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Did I Miss the Memo? Cancer Cells Have Walls?

According to this press release, cancer cells can be kept from dividing by preventing them from making cell walls. Cell walls? Yeah, cell walls. Like plants or bacteria. Last time I checked, animal cells ain't got no walls. Ordinarily, I'd attribute this to a stoopid reported getting the information screwed up, but here's a quote from the lead author of the paper: "Last year we discovered that a protein called SREBP1 that regulates the synthesis of lipids needed for new cell walls was regulated during the cell cycle." Cell membranes are made of lipids. Membranes! MEMBRANES!! Not walls. I'd…

Check Out the Old Archives!

It was a huge pain in the ass, and it probably wasn't worth the effort, but I'm happy to announce that I have organized all of my posts from the old site by category and by date. You can now access them from my main archives page or from this post. Enjoy! By date: June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 By category: academia animal rights basic science biotechnology blog carnivals blogosphere Bush Administration capitalism Congress creationism Democratic Party drug companies drug war environment events evolution foreign policy global warming Google health…

Oh, dear

The context of this graph isn't entirely clear, but it's from Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra of UC Davis, and it's from a poll of 800 first year students, so I presume it's the results of a survey of their incoming class? Maybe one of the things we need to do as part of popularizing science to the general public is to emphasize the diversity of life, and talk more about the cool things plants and bacteria and fungi and so forth do. I know I started out as a zoologist, am still mostly focused on animal development, but over the years I've become increasingly aware that there are amazing contrasts to be…

My wife will be so surprised

Hank Fox, who assures me that he is ALL MAN (just look at that beard), told me to take this test…and I seem to have a woman's brain. It's my result from my BBC sex test. I think I confused them, though: I did well on all the spatial reasoning tests and kind of bombed on the empathy stuff (male!), but I also kicked ass on the "spot the difference" test and the ability to recognize emotions from just eyes (female and off the scale!). Being able to spit out 16 and 17 synonyms for a word also makes me more ladylike, I guess. (When you look at the actual raw scores and the averages, though, my…

Science News: Ancient Climate Change and Modern Macroevolution

I'm putting this bit of human biogeography under the "species coming and going" category: Greenland DNA could hold key to migration mysteries: researchers from PhysOrg.com Danish researchers are to sieve through human and skeletal remains on Greenland in a quest to explain an enduring enigma over the island's settlement over thousands of years, one of the scientists said Tuesday. [...] This is a very large change in diet over a very short period of time. I call Macro Evolution! Study links success of invasive Argentine ants to diet shifts from PhysOrg.com The ability of Argentine ants…

Harvard Mind Survey: Meet the Politicians!

You'll remember that some time ago (ten, eleven minutes?) I reposted (from gregladen.com) an interesting story about a study of how the mind works. I did that because I knew that the researchers involved in this study have a new survey up on their web site, and that you might want to know about it. From Heather Gray, one of the researchers: ...we recently revised the mind survey, just in time for the presidential primaries. Now our respondents are asked to judge pairs of American politicians-- for instance, is Barack Obama or Rudy Giuliani more capable of being honest, exerting self-control…

The big day

Today's the big day for the Science Blogging Conference, and it looks like we're probably going to get a reprieve from the winter weather that was threatening to mess everything up (although I shouldn't speak too soon). Last night I got to meet a few of my fellow Sciblings, other bloggers, and folks from various other groups, experiencing the joy of getting lost again (twice) with some wonderful people. I'm sure I'll meet even more today. The group dinner last night was a lot of fun, too, and the food was great; definitely check out the Town Hall Grill if you're in the Durham, NC area. Anyway…

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 3/25-31/2009

For those of you looking for real volcanic eruption news (no, there was no "Yellowstone eruption"), here is this week's SI/USGS Volcano Activity Report. And speaking of April Fools Jokes, this is by far my favorite (mostly by its combination of volcanoes and baseball. How could you go wrong with two of my favorite things - hat tip to Fletcher for finding the article). Highlights (beyond Redoubt) include: Earthquakes, tremors and steam at El Reventador in Ecuador 12,000-15,000 foot (4-5 km) steam/ash plumes were spotted at Colima, the Mexican volcano. A shockwave was felt 10 km away from…

Fresh scientological meat!

