Search Content

Displaying results 17351 - 17400 of 87950

Ten Weird Things About Me? Say It Ain't So!

[Editor's note: Dr. Stemwedel has started this particular meme on ScienceBlogs. In the spirit of merriment if not utter buffoonery the narrator of this site feels compelled to join in - the twerp.] Confiteor, Pater Optime! 1. I can identify automobile makes and models from circa 1965 on instantly, for example, "There goes a 1973 Caprice Classic." This talent has gotten me nowhere. 2. I have a large collection of vintage horror and science fiction films, although I draw the line at The Brain That Wouldn't Die. 3. Certain food items that seem harmless are repulsive to me: cherries,…

Is the earth still circling the sun?

I ask this question because I have seen something I have never seen before, something so earth-shattering that I wonder if the very axis of the earth has shifted, something so incredible that I have to pinch myself to make sure that I'm not living some unbelievably bizarre dream. I half expect the heavens to open and reveal the Second Coming. What could provoke such incredulity in me? WorldNetDaily has published an article that is science-based and makes sense. A sample: Much more disturbingly, McCarthy attacked Peet for daring to disagree with her. "She has a lot of [nerve] to come forward…

"Friday" Fractal XVI

Life, at times, seems rather abstract. So, with little comment, I present an abstract fractal. Unlike most of my fractals, which resemble some form in nature, this one represents a figment of a dream. Since I can't exactly take a photograph from a dream, I'll let the fractal stand alone: A Mandelbrot Set, using a radial wave function to color the outside of the set. (The inside remains black.) I'll leave it at that, for now, until I can return to explain the symbolism in greater detail. In the meantime, here is a hint, disguised in one of my favorite poems: A Dream Within A Dream Take…

Carl Linnaeus, in His Own Words

Linnaeus on systematics: "I can not understand anything that is not systematically ordered." -from a letter to a friend "There are as many varieties as there are plants produced by the seed of the same species." -quoted by Gunnar Eriksson Clashing with theology and human origins: "I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history. I certainly know of none... If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I should bring down all the theologians on my head. But perhaps I should still do it according to the rules of science…

Otis Dudley Duncan on Lott and defensive gun use surveys

Otis Dudley Duncan has written an excellent article on Lott and defensive gun use surveys. I'll quote from the conclusion, but you really should read the whole thing: Investigators are obliged to tell the truth about what they take from the work of other investigators and to provide verifiable evidence and complete documentation for statements made in reports on their own research. They are responsible for telling the “whole truth” about it, to use the legal phraseology, and for enabling others to confirm or falsify their results. As far as his claim about the evidence on gun…

Using new sequencing technology to look at gene expression in a single cell

Jeffrey Perkel at Biotechnically Speaking has a great overview of a recent paper in Nature Methods (see also coverage at GenomeWeb). The study in question used second-generation sequencing (with the ABI SOLiD system) to peer inside a single cell isolated from a mouse embryo. By sequencing the messenger RNA (mRNA) produced by the cell's genome they were able to generate a high-resolution snapshot of the genes switched on by the cell. Isolating and analysing RNA from a single cell is no small technical feat, and although the technique still has its limitations - for instance, the technique can…

Genetic Genealogist on 23andMe's ancestry testing

Genetic genealogist Blaine Bettinger explores the results of his ancestry testing from 23andMe, and compares it to previous results from a much lower-resolution test. The main message: the hundreds of thousands of genetic markers used by 23andMe (and other personal genomics companies, e.g. deCODEme) to infer genetic ancestry  provide a much more detailed and accurate picture of the geographical origins of your genome. No surprises here. The power of the type of genome-wide genotype data generated by 23andMe for ancestry prediction has been compellingly illustrated by a series of recent…

