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"Don't Blame Me - I Have an Addictive Personality!"

Message to all those who are thinking of smoking their first cigarette today: Message to all those who know someone who has recently taking up cigarette smoking: Message to all those who have quit smoking but are having difficulty fighting the craving for nicotine: People who smoke cigarettes for a long period of time permanently alter their brain cells in such a way that mimics the damage done from other addictive drugs such as cocaine and heroin. Researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) examined eight samples of human brain tissue from each of three groups: long-term…

What's Reflected, What's Absorbed

I've been on a serious pigment kick lately (reinforced by my little art excursion last night and my review of all of the fall leaf literature), and rhodopsin came to mind, a light absorbing pigment found in animal eyes, archaea and bacteria (often referred to as bacteriorhodopsin in the case of the archaea). While chlorophyll is capable of absorbing red and blue light from the sun for much of the year (all year for evergreens), bacteriorhodopsin can absorb wavelengths that much of the plant world reflects, from 490 - 550 nm, or the color green (see chart below). Bacteriorhodopsin is…

Agapakis et. al.

My paper, "Insulation of a synthetic hydrogen metabolism circuit in bacteria" just came out in the Journal of Biological Engineering! And it's open access! We designed a metabolic circuit in bacteria that produces hydrogen (a potentially useful fuel) from natural precursors in the cell. The proteins in our synthetic pathway work to make hydrogen by transferring high-energy electrons from pyruvate, a common metabolite, to protons that are freely floating in the watery cytoplasm. The electrons transfer between the proteins through quantum-mechanical tunneling, which makes hydrogenases and…

More 9 prizes up for grabs

Following on from the splendid essay by Ray Kurzweil on the nature of artificial intelligence and humanity, I have five - count them: five - bags of precious stitch punk loot to give away. Seriously, I'll tell you now: being in the pocket of Big Cinema is so much better than being a stooge for Big Pharma. Who wants free pens and anti-retrovirals when you can get movie loot? Details on what you can win, and how, below the fold. As you probably know by now, 9 is the Shane Acker-directed, Tim Burton-produced animation that hits theatres on 9/9/9. Judging from the trailer, it'll be visually…

Inferring Demographic History Using Multiple Loci

One of the drums I beat around here pertains to inferring demographic history using molecular markers (i.e., DNA data). I've been known to go off on people who make claims about ancestral population sizes based on studies of a single locus or gene. You see, studying a single locus only gives you the evolutionary history of that locus. There is no way to untangle the affects of natural selection from those of demography without examining multiple loci. The coalescent is a popular statistical technique used to study DNA sequence polymorphism. Combining bayesian analysis with coalescent theory…

Golden Eagle # 49 has Entered the Building

You know the drill: Someone claims to see a golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) but then some wise-ass bird expert has to tell them that "Immature bald eagles are often mistaken for golden eagles. You saw a bald eagle, not a golden eagle." Reminds me of the bird expert lady in The Birds (which we watched just the other day) ... boy was she wrong! Anyway, golden eagles have been traversing the state of Minnesota, and occasionally wintering here, for quite some time, and only recently are people really taking notice, counting them as real, and even starting to study them. So, it was very…

Comparing Apples to Apples: Apple vs. Wooworths

Do these look similar to you? According to Apple corp, th e one on the left may be too similar to the one on the right. The other day Julia and I went to a coffee shop together to work on our stuff. When she opened her laptop I was shocked to see the Apple Logo on it! I thought she was still using the old hand me down laptop from grandpa on which I had installed Linux. "Where did you get the Mac???" I said. "What?" she looked at me quizically. Then a grin as she realized what I was talking about. "That apple thingie came with my iPod. I stuck it on this old clunker so I'd look cool…

Welcome Our New Ant Overlords!

