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While Exploring The Cosmos, A Look Back At Earth

I LOVE all things space--arguably more than the next girl. For years I wanted to be an astrobiologist. Infinite possibilities and the ultimate opportunity to explore the unknown. And it's no secret to readers that I adore Carl Sagan and Cosmos, which fostered a love and appreciation of science in so many of us. All I'm saying is, just perhaps--for the time being--we might be better off spending the kind of figures currently invested in large scale BIG 'what if?' projects on more proximate concerns. No doubt the mission of Kepler is really cool, but why rush to search for planets like…

Apocalypse When?

Over the past decade, I've spent many weekends camping in Boone, North Carolina. It's a lovely place with rolling mountains and excellent BBQ. The town itself is features all sorts of unusual shops where you can make your own hemp jewelery, admire blown glass, and there's also a particular bookshop known for mysticism and alternative cures. Once, I even found Cat Artists & Their Work in there.  Needless to say, it's an interesting store. It was in that bookshop where I first learned about December 21, 2012. The date marks the end of a 5,126-year cycle on a Mayan calendar and--as the…

Federal Energy Leadership â An Update

by Philip H. DISCLAIMER - The opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author alone. They do NOT represent the official opinion, policy, or action of any governmental agency the author may work for or have ever worked for at the county, state or federal level. If you do not like the content or opinions, contact the author, not your Congressmen. In my last post for The Intersection, I let folks in on the potential energy and carbon savings from software that would automatically turn off computers across various federal executive departments. At the time, I also referenced a…

Best Of: Framing III: Happy Feet

originally published May 23, 2007 by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum Much emphasis in traditional conservation is paced on 'charismatic megafauna,' meaning the species that we all know and love. The heroes of the big screen. Save the Oceans for Flipper and Free Willy. Keep those penguins marching and the polar bears drinking Coca-Cola. Market the smiling dolphins, the majestic blue whales, and those adorable baby seals. 'Save the Sea Cucumber' just doesn't have the same clout. Package your landscape or region of choice under the umbrella of huggable marine mammal and everyone's on board to clean up…

Scientists Need to Strap on the Gloves

I've been writing more for D.C. based political magazines lately--going back to the roots, I guess--and I now have a piece in the latest issue of The New Republic about why scientists need to stop taking abuse and fight back. As described in this piece, "framing science"--or, as I put it, "investing... in mass-media initiatives to communicate"--is just one part of what must be done. There's a great deal more if we want science to be both tough but also smart: So how can scientists strap on the gloves? They can start by investing, through their major organizations, in mass-media initiatives to…

The Thirteenth Laureate

ScienceDebate2008 added the following names yesterday: Sheldon Glashow. The Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979 Geoffrey West, President, Santa Fe Institute, Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people of 2006 Meanwhile, our blogger coalition, I'm pleased to say, added some top hurricane folk: Eric Berger, SciGuy Jeff Masters, Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog In short, they just keep on coming in... Which brings me to the current outlook on this project and where it stands (I know a lot of you want to know). Right now, the…

MSM misses the point on chimpanzee meat sharing

Evolutionary anthropology is a subject that has traditionally been dominated by a focus on males, or at least "masculine" behaviors like hunting. The most popular images of our own ancestors have often been of a group of males setting out for a hunt or crouched over a freshly-killed carcass. It is as if our evolution was driven by male ambition. Such tendencies have triggered some backlash, from the relatively absurd (i.e. the aquatic ape hypothesis) to more reasoned critiques (i.e. Woman the Gatherer), but it is clear that our understanding of our own history is most certainly biased by…

The Sputnik Fable

In conversations about the sad state of science literacy in America, Sputnik usually comes up. (It's not at Godwin's Law status yet, but it's close.) The argument is that we either are in a "Sputnik moment" that researchers can use to make the case for greater investment in science, or that we need such an event to reinforce the importance of science in this country. The problem is, as David Goldston pointed out in this week's issue of Nature, that the story isn't so simple. America was not a scientific backwater at the time of the launch of Sputnik, and (as is often the case with events said…

Cats. The Other White Meat.

