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NIH to Fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Following through with President Obama's executive order issued March 9, Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells (link to PDF), the NIH has released a draft of guidelines revising the NIH's position on how it may fund "responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell research." The funding only extends to human embryonic stem cells derived from embryos created in excess at fertility clinics. ScienceBlogger Nick Anthis from The Scientific Activist views the creation of these guidelines as a "significant…

Stem Cells on the Medical Frontier

On Respectful Insolence, Orac examines the dangers posed by experimental stem cell treatments, which are often offered outside the United States in order to avoid regulatory oversight. Orac writes that stem cell therapy is "moving from cutting edge science to applied science" but treatments are not yet refined to the point of being safe and effective. In the case of Jim Gass, a stroke patient who sought stem cell therapy at clinics around the world, the intervention proved to be disastrous, as cells injected into his lower back grew into a cancer-like mass that left him paralyzed from the…

Divergent & Convergent Evolution

On ERV, Abbie Smith reports that scientists have discovered an entirely new branch of viruses in the boiling acid pools of Yellowstone National Park. By analyzing RNA segments from the pools, researchers inferred the existence of positive-strand RNA viruses with unknown genetic configurations. Smith writes, “These viruses are not just kinda new. They are really really different from the RNA viruses we already know about!” They infect primordial single-celled organisms called Archaea which thrive in the extreme heat of the pools. On the multicellular side of life, Dr. Dolittle shares the first…

Indiscriminate Force Rocks Japan

The staggering 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan March 11 sent a thirty foot tall tsunami raging up to six miles inland, with diminished waves reaching all the way to the Pacific Islands and the shores of North America. In Japan, thousands are dead, and the devastation is stunning. On Thoughts from Kansas, Josh Rosenau reflects that due Japanese diligence may have spared millions of lives, noting "the earthquake in Haiti last year, which was 100 times weaker, killed 230,000." On Observations of a Nerd, Christie Wilcox recounts her experience in Hawaii, from…

Hello Kitty! or Don't Eat Me, I Study Genetics!

Genetics textbooks abound with stories of European royalty and the hazards of having children after you've married one of your cousins. It struck me as an interesting parallel that the lion is such a popular symbol in so many royal coats of arms. Like the royal families of Europe, certain lion populations have also suffered from a few too many copies of certain recessive genes. I first read about the Florida panthers a few years ago while researching material for a class that I teach on using bioinformatics. It wasn't my first encounter with big cats and their DNA. Years before, while…

Help for educators with exploring new worlds

If like me, you were a little disoriented and confused when you visited Second Life and traveled through orientation island, then you may like this. The Wired Campus (from The Chronicle for Higher Education) led me to an interesting post from the New Media Consortium and a new place to visit once I get a bit of time to do so. The NMC has set up a special orientation island for educators. From the photos, this island looks like a unusually clean and artistic rendition of San Francisco, complete with the Golden Gate bridge and a few Bay area landmarks. Unlike the usual orientation, though,…

Word Of The Day

From Merriam-Webster: Pecksniffian ⢠\pek-SNIFF-ee-un\ ⢠adjective : unctuously hypocritical : sanctimonious Example Sentence: "His book suffers from excessively long harangues against Pecksniffian prigs and temperance types who, he claims, are still trying to ruin our fun." (Mark D. Fefer, Seattle Weekly, January 22, 2003) Did you know? Seth Pecksniff, a character with a holier-than-thou attitude in Charles Dickens's 1844 novel Martin Chuzzlewit, was no angel, though he certainly tried to pass himself off as one. Pecksniff liked to preach morality and brag about his own virtue, but…

New Health Wonk Review is up

A new Health Wonk Review compiled by Peggy Salvatore is now up at the Healthcare Talent Transformation blog. It's got links and descriptions for a great collection of posts on several healthcare topics, from health information technology and patient-experience reviews to the impact a government shutdown would have on Affordable Care Act implementation. (My post from last week, "Expanding Medicaid can improve birth outcomes," is included.) One of the posts I found especially thought-provoking (and probably wouldn't have seen if not for the HWR link) is Vince Kuraitis's post "Healthcare…

EPA Staff Told Not to Answer Questions from Congress and IG

The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin reports that a senior EPA official has told managers that they shouldn't answer questions from reporters, congressional investigators, or the agency's inspector general - instead, they should direct them to a press officer. (The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has more details.) Discouraging EPA employees from speaking with members of the media is nothing new, as the Union of Concerned Scientists reported after surveying hundreds of EPA scientists (see Chapter 4 of their report). But Congress and the Inspector General are…

For the jump haters...

