Search Content

Displaying results 13351 - 13400 of 87950

5 NASA Photos That Changed The World

"Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow. Science has been greatly successful at explaining natural processes, and this has led not only to increased understanding of the universe but also to major improvements in technology and public health and welfare." -National Academy of Sciences It’s no secret that peering out into the distant Universe is best done from space, just as looking at our entire world is best done from that same vantage point. For all of human history until the mid-20th century, this was an…

Sacred Field of the Shining One

Yesterday me and my buddy Per Vikstrand visited the third site in our little exploration program for fields with highly suggestive names on 18th century maps. We've already covered the Field of St. Olaf and the Hall of Odin. This time we went to the Field of Ullr near Gävle, an hour and a half's drive from Uppsala along the new shiny E4 motorway. (On the way we zipped across sites such as Sommaränge skog, excavated for the roadworks and previously covered in my blogging.) Ullr is one of the old gods that were semi-forgotten in Snorri's day, and so doesn't figure prominently in extant…

Unwritten rule #723: On spring break, real faculty work at home

Even though it's spring break, I'm in my office today because I need access to some software and datasets that I don't have at home, and because, frankly, I work more efficiently and with less guilt at school than at home. (Unless I'm blogging, that is!) I didn't ask very many colleagues about their spring break plans, maybe because the internet consensus was that spring break was a time to recuperate from teaching and get some research done, and those were basically my plans, too. (Plus taxes, whee!) I assumed my colleagues here at Mystery U would do some variation on the same themes. So…

The War on Christmas continues!

I guess I'm not the only person in the world to get ranty emails from devout Christians. I was sent a copy of the message below which was originally sent to a store (name hidden to protect the guilty) which was selling a copy of the hideous leg lamp from the movie, A Christmas Story. To 'Your Retail Store': Today I went into your store, and I was appalled and disgusted that you blasphemed Almighty God Jesus Christ and His Most Holy Nativity Christmas by selling from your store shelves a filthy pornographic lamp that said "Christmas" Story on it. REMOVE THAT PIECE OF FILTHY, PORNOGRAPHIC…

Meet Professor Paleozoic

Profesor Paleozoic. From Buffalo Land. Our leader, Professor Paleozoic, ordinarily existed in a sort of transition state between the primary and tertiary formations. He could tell cheese from chalk under the microscope, and show that one was full of the fossil and the other of the living evidences of animal life. A worthy man, vastly more troubled with rocks on the brain than "rocks" in the pocket. Learning had once come near making him mad, but from this sad fate he was happily saved by a somewhat Pickwickian blunder. While in Kansas, some years since, he penetrated a remote portion of…

New, Less Invasive Down Syndrome Tests?

Today's NYT describes a new strategy for Down Syndrome screening. The new test, developed by a company called Sequenom, screens the mother's blood sample for fragments of RNA produced from fetal chromosomes. Dr. Lo looked for genes on Chromosome 21 that were active in the fetus but not in the mother. That means that any such RNA found in the mother's bloodstream comes from the fetus. The Sequenom test then looks at spots where the version of those genes inherited by the fetus from the father might differ from the version inherited from the mother. If the baby has the normal two copies of…

Six Degrees of Scientific Separation

I have a favour to ask of all of you. Go and fill in SciLink's Tree of Science (you'll have to sign up to SciLink first). Why? Well it is very interesting to see how different scientists are connected. And on top of that we can settle a longstanding dispute - what is the appropriate Erdos Number for biologists. You might be asking, what is the Erdos Number? or who was Paul Erdos Number? From an old post by RPM: Paul Erdos was an extremely prolific and mobile mathematician who has left a legacy in academia in the form of the Erdos Number -- a count of your "academic distance" from Erdos.…

Politics, Wild West Style

Here's some election news from back home in Texas--specifically, from the district where my mother lives, just south of Austin, Texas. From the Burnt Orange Report: This just in from Hays County. Former Republican [State] Rep. Rick Green who was taken down by Patrick Rose in 2002, apparently got a little upset over a Rose mailer that had his face superimposed on this year's Republican nominee Jim Neuhaus (as Green is deeply involved in running the Neuhaus campaign). So upset that Rick Green drove up to the polling location that Patrick Rose was at a punched him in the face, catching him off…