Okay you two legged mutants... Chris and Sheril don't know I'm laptop side again. He's off, I don't know, probably writing about elephants' rear ends (frankly I never understood why all you humans got so excited over that book - with a name like 'Mooney', what did you expect?) And Sheril's likely blogging somewhere else or playing with sea cucumbers. So while they're away, this conure will play and I'm infiltrating The Intersection with good reason... I've noticed Sheril and Chris have been going with a Hillary theme much of the week and realized to my horror they left out one very…

Readers Saw Through My Framing Game

Kudos to our clever commentors... Well played! You figured out my framing game... I've been sharing my perspective on the media with regard to science and politics over several months now and evidently readers have been paying attention. My post yesterday was an experiment of sorts to see if you'd notice when a seemingly reputable news source emphasized the alarmist spin and left out some details. [Note the heavy use of italicized quotes]. Instead of replying in the comments, I'm outing myself in this forum with hope to find out more about your initial reactions... This is the kind of…

Jebus but I despise these people

Most Christians are merely misguided and lazy thinkers; I don't have any particular animus against them, and just wish they'd grow up. However, there's one kind of Christian that makes me furious and fills me with an angry contempt. I have been known to make the most militant atheist response in my repertoire when I encounter them: I might snarl briefly and leave them to rot in their hateful ignorance. These are the people for whom I reserve the term "demented fuckwits". They are the apocalypse-mongers, the cheerleaders for Armageddon, the monsters who take great satisfaction in their…

The Sky's Not Falling but The Sea Is Rising!

A frightened society is easily kept in check by the powers that be so I suppose someone is benefiting from the news media circus, eh? But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself...let me begin again by taking things back to our formative years: One day Chicken Little was walking in the woods when -- KERPLUNK -- an acorn fell on her head. "Oh my goodness!" said Chicken Little. "The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king." Hence, 'Chicken Little' has become synonymous with hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. I liken the mentality to that exhibited by the prime time news…

Storm World, The Party, Part I

Sheril has already posted a recent picture of us featuring me in my trusty black Banana Republic shirt, comfortably toting a beer. It's the same shirt I've been wearing pretty much every night on my book tour, since I haven't had any luggage and, therefore, any other options. This sartorial detail is mentioned by way of full disclosure: When you survey the pictures below--taken at the Seed-sponsored Storm World book party in NYC last Tuesday and finally posted here--be forewarned that it might appear that, like some cartoon character, I never change clothes. Let me also acknowledge at the…

More Storm World Reviews: Real Climate, Outside, Wired

The longer form reviews of Storm World are starting to come out, even as the book is now shipping from Amazon (and presumably other sites). I'm excited that the first really meaty review has gone up today by Mike Mann at RealClimate.org. You can read it here. The review is very positive but does include "minor quibbles" such as the following: As we have remarked before, one should be very careful about giving too much weight to any one late-breaking paper. Where there are certainly exceptions where paradigms are dramatically broken on the strength of one groundbreaking paper, science rarely…

Framing III: Happy Feet

Much emphasis in traditional conservation is paced on 'charismatic megafauna,' meaning the species that we all know and love. The heroes of the big screen. Save the Oceans for Flipper and Free Willy. Keep those penguins marching and the polar bears drinking Coca-Cola. Market the smiling dolphins, the majestic blue whales, and those adorable baby seals. 'Save the Sea Cucumber' just doesn't have the same clout. Package your landscape or region of choice under the umbrella of huggable marine mammal and everyone's on board to clean up the next oil spill and protest dynamite fishing. All in…

Announcing a New Website and Speaking Tour, "Speaking Science 2.0"; First Stop, Kansas City

On April 6, 2007, as many of you already know, my good friend Matthew Nisbet and I published a policy forum article in the journal Science. A week later, we followed up with a somewhat longer commentary in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post. In both articles, we argued that scientists, while always remaining true to the science, should "frame" issues and topics in ways that make them personally relevant to broader audiences. The response was overwhelming. There was controversy; there were also many endorsements. Most of all, there were many calls, from bloggers and other commentators…

Why are older people worse at only some visuospatial tasks?

