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Science Sampler

Well a good friend of mine is starting a virtual journal club, Science Sampler. We'll be 3 to 5 contributors and the entries will be about articles from the current scientific literature. From the website: We read them so you don't have to!!! Comments on recent works in Cell Biology, from the cytoskeleton to membranes. And we also read yeast papers... So far there are two articles reviewed on the site, including a review of the same STED microscopy paper that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The format of this virtual journal club will be based on the 5 minute men, a club at Columbia U.…

Give Yourself a Pat on the (Hump)back

AP stock photo. Rex Dalton reports in the latest issue of Nature: "Humpback whale numbers in the northern Pacific Ocean have ballooned to nearly 20,000, the largest population seen since the majestic mammals were hunted nearly to extinction half a century ago. The number of humpbacks hit an all-time low of 1,400 or even lower by 1966, when their hunting was banned internationally. The new census, from one of the largest whale studies ever undertaken, shows that the animals have rebounded much better than expected.[...] The three-year study, called SPLASH (Structure of Populations, Levels of…

Energy vs. Power. There is a difference

Here is an article from Wired.com that talks about a used cooking oil generator. It's a really neat idea in that the oil is right there anyway. Here is my problem - from the article: A new garage-engineered generator burns the waste oil from restaurants' deep fryers to generate electricity and hot water. Put 80 gallons of grease into the Vegawatt each week, and its creators promise it will generate about 5 kilowatts of power. If you put 80 gallons of grease into the thing, that has a finite amount of energy. 5 kilowatts tells you the rate the energy is created. This would be like saying "…

How We Actually Monitor an Outbreak

A CDC website lays out how we actually identify an outbreak of O157:H7. Guess what? It doesn't happen like it does in the movies or on TV. This is why keeping these networks fully functional (i.e., adequately funded) matters: time is critical and delays in processing due to inadequate resources or personnel can be deadly. For kicks, imagine if this were something far more contagious than a food-borne pathogen. Here's the timeline: 1. Incubation time: The time from eating the contaminated food to the beginning of symptoms. For E. coli O157, this is typically 3-4 days. 2. Time to…

Education & Careers and Politics Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Politics. From Flickr, by art_es_anna Education & Careers. From Flickr, by Irish Typepad Reader comments of the week: In Scientific Virtue, Jonah Lehrer of the Frontal Cortex shares an excerpt from an interview with Steven Shapin, author of The Scientific Revolution and the upcoming The Scientific Life. Shapin criticizes the supposed differences between "true" academic scientists and scientists working in industry and government,…

Dead bodies don't cause disease outbreaks

I'm not sure why I'm bothering to say this -- again -- but it always seems to be necessary. The horrific oil pipeline explosion in Nigeria that took over 260 lives is now being treated as a possible focus of epidemic disease because of the decaying bodies. Dead bodies in mass casualties do not cause disease, no matter how many times we see reports like this: Nigerian health officials are disinfecting the site of an oil pipeline explosion that killed more than 260 people and injured dozens more. Fumigation work began on Tuesday night, according to health officials. "Our concern is to prevent…

Light Shining into a Tangled Bank

tags: Sandwalk, Darwin's Down House, nature, photography, London, England, Bromley, England Light Shining into a Tangled Bank. A view through a thicket of trees as seen from the Sandwalk near Darwin's Down House in Bromley, England. Image: GrrlScientist 31 August 2008 [larger view]. The last paragraph in Darwin's On The Origin of Species; It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately…

When Press Releases Collide

Consecutive entries in my RSS reader yesterday: Salty ocean in the depths of Enceladus Discovery could have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life An enormous plume of water spurts in giant jets from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. In a report published in the international science journal Nature today (25 June), European researchers provide evidence that this magnificent plume is fed by a salty ocean. The discovery could have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life as well as our understanding of how planetary moons are formed. and: Jets on Saturn's…

Wound healing with fish?

