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evolgen | September 26, 2007Over a year ago I threatened to perform some original research and publish it on my blog. I got as far as writing an introduction to the project, but I never actually posted any data. I know, I suck.I had hoped to make the project simple enough that people could follow along. The problem was the available data were not in a form that would be accessible for most readers. So, I've held off until now. But the appropriate data have now been deposited in Genbank, so I can continue the series.
Over the next couple of days I'll post the previously published entries, and they will be followed by the…
evolgen | August 12, 2007
Wow, posts at evolgen have been few and far between. A damn, dirty manuscript is to blame. I keep trying to get it write itself, but the sucker refused to oblige. Maybe it would help if I could finish the data analysis.
But enough about me. Let's talk about me Steve Steve. The last time Professor Steve made an appearance on evolgen we were on our way back from the Fly Meeting (the other Fly Meeting posts can be found here: 1, 2, 3). After we got home, Steve Steve visited our lab, and I got a few pictures of him posing with Charles Darwin and hanging out in the fly room. You can see them all…
evolvingthoughts | May 22, 2007
This is the top level list of Basic Concepts in Science posts.
Welcome to the Basic Concepts blog. This is not your ordinary blog. Instead of regular posts, it has a few post pages that will track and link to new posts of Basic Concepts in Science, and to pages that will list them by field or discipline.
Below the fold are the topic page links, or you can click on the new posts below.
New posts:
De Broglie Equation (quantum physics) by Wandering Primate
Paleomagnetism by Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous
The Pharyngula Stage by PZ Myers at Pharyngula
Estimation and DImensions by…
evolgen | May 10, 2007Rick at My Biotech Life is organizing all the genetics feeds into a single Feedburner feed. The DNA Network is a collection of feeds from sites that blog on genetics. You can subscribe to the DNA Network Feed to get the web's best genetics content delivered to your newsreader. If you would like to join the network, leave a comment on Rick's blog.
Via Neil Saunders I learned about Google's Image Labeler, in which you team up with another person to come up with labels for random pictures. I presume these labels will be used for smart searching in the future. Beware, this is an amazing time sink.
evolgen | April 28, 2007In a round-up of some of the coverage of Shelley's run-in with Wiley, Scientific American's Nikhil Swaminathan wrote the following:
Anyway, on Tuesday, over at the ScienceBlog Retrospectacle, neuroscience PhD student Shelley Batts (who based on her pictures alone seems to be both attractive and avian-friendly) posted an analysis of a study appearing in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, which suggested that the antioxidants properties in fruits were boosted by alcohol.
So, Nik wants to hit that shit. This is, like, two steps away from passing Shelley a note in homeroom that…
evolgen | April 26, 2007Ever wonder what biobloggers are blogging about on their blogs? Here's what:
Razib posts part of a paper by Jerry Coyne and others (which I can't seem to track down) which questions the role cis regulatory elements play in adaptive phenotypic evolution. This all part of Coyne's war on evo-devo.
Another post at GNXP (this one by p-ter) describes a polymorphic deletion that is associated with resistance to retroviral infection. P-ter tries to throw me a bone by mentioning the relevance of Drosophila research, but ends up shooting himself in the foot (how's that for mixed metaphors?).
Orac's…
evolgen | April 23, 2007Because my browser consists of a growing forest of tabs containing stuff waiting to be blogged, and there is no way I can write a complete entry on each one, and I want to at least link to the relevant sites so that I can close those tabs, I give you a link dump with maximal run-on sentences:
Remember my post on the evolution of zombie populations? If so, you've got a good memory. If not, who cares? Anyway, there's an article in arXiv about ghosts, vampires and zombies. (Via Ortholog).
The evolution of snake venom genes. They make up part of the venome.
Jonathan Eisen on the Human…
evolgen | April 12, 2007Because everyone else is commenting on it, I must as well. After all, I'd jump off of a bridge if everyone else were doing it.
I don't read science fiction. Sure, I've read a couple of the classics (ie, Ender's Game). And I was really into Stephen King for a couple of years, starting in fifth grade (which seems just about right considering the level of his writing), but he's not really a science fiction author. Neither is Dean Koontz, whom I became infatuated with after I abandoned King (whom I think I was most interested in because of all the sex in his stories).
But here's where I'm going…
evolgen | April 3, 2007GAME PREVIEW | PRESS CENTER
We are merely (a) day(s) away from the game between Corporate and Darwin (we're not sure whether the game will happen tomorrow or the next day due to some scheduling conflicts at Ivory Tower Arena), and the Corporate team has made a stunning revelation: Darwin did it for the money, not the love of the game. This is quite a surprising turn of events. Chuck D was financial secure for his entire life, and it was long thought that his pursuit of science came from a quest to understand the world around him.