A number of studies have found that older adults aren't as good at certain visual tasks compared to younger adults. Mental rotation, for example, is both slower and less accurate. But other studies have found that for certain types of mental rotation, older adults do just as well as younger adults. The dividing line, these researchers argued, was based on whether the viewer was rotating or the objects themselves were rotating. So in a classic mental rotation task like Shepard and Metzler's, older adults don't do as well, but in many other tasks, their performance isn't much different from…

Fife Symington III on UFOs

rel="tag">Fife Symington III, former governor of Arizona, is planning a press conference to discuss UFOs.  He plans to discuss the href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights">Phoenix Lights incident.  Symington is a former Air Force pilot, which he feels lends him some credibility.   href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/11/09/simington.ufocommentary/index.html">Symington: I saw a UFO in the Arizona sky By Fife Symington Special to CNN 11/9/2007 (CNN) -- In 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my…

About Those Reforms...

A couple of days ago, I href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/10/lets_improve_the_quality_of_th.php">wrote about the government reforms proposed by href="http://www.centerforinquiry.net/advocacy/protecting_scientific_integrity_2/">The Center for Inquiry.  Specifically, Enact legislation to specifically permit government scientists to communicate freely with the media and the public. Re-establish the Office of Technology Assessment Reform the Data Quality Act Now, Think Progress has a post in which they detail how the Administration href="http://thinkprogress.org/…

Bizarre Sex Organs II

Since the last one of these I did was kind of scary, I decided to do one that is not so scary.  It is just plain weird.  But there is an interesting story to it. The female is on the left; the male is on the right.  These are the genitalia of mallards: href="http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Anas_platyrhynchos.html" rel="tag">Anas platyrhynchos.  The photo is from href="http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070430_duckgenital_evolu_02.jpg&cap=The+genitals+of+the+mallard+%28Anas+platyrhynchos%29%2C+female+vagina+…

Oxytocin for Shyness

There is new information indicating that an rel="tag">oxytocin nasal spray could be used to treat shyness.  Oxytocin is a peptide hormone best known for its role in childbirth and breastfeeding.  These are known as peripheral actions, meaning they take place outside of the central nervous system (CNS). However, it also is known as a neurotransmitter, having effects within the CNS.  It has been touted as a chemical that can increase trust and reduce fear.  It also has been claimed to have a role in the difference in how href="http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/471090,CST-FTR-…

Sunshiney afternoon

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday at this time, I was frustrated by my lack of getting things done during my spring break. This afternoon, I'm feeling much better. It's not that I've suddenly gotten a bunch of stuff taken off the plate, it's just that I've resolved to be OK with how this spring break is shaking out. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon in my office at school. When I opened the door of the building, I felt a physical revulsion and had to fight the urge to turn around and leave. It's not that my office is horrible - I just really didn't want to be there. So today I am home…

Girls sweep science competition. Aren't you tired of these headlines?

Congratulations to Isha Jain, Janelle Schlossberger, and Amanda Marinoff, this year's prize winners at the prestigious Siemens competitions for high school science research. Jain won the individual competition and was awarded a $100,000 scholarship. Schlossberger and Marinoff will share another $100,000 scholarship for their team research, while Alicia Darnell took home the second place individual prize, a $50,000 scholarship. That's awesome with no qualifiers. These students are being rewarded for thousands of hours of effort and research that is graduate-level and publication quality. I've…

New football helmet detects impacts that may cause traumatic brain injury

Sport and recreational activities account for some 21% of traumatic brain injuries in American children and adolescents, and football players are particularly prone to head injuries that can lead to permanent brain damage. American football is associated with more head injuries than any other. Last year, for example, more than 34,600 football players were treated for head injuries in U.S. hospital emergency rooms. But the incidence of traumatic brain injury among footballers maybe far higher, as injuries that could cause damage to the brain often go unnoticed. Players experience repeated…

Blogroll

The blogroll toward the bottom of the sidebar on the left displays 15 random links from the list below. 10,000 Birds 3 Quarks Daily Abu Aardvark Acephalous Ad Hominin Advances in the History of Psychology All in the Mind Anna's Bones The Annotated Budak Bad Astronomy Bad Science Bering in Mind The Beautiful Brain BibliOdyssey The Big Picture Bioethics.net Biology in Science Fiction Bjorn Brembs BLDGBLOG A Blog Around the Clock Blue Ridge Blog Body in mind Bogbumper Botany Photo of the Day BPS Research Digest Brain Ethics Brain Hammer Brains Brain Windows…

