biology
oracknows | May 20, 2015Yesterday was a long day, starting in the operating room and finishing at a dinner reception for our visiting speaker today. As a result, when I arrived home, I was sawing the proverbial logs within five or ten minutes of hitting the couch, more or less without realizing it. I was going to just skip today, making it a rare weekday where I don't provide you, my loyal readers, with a dose of the Insolence, be it Respectful or not-so-Respectful, to which you have become accustomed. But then I saw an article that reminded me of a topic that I haven't revisited for quite a long time. I'm referring…
esiegel | May 14, 2015“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” -Joseph Campbell
When you think about dark matter, you probably think of a few things: how mass and gravity don't appear to line up, how there isn't enough normal matter to account for the motions we see on scales of galaxies and up, and how it's necessary to form the structure we see on the largest scales, from the early times of the cosmic microwave background to the cosmic web spanning billions of light years we see today.
Image credit: Tony Hallas, via http://www.qsimaging.com/gallery.html.
But what you might not realize is that…
oracknows | March 18, 2015The New York Times Styles Section giveth. The New York Times Styles Section taketh away.
Last week, The NYT Styles Section published an excellent deconstruction of the pseudoscientific activities of Vani Hari, a.k.a. The Food Babe, by Courtney Rubin. Although skeptics might think that it was a tad too "balanced" (as did I), by and large we understand that this was the NYT Style section, and seeing a full-throated skeptical deconstruction of The Food Babe's antics in such a venue is just not in the cards. That's what I'm there for (not to mention other skeptics like Steve Novella), such as…
esiegel | February 27, 2015“A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.” -Tennessee Williams
The depiction of dying in space -- by exposure to its terrifying vacuum -- is incredibly varied, from freezing to swelling and bulging to simply exploding.
Image credit: Mike Tyson Mysteries / Adult Swim. Uh oh, looks like I killed another astronaut!
For this week's Ask Ethan, we take on the question of Kerrie Pinkney, who wants to know:
[W]ill you explode if exposed to the vacuum of space? I’ve gone down the “water boils in a vacuum then freezes” road, others have gone down the “…
esiegel | February 25, 2015“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.” -J.R.R. Tolkien
No matter how well we care for our bodies, they eventually wear down, give out, and we all will someday face death. Yet if there's anything to be learned from looking at the physical Universe, there's no reason to expect that death is truly the end.
Image credit: NASA/ISS Expedition 28.
Every time a star runs out of fuel and dies, no matter what type of star it is or what fate it…
oracknows | January 16, 2015
It looks like this year's going to be a bad flu season.
Hard as it is for me to believe, it was only five weeks ago when I discussed an announcement by the CDC that this year's flu vaccine would likely be less effective because it isn't a good match for the influenza strains in circulation this year. Those familiar with how the flu vaccine is developed every year know that the composition of the vaccine depends on the WHO's choice of the three or four strains that its experts deem most likely to cause significant human suffering and death in the coming flu season. Basically, the WHO has to…
oracknows | January 5, 2015
NOTE: There is a follow up to this post.
The holidays are over. Time to start dishing out fresh Insolence, Respectful and, as appropriate, not-so-Respectful for 2015.
I do, however, feel obligated to deal with one painfully inappropriate action by a major science journal left over from 2014. It happened in an issue that came out just before Christmas, and, with all the festivities, being on call last week, and having houseguests; so, unfortunately, I just didn't get around to addressing it, either here or on my not-so-super-secret other blog (where I might crosspost this later in the week).…
oracknows | January 2, 2015
Seven years ago I returned to Michigan, where I was born and spent the first quarter century of my life, after an absence of more than 20 years. In the interim, I had done my surgical residency and earned my PhD in Cleveland, a surgical oncology fellowship in Chicago, and worked in New Jersey at my first academic job for eight and a half years. Then I was lured back with a job in Detroit. One of the odd things about this return after such a long absence was the culture shock, how much I had forgotten about the Detroit area. One of those things that I had forgotten is just how crazy about…
aardvarchaeology | December 30, 2014Things are coming together with the post-excavation work for last summer's castle investigations so I'm putting some stuff on-line here.
I've submitted a paper detailing the main results to a proceedings volume for the Castella Maris Baltici symposium in Lodz back in May. There are no illustrations in the file, but you'll find all you need here on the blog in various entries tagged ”Castles”.
Osteologist Rudolf Gustavsson has completed his reports on the bones from the two sites (Landsjö – Stensö).
For the Dear Reader who doesn't read Swedish, a short summary of Rudolf's results is in order…
esiegel | December 30, 2014“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” -Winston Churchill
There was a piece that ran over this weekend in the Wall Street Journal, claiming that the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life is actually evidence pointing towards the existence of God.
Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech, via http://kepler.arc.nasa.gov/news/nasakeplernews/index.cfm?FuseAction=Sho….
Does this argument hold any water? If we want to scrutinize it (for real), there are three questions we should be asking ourselves:
What are,…
esiegel | December 23, 2014“It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.” -Amelia Barr
All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the best. At least, that's how Occam's razor is most commonly phrased these days. Yet, when it comes to the headlines -- whether it's a "discovery" of dark matter or "evidence" for life on Mars -- you have to wonder what "simple" actually means.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SAM-GSFC / Univ. of Michigan.
The answer isn't what most people suspect, and it shouldn't really be up for debate. If you want to hypothesize that something novel is occurring, something…
oracknows | November 9, 2014Medical conspiracy theories tend to involve “someone” hiding something from the public. I like to refer to this as the fallacy of “secret knowledge.” That “someone” hiding the “secret knowledge” is usually the government, big pharma, or other ill-defined nefarious forces. The “secret knowledge” being hidden comes invariably in one of two flavors. Either “they” are hiding cures for all sorts of diseases that conventional medicine can’t cure, or “they” are hiding evidence of harm due to something in medicine. Although examples of the former are common, such as the “hidden cure for cancer,” it…
esiegel | October 2, 2014“Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” -Paul Tillich
One of the biggest questions in all of science is that of just how ubiquitous -- or rare -- life in the Universe is. With the sole exception of Earth, all the worlds in our Solar System seem devoid of life. Or at least, their detection has eluded us so far. But what of all the other planets, star systems and galaxies in the Universe?
Image credit: Robert Gendler of http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/Biography.html.
We…
esiegel | September 25, 2014“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…
carlyo | September 15, 2014The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools.
Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Dayna Baumeister
Co-founder and Keystone of Biomimicry 3.8, Dr. Dayna Baumeister's fascination with the natural world began with daily forays into the woods and mountains of Colorado, her childhood home. As an adult, nature has continued to inform her personal…
oracknows | September 9, 2014
There are some myths, bits of misinformation, or lies about medicine that I like to refer to zombie quackery. The reasons are obvious. Like at the end of a horror movie, just when you think the myth is finally dead, its rotting hand rises out of the dirt to grab your leg and drag you down to be consumed. Of course, the big difference between zombies and these bits of zombie quackery is that in most stories a single shot to the brain will kill the zombie. The same is not true of zombie quackery. You can empty clip after clip of reason, science, and logic into the “head” of the zombie…
aardvarchaeology | August 30, 2014Mushroom picking again this morning, this time in the area between Lakelets Skinnmossen and Knipträsket. Found more velvet and birch boletes than we cared to pick.
King bolete, Stensopp/Karl Johan, Boletus edulis
Orange birch bolete, Tegelsopp, Leccinum versepelle
Velvet bolete, Sandsopp, Suillus variegatus
Chanterelle, Kantarell, Cantharellus cibarius
Gypsy mushroom, Rynkad tofsskivling, Rozites caperata
False saffron milkcap, Blodriska, Lactarius deterrimus
Oh how annoying that the image gallery function is so bug-ridden.
aardvarchaeology | August 23, 2014It's the time of the year when it used to become legal to catch and sell Swedish crayfish (since 1994 there is no limit), and so the grocery stores sell Turkish and Chinese crayfish for a few weeks. The traditional way to eat them is to boil them with dill, salt and a little sugar, and serve them with toast, strong cheese, beer and akvavit. I don't drink but I love shellfish, so crayfish time is always a treat for me. My wife, being refreshingly unorthodox about traditional Swedish customs, and indeed about all traditional customs thanks to a Maoist childhood, served crayfish with smoked…
aardvarchaeology | August 22, 2014Has it really been almost four years since I blogged about mushrooms? This afternoon me and my wife repeated our September 8, 2010 expedition to the hills between Lakes Lundsjön and Trehörningen and picked almost a kilo of mushrooms in a bit more than an hour. We got:
King bolete, Stensopp/Karl Johan, Boletus edulis
Bay bolete, Brunsopp, Boletus badius
Orange birch bolete, Tegelsopp, Leccinum versepelle
Birch bolete, Björksopp, Leccinum scabrum
Entire russula, Mandelkremla, Russula integra
Two kinds of red or brown brittlegill, mild-tasting and thus non-poisonous. Scandyland has more than…
oracknows | August 18, 2014
About five weeks ago a month ago, I finally wrote the post I had been promising to write for months before about medical marijuana. At the time, I also promised that there would be follow-up posts. Like Dug the Dog seeing a squirrel, I kept running into other topics that kept me from revisiting the topic. However, recently the New York Times gave me just the little nudge I needed to come back and revisit the topic, first by openly advocating the legalization of marijuana, then by vastly overstating the potential medical benefits of pot (compare the NYT coverage with my post from last month…