Not so fast, says Corporate team spokesman B. Roe Crat. The…
evolgen | March 28, 2007PRESS CENTER | UPDATED BRACKET
The folks that brought you the Second Round of the Octopus Region of the Science Spring Showdown (part 1, part 2) will be bringing you one of the marquee match ups of the third round. Those folks are us, and the place is here at evolgen. We're down to sixteen teams (some would even call this collection of teams "sweet"), which means there are eight games that will be played on the internets over the course of the next week.
We'll be playing host to a game from the Chair Region between Darwin and Corporate. That's right, we're delving into the Philosophy of…
evolgen | March 4, 2007The word on the streets is that there used to be a blog at this URL (pronounced like the mountain range separating Europe from Asia). If this were a blog, however, it would be updated often and definitely not left dormant for over two weeks. All I can say is that meth is a hell of a drug. But fear not readers, I have reemerged from a research induced vanishing act, and I'll be blogging with some vigor for the near future (the specific amount of vigor cannot be guaranteed or measured with anything resembling an acceptable level of accuracy). In fact, I've got a long post -- filled with all the…
evolgen | January 29, 2007The Week of Science Challenge (official website here) begins next Monday (5 February 2007). During the time of the challenge, all participating bloggers will post at least once per day on science and only science -- no anti science or non-science material.
If you would like to participate, you can sign up here by providing your blog name, email address, blog URL, and blog RSS feed. There will be an official Week of Science feed made up of all the participating blogs.
evolgen | January 22, 2007I got my motherboard replaced a couple of hours ago, so I now have my old forms of procrastination at my disposal -- blogging and blog reading.
I've got one link for you that is relevant to Gregg Easterbrook's anti-multi-author screed. This one comes from BioCurious; it's an article on attributing credit in multi-author papers. Enjoy.
evolgen | January 20, 2007Three things:
A new edition of Mendel's Garden has been posted at Neurotopia. Go read the latest genetics blogging.
The anecdote at the beginning of my rant about elevator usage needs a slight correction: I think the grad student who took the elevator down has a bum knee (it's a new injury). I'm not too disappointed that she took the elevator, as walking down stairs sucks when your knee's screwed up. That's what I get for passing judgment without knowing all the facts. But that doesn't make up for all the perfectly healthy people who ride the elevator despite the fact that they don't need…
evolgen | January 17, 2007Do you consider yourself a Science Blogger? You could be a hard blogging scientist, science journalist, student of science, or just a member of the general public with an interest in the scientific process. If you identify with any of these, I've got a challenge for you.
It boils down to this:
One week of science blogging and only science blogging.
At least one post a day of pure science content.
No blogging about anti-science -- no creationism, no anti-vaccination, no global warming denialists.
Just Science from February 5 through February 11.
More information can be found here or…
evolgen | January 11, 2007One year ago today the current incarnation of evolgen at ScienceBlogs was launched. A lot has happened in that year -- we junked DNA; we became terrified of manatees; we were voted the sexiest blog in all of scibloggistan by Nature; we were awarded the Nobel prizes for Physiology or Medicine, Peace, and Literature; we cured cancer -- but most notably, we changed banners. A lot. So, in honor of a full year without pissing on the floor (which is more than some folks can say) we're unveiling a new banner. Our last banner. The best banner of all time. This banner will be up until the internet…
evolgen | January 10, 2007First of all, do you consider the terms "Caucasian" and "of European ancestry" synonyms? How about the use of those terms in the popular press? If the two terms are equivalent in the common vernacular, which one do you prefer?
What about the words "race" and "ethnicity"? Are they equivalent in the common vernacular? Should they be?
This one was about human races -- unlike the last one.
evolgen | January 7, 2007After beating a dead centaur yesterday, Dictionary.com's word of the day for today seems quite appropriate:
chimerical \ky-MER-ih-kuhl; -MIR-; kih-\, adjective:
1. Merely imaginary; produced by or as if by a wildly fanciful imagination; fantastic; improbable or unrealistic.
2. Given to or indulging in unrealistic fantasies or fantastic schemes.
I would have thought chimerical meant part one thing and part another -- you know, a chimera. I guess not.
evolgen | December 28, 2006Why, it seems like just last week that we were kvetching about the ad nominum attacks upon our character -- or, at least, the spelling of our blog's name. The people who add an extra "V" (turning evolgen into evolvgen) are lightweights compared to those who confuse us with Evolution Blog. As of today, we can add Page 6.0221415 Ã 1023 3.14 to the list:
From Evolgen, A Boom in Bible Publishing.
Jason Rosenhouse comments on an article in The New Yorker that casts Bible printing as a booming business.
I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, named Jason Rosenhouse. I am an evolutionary…