Science
drorzel | February 26, 2008The local fraternities and sororities hold occasional dinners/ discussions with faculty, to demonstrate that they're engaged with the intellectual life of the college. One of my students invited me to dinner at the Change in Kinetic Energy fraternity tomorrow night, and I agreed to do a discussion of physics and politics.
That's a vague topic, because I didn't have anything really definite in mind for it, other than that it seems better suited to a dinner and discussion than any of my regular presentations, which tend to be PowerPoint lectures. That doesn't really seem appropriate, so I…
oracknows | February 26, 2008
...and this time it's a home invasion.
Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sig pointed me to this incident, which has all the markings of still more animal rights terrorism. This time, the attack occurred at the University of California Santa Cruz and involved a home invasion by masked intruders:
SANTA CRUZ - A UC Santa Cruz faculty member whose biomedical research using animals sheds light on the causes of breast cancer and neurological diseases was the target of an attack Sunday afternoon, reportedly by animal rights activists.
UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal confirmed late Monday that an off-…
awild | February 25, 2008The imminent release of an embryonic Encyclopedia of Life (EoL) has journalists buzzing about an exciting new online resource. I wish I could share their enthusiasm.
EoL has announced 1.7 million species pages within a decade, providing biological information for all of the world's described species. That's a lofty goal, but their plan for getting the content for those pages goes something like this:
Let's build a snappy website, and then the site's awesomeness will spontaneously cause all the biologists in the world to shower us freely with their knowledge.
And maybe they'll buy us a pony…
tqa | February 25, 2008
Wilkins just tagged me with one of those blog meme things. Apparently, he thinks that I've nothing better to do with my time (and, unfortunately, he's totally correct about that). This particular meme involves historical figures. The rules are simple:
1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.
3) Tag seven more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs.
4) Let the person know they have been tagged by leaving a note on their blog.
I'm going to do what both Wilkins and Myers did, and pick someone who probably wouldn't…
drorzel | February 25, 2008Over at evolgen, RPM is wondering about the disciplinary distribution of bloggers:
I have an intuition, backed up by absolutely no evidence, that my particular area of interest (evolutionary genetics) has more faculty blogging about stuff related to their research than other fields. This is most likely the result of my interest in those blogs, and, hence, my increased awareness of them compared to blogs of faculty in other research areas.
[... list of half-a-dozen blogs...]
That's not a lot of blogs, but it's also not a huge field. How does that compare with faculty who blog in your research…
denialism | February 25, 2008I must say I've loved much of the writing at the new blog Science-Based Medicine. These guys are fighting the good fight and presenting very sophisticated aspects of evaluating the medical literature in a very accessible way. In particular I'd like to point out David Gorski's critique of NCCAM and the directly-relevant articles from Kimball Atwood on the importance of prior probability in evaluating medical research. I mention these as a pair because lately I've really become highly attuned to this issue due to the research of John Ioannidis which is critical for understanding which…
pharyngula | February 24, 2008The author of All-Too-Common Dissent has found a bizarre creationist on the web; this fellow, Randy Stimpson, isn't at all unusual, but he does represent well some common characteristics of creationists in general: arrogance, ignorance, and projection. He writes software, so he thinks we have to interpret the genome as a big program; he knows nothing about biology; and he thinks his expertise in an unrelated field means he knows better than biologists. And he freely admits it!
I am not a geneticist or a molecular biologist. In fact, I only know slightly more about DNA than the average college…
drorzel | February 22, 2008A reader writes in with a literary query:
I was asked to teach a 400-level course on Nanotechnology at my U. In addition to the usual technical content, I would like to include a critical view of how nanotechnology is portrayed in popular culture. So I am looking for suitable works that can be examined. Naturally, Stephenson's Diamond Age and Crichton's Prey come to mind. You know of other examples that would make for meaty discussion by a bunch of engineers? [...] I want to stress that most of the course will focus on technical content, so whatever work we pick has to have *some* basis…
awild | February 22, 2008
The smallest insect I've ever photographed made the cover of the scientific journal Genetics this week. Encarsia pergandiella, an aphelinid wasp not even a millimeter long, was the subject of a study by Perlmann, Kelly, and Hunter documenting the reproductive consequences of infection by bacterial parasite.
