evolution
pharyngula | April 28, 2013I think BAHFest — the festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses — has been made entirely redundant. It's an event to mock the absurdly adaptationist hypotheses put forward by some scientists, and it's intended to be extravagantly ridiculous. But then, you look at some ideas that are inexplicably popular among scientists, and you realize…it's a little too close to reality.
I'm speaking of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis.
The Guardian is running yet another article on the goofy idea that we evolved from swimming apes, and that all of the unique features of our species are a product of adaptations to an…
pharyngula | April 27, 2013Casey Luskin is such a great gift to the scientific community. The public spokesman for the Discovery Institute has a law degree and a Masters degree (in Science! Earth Science, that is) and thinks he is qualified to analyze papers in genetics and molecular biology, fields in which he hasn't the slightest smattering of background, and he keeps falling flat on his face. It's hilarious! The Discovery Institute is so hard up for competent talent, though, that they keep letting him make a spectacle of his ignorance.
I really, really hope Luskin lives a long time and keeps his job as a frontman…
pharyngula | April 20, 2013The coelacanth genome has been sequenced, which is good news all around…except that I found a few of the comments in the article announcing it disconcerting. They keep calling it a "living fossil" — and you know what I think of that term — and they keep referring to it as evolving slowly
The slowly evolving coelacanth
The morphological resemblance of the modern coelacanth to its fossil ancestors has resulted in it being nicknamed ‘the living fossil’. This invites the question of whether the genome of the coelacanth is as slowly evolving as its outward appearance suggests. Earlier work showed…
tfk | April 2, 2013"The president says that the jury's out on evolution. Here in New Jersey, we're counting on it."
–Bruce Springsteen, May 21, 2005
"Folks in Dover [PA] aren't sure about evolution. Here in New Jersey, we're counting on it."
–Bruce Springsteen, August, 2005
"This issue [marriage equality] is in a state of evolution."
–Hillary Clinton for Senate spokesperson Karen Dunn, July 3, 2003
"I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage. But I also think you’re right that attitudes evolve,…
pharyngula | March 29, 2013
My students are also blogging here:
My undergrad encounters
Developmental Biology
Miles' Devo Blog
Tavis Grorud’s Blog for Developmental Biology
Thang’s Blog
Heidi’s blog for Developmental Biology
Chelsae blog
Stacy’s Strange World of Developmental Biology
Thoughts of Developmental Biology
Biology~
I'm out of town! Class is canceled today! But still, my cold grip extends across the Cascades, over the Palouse, the Rockies, the Dakota badlands, the old homeland of the American bison, the the great farms of the midwestern heartland, to a small town in western Minnesota,…
oracknows | March 24, 2013There are many fallacies that undergird alternative medicine, which evolved into "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), and for which the preferred term among its advocates is now "integrative medicine," meant to imply the "best of both worlds." If I had to pick one fallacy that rules above all among proponents of CAM/IM, it would have to be either the naturalistic fallacy (i.e., that if it's natural—whatever that means—it must be better) or the fallacy of antiquity (i.e., that if it's really old, it must be better). Of course, the two fallacies are not unrelated. In the minds of CAM…
sa smith | March 22, 2013The News in HIV the past few weeks has been the same message: Get people tested. Get people antiretrovirals.
It saves lives.
YAY!!!
KINDA! FOR NOW!
Test and Treat in Los Angeles: A mathematical model of the effects of test-and-treat for the MSM population in LA County.
This group of folks looked at a very specific question: What are the anticipated effects of ASAP HIV testing and ASAP antiretrovirals in the homosexual community of LA? If we start implementing this strategy now, in 2013, what will the HIV landscape in this community look like in 2023?
First, the good news--
The people who are…
sa smith | March 15, 2013A few weeks ago, The Thinking Atheist was in town-- He gave us a sweet preview of the new video hes planning on officially unveiling at the American Atheists convention and signing copies of his new book "Deconverted". Beforehand, he set up some camera equipment and did quick impromptu interviews with fellow OK Skeptics Caleb Lack, Red McCall (more on Reds video later!), and me!
Due to The Thinking Atheists interests/audience, my answers are a little more atheistic-y themed ;)
Of course they are extremely short, so I had to be very general, but if you have any questions or want more info…
gregladen | March 14, 2013You know about the Atheists Nightmare, right? Also known as the Evolutionists Nightmare. No? It goes like this:
That's pretty darn convincing. Until someone opens up some closed thing and there is some new species in there, then EVOLUTION IS MADE UP!!!1!!!
Well, it turns out, Evolution is True. Some guy on the internet opened up an Oreo Cookie and inside was a new organism that could only be there IF IT EVOVED IN SIDE THE COOKIE!!1!! Look here's a picture:
PROOF THAT EVOLUTION IS TRUE: This spider evolved inside this Oreo Cookie!
