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Survival of the fittest... memories

Even though most of us aren't concerned with physical survival on a day-to-day basis, the concept of "survival" remains a potent one -- just think of the persistent success of TV shows like Survivor and Lost. Perhaps this popularity has to do with more than just good advertising and an interesting plot twist. Perhaps it also has to do with the fundamental nature of survival itself. Darwin's mechanism for evolution -- natural selection -- has often been reduced to the catch-phrase "survival of the fittest." There's more to it than that, of course, but if survival is such an important aspect of…

How to cause motion sickness: Let's hope the folks at Guantanamo don't get their hands on one of these

What in the world is this thing? It's called an optokinetic drum, and it's one of the many implements of torture you'll find in a spatial orientation lab. In an optokinetic drum, you sit or stand inside while the entire drum rotates around you. By changing the pattern on the inside of the drum, or by changing the way the drum rotates, a researcher can easily make you lose your lunch, breakfast, or even last night's dinner. I got the picture of the drum from the Ashton Graybill Spatial Orientation Lab, where you'll find plenty of other devices that I sincerely hope the U.S. military doesn't…

AMS Dispatch: Numbers Game

[Tracks of the record 28 named storms of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.] Something of a subtle shift may be happening in the ongoing hurricane-global warming debate. This was very much on display yesterday in San Antonio during a panel that featured Greg Holland, director of the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Chris Landsea, science and operations officer for the National Hurricane Center. A year ago, this debate--spurred by two papers in Nature (PDF) and Science (PDF)--centrally focused on the question of whether…

What can you remember in a glimpse?

The text below will bring up an animation. Just look at it once -- no cheating! A picture will flash for about a quarter of a second, followed by a color pattern for a quarter second. Then the screen will go blank for about one second, and four objects will appear. Use the poll below to indicate which object (#1, 2, 3, or 4) appeared in the picture. Click here to view the animation! I'll let you know which answer was correct at the end of the post, but this test approximates the procedure of an experiment conducted by Kristine Liu and Yuhong Jiang, designed to measure the capacity of visual…

Applying science to art

Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad Orzel's hosting a discussion on who should be on a hypothetical Mount Rushmore of science. There's a fairly broad consensus that Darwin, Einstein, and Newton make the cut, but rather heated debate on who should be the fourth member. Many of Chad's readers suggest Sigmund Freud. I found that surprising, since the field of psychology has largely moved away from the work of Freud. Freud is still very influential in literary and cultural studies, but not so much in the world of science. Indeed, one of Freud's lasting influences was the attempt to undertake a…

Seeing and awareness, or how fear can bypass the visual system

Yesterday's post brings up an interesting question: How can you be unaware of having even seen an image, and yet be able to make reliable judgments about that image? That article is just one example of a variety of situations in which people can be unaware of seeing something, even immediately after being given a quick glimpse of it, yet behave as if they have seen it. We discussed how visual images can be "masked" -- flashed quickly and then followed by another image which is displayed for a longer period. Though observers had no conscious recollection of seeing faces, they still could make…

How many things can we do at once without crashing the car?

Take a look at the QuickTime movie below. It will show a still image for 10 seconds, then a blank screen. Then it will show you the image again. Your job is to look for a detail that has been changed between the two images. Most people have difficulty with this task. Even when the part that changes is central to the image, accuracy is typically no better than 50 percent. For the particular type of change depicted in this movie, accuracy averages less than 30 percent. If you didn't notice the change, drag the slider in the movie quickly back and forth and you should be able to spot the…

What aspects of facial movement convey emotion?

Disney's purchase of Pixar makes it clear that computer-generated (CGI) animation appears to be the wave of the future in movies. But one difficulty with CGI animation is conveying realistic emotions. While film animators (whether they use computers or not) can use artistic license to achieve the desired effects, when "emotions" are generated exclusively by computer, it can be difficult to identify the key factors in conveying that emotion. We've discussed avatars, for example, as one way that computers can automate human interaction. Artificial intelligence -- lifelike simulators of human…

What matters most, in perceiving emotion in music?