Sequencing one genome at a time is so last week

Last week I posted on the publication of three papers in Nature describing whole-genome sequencing using next-generation technology: one African genome, one Asian genome, and two genomes from a female cancer patient (one from her cancer cells and one from healthy skin tissue). At the end of that post I noted that the era of the single-genome publication is drawing to a close as the age of population genomics commences. Today GenomeWeb News reports from the American Society of Human Genetics meeting on the biggest current foray into the field of population genomics: the 1000 Genomes Project.…

HapMap phase 3 data available for browsing

This will probably only be of interest to population genetics afficianados, but I just noticed that the HapMap project has made its phase 3 data available through its browser (the data were previously available for download, but are much more accessible - especially to non-bioinformaticians - through the browser interface). The HapMap project is a massive international collaboration collecting information on common sites of genetic variation (called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) in anonymised individuals from a variety of human populations. Phase 3 has data on about 1.5 million…

Medical Doctors Support Animal Research

A new study from the Research Defence Society (RDS) indicates that medical doctors in the UK overwhelmingly support the role of animal research in contributing to important medical advances. The RDS questioned four hundred general practitioners from across the UK about their feelings on the importance and necessity of medical research, and the results can be found here. The study found that 96% of general practitioners agree that "animal experiments have made an important contribution to many advances in medicine" and that 88% agree that "safety tests should be carried out on animals before…

Who Is The Fetching Girl with the Archaeopteryx Tattoo?

Photo source. Young ladies proudly displaying tattoos do not typically bring to mind a neuroscientist or a passionate advocate for science education, but that's the point. Cara Santa Maria is a science correspondent for The Huffington Post, with the slyly named blog "Talk Nerdy To Me." I applaud her for her mission to sharing with the broader public about why science is so amazing and cool. So who is she? From her website: Cara Santa Maria is not your typical neuroscientist. From cheerleader to jazz vocalist, model to tattoo enthusiast, she traveled many paths before pursuing her…

Soviet Science Fiction season at the British Film Institute

The British Film Institute in London is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic flight with KOSMOS, a season of films dedicated to Soviet sci-fi. Snip: Part two of KINO will be presented in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebrations of Yuri Gagarin's momentous journey into space. KOSMOS will provide an introduction to Russian and Soviet science fiction from the periods leading up to and after Gagarin's expedition as the first human to orbit space. The season will offer rarely seen films and key documentaries in a programme that explores the impact of the Soviet…

Phylogeny Friday -- 25 April 2008

Duh! That's Obvious, Edition Take a look at this mastodon skeleton: Does it look like anything you recognize? Perhaps a large terrestrial mammal with big tusks. If you said "elephant" you win. The prize: nothing. That is half of the conclusion from a recent paper in Science (doi:10.1126/science.1154284). Really. The other half: birds and dinosaurs are pretty closely related. Or, more specifically, birds and Tyrannosaurus rex -- THE COOLEST MOST AWESOMEST OF ALL DINOSAURS EVER!! -- are closely related. And, for this, they get a Science paper. Now, the way they did this is pretty damn cool…

Lab Coats & Gloves

Biologists often wear rubber gloves when doing their research to protect them from the nasty chemicals they're working with and to protect their samples from contamination. I've been known to bitch about people not removing those gloves prior to entering common areas -- touching things they shouldn't be touching with gloves. This could lead to mutagens, carcinogens, and simply abrasive reagents on doorknobs and elevator buttons that other people touch with their bare hands. Or it could lead to environmental particles on the gloves which could contaminate and ruin some experiment. The chances…

Complete Genomics announces 500 genomes in the pipeline

I'll be at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting in Marco Island, Florida for the next week, soaking up sun and genomics, keeping my eye out for the anticipated major announcements from sequencing companies and researchers, and quietly panicking about my presentation on Thursday. You'll hear more about the meeting from me and the other bloggers there - Luke Jostins, David Dooling, Dan Koboldt and Anthony Fejes - over the next week. It's amazing to think that it was at the same meeting in 2009 - just one year ago - that Complete Genomics emerged dramatically from stealth mode…

