Skip to main content
Advertisment
Search
Search
Toggle navigation
Main navigation
Life Sciences
Physical Sciences
Environment
Social Sciences
Education
Policy
Medicine
Brain & Behavior
Technology
Free Thought
Search Content
Displaying results 62051 - 62100 of 87947
Tarantula insecticide
Photo credit: Margaret C. Hardy Drs. Glenn King and Maggie Hardy at the Institute of Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Australia have discovered a small protein, aptly named orally active insecticidal peptide-1 (OAIP-1), in the venom of Australian tarantulas (Selenotypus plumipes) that can kill prey when ingested orally. According to the study, OAIP-1 is fast acting and more potent than commercial pyrethroid insecticides and is very effective at killing the agricultural pest, cotton bollworm. The authors suggest that OAIP-1 may therefore be useful as a bioinsecticide. The…
Experimental Biology 2012 - Monday (continued)
Highlights from the afternoon seminars: D. Schlenk, "Estrogenic activities in marine wildlife: potential causes and population impacts" Dr. Schlenk has been studying the estrogenic effects of Bifenthrin, a pyrethroid insectide in fish populations. He observed that male fish exposed to this chemical actually show an increase in vitellogenin, which is important in the development of eggs in female fish. More importantly, other pesticides, including Befenthrin, and alpha polyethoxylate (APEO) chemicals have been detected in the San Francisco Bay and may be related to declines in the fish…
Weekend by the numbers
A numerical synopsis of my weekend: Number of sick babies in household: 1 Doses of Tylenol administered: 6 Amount of vomit cleaned up: 1 metric ton Amount of baby snot/drool/various secretions on clothing: 3 pounds Number of outings canceled: 3 Loads of laundry done: 1 Loads of laundry typically done on a "normal" weekend: 5 Net laundry: -4 Hours of work done Saturday: 1.5 (yeah, I know, this violates the whole Saturdays off thing) Hours of work done Sunday: 8 Percentage of work that needed to be done that was completed: 90% Stress level (1-10 scale): 10 at start of day, 3 now…
CCTV as Security theater
From the beebs: Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. Bruce Schneider calls this security theater. It makes a good show to be able to show pictures on TV of alleged criminals. We watch it and feel safe: if a criminal is caught on a camera, it wouldn't be long before he is caught physically as well. Right? Wrong. It seems very reasonable and natural but fact is not obliged to follow our misguided…
Kellermann's case-control study on gun ownership and homicide
The authors of the bibliography are quite correct when they state that a case-control study could measure a net protective effect of firearms. EdgarSuter writes: "could" if death were the only legitimate measurement of the protective benefits of guns. Wrong. "could" if protection from death is a legitimate use of a firearm. Mr. Lambert's quibbling about the definition of "only rarely" bypasses the main point of the letter. Since an indisputable majority of Kellermann's homicides were not committed using those scary "guns in the home," one must invoke magical thinking to explain how these…
Oppenheimer's demons
Held a hefty book today that warrants a blog post. The book is American Prometheus, The triumph and tragedy of Robert J. Oppenheimer. I referred to this book to check on a certain event in Oppenheimers life. It is this: Oppenheimer, at one time, left a poisoned apple for his tutor Blackett at Cambridge (Blackett apparently and luckily did not eat it). This rather alarming action was the result of Oppenheimer's lack of good experimental hands. Blackett had assigned him seom experiments without knowing Oppenheimer's ineptitude, and boy! What a way to be avenged! Oppenheimer almost got expelled…
Truth and My Unease with Explanations
I am sure this has happened to many. I find catching myself out at times in that strange land where an Explanation has taken the place of Truth. I stand there looking lovingly at the face of Clarity and Certainty with little realization that they are strangling curiosity to death; when they vanish, one is left staring at a void with a dead soul. All this while that we have indulged these deadly twins, we have stopped from going further. When one has 'explained' something satisfactorily (to oneself), that is normally the end of one's quest, and therein lies the danger. The danger is this: the…