Psychologists have known for decades that people perceive music as happier when it's played faster, and in a major key (mode). Take a listen to the following sound clips I created using a synthesized flute. Each plays the same melody three times—first in a major mode, then a minor mode, then a "whole tone" middle ground. The only difference between the two clips is that the second clip is played twice as fast. Clip 1 (slow) Clip 2 (fast) For most people, the second clip sounds happier than the first overall, and the major mode portion sounds happiest within each clip. But what matters most—…

Physical exertion impacts our perception of distance

I'm usually disappointed when I try to take a picture of a steep precipice—it never seems as impressive in the photo as it did when I was standing right there. Take this photo, for example. It's a nice shot of my daughter Nora, taken on our hike in the Great Smoky Mountains this past summer, but you just don't get much sense of the dizzying precipice she's standing on the edge of. Later that summer, on Lake Powell, Utah, I finally managed to get a shot that conveyed some drama: But even this shot doesn't really show the paralyzing terror Nora felt as she peered over the 100-foot drop-…

When do we learn what colors mean?

When I was about twelve years old, I came up with an idea for a massive practical joke to play on an unsuspecting baby. For its entire childhood, everyone around the baby would conspire to convince it that the sky was green. Then at some point in the future, perhaps in front of the entire sixth grade class at Whitworth Elementary School, the truth would be revealed, and one poor kid's world would be turned upside-down. Somehow I was never able to recruit enough people to pull this ruse off, but it does beg the question: would such a joke even be possible, or would our natural perceptual…

The influence of media violence on youth: Part 1

In the summer of 2000, a committee of scholars was commissioned to write a chapter on the effects of media violence on youth for the Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence, published in January 2001. But their chapter was not included in the Surgeon General's final report. The reason for the omission was unclear; however, there had been disagreement between the report's authors—experts in the field of media and violence—and the Surgeon General's office and the National Institue of Mental Health, regarding whether it was appropriate to include research not directed specifically at criminal…

Pop Goes the Photomultiplier Tube

How do scientists make glass stronger? Break it. Brookhaven Lab physicists and engineers take this hands-on approach a step further. In order to strengthen the design of glass bulbs known as photomultiplier tubes, the researchers submerge the devices in 500,000 gallons of pressurized water, punch a small hole through their sides, and watch as the glass cracks, crunches, and, just milliseconds later, implodes (see videos below). The implosion of a photomultiplier tube in a tank at BNL, as seen through combined high-speed camera images. Time scale: 6,000 frames per second. Fifty thousand…

Love Letter To New York: Repost

originally published September 11, 2007 Dear New York, We've been together a long time and although I'm terribly unfaithful, you always welcome me back with open arms because you know no matter how many states I've slept in, I'm yours. And truth be told, I love you. You're my city - center of the universe - and there will never be another to take your place in my heart. DC and Maine were fun, North Carolina's been good to me, and I'll never forget the college years in Boston.. but New York - you ROCK my world! You'll always be home. Two years ago I composed an OpEd to commemorate the…

Love Letter To New York: You're the Best and Greenest I've Ever Had

September 11, 2007 Dear New York, We've been together a long time and although I'm terribly unfaithful, you always welcome me back with open arms because you know no matter how many states I've slept in, I'm yours. And truth be told, I love you. You're my city - center of the universe - and there will never be another to take your place in my heart. DC and Maine were fun, North Carolina's been good to me, and I'll never forget the college years in Boston.. but New York - you ROCK my world! You'll always be home. Two years ago I composed an OpEd to commemorate the fourth anniversary of…

Do Health Care Providers Understand the Medical Literature?