Thomas asks in the comments: "More after the jump..." WTF? Why must people insist on using this trite, meaningless phrase? Don't they know it immediately makes people hate them for using it? I'm pretty sure people know how to scroll down to see if the article continues. And when all that "jump" is is a double-spaced line... WFT!? I'm not a big fan of this phrase either, but I started using it after talking with readers who 1) came in from the home page and it wasn't always clear from the portion of the post appearing there if there was additional text at the link; and 2) read via RSS feed and…

Friday Blog Roundup

Ruth Levine of Global Health Policy offers the AIDS-Malaria link as a reason disease-by-disease thinking isn't the way to go. Richard Littlemore at DeSmogBlog reports on which US publishers don't think their audiences can handle George Monbiot's book "Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning." Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily describes research into improving mood with fast thinking and positive statements. Jordan Barab at Confined Space has the goods on the nominee for EPA's Inspector General position. Page Rockwell at Broadsheet considers the prospects for getting HPV vaccine Gardasil to…

Giant killer pigs from hell

Entelodonts were covered briefly on Tet Zoo back in July 2007 (here), when life was oh so different. Here's a brand-new rendition of Entelodon from the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene of western Europe, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and Japan (it's probably the most widely distributed entelodont), kindly provided by Jaime Chirinos of zooartistica.com and used with permission. Closely related to Late Eocene-Oligocene Archaeotherium from North America, Entelodon was a large entelodont, with good remains of E. deguilhemi from France showing that it reached 1.3 m at the shoulder, and 65 cm in…

Scienceblogs.com - new homepage and channels!

If you come here from the front page of Scienceblogs, you have probably noticed some changes. Instead of ten, there are now eight channels, and the latest 4 (instead of 3) posts in each category are highlighted. If you check the channels on the left side-bar you will see that the landing pages of each channel are now much more exciting! See, for instance, the Life Science page - it is not just a simple aggregator any more - there is a daily quote from a reader comment (the main quote on the front page is going to continue to be from one of us bloggers), a pretty picture of the day, and more…

Thanksgiving Thoughts

As for me, I am thankful for every one of you, amigos bonitos. Your many comments, emails, cards and gifts, filled with love and encouragement and stories of your own sadness, travails and triumphs have given me courage and so much faith in your humanity and kindness. I cannot tell you how many times I've re-read your cards, emails and comments, and been comforted by them, nor can I tell you how many times I've slept with gifts -- mostly books -- that you've sent to me, holding them close to my heart throughout the night, and the comfort these items bring me when I wake up in the darkness…

Snow Plant

Snow plant, Sarcodes sanguinea. This is a saprophytic (lacking in chlorophyll) plant related to the better-known Indian Pipe.It is myco-heterotrophic, which means it is symbiotic with a fungus. It grows in California forests above 4000 feet. Its name comes from the fact that it is one of the first plants to appear in spring. Photo taken on Mt. Pinos, north Los Angeles county. Image: Jeff Lanam. This is another "Get Welll Soon" nature picture from one of my readers that I am sharing with all of you! I am receiving so many gorgeous images from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the…

Climate Change: Europe to get Chinese Trinkets Cheap!

ESA Envisat press release shows north pole ice pack cracked from Svalbarð to the pole. Finally large container ships will be able to take the short cut from Hong Kong to Rotterdam. Eh? The NASA EOS Aqua satellite provided the complimentary data on this but have not seen an associated NASA press release. "Mark Drinkwater of ESA's Oceans/Ice Unit said: "This situation is unlike anything observed in previous record low ice seasons. It is highly imaginable that a ship could have passed from Spitzbergen or Northern Siberia through what is normally pack ice to reach the North Pole without…