Hybrid Research/IT Position at PI

Rob sends me information about an interesting new position at the Perimeter Institute (more info here): The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) is looking for a Scientific IT specialist -- a creative individual with experience in both scientific research and information technology (IT). This is a new, hybrid, research/IT position within the Institute, dedicated to helping PI's scientific staff make effective use of IT resources. It has two clear missions. First, to directly assist researchers in using known, available IT tools to do their research. Second, to uncover or…

Plague Still A Threat In Some Parts of the World

The plague was unbelievably deadly and disastrous in Europe during the 1300-1700s, but it is somewhat more surprising that the plague still claims a number of lives across the modern world. Even more surprising is that the number of cases has been slightly rising over the past few decades. In the midst of my 'Plague Blogging,' an interesting paper was published in PLoS Medicine entitled "Plague: Past, Present, Future" which is chock full of information about the ancient, and modern plague. For example, thousands of people (even a dozen or so in the USA) still die from the plague, a bacterial…

The Science of the Ultimate Jello Shot

When I threw a going-away party for my friend Lisa on Friday, I made some of that jiggly party staple: jello shots! Little did I realize that some awesome (and bored) sciency-types have a website dedicated to a series of experiments to determine how much vodka can be added to jello shots before they lose their gelainous cohesion. The way that I made mine is "the normal way," where you add 1 cup boiling water to the Jello packet, stir for 2 minutes until the mix is completely dissolved, and then add 1 cup vodka (instead of water). This yields jello shots which are not overwhelmingly…

Help Carl Zimmer choose a textbook cover!

Over at his Discover blog, Carl Zimmer has asked readers to help choose a cover for his new non-majors evolution textbook. If you have a good eye for design, as I'm sure many BioE readers do, go over and help him pick the most appealing cover! It's a hard choice, as so many design choices are. I'll leave my vote until after the fold so I don't prejudice you. Okay; so I like all of them, but don't *love* any of them. My problem with the orchid, which I think is the most elegant and subtle design, is that it doesn't say "evolution" to me. It says "botany." Then it says "yawn." The minute I…

Invasion of the Viking women!

The cartoon version of my Scandinavian ancestors has swarms of fiercely bearded men charging off of their longships into monasteries, where they lopped the heads off priests and plundered the gold and silver from the altars. While I admit that I find that imagery quite romantic and appealing, the truth was more complicated: they were also settlers and traders. Also, the beards may have been less common than we thought—an examination of Viking graves in East England, graves that were assumed to have belonged to men because they contained swords and shields, has revealed a surprise. When they…

Whereas the Greek letter (Pi) is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter

So I observed Pi day by baking a pie. But Representative Bart Gordon of Tennessee, Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, has a much grander idea: let's pass a resolution! Witness H.Res.224, introduced yesterday: Supporting the designation of Pi Day, and for other purposes. Whereas the Greek letter (Pi) is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter;Whereas the ratio Pi is an irrational number, which will continue infinitely without repeating, and has been calculated to over one trillion digits;Whereas Pi is a recurring constant that has…

Want One of My Paintings? Here's How to Get One

Amazingly, it's already the last week of the DonorsChoose fundraising drive! SEED has generously kicked in matching funds for each blogger, which enabled me to contribute to several more projects - but we only have a total of $1,026 so far. That's much less than Chad is getting for promising to dance like a monkey. Honestly, I'd dance like a monkey too, but none of you wants to see that, I promise you. I have no rhythm whatsoever. So here it is, readers: I'm going to do something to persuade you to donate, too. I'm going to give away a painting. A new, original, watercolor painting that I am…

Singing about phylogeny

My friend mdvlist sent me the link to some rather odd educational materials, called "Lyrical Life Science." They're folk songs set to familiar tunes, but the lyrics are all biology. I realize that folk songs about science have a storied history. But these are kinda weird - like "Sirenians" set to "Drunken Sailor," or "Oh Bacteria" set to "Oh Susanna" ("though lacking any nucleus, you do have a cell wall. . . ") mdvlist claims that the kids in her party LOVED these CDs, although she was not impressed by the quality of the music. Nor was I - in fact, I couldn't understand half of what they are…