I've done something a bit off the beaten path recently--teamed up with a scientist to write an editorial for a medical journal. My piece, with Beth Jordan, M.D., who is the scientific director of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, just appeared in Contraception. Here is the gist: In the medical and especially the highly politicized reproductive health arena, one consequence of the frequent misappropriation of the mantle of science can be seen in a cacophony of news headlines, presenting bewildering and often conflicting information: "Rethinking Hormones, Again", "What?…

How do you react to an emotional face? Depends on how quickly you see it

What's your first reaction on seeing this picture of Nora? Are you excited because she appears to be excited? Or do you react to her intent? Perhaps you think she's cute, or maybe even sarcastic. Ultimately you might have all of those reactions. There's no doubt we're exceptionally fast at responding to faces, and to the emotions they convey. But reacting appropriately, especially when a face signals danger, could be the difference between life and death. These two ways of reacting to a facial expression correspond to two possible intentions of an expression: to elicit an emotion in someone…

Some people are more distractible than others ... sometimes, that is

Take a look at this quick movie. You'll be shown a "ready" screen, followed by a quick flash of eight letters arranged in a circle. Your job is to spot either a "Z" or a "K" in that circle of letters, while ignoring other letters appearing outside of the circle. You'll see two different circles of letters in the movie. Each circle will either contain a Z or a K. Again, ignore the letters appearing outside of the circle. Go ahead, give it a shot. Just watch the video once! What order did you see the Z and the K in? Let's make this a poll. What letters did you see? ( surveys) I don't…

Babies have boundary extension, too

Boundary extension -- misremembering the boundaries of a scene as wider than they really are -- has been observed in adults as old as 84 and children as young as 6. But for kids much younger than 6, the phenomenon becomes quite difficult to study. How do you ask a 6-month-old whether the picture they're looking at has the same borders as one they saw a few minutes ago? You can't ask them to draw the picture for you -- they can barely sit up, let alone hold a pencil. Yet the development of boundary extension is an important aspect of the study of vision. Do babies experience the phenomenon…

Insight into how we tell whether something's alive

Take a look at these three pictures. Can you tell which is a human, which is a cat, and which is a pigeon? How about these three pictures? A little easier? It would be even easier, of course, if the pictures were in motion, like in this movie (QuickTime required). (Update: Nikolaus Troje has provided a link to a full set of demos here -- check them out, they're awesome!) The difference between the first three pictures and the second three is that the points that make up each animal's body parts have been scrambled in the first set of pictures. Why? Because the researchers Dorita Chang…

How hints help speed up math performance -- and what this says about memory

The link below will take you to a short movie (QuickTime Required). You'll see a series of seven easy addition problems, which will flash by at the rate of one every two seconds. Your job is to solve the problems as quickly as possible (ideally, you should say the answers out loud). Click to watch movie Apart from the possibility that you might have a better memory for some math facts than others, were any of the problems easier for you? If you're like most people, you probably responded faster when a problem was repeated, as was the case with 3 + 5. And since the order of operations doesn't…

Paying top dollar for "Just So Stories"

As we approach the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, I can't help but notice the shoddy treatment natural selection receives in many of the college courses I have attended. Everyone is in agreement that understanding natural selection is important, so much so that it often gets its own lecture, but apparently it is not important enough to have professors memorize relevant examples of it. I have seen it happen over and over again. The major points of evolution by natural selection are outlined (usually between 4 and 8 concepts, with…

I was going to write a post, but then I didn't feel like it

Is it just me, or have some science blogs been running out of steam lately? I know earlier this year we had a number of people (either on their blogs or privately) express that they were considering giving up blogging to concentrate on other things. I haven't been paying attention for that long, though, so I thought I would open up the question to whoever might want to chime in. Particularly in the case of long-time science bloggers, are you just as enthusiastic about science blogging as you were a year ago (or when you started)? How have things changed? For my own part, a number of changes…

Bad science in the British Journal of Psychiatry

Would you believe that ""the largest, most definitive analysis of the mental health risks associated with abortion, synthesizing the results of 22 studies published between 1995 and 2009 involving 877,181 women, of whom 163,831 had abortions" has determined that "abortion harms women's mental health"? It concludes that "10% of all mental health problems and 34.9% of all suicides in women of reproductive age" are caused by abortion. Here's the author's own summary of the results. Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of…

Follow-up on Gerberding's Testimony

Dr. Gerberding's congressional testimony was heavily edited by the Administration.  Fortunately, that fact was picked up by the MSM.  As of now, there are 711 mentions on Google News.   In the interest of completeness, however, I noted that Dr. Gerberding herself denies that there was censorship.  As href="http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/news/stories/2007/10/24/cdcgerberding_1024.html">reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Gerberding said Wednesday she was happy with her testimony and that the review process was normal. In a lunch-hour speech before the Atlanta Press Club,…

