Science Education
tsmith | August 15, 2006The grandaddy of the state science groups, Kansas Citizens for Science, celebrated its 7th birthday. Congrats to everyone involved, and much thanks for your leadership--not only in the state, but in the national fight for better science education. Happy birthday, and keep up the excellent work!
evolgen | August 15, 2006Creationists devote most of their energy towards undermining science education. Whatever their flavor, they are not scientists and they don't do science. Creationists evolved into intelligent designers after Edwards v. Aguillard. Kitzmiller v. Dover was a huge blow to the intelligent design movement, showing that the "teach the controversy" mantra was a load of shit. There is no controversy. Evolutionary theory is solid, with both empirical observations and excellent models to back it up. The data supporting evolution come from disparate fields such as geology, genetics, developmental biology…
evolgen | August 14, 2006Razib wants us to come up with 10 assertions of 10 words or less which we believe that the public should know about evolutionary science. He also wants us to come up with our list before looking at his list, which means we're left to figure out what the hell he means without seeing any examples. My stab at this is below the fold, but you should come up with your own list before reading Razib's or mine (according to Razib).
10 Assertions about Evolution, in no particular order:
Common ancestry is supported by multiple, independent lines of evidence.
Evolution is not an entirely random…
tsmith | August 13, 2006If I could have been at this week's conference for one session, it would have been this morning's symposium on AIDS denial and responsible journalism. Hannah has already mentioned it and given her impressions and thoughts. The session itself was moderated by HIV researcher Daniel Kuritzkes and journalist Laurie Garrett, currently a Senior Fellow on Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Talks were also given by HIV researcher John Moore, South Africa-based science journalist Tamar Khan, Toronto Star science reporter Kim Honey, and Nathan Geffen of the Treatment Action Campaign…
evolgen | August 13, 2006I tend to avoid writing about creationists (despite what Orac believes) because I find them quite boring. Sure, they can be amusing (scoring high on the unintentional comedy scale), but I'm not a huge fan of willfull ignorance, deception, and attacks on eduction. I'd rather waste my time writing about real advances in biology instead of attempts to undermine the scientific method. So, I present for you, without much comment, some new anti-anti-evolution resources and a bit of anti-science from a US politician.
The first is a pile blog where you can leave comments that would be deleted if…
tsmith | August 11, 2006As y'all may or may not be aware, the XVI International AIDS Conference begins this weekend in Toronto. For those of you who read Seed magazine, you've seen that the current issue focuses on "AIDS at 25," and they also have an online summary here. As a matter of fact, myself, a Seed journalist, and a freelance science writer will be blogging the conference at a temporary blog this coming week; myself remotely from Iowa, and the others live from Toronto. So while AIDS will be at the forefront of this blog for a few days, I also have some posts on tap about other issues in infectious disease…
sporte | August 11, 2006During these past couple of weeks, we've been comparing mitochondrial DNA sequences from humans and great apes, in order to see how similar the sequences are.
Last week, I got distracted by finding a copy of a human mitochondrial genome, that somehow got out of a mitochondria, and got stuck right inside of chromosome 17! The existence of this extra mitochondrial sequence probably complicates some genetic analyses. One of my readers also asked an interesting question about whether apes have a similar mitochondrial sequence in their equivalent of chromosome 17, and how it compares. We will…
tsmith | August 11, 2006Via Stranger Fruit, Panda's Thumb, and elsewhere in the blogosphere comes this Science paper discussing attitudes regarding evolution in a number of countries, including the United States. As noted in John's title, the U.S. comes in second....from the bottom. Only Turkey has a greater proprtion of citizens that doubt evolution.
People sometimes ask why I bother even writing about "intelligent design" and other such supposed "challenges" to established scientific theories. Evolutionary biology is so overwhelmingly supported by the evidence, why even take the time to address those who deny…
sporte | August 10, 2006It's hard sometimes when you're out of synch with the rest of the world. While my fellow ScienceBloggers have been obsessing about breasts, I've been really amused by the genetics of ear wax.
Eh, what's that you say?
Yes, it's true. Back in March, when Nature Genetics published this paper from Yoshiura (and friends), this bit of fun just went in one ear and out the other. But then I read this really funny blog about a person, some ear wax, and an NMR machine, and well, you guessed it, I couldn't resist.
To me, it's been a jelly bean flavor that I studiously try to avoid. To several…
sporte | August 9, 2006One of the commenters on a previous post, pointed out that proteases have pretty diverse structures, even though they also share a common function.
What else could I do? I had to take a look. I found structures for chymotrypsin (from a cow) and subtilisin (from a soil bacteria, Bacillus lentus) and used Cn3D to see how they compare (below the fold).
Both enzymes are proteases - that is they cut the peptide bonds in proteins that hold amino acids together. Many of you use proteases routinely, without knowing it or probably even thinking about it. Proteases, including subtilisin have…
clock | August 6, 2006My wife and kids went to the beach last week. When they returned they gave me a present. Frankly, I wasn't expecting a present at all, so I found it funny that they felt apprehensive that I woud not like the present as it was cheap. Then I opened it, and it was....