A new study in one of our favorite bathroom reading publications, Insectes Sociaux, has revealed that ants are indeed taking over the world and our role as ants' masters will soon be upended. The group looked at a species of Argentinian ant, Linepithema humile, that has hitchhiked to other continents in the last century or so on human vessels (ships, planes, etc.) to form invasive colonies. Previously, scientists had examined the relationship between these different colonies within countries and continents. When Linepithema humile from different colonies come into contact in Argentina, they…

Seamounts 2007, Day 4-7

Weather, O' Weather...you are my fair and fickle lover. On day 4, we sailed on from Davidson to Patton Escarpment, but a 25+ knot wind kept the ROV out of the water. We steamed further south with the intent of diving off the Channel Islands on the sheltered leeward side. However, naval exercises in the area (i.e. if you come near us we will torpedo you out of the water) and a further degradation of the sea state (from Moderate Nausea to I Think I Just Puked Up My Spleen) prevented us again from diving. We steamed back north to take shelter in Monterey Bay, taking a full 2 days as we made…

Feministe takes on guilt-inducing erections

For your perusal: Christian warriors fighting immodesty one guilt-inducing erection at a time The Feministe blog adroitly unzips, strips, and de-wingtips the Modest Survey from the "Rebelution," a Christian teenage rebellion against low expectations. The take home message of the survey is that women are expected to protect their brothers in Christ by wearing modest clothing. Although not quite venturing into burkhaville or the depeche mode of The Handmaid's Tale, it's great to know that women are still considered wicked temptresses and that men will easily "fall" because of "unguarded…

Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for 5/26-6/1/2010

The level of news-frenzy on some of the recent volcanic eruptions has died down, but if you're looking to see information on the many rumbling going on worldwide, look no further. Here is this week's Volcanic Activity Report put together by Sally Kuhn Sennert of the Global Volcanism Program. Highlights - not including Pacaya, Yasur, Tungurahua and our friend in Iceland - include: The eruption in the Marianas apparently came from South Sarigan volcano - at least according to the best guess by folks who work in the Marianas. This submarine volcano apparently shows evidence of young lava flows…

Cities on Volcanoes 6 Update - Day 1

This week is the Cities on Volcanoes conference - now in its sixth iteration. This year the conference is in Tenerife in the Canary Islands and while I wish I could be there, I'm not. However, we can all live vicariously through Dr. David Calvo, who will be sending daily updates from the meeting. He's been busy with the usual first day activities of someone helping run a meeting, but here is his first blurb from Tenerife: CitiesonVolcanoes6 started just today at Puerto de la Cruz (Tenerife, Spain), and right now more than 700 people are sharing their knowledge about volcanism and volcanic…

Explosions and ash at Guatemala's Santiaguito dome

Guatemala's Santa Maria volcano with the dome complex visible in the foreground. I got a tip the other day from an Eruptions reader of something afoot at Guatemala's Santiaguito - a part of the larger Santa Maria volcano - and sure enough, there are reports today that the volcano is experiencing an "unusual and violent" display. The articles I can find only mention that ash was spread over six provinces in the western part of the country, which is unusual for this volcano that normally produces diffuse ash plumes and minor dome collapse avalanches (at least in the recent past). The Institute…

Mayon Update for 12/28/2009

Lava flows from Mayon, taken December 23, 2009. Volcano news over the holidays this year is still focused on Mayon in the Philippines. We're reaching almost a month since the volcano starting showing signs of a major eruption, but no "big one" yet. Lava flows, ash and block-and-ash flows are continuing to be issued from the new dome at the summit, but earthquakes are down some - which is leading to the problem that people are thinking the volcano is "safe". Many evacuees are returning home already, even with the threat-level at Mayon is unchanged. This danger of people losing faith/not…

Sarychev Peak eruption update for 6/15/2009

Sarychev Peak in the Kuril Islands in 2007, the source of the large ash column currently disrupting transpacific air traffic. It seems that the eruption at Sarychev Peak in the Kuril Islands of Russia might be a lot bigger than it first seemed. I've gotten a couple reports of flights to Tokyo from North America being diverted or delayed due to the ash threat, including All Nippon Air Flight 1 (Washington DC to Tokyo) and Continental Flight 7 (Houston to Tokyo, diverted to Anchorage). The NASA Earth Observatory has some great new images of the eruption taken today from the MODIS on the Aqua…