Humor and Hormones

Humour appears to develop from aggression caused by male hormones, according to a study published in this week's Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal.... Makes total sense to me. And if you think I'm kidding, you can stuff it. This is the finding of a newly published study by Sam Shuster, emeritus professor of dermatology from the Department of Dermatology, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, in the U.K. This study involved measuring responses of subjects categorized by age and sex (and other variables) and showed that individuals with higher levels of testosterone (adult men…

Birds Building Bulk

Photo Credit: A chestnut-backed chickadee from San Francisco, 2008 Greg Cope Scientists at San Francisco State University, in collaboration with researchers from PRBO Conservation Science, have discovered that birds in central California are bulking up. Not only are they gaining weight, but their wingspans have also increased over the last few decades. The suspect in this alteration is climate change. According to Bergmann's Rule, animals at higher latitudes tend to be larger. This may be due to their ability to store fat for protection in cold weather. Therefore, some scientists predicted…

Experimental Biology 2011-Day 1

Day 1 (Saturday) of the meeting was nothing short of exciting!! The only problem with these large meetings is that there are multiple interesting seminars occurring simultaneously. How to choose??? The first symposium that I attended was on Translational Research. This area of research seeks to apply discoveries in the laboratory or field to the development of studies in humans. The first talk was on the evolving landscape for medical innovation given by K. Kaitin from Tufts University followed by a talk on finding the right animal models for translational research given by S. Prabhakar…

Great Land Migrations

I LOVE National Geographic!! They have so many beautiful video clips of great animal migrations that I could just sit down with a bowl of popcorn and watch them all day. Here are some highlights of my favorite land animals that migrate: In Africa, wildebeests (shown in the image above) are perhaps the most well-known migratory mammal. Check out this video clip from National Geographic which talks about their migration. The largest land mammal that migrates is the elephant (image below from National Geographic). In Mali they migrate over 300 miles to find food and water along long corridors…

Gender Identification of Young Poults

Most people probably only think of turkeys as the delicious main course served with gravy, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce (among many other items) at Thanksgiving. I too have mainly been concerned with how best to prepare them for dinner and have admittedly not given much thought to their anatomy or physiology. So, with Thanksgiving literally right around the corner, let's discuss turkeys. In many species, young birds do not display external sexual characteristics, like differences in feather color. However, knowing the gender of a young bird is very important to poultry breeders to…

Chickens with Gender Identity Issues

Okay, so I am searching the internet looking for information on the reproductive physiology of chickens...and I come across this crazy story of how some chickens are half male and half female. Sounds like an advertisement for a new science fiction movie, doesn't it? After doing some research on the issue (i.e. Googling it), it turns out that this is not a promotion for a movie after all. Scientists from the Roslin Institute at the University Edinburgh have been studying this mysterious rare occurrence of what they call "cell autonomous sex identity", or CASI. According to an article in…

Kid's got autism? Get 'em high!

Today over at Science-Based Medicine, Dr. Novella has a review of the so-called "biomed" movement in autism treatment. Anyone should be able to understand the desperation of parents with sick kids, but grief can lead to very bad decisions. As physicians, one of our jobs is to guide people away from these decisions and not to give false hope. Telling people what they want to hear might make you as a caregiver feel good, but as physicians, our goal is not to make ourselves feel good but to help others. It pained me to read this story about a mom who gets her autistic son stoned. As a father…

Poking the hornets' nest

I played hooky from the office this morning. My hours have really been weighing down on me, and with my recent back injury, I really wanted a break. Then my wife begged me to take our daughter to school. And stop at the store. And find the shopping list in her car. I was unhappy. I made her cry. You see, today is my father-in-law's birthday. He was born 70-odd years ago today. He died less than three months ago. It's not going to be an easy day. I apologized and worked on getting my daughter ready. My daughter has, like most children, traits from both of her parents. From her…

