history of science
clock | April 26, 2007John James Audubon was born on his father's plantation in Haiti on this day in 1780. Despite being born of his father's mistress, he was raised in France by his father's wife and educated with other young aristocrats. He took an early interest in drawing birds, when he found himself without an income he proceeded to paint some of the finest images of North America's avians. The modern Audubon Society approves of his art but would hardly approve of his methods: He got the birds to pose for him by first shooting them.
It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.
- Aesop
The birds I…
clock | April 11, 2007How did I miss this!?
Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, one of my personal scientific idols, died on January 25th, 2007at the age of 92.
He has re-invented, or perhaps better to say invented, the field of comparative physiology (now often refered to as 'evolutionary physiology'). He wrote the standard textbook in the field - Animal Physiology: Adaptation and Environment, that he updated through several editions, from which generations of biologists (including myself) learned to think of physiological mechanisms as adaptations.
He wrote a definitive book on Scaling, as well as a wonderful autobiography…
clock | March 14, 2007Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, Germany on this day in 1879. It's unlikely you need much background on the author of today's quotes, so I'll keep this short. Given how intelligent the man was, it shouldn't come as a surprise that he had a number of choice comments on the fools around him.
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Before God we are equally wise - and equally foolish.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices…
clock | March 13, 2007Go here to get the code to put on your sidebar so your visitors can donate to the Beagle Project:
clock | March 3, 2007This news just came in:
Charles F- Ehret died of natural causes on February 24th at his home in Grayslake, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
His Wikipedia entry is quote short:
Charles Frederick Ehret is a WWII veteran (Battle of the Bulge/Ardennes along the Siegfried Line) as well as a world renowned molecular biologist who worked at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in Lemont, Illinois, USA, for 40 years. Dr. Ehret researched the effects of electromagnetic radiation on bacillus megaterium with Dr. Edward Lawrence (Larry) Powers, as well as the effects of time shifts on paramecia, rats and…
clock | February 17, 2007While Aaron Lerner was not a chronobiologist, his discovery of the hormone melatonin in 1958 was one of the key milestones in the biological rhythm research (just see how much I mention it around here) and the chronobiological community will always regard him as one of its own.
You can learn more about melatonin here (UPI got it wrong - the discovery was not made on human skin but a skin preparation of the frog Rana pipiens).
If you are interested, here are three of the first four Lerner's papers on the discovery of Melatonin:
ISOLATION OF MELATONIN, THE PINEAL GLAND FACTOR THAT LIGHTENS…
clock | February 12, 2007[Moved to the top of the page. First posted at 1:43am]
Last year, I collected the links to notable posts about Darwin Day and posted them here. That was fun, so I decided to do it again.
I checked the Technorati and Google Blogsearch and took my picks that you can see below. I will update this post several times today and move the post to the top in the evening. If you want your post to appear here, please e-mail me at: Coturnix AT gmail DOT com.
Also, later today, I will update this post with a special announcement (pending the approval by the person in question) - naming the winner of…
clock | February 12, 2007Way back when, while I was still an active grad student, I was a student representative on the departmental seminar committee for about four years (going through four faculty members rotating through the position). So, I pushed for a Darwin Day seminar - inviting someone to give a talk that is not all about data, a historian or philosopher, for instance.
So, I managed to get Bob Brandon, from the Philosophy Departament at Duke one year. He talked about multi-level selection, which was great introduction to a couple of more speakers (including David Sloan Wilson himself - that was one of my…
clock | February 12, 2007 This post is a modification from two papers written for two different classes in History of Science, back in 1995 and 1998. It is a part of a four-post series on Darwin and clocks. I first posted it here on December 02, 2004 and then again here on January 06, 2005:
II. Darwin on Time
There is a season for everything
And a time for every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die:
A time to plant and a time to reap.... (Ecclesiastes)
In this section I will attempt to evaluate from Darwin's writings what he thought about the selective role of environmental periodicities…
clock | February 12, 2007OK, this is really ancient. It started as my written prelims (various answers to various questions by different committeee members) back in November 1999, and even included some graphs I drew. Then I put some of that stuff together (mix and match, copy and paste) and posted (sans graphs) as a four-part post here, here, here and here on December 2004. Then I re-posted it in January 2005 (here, here, here and here). Finally, I reposted two of the four parts here on this blog (Part 2 and Part 3) in July 2006.
This all means that all this is quite out of date. The world has moved on, more…
clock | February 10, 2007It is midnight, Day 10, so the contest is officially over. The winner will be announced tomorrow. But that does not mean that you should abandon reading the Beagle Project blog or helping the Beagle Project get advertised and funded.
clock | February 9, 2007Alliance For Science is starting the First Darwin Day Essay Contest for high school students. Go to Neurotopia for all the details about it. I am assuming that this is going to become an annual event.
On the other hand, the rebuilding of the HMS Beagle is going to happen only once, for the Darwin Bicentennial in two years. Of course, once the ship is built and is done with its maiden voyage with all the media spotlight on it, the ship will continue to be used for scientific exploraiton and education for many years to come. [Day 9]
clock | February 8, 2007I and the Bird #42 is up on Neurophilosophy blog. Beautiful rendition, formatted like Charles Darwin's diaries from the "Beagle", which - the ship, I mean - as you know (Day 8), is planned to be rebuilt and sailed again, but only if you help.
clock | February 6, 2007...by sending a Darwin (or a Lincoln, or more) to the Beagle project. Day six.
clock | February 5, 2007Do it for Charles Musters!
Or do it for Charles Darwin.
Or do it for the fun of sailing.
But do it nonetheless:
...send in a Darwin (£10) or a Jackson ($20), spread the word, encourage colleagues to bookmark the site and root through their labcoat pockets for a donation...
Check the website and the blog. Then decide if you think this is a worthy cause.
The donations have started coming in. The biggest so far is $100. If you give more by the end of the tenth day of this drive, you will become a lucky owner of a copy of The Open Laboratory.
clock | December 23, 2006The Icons of Evolution finally tested! Who won? Lamarck or Darwin?
Under the fold:
Winning By A Neck: Giraffes Avoid Competing With Shorter Browsers:
The giraffe's elongated neck has long been used in textbooks as an illustration of evolution by natural selection, but this common example has received very little experimental attention. In the January issue of the American Naturalist, researchers at the Mammal Research Institute in the Department of Zoology and Entomology at the University of Pretoria tested whether foraging competition with shorter herbivores could explain why giraffes…
clock | December 22, 2006So, why do Creationists and other quacks try so hard to sound all 'scienc-y'? (June 15, 2005)
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Check this guy out - Jim Pinkoski - in the posts AND in the comments here, here and here.
OK, he's a creationist, but he is not even trying to be consistently within ONE version of creationism. He freely switches between YEC and OEC and IDC and when asked ONLY for internal logical consistency, not even evidence, he starts using all caps and bold and calls everyone stupid and liars and exhibits all symptoms of a persecution complex. What gives? He appears…