...the Drinking Happy Bird!!!! I love it! I always wanted to have one. A craftsman of some sort (watch repair, glass-cutting?) down the street where I grew up had one displayed in his shop window. It was big (about 20cm long) and the legs and stuff were made of metal.
It took me a few minutes to get it set up and working…
clock | August 5, 2006 While I am teaching the biology lab, I set this post to show up automatically at the same time. It describes what we do today, the same stuff we did back on April 02, 2006:
So, yesterday was the last, fourth meeting of the lab. We started out by going over their homework questions about the evolution of Vertebrates. I was quite happy that only one person in only one question confused development with evolution - something that I see, unfortunately, very often. The legs of the frog do not "evolve" out of the body once the tadpole starts losing its tail: the frog legs evolved out of meaty…
sporte | August 4, 2006Last week, we decided to compare a human mitochondrial DNA sequence with the mitochondrial sequences of our cousins, the apes, and find out how similar these sequences really are.
The answer is: really, really, similar.
And you can see that, in the BLAST graph, below the fold.
A quick glance shows that the ape with the most similar mitochondrial sequence is Pan paniscus, the pigmy chimpanzee. Next, is Pan troglodytes, the chimp that we see in movies, and last we have Gorilla gorilla.
Then we have a really curious, and unexpected, matching sequence.
Click the picture to see a larger…
tsmith | August 4, 2006Though I won't be around this weekend to attend, y'all might be interested in checking this out:
The Iowa Academy of Science will present "Iowa Skies" at the Saylorville Visitors Center this Saturday evening, August 5th, at 7:00 p.m. The program is free and open to the public.
The program by Craig Johnson, IAS Executive Director, will feature cloud photos taken in Iowa. From delicate cirrus to the dark and robust cumulonimbus, clouds have a story to tell. Hear about lightning, tornadoes, blizzards and more in a program that has been enjoyed by children and adults alike. A question and…
sporte | August 4, 2006It seems kind of funny to be thinking of anti-freeze at the moment, with heat waves blanketing the U.S., but all this hot weather makes me miss winter. And so I decided it was time to re-post this from the original DigitalBio.
Winter is coming soon, my bike ride to work was pretty chilly, and it seems like a good time to be thinking about antifreeze. Antifreeze proteins, that is. Antifreeze proteins help keep pudgy yellow meal worms from turning into frozen wormsicles and artic flounder from becoming frozen flat fish.
Funny, but I would have thought that one antifreeze protein would…
tsmith | August 3, 2006 People probably don't generally think of Iowa as their first destination for bone and fossil-hunting. And sloth bones don't exactly get the press coverage that a giant T. rex or a novel dinosaur species often receive. But this is still a fascinating story:
After three years of digging up bones in an Iowa creek near Shenandoah, University of Iowa researchers and others found 31 bones of an extinct giant sloth.
The team found the bones of the juvenile giant sloth just 10 feet away from where adult sloth bones were discovered in 2001.
"We're almost certain that we are looking at a mother and…
jlynch | August 2, 2006Dembski predicts:
This war will not be decided by courts, legislators, or school boards, but by young people as they wake up to the fact that dogmatic Darwinists have been systematically indoctrinating and disenfranchising them. Just as the counterculture of the 60s overturned the status quo, so a new counterculture, with high school, college, and university students taking the lead, will overturn the Darwinian status quo. [Uncoomon Descent, "Why student activism is the key to winning this war", August 2, 2006]
Whatever happened to the "war" being decided in peer-reviewed science journals? Oh…
jlynch | August 2, 2006The ID reaction to Kansas is beginning to trickle in. Paul Nelson gives us a little fable claiming that the science standards don't matter anyway, and John West said the outcome would not stop people from learning about the "growing controversy" over evolution."
Let's face it guys -- up until last night, you saw the standards as being important Hell, you funded a media campaign with lecture tours and websites just to make that point.
And here's the rub, in conservative Kansas, in Republican primaries (surely members of your "natural constituency") you lost. That must hurt.
tsmith | August 2, 2006In case you've not heard, several the pro-science candidates for the Kansas Board of Education were victorious in the primary election last night.
If current results hold, it looks like the creationists on the 10-member Kansas Board of Education have lost two seats in the Republican primary. The likelihood is therefore that the new Board of Education will switch from being a 6-4 pro-creationism majority to at least a 6-4 pro-science majority (depending on the November general election). This probably means the pro-ID/creationism science standards are history.
(Continued below...)
Pat Hayes…
jlynch | August 1, 2006News from Kansas seems to be that Bacon & Willard won their primaries and Morris & Patzer lost, being replaced by pro-science Republicans. As Nick notes, "[t]he likelihood is therefore that the new Board of Education will switch from being a 6-4 pro-creationism majority to at least a 6-4 pro-science majority (depending on the November general election). This probably means the pro-ID/creationism science standards are history." Things are looking good for Kansas at last.