Cuddle-less Cuttlefish

by Katie the lowly intern Just when you started to feel comforted by the surge of popular culture embracing cephalopods on TV, apparel and porn, scientists spoon out a dose of brutal reality. Researchers from University of Melbourne, University of Brussels and Museum Victoria have revealed another terrifying fact about octopuses. It's not enough that they can squirt ink, have beaks, move by jet propulsion, change colors in seconds, turn their eyes to keep their pupils horizontally oriented, have no bones and most horrifically: have eight arms... but give very few hugs*. The original octo-…

Time-lapse camera recovered from seafloor

A team of marine biologists, geologists, and oceanographers studying chemosynthetic communities around hydrocarbon seeps aboard the Deep Slope Expedition 2007 research vessel RV Ron Brown successfully recovered a time-lapse camera from waters more than 2000m deep in the Gulf of Mexico. "Life goes on in chemosynthethic communities when we're not there," says Dr. Ian MacDonald of Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. "We have to wonder what happens outside of the brief snapshot in time when we were there exploring." Dr. MacDonald will use the information "to understand how the physical…

25 Things You Should Know About the Deep Sea: #16 Bioluminescence is the predominant source of light in the deep.

 From Bioluminescence Web Page: Nudibranchs are not generally thought of as bioluminescent organisms, but this pelagic form Phylliroe has the ability to produce light. (The head is on the left). (Length approx. 7 cm) See the SeaSlug Forum for more information It has been a long time coming, but at last #16 is here!  As I began to write this post, I soon realized that someone else had already compiled (and much better) the information on the web.  Steve Haddock, Bioluminescent Expert Extraordinaire, maintains the Bioluminescence Web Page, which is chock-a-block full of information.  Head…

Following Isis's Lead...

While I've been away from the blogiverse, it appears that you've had the misfortune to be treated to all manner of disgusting ads popping up here at ScienceBlogs. Mail Order Brides, Naughty Singles, and I don't know what all else. Isis has some details here. She says: ...if you've been visiting me for any length of time then you know how I feel about the exploitation of women, especially racial minorities and women from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. That's the entire point of the Letters to Our Daughters Project and the Silence is the Enemy Project, right? That said, I cannot in…

Discipline, no bondage

Proposal would give immunity to schools that spank: One Kansas senator thinks that a quarter-inch of pine might be part of the solution to school disciplinary problems. Sen. Phil Journey, R-Wichita, plans to introduce a bill on Monday that would shield educators from legal liability for administering corporal punishment to students. "From what I've seen and what I've been told by teachers and parents, we need to bring some order to schools, particularly middle schools," Journey said. Like seven other states, Kansas has no law regarding spanking in schools. Twenty-eight states ban corporal…

Pre-election purge: The KGB is here

Every week, the Kansas Guild of Bloggers gathers to highlight the finest of Kansasish blogging. This week, we are not surprisingly heavy on the politics. New blogger Howls from Kansas reviews the events that led to this Kansas election becoming interesting. "I LIVE IN A NOISY STATE where the wind is wont to blow at gale force from any compass point of the globe," he begins. EmawKC is undecided on the Johnson County soccer initiative. Will ...JustCara's argument or Tony's win out? I guess we won't know until tomorrow night. Red State Rabble charts the DeKline and Phall of Phill Kline.…

Your day in the Bay

West Oakland shooting sends one to hospital: A person was shot in the chest and leg Sunday night in West Oakland, police said. Teen dies in Oakland shooting: A 15-year-old boy was shot to death Saturday night not far from his East Oakland home, police said. Mountain lion jumps man in Palo Alto park: An animal tracker hired by city officials was heading into Foothills Park in Palo Alto on Sunday night to hunt down and kill a mountain lion that attacked a man over the weekend, authorities said. …the first known mountain lion attack in Palo Alto, said Palo Alto Police Agent Dan Ryan. The 50-…