Inhuman India
Anand Giridharadas (his blog) writes at IHT: many of the people who are making the new India new - from the stockbrokers to the bedecked socialites - are responsible for preserving a certain gloomy element of the Indian past: a tendency to treat the hired help like chattel, to taunt and humiliate and condescend to them, to behave as though some humans were born to serve and others to be served. "Indians are perhaps the world's most undemocratic people, living in the world's largest and most plural democracy," as Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar, two well-known scholars of Indian culture, put…
Ursula K. Le Guin's Interview
She is one of the writers I admire for her uncompromising and thoroughly researched exploration of possibilities - especially of race, gender and political philosophies. Ursula Le Guin's novel The Dispossessed has in many ways clarified my personal questions on anarchism and gave a vocabulary to build my thoughts on. It is great to see her speak. These words in the interview struck a chord in me: I can't say I have suffered for my politics. SF and fantasy slip under the wire a lot, you know? People just aren't looking for radical thought in a field the respectable critics define as…
A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi
I have been reading Primo Levi, that man who was sent to to vey core of inhumanity and returned more humane than anyone, that man who I am proud to look up for inspiration. There are only a few who can move us the way Levi does with his prose, his courage and his life. A few links to share. A story (translated) published recently at New Yorker called A Tranquil Star. Once upon a time, somewhere in the universe very far from here, lived a peaceful star, which moved peacefully in the immensity of the sky, surrounded by a crowd of peaceful planets about which we have not a thing to report. This…
Scifi Contest: Message to Neelam Shah
Dear Neelam Shah, Glad to see your note submitted via TheScian.com Contact Form. Unfortunately, the email you provided seems to be incorrect and my response to that email bounced. If you were wondering why I haven't replied, you now know. Here's my reply. You asked if there is any age limit for the contest (from your email, I gather you are 15 years old and probably not sure if you can send a story to the contest). There is no age limit. Everyone who can write a good scifi story can enter the contest. There will be contests in the future too. But, don't wait. Send your story for the 2007…
A geyser in the car
Yesterday afternoon, I took the car out and after driving a few minutes noticed the air over the bonnet shimmering and undulating like in a mirage. I have seen this before and it's not good news. The last time I saw this sign, the car burst into flames, the birds flew away, the sky clouded up and I heard the devil. I quickly parked the car and took a look inside the bonnet. The engine had overheated and was hissing and puffing at the seams. I clearly remember adding any coolant, about four months ago. Understandably, the engine was unhappy about it. when I opened the coolant chamber lid…
Cognitive lock-in
Fascinating news I read at ScienceDaily. An important new study from the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrates how this "cognitive lock-in" can cause us to remain loyal to a product, even if objectively better alternatives exist. "We find that consumers typically are not aware that this mechanism is a powerful determinant of the choices they make," write Kyle B. Murray (University of Western Ontario) and Gerald Häubl (University of Alberta). Murray and Häubl examine a theory of cognitive lock-in centered around the notion of skill-based habits of use, that is, how using or purchasing a…
God says no, says bishop
God says no to abortion. God says no to condoms. God says no to reason and toleration. Since god has a very fragile ego and does not say all this in public, it falls upon a bishop of the catholic church in Scotland to relay god's delusions to us mortals. A friend of mine in Colorado - a woman, an atheist - used to say that most gods are men and they always talk through their penises. How true. God speaks through his penis, and that's surely why the religious knuckleheads liken abortion to preempting god's message. Using insensitive and terrorizing language to sway the unsuspecting…
"The male approaches with his thumbs (like the Fonz) and mounts the female (like the Fonz.)"
