Science
oracknows | March 7, 2008I really have no idea how valid this is (I suspect not very), but every blogger likes a bit of ego stroking from time to time, and I'm no different. So, take this with an enormous grain of salt, but somehow on a new system of blog ranking on Wikio, Respectful Insolence is ranked #8 among science blogs and #466 among general blogs.
What this means, I have no idea, particularly given that the blog doesn't show up at all in the Health section. I suppose I can console myself that I'm ranked #3 on the Medicine Blog Directory. Again, I have no idea what this means; so take it with a huge grain of…
pharyngula | March 7, 2008My last column in Seed is now online for you cheapskates (OK, you're forgiven already) who don't subscribe. It's called "Eyeing the Evolutionary Past," and discusses a familiar topic around these parts — the evolution of eyes.
awild | March 7, 2008
Apteroloma caraboides (Agyrtidae) - Snowfield Beetle
California
Why would I waste a prime Friday Beetle Blogging slot on such a drab little beetle? Because Apteroloma caraboides does something really cool. Really cold, even. This species inhabits the edges of high-altitude snowfields. They are found in places like these, in the high Sierra Nevada:
Snowfields are an inhospitable environment for an insect, but one that offers animals with good cold tolerance a unique way to make a living. Apteroloma caraboides cruise the easy pickings of less hardy creatures that fall onto the snow…
awild | March 6, 2008Here's a fun application that matches a journal to your research: Jane: the Journal/Author Name Estimator
To see what would happen, I fed a few of my research projects to Jane. Apparently I'm supposed to submit all my work to Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. In some sense that's reassuring. I just had a paper accepted there.
On closer inspection though, Jane does a terrible job of indexing taxonomy. Most of the prime journals where taxonomy is published- Zootaxa comes to mind- don't register. It is as if the entire discipline didn't exist.
tqa | March 3, 2008
In Friday's picture quiz, I posted a picture that I took that contained two Hawaiian Monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi), and asked you to take a guess at what percent of the total population of the species appears in the picture. As David noted, if you're asking that sort of question, the answer isn't likely to be good. It certainly isn't good in this case.
The Hawaiian Monk Seal has been on the Endangered Species List since 1976. A five-year assessment of the seal's current situation was concluded in August, and examined whether or not the species has met the three biological factors…
drorzel | March 3, 2008Michael Nielsen is planning to attend an "unconference" and is considering possible topics. He quotes one from Eva Amsen:
My idea: find 4 or 5 volunteers from different backgrounds to sit on a 20 minute panel and (with audience feedback) make a list of Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Science. Since we have a wide audience, this hopefully would be a varied list. Actually, maybe we could just put up a large sheet of paper and have people write down what they think should be on the list and get back to it later.
Michale offers a suggestion, which leads him to ponder scientific literacy,…
oracknows | March 3, 2008I'm not sure why, but it's been a while since I've delved into the cesspit of pseudoscience that is the Discovery Institute's propaganda organ, Evolution News & Views. Perhaps it was because I simply got tired of diving into the depths of stupid. Of course, that then begs the question of why I've been spending so much time diving into the Age of Autism website or the sophisticated-sounding yet ultimately vacuously pseudoscientific blather that is David Kirby. Trying to decide which is stupider, AoA or ENV, is rather like deciding whether it would be better to die of cancer or Lou Gehrig's…
pharyngula | March 2, 2008
What are the key innovations that led to the evolution of multicellularity, and what were their precursors in the single-celled microbial life that existed before the metazoa? We can hypothesize at least two distinct kinds of features that had to have preceded true multicellularity.
The obvious feature is that cells must stick together; specific adhesion molecules must be present that link cells together, that aren't generically sticky and bind the organism to everything. So we need molecules that link cell to cell. Another feature of multicellular animals is that they secrete…
catdynamics | March 1, 2008curious case in Las Vegas with a middle aged man in a coma and ricin found in an extended stay hotel room
lots of new stories and blog posts on this, but very little information
some blogs are claiming an ID for the man hospitalized, and reports say guns and a "anarchist type" book was found, with a bookmark at the ricin recipe page
interesting question is which book:
the standard is "The Poisoner's Handbook" by Hutchkinson
which is a favourite of certain non-progressive fringe elements
- it is available on amazon, natch
a more obscure source would be a crude survivalist handbook which I…
drorzel | March 1, 2008As mentioned previously, I was invited to discuss physics and politics at one of the local fraternities earlier this week. Oddly, given the primacy of Greek organizations on campus, this is only the fourth time I've set foot inside a fraternity or sorority house in seven years. The previous occasions were times when I was doing housing inspections for the committee that handles those matters.