Okmok Update

Sorry about the delay with updates, I am actually at a meeting filled with volcanologists (of all things), so updates might be a little sporadic. A lot of news today about Okmok erupting in the Aleutians. The Alaska Volcano Observatory had this to say: The eruption at Okmok continues based on high levels of seismicity and ash continues to be erupted as indicated in satellite observations. Seismicity reached a peak at about 2200 Z (2:00 PM ADT) yesterday and has been gradually declining since. Reports from Unalaska indicate no ash fall in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor since last night. However,…

Zombie lies keep dying

In February, Penn State issued a report clearing climatologist Michael Mann of 3 charges of academic misconduct arising from the theft of emails from a server at a British university. More recently, a British parliamentary report dismissed claims that climate scientists had behaved improperly. And now, the fourth charge against Mann has been dismissed as well. Penn State's press release explains: "A panel of leading scholars has cleared a well-known Penn State climate scientist of research misconduct, following a four-month internal investigation by the University." The first charges were…

Clock Quotes

No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time - but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming. - Charles E. Wilson

Writers from Across the Blogosphere Carnival Available

tags: books, writing, writers from across the blogosphere, blog carnivals The most recent edition of Writers from Across the Blogosphere Carnival is now available for you to read and enjoy.

Science + Art + Math = Haeckel Fractals

Thanks to Morbid Anatomy for this fantastic mashup: Ernest Haeckal's highly-celebrated engravings from Artforms of Nature turned into mutant beauty using a fractal generator. More images available from sub blue

What would Ciro do now? Learning from a public health hero

by Phyllis Freeman and Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA One of our public health heroes, Ciro de Quadros, a public health physician from Brazil died on May 28, 2014. We need his attitude, skills, and persistence more than ever today. Ciro was a master of innovation, particularly in his efforts to prevent infectious diseases with vaccines. It seems especially timely today to review highlights of his career. And why now? For one, because just now efforts to eliminate polio are foundering in the wake of the US CIA’s disastrous and hugely counterproductive scheme to identify Osama bin Laden’s children…

When snouters attack (or... rhinogradentians part II)

In the previous post we looked at the diversity of the rhinogradentians (aka rhinogrades or snouters) belonging to the so-called monorrhinan or uni-snouter division, and we also started to go through the asclerorrhinan or soft-nosed snouter division. Here, in the second post on this much-discussed and highly popular subject, we finish our tour of asclerorrhinans before going on to look at the last and most anatomically complex group, the polyrrhinans or multi-snouters. We finish by looking at the modern-day renaissance in rhinogradentian research: an endeavour which has resulting in the…

Ask Ethan #3: A Wild New Idea I Read About

"Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker." -Stephen Hawking Today's Ask Ethan comes to us via our question/suggestion box from reader MIUFish, who asks: I read something recently about some people who were doing work looking at the possibility that the mass of things has been decreasing, as an alternate explanation - or, perhaps, interpretation - to some of the questions regarding the expansion of the universe and so on. Is there any seriousness to this? Do you know anything about it? Here's what…

The Basics of Statistics III: Samples, Sampling Distributions, and t Distributions

Before we start in on new stuff, let's recap what we've covered so far. We started with the Central Limit Theorem, which tells us that if a bunch of random variables go into determining the values of yet another variable, then the values of that variable will approximate a normal distribution. The normal distribution is great because the measures of central tendency -- the mean, median, and mode -- converge, and because the measures of spread (variance and standard deviation) can be associated with specific probabilities (derived from the area under the curve in the distribution). Then we…