Lott letter in The Columbus Dispatch

Lott has a letter in the 26 July Columbus Dispatch replying to an earlier letter from Paul van Doorn. Lott repeats his claim from his 21 July letter: Yet, in the very same issue, another paper appeared by professors Plassmann and Whitley, who examined three additional years' worth of data and found "annual reductions in murder rates between 1.5 and 2.3 percent for each additional year that a right-to-carry law is in effect. The total benefit from reduced crimes usually ranges between about $2 billion and $3 billion per year." Once more he pretends that he never miscoded his data…

Humboldt Are Here And They're Hungry

Growing up to two meters (six feet) long, Humboldt squid are formidable predators that hunt krill and a variety of fishes. Their normal habitat is within the tropical and subtropical waters of the East Pacific. Over the last few years, however, Humboldt squid have begun moving into cooler-water areas such as Central California. Image: (c) 2003 MBARI If you been keeping up here at DSN, you probably already know that Humboldt squid are invading further north up the Pacific Coast. Dosidicus gigas are voracious pack hunters occurring historically from Chile to Baja California. Occasionally, they…

Japan nuke news 20: Tokyo Electric: "fuel may have melted"

Tokyo Electric officials have noted that they can not rule out the possibility that fuel rods in the Fukushima reactors have melted, at least to some extent. No one else, as far as I can tell, thinks that fuel rods have not melted. A Question that is more important than that of Tokyo Electric's sudden revelation is, of course, are the fuel rods still melting? The answer is that they may well be. As of a few hours ago, there is a 20 km offset no-entry zone around the Fukushima Power Plant. The evacuation zone has been reduced from 10 to 8 km. Coagulant continues to be injected into…

A Tale of Two Quotes

One is from Nicholas Kristof and one is from batshit lunatic Ron Moore (the former judge who placed a Ten Commandments megalith in the Alabama Supreme Court). First, Kristof: Now that the Christian Right has largely retreated from the culture wars, let's hope that the Atheist Left doesn't revive them. We've suffered enough from religious intolerance that the last thing the world needs is irreligious intolerance. Now Christopath Roy Moore: Enough evidence exists for Congress to question [Muslim Keith] Ellison's qualifications to be a member of Congress as well as his commitment to the…

Protest BP Day in New Orleans [Guilty Planet]

Tonight we made our way to Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter to witness the New Orleans gathering of Worldwide Protest BP Day. The drizzling weather probably served to separate the men from the boys, as they say, and so good intentions and half-baked messages ran high (see photos from the protest on Fickr). There were plenty of people opposed to the use of Corexit and one woman rightfully demanded to know why it was banned in Europe but still legal in the U.S. (read more about this issue on the ProPublica blog). There were accusations that the President was doing nothing and that…

Quick Picks on ScienceBlogs, January 3rd, 2007

From Doc Bushwell's Chimp Refuge, Hypermiler or Hyperdumb?. "Some hypermilers have managed to get very impressive figures out of their vehicles, in excess of 100 miles per gallon, but the way some of them go about it is downright crazy. Techniques used include over-inflating tires, tailgating trucks on highways to within one car length, turning off the engine while coming down hills. I was surprised that no one had mounted a mast on their trunk with a large sail, or a grappling hook to lasso the car ahead of them." From Aardvarchaeology, Chasing Ancient Kings. "The potsherds and burnt daub…

Well, this doesn't happen every day...

Just a quick post from the "weird happenings in Iowa" file: Mysterious chunks of ice pelt Iowa town. DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) -- Large chunks of ice, one of them reportedly about 50 pounds, fell from the sky in this northeast Iowa city, smashing through a woman's roof and tearing through nearby trees. Authorities were unsure of the ice's origin but have theorized the chunks either fell from an airplane or naturally accumulated high in the atmosphere -- both rare occurrences. "It sounded like a bomb!" 78-year-old Jan Kenkel said. She said she was standing in her kitchen when an ice chunk crashed…

Mapping polymorphisms in 16S ribosomal RNA

In the class that I'm teaching, we found that several PCR products, amplified from the 16S ribosomal RNA genes from bacterial isolates, contain a mixed base in one or more positions. We picked samples where the mixed bases were located in high quality regions of the sequence (Q >40), and determined that the mixed bases mostly likely come from different ribosomal RNA genes. Many species of bacteria have multiple copies of 16S ribosomal RNA genes and the copies can differ from each other within a single genome and between genomes. Now, in one of our last projects we are determining where…

Better Biofuels

This just in: Biofuels produced from switchgrass and post-harvest corn waste could significantly reduce the emissions that contribute to climate change, according to an analysis by EWG and University of California biofuels experts. EWG’s analysis found that the life cycle carbon intensity of cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass was 47 percent lower than that of gasoline. Ethanol made from corn stover – the leaves and stalks that remain in the field after the grain is harvested – has a life-cycle carbon intensity 96 percent lower than gasoline’s.[1] By contrast, studies have found that the life…

Lunar Eclipse: Clouded out here!