They've cleaned up the house since the other time I was there-- they used to be Φ Γ Δ, years ago, and then there was a brief interregnum when they were officially "Alpha Beta" (referred to as "oh, those…
awild | February 29, 2008
Out today is a preprint version (subscription only) of Corrie Moreau's Pheidole phylogeny. At first glance this seems a nice piece of work: the evolutionary history of one of the world's most diverse ant genera inferred from 140 species and 5 genes.
This is some extremely cool ant evolution research, and the first salvo from the nascent Pheidole working group. Once I get a chance to digest all 50+ pages I'll post the highlights.
source: Moreau, C. S. 2008. Unraveling the Evolutionary History of the Hyperdiverse Ant Genus Pheidole (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and…
tqa | February 29, 2008
I took the picture below at Ka'ena Point, Oahu in January of 2006. In this picture, there are two Hawaiian Monk Seals. (They can be hard to spot, so I've marked the two animals in a second version of the picture below the fold.) Here's the quiz question that goes with this image: without recourse to Google, estimate the percentage of the total population of the species that can be seen in this one picture.
(Click on the pictures to view larger versions.)
awild | February 28, 2008
Ectatomma parasiticum Feitosa & Fresneau 2008
Mexico
In today's Zootaxa, Feitosa et al describe a workerless social parasite in the ant genus Ectatomma. Like many discoveries, this one was fortuitous. The authors were collecting nests of the common Ectatomma tuberculatum when they noticed that some nests had a number of rather small queens in them. Genetic tests revealed them to be distinct.
Ectatomma parasiticum is a social parasite, using the labor of the host ants to raise more parasites. Although a similarly parasitic lifestyle is known to occur in other ant subfamilies, this…
awild | February 28, 2008http://plazi.org/
Donat Agosti's group has launched Plazi, a set of tools that translates flat paper taxonomy into dynamic web content. This technology is significant: it means the content of old literature can be extracted automatically into databases. Taxonomic names are tracked and linked to external information, and collecting locations are linked to maps. This will be a valuable time-saver for taxonomic research.
As an example, my doctoral thesis was a fairly traditional piece of work: a book length taxonomic revision, all done in flat text on a word processor. Plazi has turned it…
tqa | February 28, 2008
On Tuesday, I posted a "can you identify this animal" quiz. I put a picture of an animal up, along with some information about it. The photograph was taken with the animal in captivity, at a location that was relatively near where the animal lived in the wild. The picture was not taken in Australia, and the DNA sequence that was superimposed over the image came from the animal in the picture.
Shawna was the first person to correctly identify both the species of the animal and the location where the picture was taken. The animal is a Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata), and…
drorzel | February 28, 2008EurekAlert tossed up a press release from the University of Minnesota yesterday with the provocative title: "U of Minn researchers find primary alcohol prevention programs are needed for 'tweens'" and the even more eye-popping subtitle "Study recommends that prevention programs occur as early as third grade." What, you may ask, is the problem this is intended to solve?
The study found that adolescents who already use alcohol are less receptive to prevention programs aimed at all students. Intervening at earlier ages, specifically between third and fifth grade, would allow for truly universal…
awild | February 27, 2008
Meet Ectatomma tuberculatum. This tropical insect has the largest genome of 40 species of ants measured in a study by Neil Tsutsui et al in BioMed Central. Weighing in at 690 megabases, E. tuberculatum has nearly twice as much DNA as most other ant species, leading the authors to suggest that a whole genome duplication occurred somewhere in the line of Ectatommine ancestry.
Tsutsui et al's study, released today, is the first comprehensive genomic survey across ants. What's more, it is open access. You can read the whole thing here:
Evolution of Genome Size in Ants
Summary: Here, we…
pontiff | February 27, 2008Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer Ouellette shares her thoughts on good science communication
I've learned over the course of my varied career that the trick to all good science communication is being able to boil a complicated science story down to its most basic components -- the "core narrative" -- to which one can then add layers of detail and complexity to tailor the narrative to a wide range of target audiences.
The main point I tried to get across in that first workshop is that this is not the same thing as the "dumbing down" epithet that many physicists like to fling at…
tqa | February 26, 2008
Here's a picture of an animal that I took (and played around with) a few years ago. The DNA sequence that's superimposed over the picture came from that individual, so you can probably use it to figure out what species you're looking at (if you're so inclined). You can click on the image for a higher resolution version. The animal in question was (obviously) in captivity when the picture was taken, but it has since been re-released into the wild. It was held within 10 miles of the place it was captured, and the picture was not taken in Australia. Can anyone guess where the picture was taken…
awild | February 26, 2008For a devastatingly thorough critique, read Rod Page's first impressions of EoL:
The first release was always going to be a disappointment, especially given the hype. What frustrates me, however, is just how far the first release is from what it could have been. The real question is how much the issues I've raised are things which are easy to fix given time, or whether they reflect underlying problems with the way the project is conceived.