The Origin of the Chicken

Photograph of a chicken. Click to see larger version. From PLOS article cited in blog post. Where and when were chickens domesticated? From whence the humble chicken? Gallus gallus is a domesticated chicken-like bird (thus, the name "chicken") that originates in southeast Asia. Ever since Darwin we've known that the chicken originated in southeast Asia, although the exact details of which one or more of several possible jungle fowls is the primal form has been debated. The idea that more than one wild species contributed to the early chicken has been on the table for a long time,…

Giant Birds and Terrified Monkeys

[It's a really busy week over here at blog headquarters, because it is data collection week. Data collection week is awesome, but it means less time for blogging. So here's a piece from the archives. I picked this one especially for Drugmonkey, because he liked it so much.] The Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) is a nasty scary-looking muppethugging monster of a carnivorous bird. Female harpies weigh 14-20 pounds, and males weigh 8.5-12 pounds. They stand between 2.9 and 3.5 feet tall. The wingspan of the harpy eagle can reach 6 feet, 7 inches. The talons - sharp claws to grasp onto its prey -…

Still more evidence that Morgellons disease is most likely delusional parasitosis, 2012 edition

It's been nearly a year since I last discussed a most unusual malady. Part of the reason is that the opportunity to discuss it hasn't occurred recently; usually I need some spark or incident to "inspire" me to write about something, and there just hasn't been any Morgellons news that's caught my eye since then. However, another part of the reason, I must admit, is that writing about this particular condition almost always brings sufferers out of the woodwork, castigating me the way antivaccinationists like to castigate me for challenging the scientific basis of their preferred pseudoscience.…

Six in 10 Americans wouldn't vote for an atheist: Good news for New Atheists?

Jerry Coyne is trying to do math. A new survey out from Pew finds that, as in 2007, 61% of Americans say they'd be less likely to vote for someone who did not believe in God. Coyne thinks: The unchanged level of disapprobation is a bit disconcerting, but at least gives the lie to accommodationist claims that vociferous atheism is turning people off. And we know that lack of religious belief is still increasing everywhere in America. Several problems arise here, exacerbated by the generally handwavy attitude Coyne-as-blogger takes towards data and logical argument. We have to guess what…

Eptesicini: the serotines and their relatives (vesper bats part XIV)

A group of mostly mid-sized pipistrelle-like bats of Africa and the northern continents are known as the serotines (Eptesicus) [species shown here is the one generally known simply as the Serotine E. serotinus: photo by Mnolf, from wikipedia]. Here in Europe this is - along with pipistrelles, noctules and long-eared bats - one of the most familiar of vesper bat groups. As we'll see, this group is anything but boring: it includes some weird big-eared species as well as the only bats known to breed within the Arctic Circle and a 'giant' species that eats birds. Substantial confusion has…

Comments of the Week #62: from the dark ages to confirming relativity

"Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own." -Georg C. Lichtenberg There was so much action on Starts With A Bang this week, from darkness to the brightest lights, that it's going to be a bear choosing what to highlight from the comments. Here's what this past week saw: The Universe's dark ages (for Ask Ethan), The logic that stumped Brooklyn Nine-Nine (for our Weekend Diversion), The largest eruption in the known Universe (for Mostly Mute Monday), How to travel faster than light without really trying (a great piece from Brian Koberlein), Will the LHC be…

John R. Lott - General Discussion on 1997 and 2002 surveys

[Note: This is a copy of a document found at this link on John Lott's website on May 13, 2003. I have added critical commentry, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ] With some recent attacks on me in a variety of places from the Washington Post to the Chicago Tribune to numerous other places, I thought that I should send out some responses for those who might be interested. A) There have been many claims that I didn't conduct a survey in 1997 that was reported in one sentence on page 3 of my book, More Guns, Less Crime. In the attached MSWord file, I present the complete statements…

Good news!

I brought that Washington state 'academic freedom' bill to your attention a while back. I've been hearing from lots of readers from the Pacific Northwest that the bill died in committee. Perfect!

National Day of Prayer-- A musical interlude

Oh yeah-- Today is the National Day of Prayer (WHOOO NICK! WHOOOOO!!!). Lets celebrate! This catchy tune from 2004 is still 100% relevant-- from abortion to child rape... good times...