I know many of you are occupied with batting around an obtuse creationist named JohnHamilton, but if you need a break, there's a nice post here that has drawn out a couple of scientologists. They're actually trying to defend the fantasies of L. Ron Hubbard as "science"! Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction, or reliably-predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice, from…

The Great Recession and Great Depression in perspective

Calculated Risk has a great chart showing GDP fluctuations which puts into perspective just how big a downtown the Great Depression represented, and how it compares to the current one. For the population ~30 and under the current downswing is already 3 times more extreme from the peak than any recession they have memory of. In fact, we're already approaching the biggest downswing since World War II and the recession will certainly be the longest as well. On the other hand, we're as far from the commonly accepted definition of a Depression of a 10% decline in GDP as the 1991 one recession was…

You're not a proto-phorusrhacid, but you're still a cariamaen, and that's alright with me (ode to the Ameghinornithidae)

You'll recall me saying recently that 2007 was a good year for publications on phorusrhacids, aka terror birds. And as I discussed in the previous post, one of the most interesting contentions made about phorusrhacids last year was that one of the most remarkable members of the group (super-robust Brontornis from the Miocene) is actually not a phorusrhacid at all. Here we look at recent work on a group of birds that, while initially suggested to be part of the phorusrhacid radiation, now, also, seem not to be. They are the ameghinornithids... Originally named as a phorusrhacid 'subfamily'…

Peter Hocking's big cats: where are you now?

If you've read the series of posts on Marc van Roosmalen's new Amazonian mammals, you should, by now, be fairly open-minded to the possibility that large terrestrial mammals await discovery and description. And if you follow rumours about new mammal species, you'll have heard of the alleged new big cat species that ornithologist and missionary Peter Hocking (of the Natural History Museum in Lima, Peru) has reported from the Peruvian Amazon (Hocking 1992, 1996). Eleven years have passed, and where are those cats now? Peter Hocking was born in Peru to American missionary parents, studied at…

Comments of the Week #21: From Quantum Observations to the Sun

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” -Albert Einstein It's been a fabulous, fun-filled week over at the main Starts With A Bang blog, and we've taken on a variety of topics that range from the small and subtle to the large and... less subtle. In a span of only seven days, we've explored the following topics and questions (and go ahead and click if you missed anything): What is a quantum observation? (for Ask Ethan), But will it Bea Art(hur)? (for our Weekend Diversion), The Most Perfect…

Comments of the Week #85: From betting your scientific life to black hole entangelment

“You are all wave particles when I close my eyes. I am no more entranced by your entanglement than a butterfly is to a bee.” -Solange nicole This past week at Starts With A Bang saw a flurry of activity, including a wonderful variety of new stories, like: Would a scientist bet their life on a theory? (for Ask Ethan), The EM Drive, NASA's 'impossible engine,' highlights our greatest failing, Stunning visualizations of our galaxy's magnetic field (for Mostly Mute Monday), Scientists redefine planet to include exoplanets, and it works beautifully, Keeping Better Time With Atomic Clocks (a live-…

Comments of the Week #29: From the earliest signals to the present day

“Everything comes at the right time, but if the right time is too late to be patient, go earlier before it becomes too late.” -Michael Bassey Johnson After another fun-and-science-filled week here on Starts With A Bang, where we've covered topics ranging from near-to-far, from historical to very modern, and from the beginnings of the Universe up to the present day, it's time once again to take a look at the fabulous comments you've left for us! Looking back, we've recently covered the following topics: What's the earliest signal from the Universe? (for Ask Ethan), The Greatest Chatroulette…

Baghdad's Murder Rate Irresponsibly Distorted by Lott

Last time I commented on Lott's claims about the Baghdad murder rate, I noted his pathological refusal to admit that he was wrong about the rate. Even though dozens of newspapers have reported that there are hundreds of murders each month in Baghdad (see the table with some of the stories at the end of this post), Lott insisted that the one single report he found that claimed that there were only 24 murders in October must be right and all the others must be wrong. He has now drafted on op-ed repeating his claim and complaining that the New York…

Does Religion Make You Meaner or Nicer? Inquiring Minds, Etc.

If you were hanging around ScienceBlogs yesterday, you probably came across this post at Pharyngula. In it, Dr. Myers links to an article on a study by Bushman et al.1 purporting to show that people are more aggressive after reading passages from the Bible in which God sanctions violence than after reading passages that don't involve sanctioning violence. In the study, two sets of participants, one from Brigham Young University, and the other from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, were told that they would be participating in two seprate studies. After being asked a few questions about their…

Romulan Ale

Seen in the exihibition room at SETIcon Yes, that is what you think it is: Romulan Ale from Rocket Fizz From Real Art

Dead Bowhead whale really does say "Ouch"

Borrowed from here on David's Really Interesting Pages (and used with permission: thanks David). A sort of homage to this article from last month.

