Science
pharyngula | June 18, 2009
My previous repost was made to give the background on a recent discovery of Jurassic ceratosaur, Limusaurus inextricabilis, and what it tells us about digit evolution. Here's Limusaurus—beautiful little beastie, isn't it?
(Click for larger image)Photograph (a) and line drawing (b) of IVPP V 15923. Arrows in a point to a nearly complete and fully articulated basal crocodyliform skeleton preserved next to IVPP V 15923 (scale bar, 5 cm). c, Histological section from the fibular shaft of Limusaurus inextricabilis (IVPP V 15924) under polarized light. Arrows denote growth lines used to age the…
pharyngula | June 18, 2009
Answers in Genesis has evolutionary biology on the run now. In an article from 2002, Ostrich eggs break dino-to-bird theory, they explain that development shows that evolution is all wrong, since developmental pathways in different animals are completely different, and can't possibly be the result of gradual transformations.
The first piece of evidence against evolution is the old avian digit problem. Birds couldn't have evolved from dinosaurs, because they have the wrong finger order!
The research conclusively showed that only digits two, three and four (corresponding to our index, middle…
drorzel | June 18, 2009(Alternate post title: "Hey to James Nicoll")
Via John Dupuis, our clever neighbors to the North has come up with a possible (partial) alternative to rockets:
"For decades, scientists have been grappling to find a more efficient means of getting payloads into space," says Brendan Quine (right), professor of space physics and engineering in York's Faculty of Science & Engineering, who is heading the project. A paper detailing the design was recently published in the journal Acta Astronautica; it is co-authored by York space engineering Professor George Zhu and graduate student Raj Seth.
"…
drorzel | June 17, 2009Whether because I'm a blogger, or because I'm a previous recipient of their money (I suspect the latter), I recently got email from the Research Corporation announcing their new Scialog 2009: Solar Energy Conversion program:
Scialog will focus on funding early career scientists and building research teams to undertake groundbreaking studies in solar energy conversion. This initiative will be entitled Scialog 2009: Solar Energy Conversion.
Scialog 2009 will accept proposals describing fundamental research at the molecular and nanoscale level that show high potential to impact advanced energy…
awild | June 17, 2009
A velvet mite forages over a rotting log in Urbana, Illinois.
I don't photograph all that many mites, but if these miniature arachnids are your thing you should visit Macromite's amazing mite blog.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash diffused through tracing paper
drorzel | June 17, 2009Two announcements landed in my Inbox yesterday and are worth passing along:
1) The Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism is now accepting nominations:
# Articles must have been published for the first time between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009.
# Entries must state clearly the website where each article appeared and the date that each article was published.
# Consideration will be given to the articles on the following criteria: intellectual coherence; persuasiveness; wit and relevance; clarity and simplicity; wider impact (as indicated by additional information provided by entrants in the…
tqa | June 16, 2009
NASA called off today's planned launch of the shuttle Endeavour earlier this morning when a hydrogen leak was discovered near the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate. The GUCP was also the location of the leak that shut down Saturday's launch attempt, so it appears that the repairs made to that system over the last few days did not quite have the desired effect.
According to NASA's website, the launch has been rescheduled for 11 July, at 7:39 pm EDT.
grrlscientist | June 16, 2009tags: National Center for Science Education, NCSE, religion, fundamentalism, creationism, intelligent design, streaming video
This video gives you a brief overview of what the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) does to protect our schools from the tyranny of religious brainwashing posing as "science" [3:19]
drorzel | June 15, 2009Google the title phrase, and you'll find a bunch of New Age twaddle. This is a physics blog, though, so here's a reliable scientific method for finding the location of a rainbow, such as this one seen over Chateau Steelypips after the thunderstorms that went through earlier this evening (it was much brighter half a minute before the picture was taken, but faded as the camera was fetched):
Stand so you can see your shadow in front of you.
Spread the fingers on both hands, and hold them so your thumbs just touch.
Hold your hands so one pinky finger is just on the head of your shadow.
Keeping…
awild | June 15, 2009A recent study by Gabriela Pirk in Insectes Sociaux provides me with an excuse to share this photo:
Minor workers of the seed harvester Pheidole spininodis (left) and the predatory Pheidole bergi lock jaws in combat. Jujuy, Argentina.