Taxing the Hidden Economy

There is a radical proposal in Iceland to restore the economy and rescue the nation from bankruptcy: expand the tax base to recover revenue from the extensive underground economy. Tax the fucking elves! Translation by Alda at the Iceland Weather Report Yeah! The Free Ride Is Over. Party is over, Elves! Income and capital gains taxes on the elves - especially the High Light Elves, that should cover the repayments to the UK all by themselves. This applies to all the Hidden Folk. Ghosts, zombies and others in the afterlife will be charged a Death Tax. Dwarves will, finally, pay VAT! That…

More classroom science blogs: the collection continues

Calling all scientists and science-fans: you can help with science education by letting students know you're interested. How? Go and comment on classroom blogs and wikis. I've been gradually collecting some blogs from different classes and I've even had some brave volunteers offer theirs for review. So here goes: www.missbakersbiologyclass.com/blog Ms. Hoffman's AP class blog Tomorrow's table from Pamela Ronald. This is going to be used for two months by students in a Genetics and Society class. Biology in Action Evolution and Diversity (Biol 124) at http://darwinslegacy.blogspot.com…

I Am Somebody

tags: Paul Potts, opera, Britain's Most Talented, streaming video During the past couple weeks, I have been following the amazing and inspirational story of Paul Potts on YouTube. Paul is a cell phone salesman from South Wales in Great Britain -- a very quiet and unassuming man. He has been suffering from a lack of self-confidence throughout his life even while he has been relying on an amazing talent to bolster his self-esteem. But one day, he entered Britain's Most Talented competition and has been "wowing" the public ever since. You have to see this latest video about Paul (there are more…

West 86th Street Subway Art 36

tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC West 86th Street Subway tile mosaic art #36 as seen at NYC's West 86th Street stop at Broadway for the downtown 1 train. (This piece was completed in 1989). Artist: Nitza Tufino. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. This is the last image from this particular subway station. Tomorrow, I will feature the artwork from another subway station for you to enjoy. I have photographed tile artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines, including Chambers Street…

Marijuana Stronger Than Ever!

tags: marijuana, illegal drugs Beware: Misinformation alert Wow, who knew, but the marijuana sold (illegally, of course) in the USA is stronger than ever before, which could explain the increasing number of emergency room visits due to this drug, according to government drug experts. (Image source). Analysis of seized samples of marijuana and hashish showed that more of the cannabis on the market is of the strongest grade, the White House and National Institute for Drug Abuse said. They cited data from the University of Mississippi's Marijuana Potency Project showing the average levels of…

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

The Department of History and Archaeology in Chester is moving from their lovely but run-down Georgian building at the north city gate to the main campus. So I spent most of today helping with the move: shifting finds from a Tudor manor site at Stokenham in Devon and excavation gear. On our way to the excavation site we then stopped to check out the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, an amazing 195-year-old piece of hydraulic engineering where a transportation canal has been made to cross a river 38 metres above its surface. The afternoon's fieldwork was interrupted and finally cut short by torrential…

CBS Journeys to the Bottom of the Earth

I was sent an email notice from an Eric Kuhn to pass on my potentially interested readers about a CBS News in-depth report on the Antarctic. As follows: CBS JOURNEYS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE EARTH This Monday through Wednesday CBS Evening News reporter John Blackstone is taking a journey to the bottom of the earth, for an in-depth look at Antarctica. Check out the story we aired last night - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/11/eveningnews/main3818731.shtml. Tuesday Blackstone will explore scientific factoids about Antarctica from ice bubbles that are samples of the earths ancient…

StopTheACLU on Marriage Amendment

More of that "activist judges" hypocrisy on gay marriage, this time from Jay at StopTheACLU: My first concern on the issue is limiting the courts from usurping the will of the people. This legislation will do that. But why is that your "first concern" only on this issue? I don't recall seeing any complaints from you about the Bush administration running to the courts to get them to "usurp the will of the people" in overturning Oregon's assisted suicide law (passed by popular referendum, not once but twice) or California's medical marijuana law (also passed by popular referendum). In fact, you…