Pictoral abstract showing the use of nanofibers from fish collagen in wound healing. Image from Zhou et al., 2015.   Researchers in China have discovered that collagen isolated from the skin of tilapia effectively reduce wound healing time in mice. The usefulness of collagen, a major structural protein found in connective tussues, in wound healing has been known. Using fish proteins instead of typical mammalian sources reduces the risk for potential pathogens. Dr. Jiao Sun (Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine) and colleagues isolated collagen from the skin of tilapia and spun…

Life in a lake must not be that stressful

  Image of Biwa salmon from the Lake Biwa Museum (http://www.lbm.go.jp/english/exhibits/aquarium.html) It is not surprising that Biwa salmon (image above), a subspecies of Oncorhyncus masou, do not adapt to seawater very well after having been landlocked in Lake Biwa, Japan for the last 500,000 years or so.  Researchers from Hokkaido University and Shiga Prefecture Fishery Experiment Station in Japan wanted to know what caused the salmon to lose their ability to thrive in salt water. In a new paper published in the American Journal of Physiology they compared the sodium/potassium pumps in…

Phermone from Fathers Delays Daughters Sexual Maturity

Differing from the typical strategy of threatening potential suitors with castration, scientists speculate that phermones from fathers delay their daughters sexual development: Chemical cues from fathers may be delaying the onset of sexual maturity in daughters, as part of an evolutionary strategy to prevent inbreeding, according to researchers at Penn State. ... "Recently, experts elsewhere discovered a little-known pheromone receptor gene in the human olfactory system, linking the role of pheromones on menarche, or the first occurrence of menstruation," said Matchock, whose findings are…

Your Great * 1800 Grandmother Was a Neanderthal

They've finally done it. Bruce Lahn's lab has an article in PNAS (review here) showing evidence for introgression of a gene from an archaic Homo species into the modern human genome. They suggest the possibility that Neanderthals are that archaic species. That's right: there are Neanderthals among us (at least in small portions of our genome). For those of you interested in the details, here's a brief summary. The gene in question, microcephalin (MCPH1) has an interesting pattern of polymorphism. The approximate coalescence time for all MCPH1 alleles in humans is approximately one million…

Ancient Jade Exchange in Southeast Asia

Hot off the presses from PNAS, we have a paper on ancient jade exchange in Southeast Asia. From the abstract: We have used electron probe microanalysis to examine Southeast Asian nephrite (jade) artifacts, many archeologically excavated, dating from 3000 B.C. through the first millennium A.D. The research has revealed the existence of one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks of a single geological material in the prehistoric world. Green nephrite from a source in eastern Taiwan was used to make two very specific forms of ear pendant that were distributed, between 500 B.C. and 500…

Further Differentiation within the ER

(from my old blog) OK this week I've been obsessed with the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). This organelle is comprised of a continuous network of membranous tubes (and sheets) that extends to the cell periphery. In addition ER sheets also envelopes the nucleus - forming a bilayered nuclear envelope with an outer nuclear membrane and inner nuclear membrane. The extended part of the ER though is mostly tubular, as I displayed in an earlier post on Immunofluorescence images: So the question becomes ... how do you form tubular organelles? Well Gia Voeltz, from our lab just published a paper in…

Monday Musings: Gaua evacuations, more activity at Soufriere Hills and the destructive force of Toba revisited

Back to work after Thanksgiving Break ... lets clean up a few news items I missed trying to figure out the non-eruption of Karkar. Undated photo of the summit area of Gaua, Vanuatu. There was an actual eruption - or, more correctly, a continued eruption - of Gaua in Vanuatu. The current activity has prompted the evacuation of 300 villagers from the island and they will not be able to return until activity wanes. Tourists were also told to stay away from the volcano, but the airport on the island has not been affected by the eruption, which might suggest the activity is relatively localized…

Monday Musings: The end at Montserrat, more rock falls at Kilauea and a Shiveluch update

Monday is here again already ... A pyroclastic flow from Soufriere Hills heading towards the ocean. Note the large volcaniclastic debris fan being formed by repeated flows. Dated March 2006. The "Science Advisory Committee" at Montserrat in the West Indies suggests that the current eruption of Soufriere Hills on the small island could be drawing to a close. This is mostly based on the ever-decreasing seismicity under the volcano and that the volcano has not experienced any new dome growth or explosions over the last 6 months. Gas emissions have remained relatively constant over the last 18…

Redoubt Update for 4/1/2009

Photo courtesy of Calvin Hall. Taken from March 28, 2009, 50 miles from Redoubt. Redoubt continues to huff and puff, with an almost constant ash plume of ~15,000 feet / 5,000 meters. This after ~4 PM (Alaska Time), an explosion produced a 25,000 foot / 8,000 meter ash column that disrupted flights in and out of Anchorage again. Also, the air in the Kenai Peninsula area is beginning to feel the effects of the eruption, as AVO notes: Satellite images from this morning show a broad layer of volcanic haze extending east of the volcano over the Kenai Peninsula, the Anchorage Bowl, and the…

Confucius [Kong Fuzi] say....