Buzz Out Loud and Black Holes

Buzz Out Loud is one of my favorite tech podcasts. Unfortunately, I am a little behind in the episodes. However, in the episode 900 there was an email from a listener regarding LHC and black holes. The emailer claims that a massive black hole would mess up Earth's orbit. This is not quite true. I was getting ready to make a lengthy post about how black holes work, but did a way more awesomer job than I could do. Stefan and Bee describe some very important points: First, black holes created in the Large Hadron Collider are based on a theory that has not really been verified. So, it…

The truth revealed

PZ Myers explains his objection to religion: the bible is inferior. No pirates. No cephalopods. No swashbuckling. No undead monkeys. No men with tentacles. Those are fair points, but for Cosma Shalizi's explanation of The Reason for the Season, with it's link to a working paper from the Vampire Research group on Jesus Chthulu. In that scholarly work, it is observed that: Jesus came from an area where the worship of the Magna Mater has been endemic for millennia…. Her connection with the mythos is well-known (see HPL, ``The Rats in the Walls''); a consensus of learned opinion holds her to be…

Some stats on Sb/DonorsChoose bloggers challenges.

Because I know some people in these parts like numbers, I thought I'd give you a few stats for the Sb/DonorsChoose bloggers challenges currently underway. At last count, we've gotten $12,325.59 (not counting the $10,000 match from SEED) from 152 generous donors -- that's an average of $81.09 per donor. (Potential donors, don't be put off -- as little as $10 can make a big difference when you're combining forces with other donors!) You've heard by now that the Pharyngula challenge already wrapped up. Those unholy, soulless, pirate zombies dug deep and ended up funding 313% of PZ's goal.…

The Future of Science is Art?

So the new Seed is now on the newstands. I've got a longish essay sketching out possible future interactions between science and art: The current constraints of science make it clear that the breach between our two cultures is not merely an academic problem that stifles conversation at cocktail parties. Rather, it is a practical problem, and it holds back science's theories. If we want answers to our most essential questions, then we will need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights that are the seeds of scientific progress…

Population substructure in Japan

Dienekes points me to a new paper, Japanese Population Structure, Based on SNP Genotypes from 7003 Individuals Compared to Other Ethnic Groups: Effects on Population-Based Association Studies: ....Here, we examined Japanese population structure by Eigenanalysis, using the genotypes for 140,387 SNPs in 7003 Japanese individuals, along with 60 European, 60 African, and 90 East-Asian individuals, in the HapMap project. Most Japanese individuals fell into two main clusters, Hondo and Ryukyu; the Hondo cluster includes most of the individuals from the main islands in Japan, and the Ryukyu cluster…

Thursday Throwdown: Updates from Gaua, Reventador, Soufriere Hills, Mayon and Cleveland

I did an excellent job of forgetting my notes from GSA 2009, so no wrap up on the meeting until tomorrow, but we do have some new volcano news to digest: The crater of El Reventador in Ecuador in an undated photo. Ecuadorian officials have called for evacuations around El Reventador. The Ecuadorian Geophysics Institute says that the volcano's "activities were measured at a level considered high, with permanent seismic signals indicating explosions while the southern side of the volcano crater could be seen as incandescent.". Three provinces near the volcano were put on alert evacuated as a…

Large eruption underway at Shiveluch

Undated photo of Shiveluch volcano in Russia. In case you haven't seen the report yet, Shiveluch in Kamchatka has gone, as they say, "non-linear". KVERT has raised the alert level at the volcano to "Red" with reports of many strong explosions and an ash plume of >32,800 feet / >10 km. This all suggests that the volcano might have experienced [WARNING SPECULATION] a massive dome collapse followed by rapid decompression of the magma under the dome - causing the plinian eruption that seems to be underway. The size of this eruption plume will definitely have some effect on air travel over…

El Misti threatens 100,000 people

El Misti in Peru, as seen from Arequipa. As I like to remind people concerning volcanic hazards, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure. This is not to imply we can prevent volcanic hazards from affecting us, but rather that proper mitigation in the form of monitoring, planning, education and practice can save countless lives (and dollars) when a volcano erupts. Officials in Peru seem to believe this, as they recently ran for practice evacuations for residents around El Misti, in the southern part of the country. Jersy Mariño from the Instituto Geológico, Minero y…