Pirk et al examined the diet of both Pheidole species in the Monte desert of Northern Argentina. Why would someone spend time doing this?  Ants are important dispersers of seeds, and these Pheidole are two of the most abundant seed-eating ants of the region. What they do with the seeds, which ones they choose to take, and how far they take them has…
drorzel | June 15, 2009The main speaker at yesterday's Commencement was Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman (the guy before Alan Greenspan) and current chair of President Obama's economic advisory council. As you would expect from somebody of his background, the bulk of the speech was about the current economic crisis. The full speech is online, but the relevant-to-ScienceBlogs bit is this:
The past couple of decades have been seen as a triumph of finance - new and more complex financial instruments, a huge growth of financial institutions, enormous compensation for traders, speculators, and finance…
grrlscientist | June 14, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
bioephemera | June 13, 2009In a new post, scibling Bora asks whether science blogs are "real" publications and should be cited in other publications - like research articles. That's an interesting debate, and I encourage you to participate. I'm not going to get into it right now. Instead, I want to quote this section of his post:
There is a very interesting discussion on this topic in the comments section at the Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog, discussing the place of science blogs in the new communication ecosystem and if a blog post can be and should be cited. What counts as a "real publication"? Is the…
bioephemera | June 12, 2009Maybe you can't leave town this weekend on vacation, but you can take an awesome behind-the-scenes video tour of UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, which is closed to the public, courtesy of Wired Science:
Officious handwritten tags tell the story of each and every animal's capture. In a screwtop container on the tray, a half-dozen chipmunk skulls rattle, picked clean of all their tissue by a beetle colony housed downstairs. . . You'll visit the bone room and the fur room, where the big mammals are kept. You'll see capybara furs, komodo dragon skins, and whale skulls.
grrlscientist | June 12, 2009tags: blogosphere, meme, science badges meme
Okay, my good readers, ScienceScouts has updated their badge page, so I thought I'd start a little meme where we all compare badges, sort of like an advanced form of navel-gazing, except for scientists and other geeks. Below the fold, I've listed which badges I qualify for, along with a brief comment regarding that badge, and I invite you to join in the fun!
Which badges do I qualify for? Here's a list;
The I've published at the Science Creative Quarterly Badge. It happened a long, long time ago when I was still at my blogger site. If you humor…
drorzel | June 12, 2009Tom Levenson has another post up in his ongoing series about the writing and publishing process of his new book, this one about generating publicity. At this point, he's gone past what I've experienced so far, but this is fortuitously timed, as I got a note from my editor yesterday saying that the bound galleys are in. Woo-hoo!
There will be pictures and so on when I get my copies (probably next week). This seems kind of early-- the book itself won't be out for another six months-- but I assume that the folks at Scribner know what they're doing. Anyway, I eagerly await Tom's next installment…
drorzel | June 12, 2009There's a nice write-up about the World Science Festival in the New York Times today:
The second annual World Science Festival, a five-day extravaganza of performances, debates, celebrations and demonstrations, including an all-day street fair on Sunday in Washington Square Park, began with a star-studded gala tribute to the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson at Lincoln Center Wednesday night. Over the next three days the curious will have to make painful choices: attend an investigation of the effects of music on the brain with a performance by Bobby McFerrin, or join a quest for a long-lost…
drorzel | June 12, 2009Dave Ng has recently upgraded the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique site, which provides a variety of achievement badges for members to claim and post. I'm not a big one for extra graphics on the blog (they delay the loading of the cute baby pictures), but if you're into goofy stuff, they've got some fun options.
For the record, the badges I can claim include:
I Blog About Science (duh)
Has Frozen Stuff Just to See What Happens (Level III) (liquid nitrogen is cool)
Worship Me, I've Published in Nature or Science
Experienced with Electrical Shock (…
oracknows | June 12, 2009I was very happy with NEWSWEEK recently, specifically because of its lengthy expose of Oprah Winfrey and her promotion of pseudoscience, mysticism, and quackery on her talk show. However, I haven't always been that thrilled with NEWSWEEK's coverage of medicine and science. For example, NEWSWEEK's science columnist Sharon Begley has gotten on my nerves on more than one occasion, most recently when she castigated doctors for not enthusiastically embracing comparative effectiveness research, making the unjustified slur against physicians that they "hate science." Indeed, she even managed to…
awild | June 11, 2009
I see that the TimeTree of Life project is now public. This collaborative project draws on the research of dozens of biologists to estimate the timing of past evolutionary divergences. The work is available as a book, but the online version has an interactive section that allows the user to name two organisms and get back the date the two last shared an ancestor.
For instance,
Ants vs. Bees: 163.5 million years ago
A word of caution, though. While the output is extremely precise (i.e., it gives exact dates with decimal places), precision is not necessarily accuracy. The given dates…