This hilarious article about "confirming" your descent from Confucius is making the rounds. Now, my understanding is that the patrilineage of Confucius remains to this day. So the people who would seek confirmation would often have a tradition of descent from the great sage himself. But, I note tradition. We all know that "ancestors" can be concocted, and, we also know that sometimes patrilineages can be "interrupted." When English geneticist Bryan Sykes tested individuals with his surname across the British Isles he found that ~50% of individuals were of the same Y chromosomal lineage.…

Ozone from China

It used to be my job to teach the environmental health survey course for public health students and air pollution was a topic I spent a lot of time on because it interested me and intersected some of my research work. One of the things I taught my students was that some air pollutants were very local -- carbon monoxide (CO) being a good example; levels of CO on one side of the street could vary significantly from those on the other side by virtue of traffic patterns or street canyon effects -- while others were considered regional pollutants. Ozone (O3) was my example of choice. It isn't…

Udanoceratops tschizhovi, the basics

Once more, I'm going to start recycling some of those dinosaur texts written for the defunct field guide (for the back-story on that project see the ornithomimosaur article here). This time round, I'll get through some of the ceratopsians [adjacent skull reconstruction from wikipedia, and based on an image by Jaime Headden]. One of the most poorly known ceratopsians, Udanoceratops tschizhovi was a Mongolian species from the Santonian-Campanian Djadokhta Formation. Named in 1992 by Sergei Kurzanov, the holotype consists of an incomplete skull (the frill and everything around the orbital…

Today in PLoS Biology

Could not resist.... Network Features of the Mammalian Circadian Clock: The circadian clock is the biological clock found throughout the body that coordinates the timing of molecular and cellular processes on a 24-hour rhythm. It is composed of numerous transcription factors that feed back and control their own expression. To explore how the clock functions in the face of genetic perturbations, we disrupted its function by knocking down gene expression of known clock genes in a dose-dependent fashion. We measured the expression of clock genes following knockdown and constructed perturbation-…

Mitt Romney's idea of freedom: businesses free to do whatever they darn well please?

Mr. Mitt Romney spoke this weekend at the National Rifle Association's (NRA) annual convention and kicked off his remarks applauding the gun-lovers group's defense of the 2nd amendment to the Constitution. "This fine organization is sometimes called a single-issue group," Romney said. "That's high praise when the single issue is freedom. I love my freedom as much as the next person, but I sure don't believe that background checks on individuals purchasing guns and appropriate waiting periods are a gross assault on individual liberty. We in public health consider violence a preventable…

E. coli in fluid dripping from New Mexico garbage truck

Dear PharmMom, Your daughter-in-law found this one on your local TV news station: TULAROSA, N. M. (KRQE-KBIM) - Fluid leaking onto city streets from a contract garbage truck has tested positive for the E. coli bacteria, according to the town's mayor. Alamo Disposal has been picking up the trash for many in Tularosa for the last three years. Recently resident and city officials noticed something leaking from a truck into the middle of the street. Tularosa Mayor Ray Córdova then inspected the vehicle and smelled something extremely foul coming from it. That's when he told residents to take…

Ants herd aphids with tranquilisers in their footsteps

This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material. In your garden, there's a fair chance that a farmer is currently tranquilising her livestock with a chemical cocktail she secretes from her feet. Don't believe me? Look closer... Humans aren't the only species that farms other animals for food - ants do it too and their herds consist of aphids. They feed on plant sap and excrete a sweet and nutritious liquid called honeydew, which the ants drink. In…

George Palade 1912-2008

Last week one of the fathers of Cell Biology died. I found out Friday during happy hour - but I just haven't had the time to write anything until now. George Palade and Keith Porter, were the first scientists to peer into the depths of the cell using electron microscopy (EM). This all started in 1945 when Keith Porter, a researcher at Rockefeller University, snapped the first known EM micrograph (right). A year later Palade joined Albert Claude's group to work on the electron microscopy of large structures isolated from tissue culture cells. Palade and Porter started a revolution - they were…

Hope for Nearly Extinct Ibis

Efforts to save the Middle East's rarest bird have been boosted by two chance sightings of the species 1,500 miles apart. Now, if only they could get these birds together, they would have a flock. Sort of. Here's a press release from BirdLife International: Northern Bald Ibises were seen last month in the Jordan Valley for the first time in 13 years, and in Djibouti, east Africa, for the first time ever, raising hopes that numbers of this species are not as low as scientists fear. The bird was thought extinct in the Middle East in the 1990s before a colony of just six birds was found in…

How hot would the space jumper get?