I was driving home from work at about 6:30 today and noticed the Moon, still orange, hanging low on the horizon. The lower left corner was just starting to be shadowed by the Earth. As it rose a little higher, it turned yellow and then white, as we learned it should. Then we got clouded out, and right now, during totality, the entire sky is covered in clouds. But I started thinking, "What if I were in space?" Well, the Moon appears red/orange every day during Moonrise/Moonset from Earth, but would appear white from space. But the red/orange during a total eclipse? The Moon would still…

HPV vaccine works. NO WAY!!!!

The HPV vaccine works! Genital warts in young Australians five years into national human papillomavirus vaccination programme: national surveillance data. In Australia, they started vaccinating girls/women against HPV in 2007. In 2007, 11.5% of women under 21 (age-range most likely to get the vaccine before they were sexually active) were diagnosed with genital warts. 0.85% in 2011. 0% in women under 21 who got the HPV vaccines. 0%. For women 21-30 (only maybe got the vaccine, and even if they did, maybe after they were sexually active), it went from 11.3% to 3.1%. For women over 30, there…

Viewing the Earth from space celebrates 70 years (Synopsis)

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'” -Edgar Mitchell Can you believe it’s been 70 years since humanity first began exploring our own planet from space? It’s the best way to view clouds, weather patterns, sea ice, deforestation and all sorts of other…

Ask Ethan: How many atoms do you share with King Tut? (Synopsis)

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.” -Carl Sagan Inside a typical human body, beneath the organs, cells and even molecules that define us, there are atoms: some 7 × 10^27 of them in each of us. Mostly oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen (with less than 1% of everything else combined), this tremendous number leads to an intriguing possibility: that at any given moment in your life, some of those atoms were once inside any historical living being you choose. The elements in the human body. Image credit: Openstax college,…

Death Threats by Angry Catholics Continue Against PZ Myers

... And so far, to my knowledge, there has been no commentary by the Catholic League condemning these threats. For example: You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the children. Or you can get your brains beat in....I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt That one was from mkroll writing from 1800 Flowers.com And this one from a somewhat more anonymous person: You are a scumbag, may your insides rot, may your neck be snapped by an iron boot against a curb Since the Catholic League has a hair trigger when it comes to…

UK/ Ireland in August?

Kate and I will be going to the Worldcon in London this August. This will be my first trip to the UK for anything other than changing planes, so we're going to take a few days on either end to do touristy stuff. The pre-con plan is to stay based in London, maybe taking a day trip or two from there. Post-con, we were thinking of going a little farther afield, maybe Dublin. For a variety of reasons, I've spent a whole bunch of time thinking and writing about Newgrange, and thus it might be nice to, you know, see it in person. and Ireland is another place I've never been but would like to see (I…

An environmental ultimatum: A Letter from a Top Secret Woodpecker to the Human Leader of Canada

This is straight from the minds of the young: I just had to highlight today's piece at the Science Creative Quarterly. It's a letter composed during one of our Science Creative Literary Symposia sessions, detailing a secret force of woodpeckers issuing an ultimatum to Canada's leader. Anyway, it's awesome. It begins: To the Human Leader of Canada, Greetings from all Woodpeckers. We send this letter as a warning, but also as a letter heralding the beginning of a possible alliance. And continues a bit later with: We have an offer to make, and there will be consequences for not accepting.…

Beware of freezing hearts

Image of a hibernating thirteen-lined ground squirrel from University of Minnesota Duluth researcher Matthew Andrews. Thirteen-lined ground squirrels (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus) are really cute when they hibernate (above). During torpor bouts, their body temperature decreases to a few degrees Celsius and their metabolism drops by as much as 95% with heart rates ranging from only 3-10 beats per minute. These bouts of torpor are interrupted by periodic arousals every couple of weeks during which their metabolism increases as body temperature elevates to 37 degrees Celsius. What is so…