Bittersweet

The last few weeks have been completely chaotic, over-crowded, and exhausting. On top of the end-of-term crunch, with its usual flurry of grading, review sessions, and exams, I was also trying to finish revisions on a paper, and get some research done in time to make the poster for AGU. The unintended, but entirely predictable consequences of all this was longer and longer hours working, more and more caffeine, and less and less time with Minnow. I was getting so much done! I discovered that if I just drank more caffeine, I could reduce my nightly sleep to 6 (badly interrupted) hours. And in…

Finding my research center

For the last two weeks, I have been utterly consumed by logistics. I've come home from a trip to Utopia and a research project there, have been in the field twice locally scouting a project here, and am preparing for field work in Midwest next month. I'm starting to have dreams about losing boxes of field equipment to the airlines. At the same time, I've been continuing to do lots of thinking about "what I want to be when I grow up" - when I go up for tenure, or go back on the job market, what will my research program have become, in which subfield will I fit or which subfields will I…

Why are my students so white?

Mystery City is 42% non-Caucasian, with the largest minority being African-American. Mystery University is 25% non-Caucasian.* My introductory courses bear out that statistic; I have a substantial percentage of Hispanic, Asian, and African-American students. So I was somewhat started the other day when I looked around my upper-level class and realized that we were all pretty much non-Hispanic Caucasian.** That first glance around the classroom was folled by a surreptious examination of the other upper-level courses in my department, our graduate student population, and our faculty. So far, my…

Ask Science Woman: What are your work hours? Can I be a professor part time?

A reader recently sent me this email: I have a question that perhaps you and your readers can help with. I'm currently at a cross-road in my academic career. A year ago I started a Master's program in one of the "ologies" with potential to switch over to the Ph.D if things progressed well over the first year. Well, I've had a very successful and enjoyable first year, so I was thrilled to learn that I could join the 'fast-track' for the Ph.D. Needless to say, this was my goal, since my dream job is to work at a small college/university where I can focus most of my time on teaching. But I've…

Ask Science Woman: How do I organize journal articles?

Another from the archives (originally published February 6, 2006). Let it not be said that I don't respond to readers' comments. A few posts ago, I was moaning about my inability to read journal articles in an efficient and non-fattening way. Yami requested that I share my system for organizing journal articles, writing that "Curious people who are finally getting quasi-permanent office assignments and file cabinets want to know." The succint answer: Invest in a copy of EndNote or similar and a thick stack of file folders. As soon after downloading/copying/printing a journal article, add it…

Electrode implant stimulates consciousness

Researchers report in today's issue of Nature that they have improved brain function in a minimally conscious patient by implanting electrodes into his brain. Schiff et al used deep brain stimulation (DBS), an experimental surgical technique that has previously been used to treat Parkinson's Disease and depression, to increase the level of arousal and motor control in the patient, who had been in a minimally conscious state for more than 6 years. Neurologists define disorders of consciousness according to specific criteria based on behavioural responses. According to these criteria…

Neuroscience education. . . byte by byte?

Brevity can be a creative coup. Consider Claire Evans' "Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds", which shoehorns our entire history into one minute: as the clock slowly ticks away, it makes me fear for a moment - implausible as it may seem - that it might run out before we evolve. Then there's the genius of Hamlet as Facebook updates (or Pride and Prejudice, though I don't find it nearly as good as Hamlet.) Maybe it's a symptom of our increasingly short attention spans, the acceleration of the news cycle, or simply the accumulation of too darn much data; for whatever reason, brevity is trendy. And…

As untrustworthy as a winged cat

Tia Resleure Winged Cat Mixed Media, 2002 Speaking of possible hoaxes, I noticed thanks to Zooillogix that the Chinese winged cat story is making the rounds again. I blogged about this in May 2007 on bioephemera - apparently they haven't even changed the photo accompanying the story! Although the Tia Resleure sculpture above is a fake, and the Chinese story may be a recycled urban myth with suspiciously few specifics, reports of winged cats have been around a long time. Here's what I had to say about it back in May 2007: You've probably heard the recent reports of a winged cat. The cat's…

What is the scientific meaning of God?