A new video from the Red Bull Stratos Jump guys came out. Here it is: This reminds me of an unanswered question about the Stratos jump that I didn't address on my last post on this topic. Commenter Long Drop asked about how much Felix would heat up as he falls from 120,000 feet. This is a great question. The first, off the bat answer is that he won't heat up too much. Why do I say this? Well, when Joe Kittinger jumped from over 100,000 feet and didn't melt. Still, this is a great thing to calculate. How do you calculate something like this? I will look at this in terms of energy. For…

Division on the Abacus

Now we're going to try something challenging on the abacus: *division*. Like multiplication, abacus division is close to the way you'd do it on paper. But just like doing paper division is trickier than paper multiplication, abacus division is tricker than abacus multiplication. But the technique that is used to do division on the abacus is an important fundamental one: it's what makes it possible to use the abacus for more advanced operations, like roots. Before going into the algorithm, there's one important new technique that we need, called *partitioning* on the abacus. The idea is that…

What is a meteor shower, anyway?

"That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and fire dusts begin to fall off of me... I'm a shooting star. A meteor shower. But I'm not going to die out. I guess I'm more like a comet then. I'm just going to keep on coming back." -C. JoyBell C. Here in the Solar System, meteor showers are one of the things we take for granted on Earth. In particular…

When is a Honeyeater not a Honeyeater? The Tricks of Convergent Evolution

tags: evolution, honeyeaters, Meliphagidae, Mohoidae, birds, ornithology, birds, molecular phylogeny, extinct species, South Pacific Islands Two nectar-feeding birds from Hawai'i, the kioea (brown-streaked, in middle) and an o'o species (lower left), looked so much like nectar specialists from the western Pacific (two species on right) that taxonomists put them all in the same honeyeater family, the Meliphagidae. All the Hawaiian birds are unfortunately extinct, but DNA evidence shows that their resemblance resulted from convergent evolution, because the Hawaiian birds were actually much…

Brain & Behavior and Technology Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large version of the Brain & Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by zorilla Technology. The workings of a Victorian machine shop. From Flickr, by Elsie esq. Reader comments of the week: In Kids and Happiness, Jonah Lehrer of the Frontal Cortex reports on new evidence which contradicts a widely held notion- that adults with children are happier than those without. A handful of studies have shown that being a parent may actually lead to a greater risk of depression, and that…

Bioengineered tissue transplant saves a life

There is a story on the wires today about an upcoming Lancet article describing the case of a young Columbian woman whose failing airway was replaced by a bioengineered airway whose cells were cultured from adult stem cells obtained from the patient's bone marrow. Since there is as yet no scientific paper, I got these details from a press release from the University of Bristol, one of four participating European universities in this unique case (the others were in Barcelona, Padua and Milan). The 30 year old patient's main airway (the lower trachea) and left main stem bronchus (one of the two…

Sea floors worldwide are littered with the remains of diverse extinct beaked whales

This rather unassuming photo is included for all you cetophiles out there (or, should that be cetaceophiles? Whatever). These rather crappy fossils represent an assortment of odontocete fragments from the Red Crag deposits of Suffolk, England. I initially thought that I recognised the rostrum fragments (the bigger fossils over on the right) from Richard Owen's 1870 Monograph of British Fossil Cetacea of the 'Red Crag', but I was mis-remembering, as the specimens described therein are housed in the Natural History Museum in London, not the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge (where this photo was…