Tell me that doesn't leave you wanting more. Ed Yong delivers: Male bats create tents by biting leaves until they fall into shape. These provide shelter and double as harems, each housing several females who the male mates with. Fruit bat sex goes like this: the female approaches and sniffs the male, and both partners start to lick one another. The male makes approaches with his thumbs (like the Fonz) and mounts the female (like the Fonz). Sex itself is the typical rhythmic thrusting that we're used to, and afterwards, the male licks his own penis for several seconds. But Tan also found…
Emotional Cartography
Leave it to Vaughn Bell to find this stuff: emotional maps of different cities. Got to get a hold of this -- and as Vaughn explains, you and I can, with free download. (But leave the author some $. It's the right thing to do.) Nold came up with the idea of fusing a GSR machine, a skin conductance monitor that measures arousal, and a GPS machine, to allow stress to be mapped to particular places. He then gets people to walk round and creates maps detailing high arousal areas of cities. The biomapping website has some of the fantastic maps from the project. His book, called Emotional…
Quick Dip: Mindreading, pig flu, green fade, health care costs, and drug money in Vermont
Reading the Mindreading Studies - Science Progress seeks a handle on fMRI hype, hope, and horizons The evolving Swine Flu story [Effect Measure] The skinny on a scary run of deadly swine flu, from people who've been doing this a while. Green Issues Fade Is green losing its lustre? Eli Lilly Tops List of Drug-Company Pay to Vermont Docs Altogether, 78 drug companies spent just shy of $3 million dollars in payments to health professionals in Vermont last year. This is a state of about 600,000 people, and only a few thousand doctors. Payments to psychiatrists, for instance, totaled $479,306.19…
Psychologists, doctors, and torture
Vaughn Bell, looking at the recent reports on torture, finds unsettling information about the participation of psychologists and physicians: The Washington Post has an article exploring recently released 'war on terror' interrogation memos, showing that "psychologists, physicians and other health officials" played a key part in interrogations widely condemned as torture. It's an interesting revelation because during the long debates, and some say heal-dragging, over whether the American Psychological Association should ban its members from participation, one of their main arguments was that…
Multimedia frisson: Great graphic renderings of news and history
The Nieman Journalism Lab has a nice round-up of some beautifully informative and often luscious work that "visualizes" news -- that is, turns news trends (and the social concerns and changes they document) into visual representations of data, like changing maps, splats of paint, or -- a favorite -- a simple needle meter. For example: An interview with Tim Schwartz (who has more great stuff at his site) about his indexing of various terms as used by the Times over the decades: Tim Schwartz visualizes history (1851-2008) through word usage in The New York Times from Nieman Journalism Lab on…
File it under "WTF?!"
A twelve year old boarder collie mix survived being frozen to the sidewalk for a whole night in Wisconsin. The overnight temperature dropped into the single digits, yet the elderly animal survived. How? Jiffy, the unfortunate dog, is morbidly obese. "Being insulated as well as he was with the layers of fat he had probably saved the dog's life," said the Humane Society Shelter Manager, Carey Payne, in a news story The dog's owner said she couldn't get the dog inside herself, and checked on him every few hours to make sure he was ok. The animal care workers poured warm water over the dog's back…
Science Blogging Survey
We want your opinion! This survey attempts to access the opinions of bloggers, blog-readers, and non-blog folk in regards to the impact of blogs on the outside world. The authors of the survey (from ScienceBlogs.com) are completing an academic manuscript on the impact of science blogging and this survey will provide invaluable data to answer the following questions: Who reads or writes blogs? What are the perceptions of blogging, and what are the views of those who read blogs? How do academics and others perceive science blogging? What, if any, influence does science blogging have on…
Bark Bark Woof Woof boy am I happy to see you!
We all know the basic characteristics of a happy dog (well at least pizza guys and mail men know), Ears close to the head, tense posture, and tail straight out from the body means "don't mess with me." Ears perked up, wriggly body and vigorously wagging tail means "I am sooo happy to see you!" An article in todays NYT highlights a brand new discovery in doggy linguistics, When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left. I might even read the…
State Of The Wild
The state of the world can be measured by the state of the wild. The Wildlife Conservation Society takes on that challenge by publishing their annual State of the Wild series with Island Press. The 2008-09 volume is fresh off the presses. This edition considers the integration of wildlife health, ecosystem health, human health, and the health of domestic animals, a "One World-One Health" approach to disease and conservation. The focus is complemented with essays clustered into sections that address other key issues: conservation of species, conservation of wild places, and the art and…
Shifting Baselines, Sunscreen, and More on Religion...