Wear your science - or a cross-section of it

So I had the pleasure of meeting the awesome Dr. Isis a few weeks ago. It turns out she is even more awesome in person than she is in pseudonymity. And she brought me a fabulous thing: a scarf from A Slice of Life Scarves. Creator Eve Reaven, a Bay Area cell biologist, "has continuously marveled at the intricacy and beauty of the natural patterns found inside cells. She shares what she has seen with others through designs for scarves and other textiles. In the current selection, she captures the essence of structures related to cell movement, cell traffic, energy and performance. Many of the…

ScienceBlogs Must Read: Mixing Memory on the Negative Consequences of Stereotypes

I have argued repeatedly that I don't think biological differences between men and women are sufficient to explain their different in representation in math and science (here, here, and here). Mixing Memory has a very thorough post arguing for the other side of the coin -- how stereotypes can affect negatively affect performance. Definitely read the whole thing, but here is the money quote: The point of all of this is that several studies have shown that stereotype threat influences women's performance on math tests, and thus is likely responsible for at least part of the observed gender…

Abominations: Homosexuality, Football?

Some fantastic morning reading from a USA Today opinion article entitled '"When Religion Loses Its Credibility," critiques the current religious stance on homosexuality---and wonders, what if religion is yet again proven wrong? This was written by a well-spoken, pro-science Baptist Minister (yes, they do exist.) Religion's only real commodity, after all, is its moral authority. Lose that, and we lose our credibility. Lose credibility, and we might as well close up shop. It's happened to Christianity before, most famously when we dug in our heels over Galileo's challenge to the biblical view…

Compound in Red Wine Increases Life Span 20%

A Nature podcast today details new fascinating research about a pill that may extend lifespan by up to 20%. Resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, is the only compound that has lengthened the life of every organism its been given to: yeast, worms, flies, and now mice. And, most recently, David Sinclair of Harvard University has results that show that this compound can also combat the ill health effects of a high-fat ("McDonald's") diet in mammals. Mice that were given a high-fat diet as well as Resveratrol lived as long as mice that were fed a healthy balanced diet. Even more interesting…

Music Is Visual Pattern Recognition and Language To the Brain

Well, not exactly, but I'll get to that in a minute. I read this paper last night, and afterwards, when I was looking around one of the author's pages, I came across a neuroimaging study designed to look for "pre-existing neural, cognitive, or motoric markers for musical ability" 1. Apparently there are neural differences between adult musicians and adult nonmusicians (duh), so the authors of the study wanted to see if these might be innate or the product of musical training. In the study, Norton et al. subjected 39 five to seven-year olds who were beginning piano or violin lessons, and 31…

Gene Expression Interview With Steven Pinker

Over at Gene Expression, "Darth Quixote's" (George Menard's rewriting of Cervantes? That's a bad joke, isn't it?) 10-question interview with Steven Pinker was posted today. You can read it here. The questions are pretty good, for the most part, and Pinker's answers are interesting. I agree with Pinker on the issue of politics getting in the way of science, whether the politics are right-wing or left. I have no problem with research on potentially innate differences between populations, in part because I think the political implications of the results will be dictated by pre-existing biases,…

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish . . .

Our time here with Seed is at an end. One chapter closed, another one is opened. Right now it is a time a great changes for me. As many readers know, I recently moved to North Carolina to take up a position a research technician at Duke's Marine Lab on the coast. Thankfully we did not get the full brunt of Hanna, just a bucket load of rain and 30 mph winds. Unfortunately, my U-Haul truck broke down on the interstate and I was stranded a day and half in Ashland, Virginia with truckloads of drunken racing fans. But I am here now in Cateret County getting settled in and enjoying being back in…

Are vampires a mathematical impossibility?

Costas Efthimiou is a professor of physics at the University of Central Florida, who apparently spends his time debunking myths and legends. Judging from his website, he's also a fan of web aesthetics circa 1995. I'd post a screengrab, but it could never capture the untamed beauty of an animated "Under Construction" gif. Anyway, Efthimiou has deduced the vampires are a mathematical impossibility with the following simple logic: if a vampire bit once a month, and all victims became vampires, the vampire population would increase exponentially until it wiped out the human population.…

"No disease in the brain of a 115-year-old woman"