New Banner

I want to thank everyone who was kind enough to send me banners to choose from. Several people did and they were all good. As someone who is completely clueless when it comes to the use of photo editing software, I am just amazed at what people can do with them and how quickly they can do it when I don't even know where to begin. The winning entry is from Jeff Hebert, the same one who did the Edhead graphics. I chose this one because of the background. For an enthusiastic advocate of Enlightenment thinking, a picture that clearly invokes the rennaisance is perfect. My thanks to Jeff for…

s/Crud/Fink

So, the Tories have been naughty boys again and everyone is shocked - shocked, I tell you - to discover that all that money that people pay to the political parties is actually paid for something, rather than just given for love. Well, its a bit of fun but I doubt it goes anywhere, because no-one is surprised. Labour will posture, but then squirm when their union money comes up. The house of Lords is stuffed with people who bought their way in. My 'umble prediction is that the "main" damage will come from an impression of incompetence, and it won't be much. They are supposed to be…

Richard Black winds up the wackos

Further proof of the polarisation in this "debate" comes from Climate: Cherries are not the only fruit by Richard Black. This all stems from Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998-2008 by Robert K. Kaufmann et al., who come to the not-desperately-exciting conclusion that things are pretty much as we thought they were: recent global temperature records are consistent with the existing understanding of the relationship among global surface temperature, internal variability, and radiative forcing, which includes anthropogenic factors with well known warming and…

Misleading tripe from the Grauniad

How about this for misleading tripe from the Grauniad: Yup, according to them the reactor has killed 4277 people. Or at least, that is what it looks like. Of course, you could also argue that they are trying to claim that the reactors have made the Nikkei go up 5.68%, but no-one would believe that. Incidentally, the NYT has some good disaster porn. [Updates: for a non-panic-stricken view of Tokyo, JEB is worth reading. For some quiet discussion of nuclear power, Brian has the good taste to ref me, and to remind us of some discussions from 2005. Meanwhile, the Japanese appear to be reduced to…

Throw-forward Thursday: Where will we be in 100 billion years?

“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” -Winston Churchill There's plenty to learn about, to see and to discover when we look out at the Universe today. From the leftover glow from the Big Bang in the microwave to the hundreds of billions of galaxies and the tremendous variety of stars in our galaxy and others, there's no shortage of mysteries to solve and curiosities to uncover. Image credit: NASA, ESA, the GOODS team and M. Giavalisco (STScI). But what if we, instead, came about in this Universe 100 billion years from now? How would we perceive…

Ask Ethan #33: A Flight Without Stars (Synopsis)

“Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.” -Ludwig Wittgenstein You know how bad light pollution is for astronomy, and how hard we try to escape it. We search for the darkest skies possible, away from all man-made light sources. We try to get as high above the atmosphere to clear, stable air, we try and avoid the clouds and stay as far away from the Moon as possible. Image credit: Gemini Observatory. You might think, "What better way to do that than from an…

Democratic National Convention Announces Platform Drafting Committee Members

The Democratic National Convention Committee has announced who will be on the all important Platform Drafting Committee. The committee will include an impressive mix of Clinton and Sanders supporters, as well as a key member associated with climate change activism. The committee is assembled by the CND Chair, who this time around is Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The members that will represent the presidential campaigns (75% of the members) were chosen to proportionately represent the candidates according to the current vote tally from the primaries. The platform committee will include, as…

Moron of the Day Award

Goes to Rhea County, Tennessee: Rhea County commissioners unanimously voted to ask state lawmakers to introduce legislation amending Tennessee's criminal code so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature. "We need to keep them out of here," said Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the motion. County Attorney Gary Fritts also was asked by Fugate to find the best way to enact a local law banning homosexuals from living in Rhea County. And irony of ironies, these same people celebrate the trial that made a laughingstock of them: Rhea County, about 30 miles north of…

Bob Alberti. Would you look at that face!?!?

Bob Alberti is a friend of mine in Minneapolis (actually, he was even my student for a few weeks). I was rather startled to see is very scary face staring at me from the Internet this morning (see above). All I can say, is if you run into this guy, watch out! His snark is very, very sharp. From the Star Tribune article featuring Bob: A recent study declared Minneapolis parks the best in the nation. We also have another fine natural resource: technology pioneers/comedians who go on the Internet and smack down snooty New Yorkers. Which brings us to Bob Alberti. ... “When I was a kid, I went…

Dodos on Showtime, extras on YouTube!