Just yesterday, Stuart Sandin from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography wrote a piece for the San Diego Tribune on shifting baselines and our marine environment. In older (but still worthy) news, this National Geographic piece explains that scientists estimate that 4,000 to 6,000 metric tons of sunscreen wash off swimmers annually in oceans worldwide, and that up to 10 percent of coral reefs are threatened by sunscreen-induced bleaching. Of course, people only blow the alarm whistle on coral reefs after the reefs are already heavily degraded... This is your coral. This is your coral on…
Big Fish Sell--Too Bad There Aren't More of Them
The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon (~$75), a story book of the biggest Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) caught since the 18th century, is an unexpected best-seller this year. A special edition of the book priced at $1311 sold out before it was even ready to be shipped. Good thing the Atlantic salmon has been immortalized. A WWF study a few years ago found that: Atlantic salmon have been completely eliminated from no fewer than 300 out of over 2,000 river systems in their original range, and stocks hang by a thread in many others. In Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech…
Chesapeake Oysters Hit Rock Bottom
You can't have commercial fisheries in Chesapeake Bay, and eat your oysters too. That's the thesis of Angus Phillip's excellent article in the Washington Post on how Chesapeake's Oyster Population Has Reached Rock Bottom. [Phillips] asked about the Chesapeake Bay Agreement of 2000, which set a goal of increasing the oyster population in the bay tenfold over a baseline of 1994 by the year 2010. How was that going? Seven years into the effort, "There's less oysters in the bay than we had then, according to the Department of Natural Resource's own biomass data," Baynard said. "We're going…
Those troublesome, shaky X chromosomes!
It's easy to find lists of dumb things creationists say, and I'm familiar with that lot, but here's a fun new time-waster: Things Anti-Vaxxers Say. Here's a beautiful example of something I've rarely seen so clearly stated: they get the facts totally wrong, actually the reverse of the actual situation, but nope, that doesn't stop them from inventing a bogus rationalization around them. You can do your own research but it comes down to chromosomes -- the X chromosome is shaky, and boys have two of them. So they are quite literally twice as likely as girls to be adversely affected by genetic…
Study: Internet addiction a bunch of bunk
Is there such a thing as internet addiction? Mind Hacks says the debate should be over: A study just published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior has reviewed all of the available scientific studies on internet addiction and found them to be mostly crap. And not just slightly lacking, really pretty awful. To quote from the research summary: The analysis showed that previous studies have utilized inconsistent criteria to define Internet addicts, applied recruiting methods that may cause serious sampling bias, and examined data using primarily exploratory rather than confirmatory…
Education chief Arne Duncan has his work cut out
The Washington Post, in a story fairly typical of other coverage, says that Obama's pick for Secretary of Education will "reach out to unions, school reform gorups" and "bridge the divides among education advocates, teachers unions and civil rights groups over how to fix America's school." Or as another syndicated WaPo story put it, "Duncan is embraced by the teachers unions, which have been concerned about high-stakes testing and worry about merit pay being tied to test scores, as well as reformers, who favor charter schools and tougher standards." Apparently at least some from the teachers…
Very Short List and Cognitive Surplus
A couple months ago I became a subscriber to Very Short List, an email list that sends you just ONE web link a day, 5 days a week, as a way of clueing you in to something that is both good and overlooked: Might be a movie, a web site, a blog, a book. I've now become a (modestly) paid "advisor" to a new VSL email sub-offering, VSL Science, a science-only version of the same daily email. The Shirky talk on Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus in my previous post is today's VSL Science offering, and it was something I managed to stumble over and offer up in my advisor role. It's a fun list…
Williams Syndrome, or why are we so social? Plus why the big brain?
My article on Williams syndrome and human sociability is now on the New York Times Magazine web site, at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/magazine/08sociability-t.html This was one of the more enthrallling stories I've worked on. Williams syndrome rises from a genetic deletion of about 20-25 of our 30,000 genes, and those who have it can be pretty much counted on to be quite gregarious and social. How can a deletion amplify a trait? Is their sociability actually increased, or simply left less fettered? As the story relates, research into Williams has addressed these questions, throwing…
Fishing Down the Galapagos Marine Food Web
The designation of the Galapagos Marine Reserve has not entirely buffered the waters from change. Tom Okey, a former student of Daniel Pauly, showed that the phenomenon of "fishing down the food web" is indeed occurring in the islands (though fishing at lower trophic levels has also yielded bad results, to be discussed in a later post). The sailfin grouper (Mycteroperca olfax), once the most valuable and exploited fish (see photo of seco-selado), once made up more than 40% of the catch but now makes up 20% of catch. The average size of sailfin grouper also declined and in 1996, it was…
The 3QD Science Blogging Contest is Back!