The NYTimes magazine has an excellent article on the controversy within science as to the meaning of God. This is different from the cultural controversy as to the validity of Revelation because it is concerned with why religion may have evolved as opposed to whether it evolved. Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is…

Speed daters say that selective is hot

"So I am a Libra. I enjoy science and blogging. I dislike dogs, people who talk in movies, and other people's children. I am looking for a woman who breathes regularly and is at least partially heterosexual." -- so speaketh the Speed-dater. (Actually, I have never been speed dating, but I have been on an insane number of first dates.) Speed dating -- aside from being an absolutely ridiculous situation that you should laugh about with your friends when you get home -- offers an interesting experimental model for why people are attracted to one another. Researchers at Northwestern have…

Unreal Tournament speeds visual processing, Tetris does not (is boring)

This is the best advertisement for a video game ever. The researchers compared people who played Unreal Tournament for 30 hours with people who played Tetris. They found that the Unreal Tournament players had an increase in visual processing speed: Video games that contain high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament, can actually improve your vision. Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter -- a…

Stern Report Triggers Debate on How to Value Grandchildren

The Stern Report -- a report by Sir Nicholas Stern, head of Britain's economic advisory panel -- that came out last month urged action on climate change in terms of future economic loss. I reported on people like Richard Tol who took issue with Stern's numbers in terms of the costs and benefits of climate change abatement. The Economist has a summary of Stern's critics culminating in the issue of how to value grandchildren. The issue has to do with how you discount money that you would recieve in the future. Money now is worth more than money in the future because you can do something with…

Bringing baby to a conference by myself (further proof of my insanity)

In a moment of pure foolishness, I decided it would be a good idea to submit an abstract. This was way back in June and the conference was months away. Surely, things would be calm and under control by the time the conference came. Minnow would be sleeping through the night and I'd just pay a student to come along and babysit (turns out they have daycare on-site). It'd be fun. I missed the conference season last year, and this would be a great way to network and let people know my new affiliation. Besides there was a perfect session... I don't know what I was thinking. But at the end of next…

Cool Visual Illusions: Afterimages & Aftereffects

Most of you have probably seen this before, but if you haven't, look at the flag for 30 seconds (if it doesn't work with 30, try 60), and then look at the white space underneath it. You should see a red, white, and blue flag when you look at the white space. That is a color afterimage. Again, most of you probably know how this works, but just in case you don't, I'll briefly explain it. As I'm sure you know, when light comes through the iris, it is projected onto the retina by the lens. The retina is covered with photoreceptors, which come in two types, rods and cones. Photoreceptors are…

Pancake formula says cold, lumpy pancakes are best

Today is Shrove Tuesday in the UK, relating to some archaic mumbo-jumbo religion nonsense about Jesus but generally celebrated as a good excuse to gorge oneself on pancakes. For some reason, newspapers like to ignore these religious overtones and focus on adding their own mumbo-jumbo science nonsense instead. Making and eating pancakes is one of life's simplest pleasures. Why is everyone trying trying to complicate things with god and science? In 2002, the BBC reported on physics lecturer Dr Gary Tungate who had calculated the mathematics involved in flipping a pancake, contributing this…

Presidential Science Debate One More Time

Sorry to bring this up again, as I'm sure most of you couldn't care less, but something about the idea of a presidential debate on science-related issues really bugs me, and I've been trying to figure out exactly what that is. Plus, part of me is hoping that someone will come along and explain to me why this is a good idea. So far, though, there seem to be two main justifications for having this debate. The first, expressed in the quote from the Sciencedebate 2008 website (and elsewhere) is that we are utterly dependent on science and technology in virtually every aspect of our lives. This…

Shadow Banking System Unravels: Explains Bailout Timing

No, this is not a conspiracy hypothesis.  There really is a href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/27/news/newsmakers/gross_banking.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007112810">shadow banking system.  There is even a href="https://www.aei.org/research/projectID.15/project.asp">Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (although the Committee is really a study group, not a regulatory body of any sort).   The System is said to be falling apart.  This might explain why the Fed and the Treasury decided to href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/21/AR2008092102060.html…