Largest eruption so far at Redoubt

Image courtesy of AVO/USGS, taken 3/23/09 I don't have many details, but the largest eruption so far in this eruptive stage at Redoubt occurred at 9:24 AM (Alaska Time), producing a 65,000 foot / 20,000 meter ash column! Yes, you read that right, a 20-km ash column! This is by far the largest ash column so far and AVO has returned Redoubt to Red/Warning status after this and a small explosion that occurred 30 minutes before the big one. Depending on the winds at various elevations, this sort of large ash column could threaten to coat Anchorage with ash - check the latest NOAA warnings here…

Pansies everywhere

I'm glad someone occasionally looks into the other side of the net to see what they're talking about — I can't bear to read religious forums, myself. Here's why: take a look at what they're saying on BaptistBoard. I believe women in politics have done a great disservice to the sovereignty and resolve of a our great Republic. Many issues that face our nation, from without and within, need to be decided from a place of strength instead of weakness. Women are gifted from God with a lot of skills that are good in the home, but not in the Government. They tend to base their decisions from a…

A video is worth a thousand fliers

Vedran tells me that people from the Oncology Institute in Belgrade, who usually give women little brochures that describe breast self-exam in words, are now using - and loving - the two videos (originally from here) he has embedded into his Gynecology aggregator. Another win for Open Access.

Blue Tit

tags: Eurasian blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus, birds, nature, Image of the Day This Eurasian Blue Tit, Cyanistes caeruleus, is from the photographer's ancestral village of Rintoul, near Kinross, which is north of the Firth of Forth, about 20 miles from Edinburgh, Scotland. Image: Dave Rintoul, August 2008.

Writers From Across the Blogosphere Carnival Now Available

tags: Writers from across the blogosphere, blog carnivals The latest edition of the Writers From Across The Blogosphere Carnival is now available for your reading pleasure. They included a few things that I've written, along with a mountain of other contributions that you are sure to enjoy.

Will Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos be a turning point in science denialism?

Neil DeGrasse Tyson on CNN: And while we are on the topic, Carl Sagan, of the original Cosmos, on climate change: See also this from Chris Mooney at Mother Jones. And just for the heck of it, here's my interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson from 2011.

New Look

Okay, I've unveiled a new look for Dispatches from the Culture Wars. This template is a modified version of one that I downloaded from Style Monkey. I tinkered with the style sheet a bit, but it's essentially one of the 3-column templates found here. Tell me what you think.

Conference Blogging

I'll post a March Meeting update later, but if you like your conferences a little more wide-ranging, Ethan Zuckerman provides extensive reporting from the TED Conference. The speakers range from Steven Pinker and Murray Gell-Mann to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, so there's a little something for everyone.

Franken, Coleman Near Miss Tweeted

Minnesota Post reports from the Minnesota Independent a Twitter Report from Matt HIll indicating that Al Franken and Norm Coleman were on the same flight to Washington DC yesterday. The outgoing Senator, Coleman was in First Class. Franken was in Coach. Just thought you'd like to know....

An honest creationist, at last

From Cectic: Quote of the week: "Either the theory is wrong, or I'm just incredibly stupid." -Todd Friel on Evolution, from The Way of the Master Radio for 24 Dec. The first true utterance I've heard on that show since I started listening to the podcast.

Link Love: Pulse of the Planet

You may be familiar with Pulse of the Planet as a radio show about nature, but Jim Metzner, its producer, just let me know that it now sports a pretty extensive web site, including a selection of diaries from scientists studying everything from lightning to sea turtles. Check it out.

Showing pride in comparative physiology

Meet Dr. Rudy Ortiz from the University of California, Merced. He is a winner of our show your pride in comparative physiology at EB contest! In case you can't tell from his tie, he is passionate about his research with seals. Congratulations Rudy! Enjoy your Starbucks gift card.