Braaaiiins!

Greetings from SMF! Home to the slowest baggage claim in the west (not that I was crazy enough to check a bag.) Even from beyond the grave Feynman gives string theory no love:

Mantis Pics

Some great mantis pics from InsectHobbyist: Pseudocreobotra wahlbergii Hatchling (Spiny Flower Mantis) Pseudocreobotra wahlbergii Adult Pseudocreobotra Ocellata Nymph/Villain from Halo Pseudocreobotra Ocellata Deroplatys lobata Species unidentified Freak out techno mantis!

Baruch Spinoza, the first of "us"

Alex points me to this Rebecca Goldstein op-ed in The New York Times marking the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza. I am actually reading Goldstein's biography of Spinoza, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, and just finished Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. Most of you probably know the name Spinoza from Einstein's assertion that he "believe in Spinoza's God," the pantheistic entity which suffused existence itself. Update: James H. has more at The Island of Doubt. Stewart, and Goldstein from…

Katrina rescue workers

In the days -- and weeks -- following the frantic rescue work after the destruction of the World Trade Center, the US EPA reassured everyone there was no harm from breathing the dust and fumes from that catastrophe. We now suspect this was quite wrong and EPA should have known it from the outset. Studies of Ground Zero rescue workers are beginning to show significant pulmonary function deficits and many workers are symptomatic. Since there was no registry of workers, unraveling the effects will be difficult, but there is an official commission and scientific studies under way. Now we are…

Getting the Whole Picture

What's in a picture? Prof. Benny Shilo knows the value of a good picture. We recently mentioned his book: Life’s Blueprint, which uses photographs of things like bread dough and yeast cells to illustrate the process of biological development. Here is the image from the most recent piece we have uploaded on his research: This is an individual Islet of Langerhans, as you’ve never seen it before. The white dots are the insulin-containing vesicles inside the beta cells, which both sense glucose levels and secrete insulin. Shilo and his team managed to get “close-up shots” of the individual cell…

Periodic Table of the ScienceBlogs, Part 1.

It's not easy keeping track of all the ScienceBlogs. Take four dozen witty and prolific science writers, some of whom post more than once a day, spread them out across a wide range of disciplines and sub-specialties, and what you'll have yourself is a big, tangly embarrassment of riches. What's a newcomer to do? In the interest of cleaving order from madness, I'm putting together a complete Blog Index. Over the following days, I'll be posting a short description of every blog, a handful at a time. But I'll start by giving you this complete listing of blogs by category. Though bloggers…

Life Science and Physical Science Channel Update 9-22-08

In this post: the large versions of the Life Sciences and Physical Sciences channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Life Sciences. Solenostemon, a genus of perennial plants native to tropical Africa, Asia, and Australia. From Flickr, by (Bill and Mavis) - B&M Photography Physical Sciences. A block and tackle. From Flickr, by mrpattersonsir Reader comments of the week: On the Life Sciences Channel, Janet Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science highlights a new article in American Scientist that shows how Citizen scientists help track bee…

Life Science and Physical Science Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Physical Science. Cross polarized light on a sliver of bronzitite. From Flickr, by kevinzim Life Science. From Flickr, by G's memories Reader comments of the week: In Beach Volleyball and the Public Understanding of Genetics, Benjamin Cohen of The World's Fair is baffled by the many comments on Razib's post about the genetics of Jamaican sprinters at Gene Expression. Many people, he thinks, misunderstood the science involved, posturing a causal…

Environment and Humanities Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Environment and Humanities & Social Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Environment. From Flickr, by Hamed Saber Humanities & Social Science. Architectural curves at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. From Flickr, by cobalt123 Reader comments of the week: James Hrynyshyn of The Island of Doubt recently had the chance to ask James Hansen, the famed climate activist, whether dwelling on offshore oil drilling was taking attention away from the more pressing issue of eliminating coal as an energy source.…

