biology
grrlscientist | February 1, 2006It's here, everyone; the newest edition of Tangled Bank (TB) has been published at my sibling blog, Adventures in Ethics and Science, and I am proud to say that one of my pieces was included in this issue of TB.
For those of you who are new to the blogosphere and especially to science blog writing, this is the first edition of TB that has been published on our new ScienceBlogs site. Tangled Bank is a blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing that has been published recently on a blog. As such, these written pieces can include essays, opinion pieces, stories,…
jlynch | January 27, 2006Do you agree that "[o]ne of the great strengths of the Endangered Species Act is its
foundation in sound scientific principles and its reliance on the best
available science"? As this letter notes, "[u]nfortunately, recent legislative proposals would critically weaken this foundation. For species conservation to continue, it is imperative both that the scientific principles embodied in the Act are maintained, and that the Act is strengthened, fully implemented, and adequately funded." If you are a professional biologist - or working towards an advanced degree - please consider co-signing the…
evolgen | January 24, 2006If you have not read it, go check out Nicholas Wade's article on doctored images in scientific publications. This is especially pertinent given the recent Hwang Woo Suk stem cell debacle. There is nothing all that revolutionary, but Wade gives a nice review and introduces us to some of the editors who are trying to catch the cheaters. In commenting on the article, John Hawks brings up a good point regarding Photoshop:
"I don't worry too much about Photoshopping illustrations of fossils. Instead I worry about two things.
"One is picture selection. It is easy to choose pictures that…
grrlscientist | January 19, 2006
The latest collection of articles in Journal of Biology is now available to view free of charge on the Journal of Biology website. The Journal of Biology is the open access journal for exceptional research. Published by BioMed Central, it provides free access to research articles of the broadest importance and interest. By providing immediate, permanent, unrestricted access to these articles, Journal of Biology ensures the widest possible dissemination of the research it publishes.
In the most current issue avaliable, the featured open access article written by Dr. Lukas Sommer and…
grrlscientist | January 18, 2006The latest edition of the Tangled Bank is online at Greythumb, however, I am having trouble accessing that site. Can anyone else see it? If so, what is the magical OS-browser combination that you are using? I linked to the expanded link, and managed to see it just now, but PZ still can't see it and he tried to access it approximately 2 minutes after I did and he is sitting across the table from me!
Tangled Bank is looking for volunteers to host future editions once again. If you are interested in hosting, please send email to PZ. I know that I have my most favorite time slot lined up already…
evolgen | January 17, 2006Chad at Uncertain Principles, one of my ScienceBlogs siblings, is requesting his co-bloggers suggest the most important experiment or discovery in their field. There are a disproportionate amount of "bio-bloggers" -- though we each have our own niche -- and he's asking us to nominate "the most important experiment or observation in biology". I'm expecting that because of our diverse interests, you'll see some differences in how we interpret "important". This leads me to wonder why we have so many life-sciences types at ScienceBlogs and so few math/physics/chemistry types, but that's a…
evolgen | January 12, 2006Apparently, not much known about the genetic diversity of bacterial populations -- or so I've heard. As a eukaryotic geneticist, I can say that we know a whole bunch about multicellular organisms -- mostly because they're a lot easier to see and catch, and they're more like us than are prokaryotic relatives. A paper in the PNAS pipeline provides a meta-analysis (I think that's the first time I've ever used that word) of bacterial diversity in different environments (see here for a short review).
More after the jump . . .
The authors found that the usual predictors of plant and animal…
jlynch | January 11, 2006While finishing up graduate school, I worked for the Irish government on on a project to study fish stocks in the Irish Sea - this involved modelling biological and economic aspects with a view to the long term survival of the stocks. This, therefore, caught my eye:
Why does it take so long for fish stocks to recover from over-fishing? This problem has been worrying both scientists and fishery managers who expect stocks to quickly rebound when fishing stops. Now a research team from Stony Brook University [SUNY Stony Brook?] believes they have an answer: continually harvesting the largest and…
sb admin | January 10, 2006So what do you see? A groove and some lines? Truth be told, this is possibly the oldest recorded chordate fossil (or, should I say, one of a number of seventeen specimens of same). It dates from the pre-Cambrian - i.e. before 543 million years ago - during a period known as the Ediacarian. Found by Ross Faraghar seven years ago in the Flinders Range of Australia, the specimens represent our earliest view of chordate evolution, that is, the evolution of the group that we belong to (along with a few squishy things, and the more familiar fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals). Unfortunately,…
tfk | March 6, 2005Originally posted at The Evolution Project.
Chris Mooney asks "should scientists refer to the well-adapted features of a given organism as having been 'designed,' even though we all know these are the result of natural selection?" and citesthis article in The Scientist :: Journals and intelligent design:
Biologists often get angry about the publication of studies defending "intelligent design," the notion that biochemical systems could not have been produced by evolution because they are "irreducibly complex," and as such, must have been "designed" by an unknown entity. But a careful reading…
tfk | November 29, 2004Reposted from the old TfK.
Over at Death's Door, there is a certain degree of consternation about the possibility that mallard ducks would be gang raping each other.
There is a bunch of confusion wrapped around that so let's start slow.
I also wasn't aware that duck's had duck cocks to gangbang with. I never eaten a duck but I've eaten a lot of chicken, and when you buy the chicken in the store and pull out that little pouch of giblets and shit, I've never seen a tiny chicken cock sittin off in there.
So, what do duck dicks look like, and why don't you see genitalia in chickens from the store…
tfk | November 19, 2004Reposted from the old TfK:
A few years back, I was skinning a baboon that had died in a zoo, and been given to the museum. Skinning animals is interesting, but rarely stunning. It involves a little cutting, a lot of gentle tugging, and great care when you finally get to the hands and feet. Mouse feet, cat feet, deer feet, all look pretty normal. But a baboon has fingerprints. They don't have claws, they have nails. There's something creepy about skinning a hand with fingerprints.
There's also something eerie about looking at the earliest known hominoid, a possible ancestor of modern…