Friday Cephalopod: Wicked cool

(click for larger image)Vampyroteuthis infernalis Figure from The Deep(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Claire Nouvian. from Kim Reisenbichler © MBARI 1995

It's not like their teeth are recurved or anything...

The John West mascot really gets into his work (featuring a guest appearance from one of the shark puppets from Deep Blue Sea).

Beautiful sand

These photos from satellites and the international space station show how relatively featureless deserts form beautiful patterns when seen from above. Via Wired.

Team Obama "Too Politically Frightened to Admit US Banks Insolvent."

Just like I was saying.  HT: href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/financial-times-martin-wolf-team-obama.html">Naked Capitalism.  With videos.  This is not from some marignalized doomer.  It is from the Financial Times.

Phil Plait's Famous Speech

Don't be a dick. Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick from JREF on Vimeo. Cribbed from here where you will presumably eventually find Part II.

Comments of the Week #174: from growing black holes to nuclear bombs

“It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.” ―Galadriel, LOTR, J.R.R. Tolkien Well, we've been anticipating it for months (or years), but this is our very first time meeting up since the total solar eclipse here at Starts With A Bang! Did you get to see it? Was it as spectacular for you as it was for me? I'm already looking forward to 2024, but you can look forward to a podcast coming this next week from me on just how spectacular it was! (With a judicious dose of physics and astrophysics, of course.) Patreon…

Watch Out For Those Draft-Dodging Elitists...

(Michael Barone guarding his glass house from the Elitofacist hordes; photo from here) ...because you never know where they'll show up. Conservative pundit Michael Barone writes about those who oppose the failed Bush Iraq policies (italics mine): We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the…

An Onion? Not a cancer?

Yes and No. But the article is not from the 'Onion', it's from the Hot Medical News. It's about an onion, in a strange place....

funky astrostuff

The astrodyke found some neat astro stuff Movie of the variability of the x-ray sky from RXTE and Hubble Kaleidoscope from the Onion

Recent Human Evolution in the house

Early man 'couldn't stomach milk' Working with scientists from Mainz University in Germany, the UCL team looked for the gene that produces the lactase enzyme in Neolithic skeletons dating between 5480BC and 5000BC. These are believed to be from some of the earliest farming communities in Europe. The lactase gene was absent from the DNA extracted from these skeletons, suggesting that these early Europeans would not be tolerant to milk. The paper will be Absence of the Lactase-Persistence associated allele in early Neolithic Europeans in PNAS. First LCT, then OCA2, and god knows what else?…

Did Modern Humans Get a Brain Gene from Neandertals?

Update II: Follow up post. You really should read Greg and John Hawks, seeing as how they have a paper in the pipeline on this topic which is stepping off from where Lahn et. al. left off. Update: Greg and John Hawks have much more must read stuff! Read about it here. Here is the paper, Evidence that the adaptive allele of the brain size gene microcephalin introgressed into Homo sapiens from an archaic Homo lineage: At the center of the debate on the emergence of modern humans and their spread throughout the globe is the question of whether archaic Homo lineages contributed to the modern…

If Mexico Can Teach Evolution, Why Can't the U.S.?

Here's a letter from the journal Nature from a Mexican author about creationism: In Mexico, there is no creationist movement and the teaching of evolution is encouraged. The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México has developed high-school programmes based around sequence comparison and phylogenetic reconstruction techniques, as well as the origin of life, early cell evolution and evo-devo issues. There are good reasons for this. First, as every practising scientist knows, understanding evolutionary processes is enriched by an eclectic attitude towards traditional palaeontology and…

42nd Street Times Square Mezzanine Subway Art, Detail 4

tags: Times Square, 42nd street Times Square, Times Square Mural, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Times Square Mural, 2002, detail 4 (photographed from left to right). Artist: Roy Lichtenstein (Collage 1990, fabricated 1994). NYC's Times Square/42nd Street. Porcelain enamel on wall of N, Q, R, S, W, 1, 2, 3 mezzanine. Image: GrrlScientist 5 November 2008 [larger view]. Times Square Mural captures the spirit of the subway, its linear movement and dynamic energy. With a nod to both the past and the future -- its central image is a futuristic bullet shaped car zipping…