Origin of the evil, demonic Quetzalcoatlus revealed

If you're a regular reader you'll have seen the recent article on those freaky, terrifying versions of the azhdarchid pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus from the 1970s and 80s. We looked at Guy Michel's version from 1979 and Richard Orr's spectacularly colourful rendition from 1984. My friend Paul Glynn reminded me recently that there's another version out there: Bob Hersey's purple Quetzalcoatlus from David Norman's 1980 Spotter's Guide to Dinosaurs & Other Prehistoric Animals (Norman 1980). I show it here. Again, freakin' terrifying. As I said last time round, the image of the 'demonic…

The biggest tapir

Purely because it's semi-topical - well, it was jokingly alluded to in the brief tapir article from the other day - here's a little bit of information about the world's biggest ever tapir, Tapirus augustus Matthew & Granger, 1923, the Pleistocene Asian species formerly known as Megatapirus (it's best known from southern China, but has also been reported from Java and Vietnam. Incidentally, some authors say that it survived into the Holocene). Some people estimate that this tapir was about 3.5 m long, and 1.5 m tall at the shoulder. Wow! Now, I bet you're thinking... what, you mean…

The bacterial zoo living on your skin

It's a diverse melting-pot of different groups, with hundreds of different cultures living together in harmony, many sticking to their own preferred areas. No, not London, New York or any other cosmopolitan city; I'm talking about your skin. It may all look the same to you, but to the bacteria living on it, it's an entire realm of diverse habitats. From a microscopic perspective, the hairy, moist surface of your armpits is worlds apart from the smooth, dry skin of your forearms. Even though they are separated by mere inches, these patches of skin are as different to their microscopic…

False Autobiographical Memories

One of the criticisms of most false memory research is that it lacks ecological validity. For example, in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, a common method for inducing false memories in the lab, involves giving participants a bunch of words (e.g., bed, rest, nap, snore, etc.) that are all associated with another word that's not presented (e.g., sleep). During recall, if you ask participants if they saw the word "sleep" after seeing a list of its associates, they're pretty likely to tell you that they did. But it's difficult to know how to generalize the DRM to real-world…

50% of kids are on food stamps at some point in their childhood

Mark Rank and Thomas Hirschl recently published an estimate that 50% of American kids are on food stamps at some point during their first twenty years of life. Their estimate is based on an analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, from 1968 through 1997. This news article by Lindsey Tanner provides a good overview. The survey followed up families annually, thus there are kids in the study who were included at age 1, 2, . . ., 20. From this you can easily just count the proportion who were never on food stamps, the proportion who were on food stamps for one year during the…

Eruptions Word of the Day: Dacite

So, I've had requests on the blog to help to do some defining of volcanologic terms on the blog, so I thought I'd try a new column called Eruptions Word of the Day. I'm not sure how often it will run, but let's give it a try. Eruptions Word of the Day for July 5, 2010: Dacite Dacite is a magma type defined by silica (SiO2) content between 63-68 (or 69) weight percent. That is the textbook definition, but some other typical characteristics of dacite lavas (or magmas) is the presence of certain minerals: plagioclase feldspar and hydrous minerals (containing water in their mineral structure)…

Ancient human population sizes

In light of the recent work on the acceleration of human evolution due to increased population size, this paper in Genetics, Inferring Human Population Sizes, Divergence Times and Rates of Gene Flow From Mitochondrial, X and Y Chromosome Resequencing Data: We estimate parameters of a general isolation-with-migration model using resequence data from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), the Y chromosome, and two loci on the X chromosome in samples of 25-50 individuals from each of 10 human populations. Application of a coalescent-based Markov chain Monte Carlo technique allows simultaneous inference of…

Astronomy from the Moon

The Astrophysics Enabled By the Return to the Moon Workshop is on right now at the Space Telescope Science Institute. It is webcast (link above). The program looks reasonably interesting, meetings like this have been held before, and the issues look to tbe much the same. You can do astronomy from the Moon. Some of it would be sensible, if expensive, to do from the Moon. Some might even be uniquely doable on the Moon. Some should be done from the Moon if it so happens that there is activity taking place there. Might as well give folks something interesting to do. I ran a mission concept by…

Mad dogs, rabies, and maps of the world

Over 55,000 people die each year from rabies, a disease that is 100% preventable, according to Dr. Guy Palmer, who spoke last night at the University of Washington. Dr. Palmer is from the School for Global Animal Health, a group that works towards improving global health through advancing preventative care for both humans and animals. One of the preventative measures is through rabies vaccination. Image from the CDC Public Library of Health. Rabies cases can be prevented by vaccinating dogs and other animals that carry the virus like raccoons, skunks, and foxes. The virus itself has a…