Ike Spike

As href="http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2008/09/nasa_views_ike.php">noted on Dynamics of Cats, The Oil Drum has some details about loss of production of oil, natural gas, and refined oil products, due to hurricanes href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4525">Ike and Gustav.  (They've been updated since the link first went up, so you might want to check them again.) Perhaps more importantly, they also have a post that contains an analysis of the implications for the supply of fuel (gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel). href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4526#more">…

The US Government Has Zero Grain Reserves

In 1996, the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 ("Freedom to Farm Act") called for elimination of government stockpiles of grain.  I'm sure someone thought it made sense, at the time.   Now, the United States government has no reserves of butter, cheese, dry milk, barley, corn, oats, sorghum, soybeans, wheat, rice, sugar, honey, peanuts, canola seed, crambe, flaxseed, mustard seed, rapeseed, safflower seed, sunflower seed, peas, lentils, chickpeas, and cotton.  [Source: US Farm Service Agency, href="http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/webapp?area=home&subject=coop&topic…

Ultraviolet LEDs

Everyone's heard of blue lasers by now.  Some people have them in their homes.  The reason they are important, is that blue light has a shorter wavelength than the red lasers that were used in the first CD and DVD devices.  The shorter wavelength means that the laser can see smaller dots.  Smaller dots mean that more information can be packed into the same space.  That means more information can be put on a DVD is a blue laser is used, compared to a red laser. A few years ago, companies started working on ultraviolet light-emitting diodes and lasers.  Because UV light has even shorter…

Looking For Good News

Sometimes I go to sites such as href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/" rel="tag">Yes! or Ode, looking for a positive spin on current events.  Another is the McClatchy site, where they have an href="http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/good_news/">entire section devoted to good news. But then, there is this: href="http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16760690.htm">U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty By Tony Pugh McClatchy Newspapers Thu, Feb. 22, 2007  WASHINGTON - The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe…

What's going on at CUNY?

I hate to see a great university system get thumped upside the head by chowder-brained legislators, but that's what's going on in New York. The chancellor of CUNY is pushing for a major revamp of the curriculum, system-wide. This ignores the unique culture at each institution and tries to turn them into cookie-cutter degree factories, and ends up targeting the lowest common denominator. City University of New York's Chancellor Matthew Goldstein is about to turn the prestigious system of senior and community colleges into a glorified high school. And few people seem to even want to try to stop…

Political Mutterings; New Media and the Information Gap

One thing I saw a couple of days ago, in Kalamazoo, was a protest near the office of their US Representative, Fred Upton.  It was a small protest, put on by the Pink Patrol.  I did not stop to see what the protest was about.   Today, I tried to find some reference to it on the Internet, but there was nothing.  So I went to the href="http://www.house.gov/upton">Fred Upton website, and a few other places.  There really isn't a lot of news about him.  Seems that his biggest sins are supporting media consolidation, and opposing Internet neutrality.  Aside from the fact that such legislation…

Come one, come all, and witness the molecular MACHINE

Last week was a big one for the Rapoport lab. Throughout my years here, I've come to realy apreciate how structure biology can realy lead to insight. In the latest issue of Nature, two papers describe how proteins are pumped out of cells by the SecA secretory protein. Background: You can divide proteins into three classes, those that stay inside the cell, those that are pumped out of the cell and those that must be incorporated into the membrane. The problem with the last two classes of proteins is that they must cross a membrane. This is accomplished by the translocon, a protein conducting…

What I taught today: heavy on the epistasis

My students are also blogging here: My undergrad encounters Developmental Biology Miles' Devo Blog Tavis Grorud’s Blog for Developmental Biology Thang’s Blog Heidi’s blog for Developmental Biology Chelsae blog Stacy’s Strange World of Developmental Biology Thoughts of Developmental Biology Biology~ Today we talked about gap genes and a little bit about pair rule genes in flies, and to introduce the topic I summarized genetic epistasis. Epistasis is a fancy word for the interactions between genes, and we've already discussed it on the simplest level. You can imagine…