First, an important message from Randy Olson: Second, another important message from Randy Olson: one of the DVD extras for the movie has been released to YouTube! It's got my picture in it, but skip that, watch for… Jack Cashill's little falsehood about Haeckel's embryos. He accuses SJ Gould of sitting on the problems of Haeckelian recapitulation for 25 years, only mentioning it in 1995. Of course, Gould published a whole book in 1977, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, that laid out the failures of Haeckelian recapitulation in pedantic detail. Cashill also claims "…the Haeckel embryos which are…

Tuna and Nävragöl: Harness Mounts

As I blogged about in late May, a recent find from Blekinge has cast light on an enigmatic oval mount that my team collected in Östergötland in 2007. We can now say fairly confidently that the object type belongs to the 19th century. And yesterday Karin Tetteris of the Swedish Army Museum came through with evidence that strengthens this dating and suggests a function for the mounts: horse harness. Specifically, we're dealing with cruppers, Sw. svanskappor, "a soft padded loop under the base of the tail, to keep the harness from slipping forward" as Wikipedia explains. None of the mounts in…

Throwback Thursday: Seeing a black hole (Synopsis)

“According to the special theory of relativity nothing can travel faster than light, so that if light cannot escape, nothing else can either. The result would be a black hole: a region of space-time from which it is not possible to escape to infinity.” -Stephen Hawking The idea of a black hole, of a region of space where there's so much matter-and-energy that not even light can escape from it, has been around for hundreds of years. Image credit: A BBC documentary, retrieved via http://encyclopedia.com/. Yet despite this constraint, the fact that any form of energy entering it is forbidden…

The slow dance that made you (Synopsis)

“It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!” -George Gamow But how was it that this happened? Sure, the Universe may have started off with hydrogen and helium alone, but when we look around at the world today -- at our world in particular -- there's so much more than that. Image credit: Theodore Gray, via http://theodoregray.com/periodictable/Posters/index.posters.html. Good thing, too, because without it, the molecular combinations essential to our existence wouldn't be possible! There are…

Throwback Thursday: From Nothing to You in Ten Sentences (Synopsis)

“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. It’s a crazy world out there. Be curious.” -Stephen Hawking The story of where everything came from in the Universe -- of how we came from empty, expanding space to our rich and complex Universe-of-today -- is without a doubt the most remarkable story ever told: the story the Universe has to tell us about itself! Image credit: Kfir Simon / Demetrius Gore, via http://www.pbase.com/tango33/image/140317019/original.. Although there…

The Smallest Possible Scale in the Universe (Synopsis)

There are a few questions that have perplexed humans for all of recorded history, ranging from the nature of matter to the origin of the Universe to whether there are limits to what is knowable in principle about all there is. One of the great questions that people have wondered about since ancient times -- that we still wonder about today -- is whether there's a fundamental smallest scale to the Universe or not. Image credit: The Mona Lisa, by Sanghyuk Moon. From the ancient paradoxa posed by Zeno to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, it might seem like there either could or couldn't be…

Most Obvious Violation of Free Exercise Rights Ever?

I can't imagine what on earth he's thinking, but Cale Bradford, Chief Judge of the Marion Superior Court in Indiana, has issued the most blatantly unconstitutional opinion I've ever heard of. In a divorce in which both of the parents are Wiccan, the judge placed a provision in the divorce decree forbidding them from exposing their son to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals." The parents have filed an appeal to have this provision struck from the decree, and I cannot imagine they could possibly lose that appeal. I had the same reaction upon reading this as their attorney did: "When…

Israel Does the Right Thing

Israel is refusing to cancel this week's gay pride parade in the face of escalating violence from the anti-gay loonies. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz refused on Sunday to ban a gay pride march planned for Friday in Jerusalem despite threats of violence from an extremist sect. Police advocated canceling the parade and warned Mazuz that they had "viable" information that members of the Haredi ultra Orthodox Jewish sect would attempt to kill marchers and gay community leaders if the parade were not stopped. "Giving in to threats is in itself a threat to democracy, and therefore not holding…

