jlynch | January 22, 2008Events
2003 - Last successful contact with Pioneer 10.
Births
1561 - Francis Bacon, English philosopher
1592 - Pierre Gassendi, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
1796 - Karl Claus, Russian chemist
1903 - Fritz Houtermans, Polish physicist
1908 - Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1936 - Alan J. Heeger, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1767 - Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German minerologist and geologist
1779 - Jeremiah Dixon, English surveyor and astronomer
1840 - Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German anthropologist
jlynch | January 21, 2008
Sea otter, Enhydra lutris Linnaeus 1758
Mother with young.
[picture source]
And who can resist sea otters holding hands?
jlynch | January 21, 2008Births
1912 - Konrad Emil Bloch, German-born biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1926 - Camillo Golgi, Italian physician
jlynch | January 19, 2008Events
1969 - The first pulsar is discovered.
Births
1775 - André-Marie Ampère, French physicist
1910 - Joy Adamson, Austrian naturalist and writer
1931 - David Lee, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1973 - Lorenz Böhler, Austrian physician
2005 - Miriam Louisa Rothschild, British zoologist, entomologist, and author
jlynch | January 19, 2008
Today sees the formal start of the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, an event which I unfortunately cannot attend. Instead of spending my Friday with Bora and other science bloggers, I was giving a public talk titled "Evolution Is ..." at Phoenix Country Day School in Paradise Valley. Basic content was to delineate some of the things evolution is (and is not) and to show some of the exciting things we can discover using fossils, molecules, behavioral studies etc. For those that might be interested, I’ve made the slides available here [PDF, 5.85M]
jlynch | January 19, 2008Events
2006 - The New Horizons probe is launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto.
Births
1851 - Jacobus Kapteyn, Dutch astronomer
Deaths
1878 - Henri Victor Regnault French physicist and chemist
1954 - Theodor Kaluza, German scientist
jlynch | January 18, 2008Huckabee was asked whether it is his goal to "bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible?" He didn’t clearly answer that question, of course, but instead said:
Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.…
jlynch | January 18, 2008Epitaph
An old willow with hollow branches
slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils
and sang:
Love is a young green willow
shimmering at the bare wood’s edge.
William Carlos Williams
jlynch | January 18, 2008
Events
1977 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium (Legionella pneumophila, above) as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires’ disease.
Births
1856 - Daniel Hale Williams, African-American surgeon
1892 - Paul Rostock, German surgeon
1918 - Gustave Gingras, French Canadian physician
Deaths
1878 - Antoine César Becquerel, French physicist
1995 - Adolf Butenandt, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | January 17, 2008Coming on the end of the week here and all is good. My classes look sharp, so it should be a good semester of teaching. Various non-teaching bits and pieces have clicked together over the past few days, so it looks like a good semester.
And ASU basketball has done it again - beating Cal 99-90 in double overtime to go 14-2 (4-0 in the Pac-10). Up next is Stanford (14-3, 3-2) who beat Arizona tonight to send the Wildcats to 11-6 (1-3). Could we even imagine that ASU would go to March Madness and Arizona end up in the NIT? Only time will tell.
Good times.
jlynch | January 16, 2008Births
1501 - Leonhart Fuchs, German physician and botanist
1560 - Gaspard Bauhin, Swiss botanist
1761 - James Hall, Scottish geologist
Deaths
1705 - John Ray, English naturalist
1884 - Hermann Schlegel, German ornithologist
1997 - Clyde Tombaugh, American astronomer
2005 - Albert Schatz, American microbiologist
jlynch | January 16, 2008
Events
1909 - Ernest Shackleton’s expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.
2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107. It disintegrates 16 days later on re-entry.
Births
1477 - Johannes Schöner, German astronomer and cartographer (above)
1838 - Franz Brentano, German philosopher and psychologist
1875 - Leonor Michaelis, German biochemist
1932 - Dian Fossey, American zoologist
Deaths
1547 - Johannes Schöner, German astronomer and cartographer (above)
1856 - Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist
1967 - Robert J. Van de Graaff, American nuclear physicist
2006 -…
jlynch | January 15, 2008Events
2005 - ESA’s SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon.
Births
1842 - Josef Breuer, Austrian psychologist
1885 - Lorenz Böhler, Austrian physician
1895 - Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1908 - Edward Teller, Hungarian-born physicist
Death
1804 - Dru Drury, English entomologist
jlynch | January 14, 2008Events
2005 - Landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn’s moon Titan.
Births
1684 - Johann Matthias Hase, German scientist
1806 - Matthew Fontaine Maury American oceanographer
Deaths
1742 - Edmond Halley, English scientist
1905 - Ernst Abbe, German physicist
2001 - Burkhard Heim, German physicist
jlynch | January 13, 2008
Scientists have discovered how two proteins called BERT and ERNI interact in embryos to control when different organ systems start to form. Apparently BERT binds to ERNI to unblock the transcription factor Sox2. Seriously.
The paper is over at PLoS Biology.
jlynch | January 13, 2008
In the comments to a previous post, "rebel scientist" Louis Savain made the following statements:
I have made a falsifiable prediction about the human cerebellum based on my interpretation of certain Biblical metaphors. If you can falsify it, do so. Otherwise, your lame attempt at ridiculing my person is just that, lame. You wanted falsifiability, you’re gonna get it. Lots of it.
I commented:
Excellent. I expect to enjoy reading your research papers in neurobiological journals.
and he retorted with:
Forget it. I believe in going directly to the customer, i.e., the public whom you despise,…
jlynch | January 13, 2008Elliot Sober has a new book coming out this year, Evidence and Evolution; The Logic Behind the Science. The book is divided into four sections: The Concept of Evidence, Intelligent Design, Natural Selection, and Common Ancestry. Below are the contents of the section on ID:
Darwin and intelligent design
Design arguments and the birth of probability theory
William Paley: The stone, the watch, and the eye
From probabilities to likelihoods
Epicureanism and Darwin’s theory
Three reactions to Paley’s design argument
The no-designer-worth-his-salt objection to the hypothesis of…
jlynch | January 13, 2008The semester formally starts tomorrow. As usual, I’m teaching three courses - two sections (19 students each) of The Human Event, our "great books" seminar, and one lecture course (115 students), Origins, Evolution and Creation. I’ve also got one student finishing her honors thesis.
The big service requirement will be continuing to chair a search committee - we’re short-listing candidates tomorrow and will then seek further information before choosing the five or so candidates to bring to campus for interviews in March. Anyone who has been involved with academic searches knows how much work…