Nature's Cures

Image: PopSci Researchers have been finding treatments for various conditions in what might be considered by many to be the least expected place: venoms. These toxic substances can cause reactions ranging from mildly annoying to deadly depending on the animal. But in small doses or in purified forms, these toxins are just the right medicine for some people. Here are some drugs derived from various animals: -Captopril, used to treat hypertension, isolated from pit vipers -Exenatide (Byetta), used to treat diabetes, isolated from gila monsters -Xen2174, used to treat severe pain, isolated from…

Vermont Sends Message

These kinds of images were making the rounds a couple of years ago. Kind of cute.  But now, at least a few people in Vermont are taking it seriously: href="http://www.mytelus.com/ncp_news/article.en.do?pn=oddities&articleID=2690258">Vermont secessionist movement gains support Tuesday, June 5, 2007 MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics in Vermont want the state to secede from the United States. The secessionists hope to put the question before citizens in March. Eventually, they want to…

Those wacky Kansans!

The Onion reports on the latest anti-evolution tactic. In response to a Nov. 7 referendum, Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life. "From now on, the streets, forests, plains, and rivers of Kansas will be safe from the godless practice of evolution, and species will be able to procreate without deviating from God's intended design," said Bob Bethell, a member of the state House of Representatives. "This is about protecting the integrity of…

Is it me or is the Swine Flu waaay overrated? A case of the Availability Heuristic.

I think it's a bit like terrorism. It scares the shit out of you but there's next to zero chance it will actually happen to you. Seriously... you have a much much higher chance of choking on a twinky (even if you've never eaten one) than catching the swine flu and dying or being or even seeing a terrorist attack. Talk about a great case of the Availability Heuristic... Here's a demo for you to try out (I use this to teach Psych 100). The correct answers are below the fold. Which is the more common cause of death in the USA? 1. A) Asthma B) Meningitis 2. A) Breast Cancer B) Stomach Cancer 3…

Protest BP Day in New Orleans

Tonight we made our way to Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter to witness the New Orleans gathering of Worldwide Protest BP Day. The drizzling weather probably served to separate the men from the boys, as they say, and so good intentions and half-baked messages ran high (see photos from the protest on Fickr). There were plenty of people opposed to the use of Corexit and one woman rightfully demanded to know why it was banned in Europe but still legal in the U.S. (read more about this issue on the ProPublica blog). There were accusations that the President was doing nothing and that…

Flesh Eating Robots

Because of my recent interest in autonomous, biologically inspired robots, my friend Tami sent me some fascinating links about designs and concepts for future flesh eating robots. From New Scientist, furniture that captures vermin and uses the biomass to power fuel cells that run small electronics: From Wired, Human corpse powered robots being developed by the Defense Department: From the file marked "Evidently, many scientists have never seen even one scary sci-fi movie": The Defense Department is funding research into battlefield robots that power themselves by eating human corpses. What…

Back from Halifax

After driving through the night, we got home from Halifax this morning. The SMBE meeting was excellent as usual, and I agree with Dan Hartl that it's the best meeting for evolutionary genetics. With excellent talks and posters on topics ranging from population genetics to comparative genomics (and many people discussing both and everything in between in a single 15 minute talk), it's hard to find a better meeting. I also had the opportunity to meet Rosie Redfield, John Logsdon, Jason Stajich, Reed Cartwright, and Jacob Tennessen. We got together for dinner, along with Professor Steve Steve,…

Science News - Heath

Obesity and Seatbelt Use; Epilepsy; Asthma Obesity linked to decreased seatbelt use from PhysOrg.com Obese people are less likely to use their seatbelts than the rest of the population, adding to the public health risks associated with this rapidly growing problem. [...] Epilepsy and brain pathology linked together by the protein ADK from PhysOrg.com The brain of individuals who suffer from epilepsy is characterized by astrogliosis, a brain pathology evidenced by a complex series of changes in the morphology and function of brain cells known as astrocytes. Little is known about how…

Health News

Ebola in Uganda: New Ebola fatalities push Uganda toll to 25: official from PhysOrg.com A dreaded Ebola outbreak has killed two people, bringing the toll to 25 in western Uganda, an official said Saturday, as health teams battled to contain the virulent strain in the region. [...] With the outbreak earlier in the year in DRC, and this outbreak, this is a big year for Ebola. Some time soon, someone is going to have to go and figure out where this disease resides in the wild. I'm betting on it being a plant virus that reaches human populations through a number of different routes,…