Introduction to Molecular Phylogenetics

One of the most powerful lines of evidence for common descent (the theory of evolution) is often referred to as molecular phylogenetics. In brief, it's the use of protein sequences to discern how closely two species are related. As the National Center for Biotechnology Information explains it, Evolutionary theory states that similarity among individuals or species is attributable to common descent, or inheritance from a common ancestor. Thus, the relationships established by phylogenetic systematics often describe a species' evolutionary history and, hence, its phylogeny, the historical…

More on the Fiscal Threat to Science (Your action needed)

This is direct from Shawn Otto: This is direct from Shawn Otto: Several people have emailed suggestions I will share with everyone: 1. WHAT TO DO: call and email your two U.S. senators. Contact from a constituent on a wonky issue like this will have enormous influence. Calling is better than email, but do both if you can. Go here to find your Senator, and select your state in the drop down box in the upper right hand corner. Tell them in your own words to reject the reduction effort in the stimulus bill led by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) when it comes to science. Note…

More Evidence That Science Abuse Has Been Systematic Under This Administration

This isn't a subject I blog much about any more...after all, the "war on science" argument that I helped originate has now been made in such an ad nauseum way that it has become more or less conventional wisdom. However, it's still worth noting when a great new piece of evidence emerges showing just how bad the administration has been when it comes to science. In this case, that evidence comes from the Environmental Protection Agency. Not surprisingly, the EPA's staff unions are withdrawing from their cooperation agreement with the agency's political leadership. And what is their cited…

Ants Are from Mars, Scientists Are from Uranus

Subterranean...blind...predatory...smokin' hot AILF! These are all adjectives that you could use to describe a newly discovered ant from the Amazon rainforest. Dubbed the Martialis heureka or "Ant from Mars" (not kidding), the sightless creature lives inside the soil and presumably hunts prey with massive mandibles. The Ant from Mars also represents a new subfamily of ant, a discovery that hasn't happened since 1923 (Note: see comments for various competing view points). Take me to your watermelon. After evaluating the DNA of the ant, researchers have concluded that this ant is on the bottom…

DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2008: fabulous prizes from Seed.

We're nearly to the halfway mark (in terms of time) on Blogger Challenge 2008 and the mommy bloggers are still leaving us in their dust. We've told you about the school kids you could help by donating to our challenges, we've offered small incentives (and big incentives). Today, the news comes from our benevolent overlords at Seed that they'd like to help us coax some donations from you by offering more prizes. How to win great ScienceBlogs prizes: First, make a donation (from $5 on up) to any of the challenges mounted by ScienceBlogs bloggers. After donating, forward your email receipt to…

Send GrrlScientist to Antarctica!

GrrlScientist is in a contest to become Quark Expedition's official blogger from Antarctica. (So is DN Lee from Urban Science Adventures.) Grrl has been doing pretty well getting votes in this contest, despite the fact that her competition includes a radio personality from Portugal and a member of the Osmond family. Of the top vote-getters, it is clear to me that Grrl would do the best job with the specified task (blogging from, and about, Antarctica). She has a personal and professional interest in nature, science, the environment, and conservation. She has a history of writing pieces…

Another Theory Regarding Fall Foliage

This seems to be a more sensible theory regarding leaf color change in autumn: By taking careful stock and laboratory analyses of the autumn foliage of sweetgum and red maple trees along transects from floodplains to ridge-tops in a nature preserve in Charlotte, N.C., former University of North Carolina at Charlotte graduate student Emily M. Habinck found that in places where the soil was relatively low in nitrogen and other essential elements, trees produced more red pigments known as anthocyanins. Habinck's discovery supports a 2003 hypothesis put forward to explain why trees bother to make…

Catholic taxonomy

The peculiarities of dietary restrictions by the religious are always entertaining. Catholics have their own weird practices: here's a bit of strange information from a Catholic agony aunt forum. Do alligators count as fish? As a Catholic who observes the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays, I would like to know if alligator would be considered meat or fish. Recently, on a Friday, I was in a local restaurant where I was sharing a dinner of alligator. I thought upon this, and decided, as a reptile, alligator would fall into the fish category. I hope I'm not sounding too scrupulous, but…