cwilcox | November 2, 2008Carnival of Evolution #5 is up at The Other 95%!
And, for those dedicated Nerd followers (the few elite that you are), my Fun With Evolution made the cut! The ever gracious Kevin Zelnio called it "the ultimate in geeky barroom debate" - thanks!
cwilcox | November 1, 2008Wow. Check this out: Zooillogix : Cheetah Loose on Delta Flight
That's just awesome. Imagine being the person who found the one running loose - yikes.
cwilcox | October 31, 2008Top five natural horrors that are sure to give you a fright this Halloween! Go to my other site and check it out! You just might recognize #1, though... read more | digg story
cwilcox | October 31, 2008Double,double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble...SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES!!
Anyone who knows me knows I'm terrified of moths. I get really, really, REALLY freaked out by them (especially big ones). I don't know if I watched "Silence of the Lambs" too young or what, but moths are the only thing I'm completely and irrationally afraid of. I mean, they're harmless! Right?
.............
RIGHT?(cue eerie music)
TA-DA!
Maybe my fear isn't so irrational after all. Meet a new species of Calyptra, found recently in Siberia - one of two new species of Vampire Moth. No, really.…
cwilcox | October 30, 2008Everyone knows being a scientist has its downsides (like the Pay Rate), but it definitely has its upsides, too. If you're in a really fun lab, you'll have a glowing cat or something else strange to show off. For the rest of us, simply having access to a well-stocked lab and a basic understanding of chemistry provides definite advantages on a holiday based on magic and mystery. Here's a few reasons it's great to be a scientist on Halloween:
1. You can wear your work attire as a costume - and a pretty good one, at that. Throw on a lab coat, some safety goggles, and mess your hair up and…
cwilcox | October 29, 2008John Mayer told us that "when you trust your television/What you get is what you got/Cause when they own the information, oh/They can bend it all they want." Well, it turns out it's worse than that - even if you think you're somewhat knowledgeable in an area, the media's coverage may affect the way you think.
At least that's what a new study published in PLoS ONE has found when it comes to diseases. Researchers at McMaster University wanted to see how media coverage of diseases affects the perception of their prevalence and severity. To do this, they asked undergraduate and medical students…
cwilcox | October 28, 2008I have tried really hard not to write a blog post about this book for awhile now, but I had to move recently, and in packing and unpacking I happened to run across my copy of it at least a dozen times. I can't resist it any longer. For those of you who have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you probably think you've read the best book that has ever been written. Well, you're close, but not quite there (if you haven't read Hitchhiker's, I don't really know what to tell you - you can't even imagine the best book). The best book ever written is by Douglas Adams, but it's not his…
cwilcox | October 27, 2008It seems that you can't have a conversation about evolution that doesn't end with everyone involved feeling frustrated. You can't even mention the word 'evolution' without bringing up a political philippic, religious rant or scientific squabble. Unfortunately, this keeps everyone from the conversations that really matter - of course, I'm talking about the fun ones.
No, I don't mean the ones that are fun to paleontologists looking for the origins of limbs or biologists searching for the mechanics of fat accumulation. I mean the ones that are really fun, to just about everyone, save, perhaps, a…
cwilcox | October 26, 2008One way to get people 'eating healthy' is to make food healthier - and that is exactly what european researchers have done by genetically modifying a tomato (published in Nature Biotechnology). They inserted two snapdragon genes, allowing the fruit to over-express anthocyanins, which have beneficial effects against a host of human diseases, including cancer. Of course, there was one side effect: anthocyanins are pigment molecules, so the tomatoes turned purple.
Anthocyanins are a kind of flavonoid, a group of chemicals most commonly known for their antioxidant activity. Anthocyanins from…
cwilcox | October 23, 2008The plot of M. Night Shyamalan's movie 'The Happening' is that plants mysteriously start releasing a neurotoxin that causes people to kill themselves. Originally I thought it was too ridiculous, but maybe, just maybe, it is possible.
A new study by by Drs. Michael Poulter and Hymie Anisman and colleagues in the October 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry found that the DNA of people who committed suicide is altered epigenetically compared to people who died suddenly of natural causes.