42nd Street Times Square Mezzanine Subway Art, Detail 3

tags: Times Square, 42nd street Times Square, Times Square Mural, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Times Square Mural, 2002, detail 3 (photographed from left to right). Artist: Roy Lichtenstein (Collage 1990, fabricated 1994). NYC's Times Square/42nd Street. Porcelain enamel on wall of N, Q, R, S, W, 1, 2, 3 mezzanine. Image: GrrlScientist 5 November 2008 [larger view]. Times Square Mural captures the spirit of the subway, its linear movement and dynamic energy. With a nod to both the past and the future -- its central image is a futuristic bullet shaped car zipping…

42nd Street Times Square Mezzanine Subway Art, Detail 2

tags: Times Square, 42nd street Times Square, Times Square Mural, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Times Square Mural, 2002, detail 2 (as photographed from left to right). Artist: Roy Lichtenstein (Collage 1990, fabricated 1994). NYC's Times Square/42nd Street. Porcelain enamel on wall of N, Q, R, S, W, 1, 2, 3 mezzanine. Image: GrrlScientist 5 November 2008 [larger view]. Times Square Mural captures the spirit of the subway, its linear movement and dynamic energy. With a nod to both the past and the future -- its central image is a futuristic bullet shaped car zipping…

42nd Street Times Square Mezzanine Subway Art, Detail 1

tags: Times Square, 42nd street Times Square, Times Square Mural, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Times Square Mural, 2002, detail 1 (from left to right). Artist: Roy Lichtenstein (Collage 1990, fabricated 1994). NYC's Times Square/42nd Street. Porcelain enamel on wall of N, Q, R, S, W, 1, 2, 3 mezzanine. Image: GrrlScientist 5 November 2008 [larger view]. Times Square Mural captures the spirit of the subway, its linear movement and dynamic energy. With a nod to both the past and the future -- its central image is a futuristic bullet shaped car zipping through an…

42nd Street Times Square Mezzanine Subway Art

tags: Times Square, 42nd street Times Square, Times Square Mural, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Times Square Mural, 2002 (view from right side). Artist: Roy Lichtenstein (Collage 1990, fabricated 1994). NYC's Times Square/42nd Street. Porcelain enamel on wall of N, Q, R, S, W, 1, 2, 3 mezzanine. Image: GrrlScientist 5 November 2008 [larger view]. Times Square Mural captures the spirit of the subway, its linear movement and dynamic energy. With a nod to both the past and the future -- its central image is a futuristic bullet shaped car zipping through an underground…

Indonesia does the right thing

Indonesia is making its sequences available to the world scientific community, at long last. We aren't going to ask how or why or continue to chide them for keeping the sequences until now. We applaud their decision to do so and urge others to follow their example. "I've learned that scientists across the world have complained that they could not access the data and made statements as if we had hidden it," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told a press conference here Thursday. "For the sake of basic human interests, the Indonesian government declares that genomic data on bird flu viruses…

My human lineage

This is a very simple, lucid video of Spencer Wells talking about his work on the Genographic Project, the effort to accumulate lots of individual genetic data to map out where we all came from. I've also submitted a test tube full of cheek epithelial cells to this project, and Lynn Fellman is going to be doing a DNA portrait of me. I had my Y chromosome analyzed just because my paternal ancestry was a bit murky and messy and potentially more surprising, and my mother's family was many generations of stay-at-home Scandinavian peasantry, so I knew what to expect there. Dad turned out to be…

Best New Science Books 2013: Financial Times

Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets. From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here. This time it's Financial Times Books of the Year. The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World, by William Nordhaus The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present, by Paul Seabright Writing on the Wall…

Women Who Changed the World Through Science: Monserrate Roman

PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED BY THIS STORY! (Send us your opinion today: What are the challenges faced by NASA engineers and scientists in keeping the Space Station and its astronauts safe from harmful bacteria, viruses and other nasty microbes?  Tell us what you think of Monserrate’s contributions!) Microbiology may not come to your mind when the name International Space Station (ISS) is mentioned, but it should, says NASA microbiologist Monserrate Roman.  She should know. Monserrate, born and raised in Puerto Rico, was a member of the team which built the early stages of the ISS and…

Technology Weekly Update

In this post: the large versions of the Technology channel photo, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Technology. Old robotics engineering equipment in Bristol, England. From Flickr, by crabchick Reader comments of the week: At Journalism schools behind the times, Coturnix of A Blog Around the Clock highlights Anna Taylor, a journalism student at NYU. Taylor, blogging at PBS, claims that new media is not being represented in the classroom, with her professors focusing on traditional print media at the expense of blogs. Even worse, she claims that her professors don't…