Upcoming Physiology Meetings

It is that time of year again when various chapters from The American Physiological Society hold their local meetings. I am looking forward to reporting the exciting news in physiology from these events! The Ohio Physiological Society is having their 26th annual meeting October 6-7 at the University of Cincinnati. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Ernest Wright from the David Geffen-UCLA School of Medicine in Los Angeles, CA. The Tennessee Physiological Society will be holding their annual meeting October 13-14 in Johnson City at the Quillen College of Medicine - East Tennessee State…

Tuesday Tidbits: Evacuations in Vanuatu, Shiveluch erupts and more

Gaua erupting in February 2010. Image courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory. As a certain famous Icelandic native would say, "there is more to life than this." Some other volcano news from around the world: The situation at Gaua in Vanuatu is worsening. Ash from the current eruption is contaminating water and food supplies on the island. Authorities are planning on evacuating 3,000 people from the island if the eruption that started in 2009 gets worse, but there has already been significant ash fall, mudflows and explosions. Shiveluch on the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia continues…

Tyrant dinosaurs were not a Northern Hemisphere speciality: they also colonised Australia!

Tyrant dinosaurs - properly called tyrannosauroids - are most usually associated with the Late Cretaceous of North America. Of course, if you know anything about dinosaurs you'll also know that many tyrants were Asian. So, the most familiar tyrants - the big, short-armed kinds like Tyrannosaurus, Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus and Daspletosaurus (all of which belong to the best-known tyrant clade, Tyrannosauridae) - were all animals of Laurasia, the northern landmass that split up during the Cretaceous to form North America and Eurasia [image above provided by Roger Benson; read on for…

Mesonyx and the other mesonychid mesonychians (mesonychians part IV)

After Andrewsarchus, the best known mesonychians are the mesonychids... and, as we saw previously, Andrewsarchus may not be a mesonychian anyway. Mesonychids are a mostly Eocene group that originated in the Paleocene; Mesonyx, from the Middle Eocene of North America, was the first member of the group to be named (Cope published the name in 1872), and it's still one of the most familiar mesonychians, by which I mean one of the kinds featured most frequently in the popular and semi-technical literature. Its limbs indicate a cursorial lifestyle [Charles Knight's Mesonyx shown below]. A number…

A History of our Galaxy's Fireworks!

"When I had satisfied myself that no star of that kind had ever shone before, I was led into such perplexity by the unbelievability of the thing that I began to doubt the faith of my own eyes." -Tycho Brahe When we look out at galaxies throughout the Universe, we find that every so often -- about once per century -- a bright star flares up so brightly that it can, for a brief amount of time, outshine the entire rest of the galaxy! Image credit: SN 1994D, High-Z Supernova Search Team, HST, NASA. What's going on, of course, is not that a star is brightening, but that the very atoms composing…

South Indian Phylogeography

Genetic variation in South Indian castes: evidence from Y-chromosome, mitochondrial, and autosomal polymorphisms: We report new data on 155 individuals from four Tamil caste populations of South India and perform comparative analyses with caste populations from the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh. Genetic differentiation among Tamil castes is low...reflecting a largely common origin. Nonetheless, caste- and continent-specific patterns are evident. For 32 lineage-defining Y-chromosome SNPs, Tamil castes show higher affinity to Europeans than to eastern Asians, and genetic distance…

Vedic Creationism

US author offers 'Vedic alternative' to evolution theory: Offering a "Vedic alternative" to Darwin's Theory of Evolution, an American author has claimed that human beings devolved from the "realm of pure consciousness", as testified by archaeological evidence discovered over the past 150 years. "We did not evolve up from matter. Instead, we devolved, or came down, from the realm of pure consciousness, spirit," author Michael A Cremo, said, citing many archaeological, psychological and genetic examples. I have stated before that Creationism might be most prominent in American fundamentalist…

Fracture Physics

Large Fluctuations and Collective Behavior in Solids is an overlapping workshop going on in parallel with the LHC stuff at the Aspen Center for Physics, while down the road the Republican Governors' meet at the Aspen Institute and Romney is down the valley while his peeps meet with the super PACs over lunch. The kickoff colloquium for the Collective Behaviour crowd is from Bouchard on Fracture Physics. Nice reminder that much of physics is not about Higgs bosons or speculations on supersymmetry. Also good reminder that superficially applied problems have deep issues of universality and…

Old Timey Conspiracy Theories

WaPo shows us how a good conspiracy theory can never die. It's depressing. We're probably going to be hearing from 9/11 troofers for the rest of our lives. The new evidence that Kennedy was killed by someone on a grassy-knoll or the Cubans or whatever is that the metallurgical analysis that was used to prove that the bullets could only have come from the batch that Oswald used was flawed. So is it time to re-open the Kennedy assassination? No. It's not. All this new analysis proves is that the analysis to tie the bullets to Oswald's batch was flawed. It doesn't mean that the bullet…

Friends.