This morning, while I was riding the bus to campus, I checked my email on my phone (man, I love that thing), and had a cognitive psychology topic alert from ScienceDirect. There were only three papers in the alert, but the title of the first one caught my eye: "No disease in the brain of a 115-year-old woman." I don't know whether it was the fact that she was really, really old, that they expected to find disease in her brain, or what, but the title drew me in. I need to start coming up with better titles myself. Anyway, the paper's in press in the journal Neurobiology of Aging (you can read…

Republicans to America: Drop Dead!

href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16514.html">Senate rejects auto bailout By DAVID ROGERS | 12/11/08 11:15 PM EST A White House-backed bailout for ailing automakers collapsed in the Senate Thursday night, pushing General Motors Corp. closer to almost certain bankruptcy absent a major intervention by the Treasury Department. The 52-35 roll call fell well short of the 60 needed to cut off debate, and appeared to doom any chance of legislative action until a new Congress convenes in January. “We’re not going to get to the finish line,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid…

Nice argument for the age of the earth

Geoffrey Pearce sent me this argument he uses with creationists, and I thought others might find it useful, too. I am regularly approached by young Earth creationists (yes, even in the bedlam of sin that is Montreal...) both on the street and at home. If I have the time I try to engage them on the age of Earth, since Earth is something whose existence them and I agree upon. They will tell me that Earth is somewhere between 6,000 - 10,000 years old, and, when prompted, that the rest of the universe is the same age as well. I have taken the approach of responding to this assertion by pulling…

Just Say No! to Mars

When I was 11 or so, I read Heinlein's novel, href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podkayne_of_Mars">Podkayne of Mars.  I wanted to go to Mars after that.  The thought never really left me.  But in June of this year, I began to have my doubts.  Scientists reported that the soil on Mars is href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7477310.stm">suitable for growing ASPARAGUS.  Forget Mars.  Keep your asparagus. But as the months passed by, I begin to thing I could learn to like asparagus.  My sisters used to collect wild asparagus near our home.  They enjoyed collecting it, and…

"Oh Lucy Q." Culture Of Ethical Failure

Probably everyone has seen it by now, but the NYT has a headline about the "culture of ethical failure" at the Department of the Interior.  In a way it is not news; I, among others, href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/08/culture_of_corruption_part_ii.php">wrote about it two years ago. Back then, I referred to it as a culture of corruption.  Now, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, has expanded that.  Instead of a culture of corruption, it is now a culture of complete ethical failure.  Corruption is only part of it.   href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/…

Headlines as Approximations of Truth

Here are two headlines about the same subject: href="http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/10/17/meds-help-preschoolers-with-adhd/">Meds Help Preschoolers with ADHD Psych Central News Editor Tuesday, Oct, 17, 2006 href="http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/15805876.htm">Study warns of risks of preschool Ritalin Associated Press Posted on Fri, Oct. 20, 2006 Both articles were written about the same journal article, an NIMH-sponsored study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Both headlines are accurate.  The…

Rooks can cooperate to solve problems

It now seems clear that we have grossly underestimated the cognitive abilities of other animals. In recent years, research has shown, for example, that African cichlids use simple logic to infer their social status, and that rodents can think abstractly and learn to use tools.  Birds also display quite remarkable intelligence: the ability of crows to make and use tools is at least as sophisticated, if not more so, than that of chimpanzees. (See the film clips in my post on intelligence in birds.) And now, a study published last week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that rooks…

Article on the Riboswitches and general RNA talk

Over coffee we were flipping through the May edition of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Newsletter when we saw an article on riboswitches, RNA aptamers and the RNA World. The piece features Ron Breaker from Yale, who is most known for describing riboswitches. These RNA elements usually sit on the 5' end of an mRNA and can change conformation when they bind to various small molecules, such as metabolites. These structural changes can affect whether the downstream message on the transcript is translated into protein. So riboswitches are sophisticated versions of aptamers which are RNA…

Another silent nucleotide change leads to altered protein activity

MDR: Multi Drug Resistance Protein. It's an ABC (ATPase Box Cassette) Transporter. In other words, this gene encodes an energy utilizing pump that sits on the plasma membrane and actively transports (mostly hydrophobic?) compounds out of the cell. As I wrote yesterday, a silent change in this gene at the nucleotide level alters the transporter's specificity. According to a paper in the Jan 26th edition of Science, the altered MDR protein is just fine at transporting most compounds but is defective in the transport of a particular compound. The silent mutation does not affect mRNA levels or…