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Monterey Bay Aquarium

Michael Egnor has replied to my dismissal of his claims that memories can't be stored in the brain with a curiously titled post, Understanding Memories: Lovely Metaphors Belong in Songs, Not Science. I was a bit confused, at first…I don't recall using any song lyrics or poetic metaphors in my post…

Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon, has made a bizarre post in which he reveals that he knows nothing about how the brains he cuts up work. Egnor claims that it is impossible for the brain to store memories. Yes, he knows that neural damage can cause loss of memory, that certain delicate areas of the…

MBARI And here's a whole series of weird-eyed deep sea organisms:

How romantic! I just learned that "the word mistletoe is a compound Old English word combining 'mistel' (which means “dung”) and 'tan' (which means twig) because it looks a bit like bird poop on a stick". Alder and Ash

From this worm? Sure you would.

Also, master of molluscan anatomy, and clever tool user. This paper, Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving, by Joordens et al. tells an interesting story from some mundane artifacts made half a million years ago. What the investigators have is a jumble of clam…

MBARI

He keeps saying the same ol' debunked crap over and over again, and nowadays when a paper comes out that shows he was completely wrong about something, he spins it into a triumphant vindication for his sycophantic fans, who are all, apparently, abysmally innumerate. The hobby horse he's been riding…

Why, oh why, do EP's defenders rely on throwing up armies of straw men to slaughter? It's silly. Here's how he starts: There are some science-friendly folk (including atheists) who simply dismiss the entire field of evolutionary psychology in humans, saying that its theoretical foundations are weak…

imgur

Everyone I know is raving about this short, speculative video about the future of space exploration. Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist from Erik Wernquist on Vimeo. I'm not so enthused; I even find the words of Carl Sagan troubling. It's lovely and all, but… There's nothing in those…

Chelsea Polis and Kathryn Curtis wrote a paper that asked whether hormonal contraceptives affected your likelihood of being infected with HIV, Use of hormonal contraceptives and HIV acquisition in women: a systematic review of the epidemiological evidence. Here's the abstract: Whether or not the…

Have you called her lately? Look at this mother octopus, clinging to a deep-sea cliff, hanging over the abyss, guarding her clutch of eggs. She stayed there, never leaving, for four years. The MBARI submersible would regularly visit the spot and check on her, and there she was, getting weaker…

Brandenburg is a physicist who submitted a paper to the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference a few years ago. It's way outside my area of expertise, but it postulated an interesting scenario from the ratios of rare isotopes in the atmosphere of Mars: that there was evidence of a natural…

TONMO May they rise to glory again!

But the University of Hawaii at Mānoa looks to be more broken than others. Christie Wilcox writes about the budget cuts there: the place is being gouged to the bone -- the College of Natural Sciences has a cohort of graduate students to whom they are failing to live up to their responsibilities (…

Every year in my intro biology course, I try to do one discussion of bioethics. One lecture is not much, but this is a course where we try to introduce students to the history and philosophy of science, and I think it's an important issue, so I try to squeeze in a little bit. So we spend one day…

Alex Wild

Just consult the chart. Dated phylogenetic tree of insect relationships. The tree was inferred through a maximum-likelihood analysis of 413,459 amino acid sites divided into 479 metapartitions. Branch lengths were optimized and node ages estimated from 1,050,000 trees sampled from trees separately…

Oh, great. Orac just has to tell me that the University of Minnesota is going to host an anti-vaccine conference on 24 January. First, let me say this, though: they get to do that. Presumably they've rented out (or possibly obtained student or faculty sponsorship) Cowles Auditorium at the Humphrey…

Tampa Bay Aquarium

This is devious: Mexican free-tailed bats have jamming sonar to disrupt competitor bats' food hunting. It's like there aren't enough insects for everyone to eat!

The Scientist

The New York Times has declared that Academic Science Isn’t Sexist. What a relief! The authors are reporting the results of a broad study of many different parameters of the career pipeline, and are happy to report that there are no problems in academia. None at all, no sir. Our analysis reveals…

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is offering a selection of Halloween e-cards…and you can guess which one I'm sending to you!

Kettel

It's yet another creationist conference in which the imminent demise of evolutionary theory will be declared this weekend, and it's being held on a university campus, which is always jarring. The university is said to be "uneasy" about it all. The 1 November event, called the Origin Summit, is…

It's the Bone Eating Snot Flower Worm. As a bonus, it's also one of those species where the large adult forms are all females, and the males have been reduced to a tiny bag of sperm attached for life to a Bone Eating Snot Flower Worm.