Kids Like Science Weird

Started on June 3 by medical writer, "20-something geek," and ScienceBlogs fan Mina Murray, Weird Science is a blog written specifically for adolescents. But with posts on levitating light bulbs, antidepressants for pets, and new fingerprinting techniques, Weird Science will tickle kids of any age who are interested in the hows and whys of new scientific discoveries. We recently asked Mina about science education for kids and how her readers have responded so far. Who's your target audience? I wanted to focus on kids who are in the 'tween' and 'teen' groups. Why start a science blog for…

Neurons in the movies

BioMed Central has gone beyond conventional scientific publishing and started including movie supplements to scientific papers. I saw this one in my e-mail box and couldn't resist. After all, if you don't have access to a microscope, equipped with a digital video camera, how are you supposed to see these sorts of things? I took a look at the article from Neural Development, from Zolessi, et. al. comparing the development of retinal ganglion cells in vitro and in vivo. In the movie, linked below, the first cell looks a bit like a child playing "Pin the tail on the Donkey." He/She (the…

Pathogens to go

As more and more people take their meals already prepared ("ready to eat" or RTE) from supermarkets and delicatessens, so will more and more people take their pathogens the same way. It's not that the kitchens that prepare RTE food are more dangerous than home kitchens. On the contrary, they are probably safer, as there is a strong incentive to use good food preparation hygiene. Indeed in the past most foodborne infection came from improperly prepared and cooked food in the home. Now, however, with so many meals either eaten or prepared outside the home, this is changing. And while the…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: trying to catch up to the French

My flu wiki partner, fellow blogger and friend Melanie of Just a Bump in the Beltway fame sent me an email on Friday with subject line: The Times They are a Changin'. In the email was a summary of findings from a recent survey of Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Pew has been doing these surveys periodically and they present a picture of shifting attitudes on "values" issues. They now show a welcome return to earlier, more moderate views on helping our fellow citizens, a less friendly attitude toward the use of…

What Are Gonads For (Among Else)?

This post from January 21, 2005, is about insects, parasitoids and the mental approach to science: This really cool science post (Speaking of sex differences reminds me of a seminar I attended a few years ago, about a parasitoid wasp that injects a single egg (together with some toxins and a DNA virus) into a (somewhat larger) egg of its moth host. The speaker spent his 50 minutes describing his painfully difficult and inconclusive molecular experiments, trying to figure out where the DNA (from the injected viruses) inserts itself into the host genome and how does that insertion affect the…

About race mixing

Recently we noted the passing of Mildred Loving, whose Supreme Court case in the 1960s struck down the nation's anti-miscegenation laws. Mildred was black. Her husband Richard was white. It seems like such a distant event, although I was already in medical school when it happened. What hasn't died, yet, is irony (despite the Bush administration's valiant effort to snuff it out). Consider this: Several leading child welfare groups Tuesday urged an overhaul of federal laws dealing with transracial adoption, arguing that black children in foster care are ill-served by a "colorblind" approach…

Seasonal flu vaccine mismatch

We've discussed this already, but now CIDRAP News also has a story (which they got from AP) that this year's flu vaccine is not perfectly matched to the all the circulating viruses (of course we had it first, but hey, who's keeping track?). The data that are used to prepare vaccines for the next flu season come from predictions based on what is seen during the current season as determined by a global surveillance network (the same network at issue in the refusal of Indonesia to share H5N1 isolates, although this mismatch has nothing to do with the Indonesian situation). The circulating…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Neurotic Men Die Sooner Than Their More Mellow Counterparts: While mellowing with age has often been thought to have positive effects, a Purdue University researcher has shown that doing so could also help you live longer. Strong Marriage Helps Couples Deal With Tempermental Baby: Couples with infants who are particularly fussy or difficult typically do just fine as parents - as long as they have a strong marital relationship. A new study found that a couple's relationship with each other was key in determining how they reacted as parents when faced with a temperamental baby. "When couples…