Meet A 'Change Agent' for Smarter, Efficient Telecommunications Who Is Mentoring Future Scientists

At AT&T, research scientist Alicia Abella is known as a "change agent," an innovator who is keeping her corporation on the cutting edge of developing new and better ways to help people and companies communicate with each other -- including through innovations in teleconferencing, Web-based solutions and iPhone application-based approaches that increase work efficiency and rapid-response collaboration across the globe. "We are really trying to enhance the way individuals communicate with each other over distance and time," says Alicia, Executive Director of Innovative Services Research at…

Playing in the dirt: metagenomics on the JHU campus

We have lots of DNA samples from bacteria that were isolated from dirt. Now it's time to our own metagenomics project and figure out what they are. Our class project is on a much smaller scale than the honeybee metagenomics project that I wrote about yesterday, but we're using many of the same principles. The general process is this: 1. We sort the chromatogram data to identify good data and separate it from bad data. Informatics can help you determine if data is good, and measure how good it is, but it cannot turn bad data into good data. And, there's no point in wasting time with…

Let's call a swine a swine

While swine flu as a public health issue is starting to fade from the headlines (its true status as a public health issue is another matter), the problems for the pork industry might just be starting. The industry wasn't well to begin with, and for some of its members, swine flu could be a terminal event, just as with people. Hog prices were very low even before the outbreak and hog futures have declined another 20% since then. This is on top of increased costs related to feed (70% of the cost of production). Even if people can't get sick from eating pork, pigs are getting sick from being…

Death on the job

Carl "Dan" Fish worked at Dupont's Belle plant for 32 years until last Saturday. That's the day he was sprayed in the face by phosgene gas. Sunday he was dead: On Saturday, Fish was hit with a small cloud of phosgene that leaked from a line used to transfer phosgene from storage cylinders to a crop protection chemical production unit, plant officials said. The fatal accident was the third in a series of four incidents at the Belle plant in just two days, including Friday's discovery of a 1,900-pound leak of toxic and flammable methyl chloride that went undetected for nearly a week. (Ken Ward…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In the New York Times, David Tuller describes the on-the-job violence nurses face, and efforts to make their workplaces safer:  Three years ago, an enraged patient â 6 feet 4 inches and 275 pounds â smacked another patient, bit a health aide, threatened to kill [psychiatric nurse Karen] Coughlin and lunged forward to strike her. He was restrained before he reached her.  âI really thought that my life was in danger,â she said. âIt was probably the most terrified Iâve been in my 24 years of nursing.â  In recent years, nurses like Ms. Coughlin have sounded the alarm about workplace violence,…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The longer fighting in Iraq continues, the more disturbing news we get about the troopsâ mental health. The latest and most comprehensive study on veteransâ mental health to date (by the Rand Corporation) finds that nearly one in five Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is suffering from depression or stress disorders, and that half of those suffering arenât getting adequate care. Some avoid seeking care because of the stigma sometimes associated with it, or because they fear having treatment on their record will prevent redeployment. Another problem is an insufficient supply of healthcare…

Occupational Health News Roundup

During our holiday hiatus, the Washington Post published an article looking back at OSHA during the Bush years. R. Jeffrey Smith writes: [During the Bush administration], political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure. The result is a legacy of unregulation common to several health-protection agencies under Bush: From 2001 to the end of 2007, OSHA officials issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations termed economically significant by the Office of…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Earlier this year, the Charlotte Observer published an excellent and disturbing series on the dangerous working conditions at poultry plants, and employersâ efforts to keep worker injuries from being reported. Now, the Observerâs Ames Alexander reports that poultry worker Thomas Jurrissen told auditors about safety concerns at the plant where he worked â and was fired a day later. Jurrissen has filed a complaint under North Carolinaâs Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act, which prohibits employers from firing workers who report OSHA violations. (The problems he cited had to do with…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its preliminary numbers on 2006 fatal occupational injuries, and Katherine Torres at Occupational Hazards reports on what they show. The rate of fatal work injuries declined slightly, from 4 per 100,000 in 2005 to 3.9 in 2006, but some industries showed increases: â¢Â The 47 coal mining fatalities, many of them from major disasters such as Sago, is more than double the 22 fatalities from that industry in 2005. â¢Â The 415 aircraft-related fatalities represented a 44% increase over last yearâs total of 149. â¢Â Construction was the industry sector…