3 Quarks Daily has announced their third annual science blogging prize! This year, the final results will be judged by none other than Lisa Randall, theoretical physicist extraordinaire from Harvard University. Nominations are open now, and are for any post published between May 22nd, 2010 and today. Posts can be nominated by placing a comment with a link to the post in the comments section of this post. Nominations close May 31st, so you've got about a week to nominate your favorites! ...and yes, in a moment of shameless self promotion: if you want to nominate one of mine, here are some of…
Jerry Coyne Finally Gets It!
Jerry Coyne, the author of Why Evolution is True, recently held a contest. The rules were simple: Please recommend one nonfiction book that you think everyone should read, and explain in no more than three sentences why we should read it. The book need not be about science, though those entries are welcome too. The only books excluded from this contest are mine and Darwin's Origin, which has been done to death. Well, the winner has been announced, and the book everyone should read is... Last Chance to See By Douglas Adams. I'm not surprised - I've been telling you all this for years. No…
Pssssst!
You might have noticed I've been posting a little less frequently. In part, this is because being a grad student is far more busying than being on vacation. But another part is that I've started really using Google's Shared Items. Instead of writing a ton of posts on everything I find intriguing, I pass along some of the stuff that other people have written well about. So if you're looking for even more super science news or interesting tid-bits, subscribe to my Google Shared Item's Feed (click on the "atom feed" on the right hand side). I also re-tweet interesting articles or items that I…
Weekly Dose of Cute: Cheetah Cub
Ok, so I've kinda missed a week or two. What? None of you noticed? Oh. Nevermind then. Wait a second, I see someone noticed. Just look at that face - so sad that I didn't post a Weekly Dose of Cute last week! c/o the ever-adorable Zooborns This unhappy cub is one of four lovely little 2 month olds being raised by the San Diego Zoo's all too happy staff. Cheetahs are amazing animals. They're able to reach speeds of up to 75 mph in short bursts, and are able to accelerate from 0 to 70 in about 3 seconds. Unfortunately, like so many large cats, their future is uncertain. Their numbers have…
Enjoying Florida, Part 1
So I live in Florida. It has its benefits. For example, last weekend I went walking around Myakka State Park with Barry and his family. Whenever you walk in a park in Florida with water, you're really looking for one thing: Gators. Luckily, just about every body of freshwater in Florida has them, so you're not disappointed:These guys were hanging out, sunning themselves about 30 feet away from us. I wanted to get closer for a good head shot, but Barry said I shouldn't... Oh well. But alligators aren't the only wildlife that Myakka has to offer. Check out these shots we got of some turkey…
Hey y'all! Pharma Bawd has risen from the dead at Moment of Science
If you read any sort of science blogs, you may remember when Pharma Bawd at Moment of Science burst on the scene in Feb 2006 at with her pathway of metabolism of evolution information. Reading about enzymes like Respectful Insolence Discreditase and PZ Myers' Professional Smackdownase literally had me peeing my pants (full jpg file here...of the pathway, not me peeing my pants). So, you can imagine that her prolonged silence after her 28 Feb 2006 post on epigenetics and cancer led many of us to feel that we lost a true voice of reason in the anti-science wilderness. Well, much to my happy…
Climate change cover-up
No surprise here: a highly-regarded climatologist declares that the Bush administration is "muzzling government scientists" and covering up the facts about global warming. Warren Washington, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said that Bush appointees are suppressing information about climate change, restricting journalists' access to federal scientists and rewriting agency news releases to stress global warming uncertainties. "The news media is not getting the full story, especially from government scientists," Washington told about 160 people…
Quote of the Day - 10 April 2009
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi…
The Questionable Authority: Helping People With Homework Since 2005
When people arrive at this blog via the google, it's usually because they're searching for a combination of words that doesn't produce a lot of hits. Often, it's a series of words that looks suspiciously like things that have to do with some sort of homework assignment. Earlier tonight, someone punched "Compare and contrast between peace and War" into google.ca. The fourth item on the results list was a post from early 2007 that probably didn't help our searching student much. (Unless, of course, they were looking for an exposition of former President George W. Bush's flaws.) It's unlikely…
links for 2008-07-01
Charles Darwin was not the father of atheism - Telegraph Decent article on Darwin and religion in yesterday's Telegraph. (tags: religion Darwin atheism) Science and maths exams are harder than arts subjects, say researchers | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk Kicking things off, we've got an entry in the "now tell me something I didn't know" subject area. (Yes, I'm a science snob, what can I say.) (tags: education science) Coalition troop deaths in Afghanistan surpass Iraq - CNN.com This is two months in a row now. And it's not because things in Iraq have gotten that much better.…