ACLU Defends Walmart Protestor

Pay attention now, STACLU. The ACLU of Louisiana is defending a Christian man's right to protest outside a Walmart over their pro-gay policies. The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of a man who was chased away from the front of a Wal-Mart store when he tried to protest what he believes is the company's stand on gays. A Natchitoches police officer told Edwin Crayton to leave on or about Oct. 4 after he stood in front of Wal-Mart with a protest sign that read, 'Christians: Wal-Mart Supports Gay Lifestyles And Marriage. Don't Shop There,' according to…

links for 2007-11-20

5 Upcoming Comic Book Movies That Must Be Stopped | Cracked.com 'How the project obtained funding for their proposal, entitled "give diamond-hard skin and superhuman strength to angry young ethnic convicts" is yet another prime example of the dangerous incompetence of the Nixon administration.' (tags: movies comics stupid) Confessions of a Community College Dean: Presidents on Allowances The Dean Dad calls for an end to the practice of giving college presidents cars and houses (tags: academia economics education) Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed ::…

No, it is NOT satellite junk falling on Texas. Yet.

Slashdot is reporting that Satellite junk (from the recent collision) is falling on Texas, but he very latest (as of moments ago) from Bad Astronomy is that it is not. UPDATE: But then, there's this. PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE JACKSON KY 1145 PM EST FRI FEB 13 2009 ...POSSIBLE SATELLITE DEBRIS FALLING ACROSS THE REGION... THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN JACKSON HAS RECEIVED CALLS THIS EVENING FROM THE PUBLIC CONCERNING POSSIBLE EXPLOSIONS AND...OR EARTHQUAKES ACROSS THE AREA. THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION HAS REPORTED TO LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT THAT THESE…

Shocking: Don't trust your fellow human!

This is from a news report of a paper I've not yet seen: More than two-thirds of volunteers in the research study had to be stopped from administering 150 volt shocks of electricity, despite hearing a person's cries of pain, professor Jerry M. Burger concluded in a study published in the January issue of the journal American Psychologist. "In a dramatic way, it illustrates that under certain circumstances people will act in very surprising and disturbing ways," said Burger. The study, using paid volunteers from the southern San Francisco Bay area, is similar to the famous 1974 "obedience…

Links for 2009-09-12

Sorority Row | Film | A.V. Club "Late in the dire college slasher flick Sorority Row, the killer takes some time away from impaling hateful victims to explain why the world will be a better place without all the awful people who didn't survive the movie. And you know what? The psychopath has a point. Nobody in Sorority Row has a shred of decency--it's like the school from The Rules Of Attraction with a lobotomy and a botched boob job--so the maniac in the black robe can't help but emerge as the sole sympathetic character by bumping off soulless sorority sisters one by one, mercifully…

Three Quarks Voting, X-Change Files

Two noteworthy things in the meta-blog category: 1) The 3 Quarks Daily science blogging prize nominations are up, and it's a great list of sciencey bloggy goodness. If you're looking for a way to procrastinate, you could kill several days reading all 171 entries. Once you're done reading them, go vote for your favorite. The top 20 vote-getters will be the shortlist given to Steven Pinker to choose the winners from. 2) Not on the list yet, but sure to provide some quality entries next year is the brand new X-Change Files blog from the Science and Entertainment Exchange. They're providing…

DNA Barcoding, an unwilling demonstration

You might recall how much I dislike DNA barcoding. So you can imagine my frustration when, in spite of my best efforts to mount an empirical demonstration of what a waste of time it is, the technique turns out to be extraordinarily useful.  I've been processing sequence data all day from the barcoding gene (COI) for a set of 7 Pheidole species distributed from Costa Rica to Argentina.  The results are in hand, and here are the pairwise genetic distances: See that blank spot in the middle?  That shouldn't be there.  If barcoding didn't work, that is. For this sample of ants, then, any two…

Fat Christians are a lie!

How can our news media get the story so completely backwards? MSNBC is reporting a correlation between religiosity and obesity, which simply can't be true. Aside from the difficulties of going from a correlation between two complex phenemona to an assumption of causality, we have it from an unimpeachable, objective source that the opposite is true. That paragon of scienciness, Conservapædia, has been arguing that atheism leads to obesity, and for proof, they have photos of grossly pig-like PZ Myers contrasted with slim, muscular Christian Chuck Norris. This is, of course, also evidence for…

Helmet Heads Hijacked?

How did I miss this one from 2005? And how come no one told me to take off my tinfoil hat? Via @kmerritt, "On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study" by Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, and Noah Vawter. Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either…