; As you may or may not know, the Cuban Tree Frog is an invasive species in Florida, having worked (or hitchhiked) its way up from Cuba and/or other Caribbean islands. It is an ugly, voracious predator that likes to hang around our pool at night with its buddies making lots of froggy noises. When I am not attentive to maintenance of the pool, I sometimes find hundreds and hundreds of jellified egg clots floating in it on certain mornings during the summer. The species…
grrlscientist | April 18, 2007
This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow [Bigger and more readable].
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tags: Modern World cartoon, politics, humor
grrlscientist | April 18, 2007The 22nd edition of the Carnival of Geneology has finally been published. They included a piece that I wrote in January and had subsequently forgotten about -- horrors, how could I forget a piece that I've written?? That is like forgetting a child. Anyway, this is a large blog carnival, full of many good articles to keep you occupied.
grrlscientist | April 18, 2007This streaming video is a history of the USA in a nutshell .. sad, funny and unfortunately quite accurate.
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tags: streaming video, politics, guns
grrlscientist | April 17, 2007
These are from a 1988 trip to the Grand Canyon, taken by my father Charles. They rafted down the river -- mind you, they were 66 at the time!
Image source: Charles, the father of a regular reader.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these…
grrlscientist | April 17, 2007
The strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio, is one of the species of amphibians and reptiles declining in the lowland forests of Costa Rica.
Image source: BBC News.
The recent decline in frogs and other amphibians has been blamed on a deadly fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. However, a paper was published this week that proposes another reason for the decline of frogs: there is less leaf litter on the forest floor than in years past.
This study, carried out in a Costa Rican rainforest, found that lizards, which are not susceptible to this fungus, are also decreasing by a similar…
grrlscientist | April 17, 2007Wow, a new study by a group of Australian scientists has found that the national suicide rate increases when political conservatives are in power. They found that middle-aged and older people were most at risk, and that when Conservatives ruled both state and federal governments, men were 17% more likely to commit suicide and women were 40% more likely to kill themselves. Why is there such a powerful and significant effect?
"There is a strong relationship between socio-economic status and suicide," said lead researcher Professor Richard Taylor, of the University of Sydney, Australia. "We…
grrlscientist | April 16, 2007I am sure that Gonzales is thankful today, despite the fact that a group of conservative Bush supporters are clamoring for his resignation. Why? Gonzo is being granted a reprieve from his coming congressional appearance due to the Virginia Tech shootings. Instead of appearing in front of congress tomorrow, as originally scheduled, he will be appearing on Thursday.
Leahy said the shooting deaths of 33 people including a suspected gunman at Virginia Tech was "a matter where our whole nation is going to be grieving tomorrow, and many individual members of both bodies (of Congress) will be…
grrlscientist | April 16, 2007tags: bees, cell phones, electromagnetic radiation
I've heard a lot of strange hypotheses in my life, but this one is one of the strangest: mobile phones may be wiping out bees. How? According to the hypothesis, radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing them from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there apparently is evidence to back this up.
Jochen Kuhn, a scientist at Landau University, Germany, recently found that bees do not return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby.…
grrlscientist | April 16, 2007Tomorrow, Gonzales will be lying through his teeth to the American public, but today, on the eve before tomorrow's spectacle, a group of conservatives and longtime Bush supporters wrote a letter to the White House, calling for Gonzo's resignation. Will Bush ignore his own supporters' demands to keep this lying power-hungry pustule around?
The two-page letter, written on stationery of the American Freedom Agenda, a recently formed body designed to promote conservative legal principles, is blunt. Addressed to both Bush and Gonzales, it goes well beyond the U.S. attorneys controversy and…
grrlscientist | April 16, 2007
Bumblebee in flight.
Image source: Andreas Tille, 2002.
I don't know about you, but I love bumblebees: they are one of my most favorite animals, in fact. So I find it very sad to know that bumblebee populations are declining around the world. But the British are doing something to help these fuzzy insects recover their populations.
The Bumblebee Conservation Trust is asking the public to help survey bumblebees and report the different species they find. Unfortunately, they will be reporting fewer species now than they would have several years ago because recent studies reveal that three…
grrlscientist | April 16, 2007
Glasswing Butterfly .. can anyone give me it's scientific name?
Image source: Orphaned.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-term monetary gains. But if we decide to destroy these other…
grrlscientist | April 16, 2007Another edition of the Carnival of the Godless is now available for your reading pleasure. This one is a big one, with lots of thought put into it by the host. This is the 64th edition of this publication.
grrlscientist | April 16, 2007tags: Birds in the News, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
This ear-scratching egret was perfectly posed on a balcony in Cedar Key, Florida, framed against the background shadows. Love the feather.
Image:
Martin Richard.
Birds in Science
It was once thought impossible to obtain actual soft tissue, such as proteins, from fossils, but the impossible has happened and now, two research teams who published reports in this week's Science describe their findings: the closest relative to the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex is .. a chicken. "It has always been assumed that preservation of [dinosaur…
grrlscientist | April 15, 2007Edition 4.1 of the blog carnival, Oekologie is now available for your reading pleasure. I have a bunch of submissions that were accepted and listed by this blog carnival that you might be interested to read.
grrlscientist | April 15, 2007One of the first things that Paul Wolfowitz did upon entering into his new job as President of the World Bank was to cut a lucrative deal for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. Riza was working at the World Bank when he arrived so, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, he arranged that she work at the State Department and be paid a substantial raise; $200,000 over five years.
But regardless of what the WB's staff think regarding Wolfowitz's fate, it is the shareholders who will ultimately decide his fate. For the moment, the finance and development ministers at the spring meetings are…
grrlscientist | April 15, 2007
Steller's Jay, Cyanocitta stelleri. Summer 2004. Skylar, the photographer, wrote to say that "her" Steller's jay returned to her home yesterday, bringing his girlfriend with him. Hopefully, there will be plenty of chicks this season for Skylar and her family to enjoy feeding.
Image source: Skylar.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique…
grrlscientist | April 14, 2007
A flock of Sandhill Cranes, Grus canadensis, taken from a blind at Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary on the Platte River in NE, Saturday March 31. Every year, 500,000-600,000 Sandhill Cranes congregate along a 60 mile-long stretch of the increasingly de-watered Platte River, from late February to mid-April, to fatten up and get ready to migrate to the Arctic. Some of these cranes cross the International Date Line, heading into tomorrow and nesting in eastern Siberia. Amazing birds.
Image source: Dave Rintoul, KSU.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall…
grrlscientist | April 14, 2007I have been teaching my parrots a few tricks, but I haven't attempted anything like this (yet). I am not entirely sure how to train them to play basketball or golf, although the other behaviors are something I can train them to do.
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tags: AJ, parrot, birds