Participants Wanted for Survey on Catcalling
I received an email from Dr. Kimberly Fairchild, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Manhattan College, asking for help in recruiting participants for a survey she is conducting. Kimberly is interested in the relationship between early experiences with catcalling and current experiences. The survey she is currently conducting is an extension of her dissertation work. The survey is women-only, completely voluntary, and should only take about 20 minutes to complete. Kimberly has promised to report back to me with the final results next spring, so hopefully I can share them with you here.…
"Gendered Innovations in Science"
From the AWIS Washington Wire: A new collection of essays, Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering, explores how taking gender into account in the areas of science, medicine, and engineering can enhance human knowledge. Inside Higher Ed has a conversation with the editor, Londa Schiebinger. IHE leads annoyingly with this: The discussion of gender and science can take place on many levels. Some focus on issues of bias in who gets to do science. Others use much broader definitions, looking at the impact of gender on scientific questions and findings, as well as on who leads the…
Awww, that's kinda sweet and silly
There's a campaign of sorts that's beginning in the UK, in which Christians are urged to stand up and announce that they are not ashamed to believe in a zombie redeemer who will protect them from his flaming torture pit deep beneath the earth. In a way, I'm sure it's very nice for them personally to sustain that kind of self esteem, but really…they should be embarrassed to believe in such absurd nonsense. At least they're mostly doing no harm. The action they're calling for is for everyone to pray harder. Please pray for the Not Ashamed campaign and especially that the official launch next…
That had to hurt.
A word of advice for White House staffers: when John Stewart has to take a second or two to tell viewers that he's not making things up, you might have a serious problem: Stewart: "So far, at least five four-star generals have declined the position, some citing that this administration -- and this is true -- doesn't appear to know what it's doing. To address this...." [audience laughter and applause] "...The generals said that. That's the generals saying that, and you know I never go against my commanders in the field." When he has to do it twice in a single monologue, things are…
Catching up
As you can tell by looking at the main page, I haven't been blogging much (again) lately. It's been a long semester, and I've had a lot of catching up to do at school. Between grading papers and trying to catch up on my own work, I haven't had very much time to spend here. And, of course, now that the semester is over, I'm going out of town - to Europe - and I don't know how much internet access I'll have. Access permitting, I'm going to try to post at least a few things from the road, and I'm going to put a few things into the hopper right now to make sure that I'll have at least a few posts…
The Republican War on Science - Paperback Edition
The paperback edition of SciBling Chris Mooney's book The Republican War on Science comes out today. I read it a while back, and I'm looking forward to going through it again. This is one of those books that everyone should read. Chris does a fantastic job of documenting case after case after case where science has been misrepresented and/or ignored in efforts to help advance the Republican political agenda. People can debate whether or not the Republicans are consciously trying to downplay science, but the effects are the same. To see that, you need look no further than the recent episode…
Australian national paper is antiscience
The Australian is Rupert Murdoch's treasure. He began it to show that the established state-based papers weren't doing trheir job properly, and it took over 15 years to become profitable. So one might think that its editorials are somewhat representative of Rupert's own views. Ian Musgrave has a couple of articles that show fairly conclusively both that the paper is becoming firmly anti-science (as all good conservatives must be these days, it seems), especially with respect to climate change. His first post discusses the ways the distinction between facts and belief are smeared by…
Waiter, there's a spam in my insect
In an inadvertently, or perhaps deliberately, funny abstract, D. Osorio notes that there's a role for spam in insect evolution. Spam and the evolution of the fly's eye. Osorio D. School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK. The open rhabdoms of the fly's eye enhance absolute sensitivity but to avoid compromising spatial acuity they require precise optical geometry and neural connections. This neural superposition system evolved from the ancestral insect eye, which has fused rhabdoms. A recent paper by Zelhof and co-workers2 shows that the Drosophila gene spacemaker (…
Pagination
First page
« First
Previous page
‹ previous
Page
1238
Page
1239
Page
1240
Page
1241
Current page
1242
Page
1243
Page
1244
Page
1245
Page
1246
Next page
next ›
Last page
Last »