Let me explain. The human genome has tens of thousands of genes, but not all are expressed in every cell. To…
cwilcox | October 23, 2008OK, I know GFP is hardly news since the Nobel Prize was awarded to the scientists who discovered it and made it available to researchers. But, come on - tell me this cat ain't cool:
Meet Mr. Green Genes.
He's a nearly 6-month-old orange tabby whose eyes, gums and tongue glow a vivid lime green, the result of a genetic experiment at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species. He's the first fluorescent cat in the United States, according to Betsy Dresser, the center's director.
The researchers made him so they could learn whether a gene could be introduced harmlessly into the feline…
cwilcox | October 22, 2008While it was often hypothesized in the 20th century that dinosaurs were the evolutionary ancestors of birds, it wasn't until the late 1980s that we found the first firm evidence of a dinosaur with feathers - specifically, quill knobs (which are strongly correlated with large and well-developed secondary feathers), like those recently found by Norell et al (2007) on an ulna of Velociraptor mongoliensis. But the question still remained as to why feathers evolved in the first place. Theories range from insulation to flight, and the answer is still hotly debated by paleontologists. While flight…
cwilcox | October 21, 2008If you thought I was jumping on the bandwagon by blogging, check this out: Midori-san's Blog. OK, so it's not in english, so unless you've got a good translator you might have some trouble. I'll tell you what's so interesting about it - the author is this guy here:
That's right, it's a plant's blog. Of course, Pigeons have been blogging for years now, so is anyone really impressed?
Satoshi Kuribayashi, a researcher at Keio University, Japan, explains the motive for vegetative blogging. "We were initially interested in what plants are feeling and what they are reacting to where we can't see,"…
cwilcox | October 21, 2008Each year, Malaria kills one to three million people, mostly kids. Caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium and spread by mosquitos, malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases, and while there is treatment, drug resistance is a constant problem. If the prevalence of malaria continues on its current course, the death rate could double in the next twenty years. All and all, it is a nasty, deadly, and pathogenic problem that scientists are constantly struggling with controlling.
One route scientists have taken to help stop malaria is to reduce the number of mosquitos…
cwilcox | October 17, 2008I have no response to this. Just... wow. Damn.
(thanks, Mike, for the reminder.)
cwilcox | October 17, 2008Now that I'm done fuming, I can appreciate a new site I just found by the creators over at Zooillogix: ZooBorns.
Oh yes, it's every bit as cute and cuddly as it sounds. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I WANT ONE! Look at some of the adorables posted:
Red Panda Babies
Baby Armadillo
and, my personal favorite: Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea...(please tell me someone got the musical reference)
cwilcox | October 17, 2008OK, I apologize in advance for the general venting that is about to occur. But, in my defense, people really bug me sometimes.
I posted my post 'Take 30 Seconds to Save Sea Turtles' at another website and got this response:
Is there evidence anywhere that any shallow internet poll has ever actually determined any government policy? I donât mean to be rude, just blunt: what possible reason would a foreign government have to respect your wishes?
Itâs mostly the laz-ee-boy attitude that I think gets to me, the idea that it might be possible to stop resource waste or whatever by sitting comfy in…
cwilcox | October 15, 2008I like to pride myself on knowing a lot about the marine realm, graduating with a degree in Marine Science and all. But this, I didn't know: It is legal to kill sea turtles in the Bahamas.
All seven species of sea turtle are endangered ("threatened" or worse on the IUCN red list), with three critically endangered. Five of the seven species, including the critically endangered leatherback and hawksbill turtles, are found within the waters of the Bahamas, where they are legally fished.
Oceana, the international ocean conservation group, are making a push to try and prohibit the fishing of…
cwilcox | October 14, 2008In Ol Pejeta, Kenya, conservationists faced a unique problem. The conservancy is striving to protect native african wildlife, like the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) from poaching and territory loss. Listed as 'vulnerable' by IUCN Red List, only approximately 10,000 elephants are in Africa today, compared to previous numbers of over 300,000. Protection has helped the elephant's numbers a bit, but a new issue surfaced: elephant territories got too close to neighboring farms, and the elephants became a menace.
Bull elephants started raiding villager's crops, wiping out up to six months…