A fake you say? A falsehood you say? Sorry, but Snopes…
pharyngula | March 13, 2013
My students are also blogging here:
My undergrad encounters
Developmental Biology
Miles' Devo Blog
Tavis Grorud’s Blog for Developmental Biology
Thang’s Blog
Heidi’s blog for Developmental Biology
Chelsae blog
Stacy’s Strange World of Developmental Biology
Thoughts of Developmental Biology
Biology~
Hard to believe, I know, but this class actually hangs together and has a plan. A while back, we talked about the whole cis vs. trans debate, and on Monday we went through another prolonged exercise in epistatic analysis in which the students wondered why we don't just do…
sa smith | March 11, 2013I really hate blogging on non-published information, but for the second time in as many weeks, we have had interesting information come out of CROI. This bit of news isnt as exciting. It pretty much confirms my annoyed Debbie Downer stance on using antiretrovirals in non-infected individuals as a means to prevent HIV infection (thats not entirely accurate-- my position is more 'concerned', 'baffled', 'distressed' about the obvious route of an increase in drug-resistant transmittable HIV).
This is a BIG OL Debbie Downer post.
VOICE, or Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic,…
pharyngula | March 6, 2013"TRI-LO-BIIITE!"
Oh, no, that was a terrible opening. You'll only know what the heck I'm talking about if you remember JJ from the television show Good Times, and it's such a pathetic joke it's only going to appeal to grade schoolers. So if you're a time-traveling 8 year old from the 1970s, you'll appreciate the reference. How many of those are reading this right now?
Maybe this will work better. Here's a small chip of shale I keep at my desk.
My son Alaric and I collected that on a trip to Delta, Utah over 20 years ago. We had permission from the owner of a commercial dig site to rummage…
pharyngula | February 25, 2013
My students are also blogging here:
My undergrad encounters
Developmental Biology
Miles' Devo Blog
Tavis Grorud’s Blog for Developmental Biology
Thang’s Blog
Heidi’s blog for Developmental Biology
Chelsae blog
Stacy’s Strange World of Developmental Biology
Thoughts of Developmental Biology
Biology~
You know I teach the 8am courses every term, right? Every semester for years I get my oddball classes that weren't present in the curriculum 13 years ago (when I started here) stuffed into the cracks of the schedule. I'm slowly getting to be a little pushier and am gradually…
pharyngula | February 22, 2013I rarely laugh out loud when reading science papers, but sometimes one comes along that triggers the response automatically. Although, in this case, it wasn't so much a belly laugh as an evil chortle, and an occasional grim snicker. Dan Graur and his colleagues have written a rebuttal to the claims of the ENCODE research consortium — the group that claimed to have identified function in 80% of the genome, but actually discovered that a formula of 80% hype gets you the attention of the world press. It was a sad event: a huge amount of work on analyzing the genome by hundreds of labs got…
pharyngula | February 19, 2013The baseball player Jose Canseco made a remarkable series of tweets yesterday.
I may not be 100% right but think about it. How else could 30 foot leather birds fly?The land was farther away from the core and had much less gravity so bigness could develop and dominateMy theory is the core of the planet shifted when single continent formed to keep us in a balanced spinGravity had to be weaker to make dinosaurs nimbleAnimal tissue of muscles and ligaments could not support huge dinosaurs even standing up or pump blood up 60 foot neckselephants today eight tons supersaurs two hundred tons a…
sa smith | February 14, 2013The connection between ERVs and placentas is already well established.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the ability of mammals to generate placentas was, in part, accomplished by domesticating an endogenous retroviral env protein. In humans, we call this protein syncytin, or ERVWE1.
This new paper in Nature Genetics takes the ERV-Placenta connection a step further:
Endogenous retroviruses function as species-specific enhancer elements in the placenta.
Even though all mammals have placentas, mammalian placentas are different, even between species we would think should be very similar, like the…
pharyngula | February 6, 2013It's a harsh world for us men. Oh, sure, we've got all the political and economic power, and we've got most of the guns, but step into a senior citizens' center and you'll notice the preponderance of elderly women. Men die younger, on average. I'm also acutely aware of the growing disparity as we get older: my wife seems to be aging at about half the rate I do. If you've been watching House of Cards on Netflix, you may have noticed that the character played by Kevin Spacey, face a bit puffy and deeply lined, is married to a character played by Robin Wright (Princess Buttercup!) who is looking…
pharyngula | February 5, 2013I have a bit of a peeve with a common analogy for the human genome: that it is the blueprint of the body, and that we can find a mapping of genes to details of our morphological organization. It's annoying because even respectable institutions, like the National Human Genome Research Institute, use it as a shortcut in public relations material. And it is so wrong.
There is no blueprint, no map. That's not how the system works. What you actually find in the genome are coding genes that produce proteins, coupled to regulatory elements that switch the coding genes off and on using a kind of…
pharyngula | February 4, 2013Another feathered dinosaur has been found in China, prompting Ken Ham to dig in his heels and issue denials.
Yet another supposed “feathered dinosaur” fossil has come to light, again in China. (Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, AiG–U.S., reported on another Chinese fossil of a supposed feathered dinosaur in April 2012) Now, one headline described the fossil as “almost birdlike,” and the authors of the report in Nature Communications note many features the fossil shares with living birds, particularly those that live on the ground. In fact, Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell and Dr. David Menton (AiG–U.S.) both…
esiegel | February 1, 2013“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
One of the most existential questions humanity has ever asked is the question of our origins: where do I come from? Inspired by Ben Kilminster's writings, here's the entire history of the Universe -- that's led up to the existence of you -- in just 10 sentences*.
Image credit: Amber Stuver of http://www.livingligo.org/.
1.) At some point in the distant past**, the…