A funny thing happened today. PZ is now, officially, a D-List Blogger** (a status I attained months ago, hehehehehe!!). Shortly after that, Richard Dawkins made a nice statement of support for PZ on RichardDawkins.net. ... I love being *us*, you guys. I love being *the good guys*. One of us is in a tight spot, and the rest of us have their back. Contrast that to *the bad guys*: Michael Behe gets shown up by a kid... silence from his 'friends'. Dembski gets nailed for stealing and has Harvard law on his ass... silence from his 'friends'. Luskin is used and abused like any other cheap…

This is spam, from an unexpected source

I just got this fairly typical piece of election email. A MESSAGE FROM JOHN EDWARDS '08 Dear PZ, John Edwards needs your help during the next Iowa statewide canvass, Saturday, November 17 and Sunday, November 18. It goes on, but never mind. The annoying thing is the source: it's from Ted, at the domain for my university and my lab. It has a spoofed source address! This is the kind of obnoxious crap I get from the peddlers of gadgets and drugs for my penis … it's not the behavior I expect from someone who wants me to vote for him. Just a word of warning to any candidates out there: it doesn't…

Happy Birthday Star Wars: A collection of literary humour (some science-y)

I just realized that I've written a few science-y piece with an inherent Star Wars hook to it. As well, it seems to be something that comes up at McSweeney's and other similar humour sites. Anyway, here is a collection of the ones I'm aware of. Enjoy... (From the Onion) "WHEN CELEBRITIES, WHO HAVE BEEN CLONED IN THE MOVIES, GET TOGETHER FOR A COFFEE" (scq.ubc.ca) "HAN SOLO AND CHEWBACCA WEIGH IN ON THEIR NEW HYBRID MILLENIUM FALCON" (terry.ubc.ca) "Human Gene Commonly Associated with Cancer or Droid from Star Wars?" (The World's Fair) "Quotes from Either President of the United States…

Postcards from the edge

I'm still sequestered somewhere away from Mystery City, working madly on grant proposals and spending some quality time with my family. How are these things co-existing? Not so well. But at least it's pretty here. But anyways, I wanted to offer to send my dear blog readers a postcard from our mystery destination. Anyone who wants a postcard from our scenic destination just needs to drop me an email (science dot woman at google's mail service) by the end of the day on Monday. I can't promise that postcards will actually be postmarked from the vacation (and they may even postdate the submittal…

Century Plant

New Mexico is phenomenally weird and the Century Plant is a prime example. Thanks to S. Smith for taking this pic and sending it along, even if it ain't an animal. From Wikipedia: The Century Plant or Maguey (Agave americana) is an agave originally from Mexico but cultivated worldwide. It has a spreading rosette (about 4 m wide) of gray-green leaves up to 2 meters (6 ft.) long, each with a spiny margin and a heavy spike at the tip. Its common name derives from its habit of only occasionally flowering, but when it does, the spike with a cyme of big yellow flowers, may reach up to 8 meters (…

Mary's Monday Metazoan: Respect for the nematomorph

There's a new vampire series on FX by Guillermo Del Toro, The Strain. I haven't seen it -- I don't get that channel -- but I've read the book, which I found interesting for making vampires utterly disgusting, and also for stealing biological analogues for the infection (alas, I thought the story started very well but got tedious by the end). Apparently, the model for the vampire parasite was the horsehair worm, or nematomorpha. These are best known as parasites of orthopterans. I do have to object to one statement in that story: "Really, for my money, worms are among the worst animal groups…

Scales of Space

This is one of those cool views of changes in scales. It runs from pretty large (some distance from the Milky Way) to pretty small (subatomic). One of the things you notice is that there is NOT a consistent fractal theme that operates on all scales. Fractals are not everything. They are just something. View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to…