The wasp lab is downstairs from ours, so it wasn't much trouble to schlep my equipment over for an afternoon session. The goal was to create a set of images to submit to the journal as potential covers, and I was more than happy to have the opportunity to shoot these charismatic little…
pharyngula | February 21, 2008Lots of people have sent me photos and accounts of the recent lunar eclipse (are you confusing me with that inferior spacey blog, or something?) — so I've put some of the good ones below the fold.
From Marcia:
From Phillip:
From Eric:
And here's an interesting story about an eclipse.
Don't worry, I still know that biology is much more interesting than weird rocks in the sky.
tqa | February 21, 2008
A single person contracted an infectious disease in Switzerland sometime during the week before January 15th. Within 10 days, new cases of the disease had been identified in San DIego. Less than two weeks later, the disease was known to have spread to Honolulu. People exposed to the disease are known to have attended a performance of Cirque du Soleil and a major sporting event. This isn't a Tom Clancy novel or a Homeland Security exercise, and the illness in question isn't some obscure new infectious disease. It's measles.
If you're wondering how a disease for which there is a very safe…
drorzel | February 21, 2008Janet Stemwedel is blogging, as is her wont, about questions of ethical behavior in science. She had a post Monday giving advice on how to counter unethical behavior, which all seems pretty good to me.
Unfortunately, the people who read and comment on blogs about academic culture tend to start at "corrosively cynical," and get more misanthropic from there, so Janet has been deluged with negative commentary about how nothing she suggests will work. Feeling beleagured, she has issued a call for comments from senior scientists, asking for stories of how they deal with ethical issues:
I keep…
pharyngula | February 20, 2008Check out Phil for the details. For us Minnesotans, the events start around 8pm, should reach totality around 9, and should be over around 11.
Here's the good news: we're supposed to have clear skies!
And now the bad news: it's about -27°F outside right now, and while we're supposed to warm up a little today, it's still going to be about -15°F tonight. Don't let your eyeballs freeze while you're doing your moongazing.
drorzel | February 20, 2008Regular commenter Johan Larson writes with a suggested blog topic:
The Human Genome Project (yes, you have to pronounce those capitals) cost about $3 billion. If $3 billion were yours to spend on scientific research, how would you spend the money?
That's a great question, and a great topic for a Dorky Poll. I'll narrow my response a little, because if I had to choose from all areas of science, it's a no-brainer to throw all the money at public health-- eradication of malaria, cures for major diseases, etc. For the sake of variety, let's restrict it to your own particular subfield, so, for…
awild | February 19, 2008Â
Does ant activity cycle by an internal clock, or is their activity cycle a response to changing environmental cues?
A study in Insectes Sociaux weighs in on the side of environment. Penick & Tschinkel experimented with applying light and heat from different directions and at different times of day to fire ant mounds. It turns out that the ants' daily rhythm of moving their brood around the nest is a result of temperature tracking. I've pasted a link to the article and the abstract below.
Penick & Tschinkel. 2008. Thermoregulatory brood transport in the fire ant, Solenopsis…
pharyngula | February 19, 2008
It means "devil toad," and it was a 10 pound monster that lived 70 million years ago, in what is now Madagascar. It's huge, and judging by its living cousins, was a voracious predator. If it were alive today, it would probably be eating your cats and puppies.
In other words, this was an awesome toad, and I wish I had one for a pet.
Here's what it looks like, with some very large extant toads for comparison.
Beelzebufo ampinga, Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. (A) Skull
reconstruction showing parts preserved (white areas, Left) and distribution of
pit-and-ridge ornament (stippling, Right). (B…
bioephemera | February 19, 2008The following is my most popular post, by far, from the "old" bioephemera (originally published Jan 5, 2007). I'll do a repost each week for the next few weeks to give new readers a taste of the blog. . .
Anatomical Teaching Model of a Pregnant Woman
Stephan Zick, 1639-1715
Wood and ivory
Kunstkammer Georg Laue is a Munich antique/art gallery informed by the sensibility of the "wonder cabinets" (kunst- or wunder-kammer) of 17th century Germany. One of the interesting objects described on the site is this ivory model of a pregnant woman with removable parts, including internal organs and a…
oracknows | February 19, 2008In response to my post yesterday castigating J. B. Handley of Generation Rescue for hypocritically accusing the American Academy of Pediatrics of "manipulating the media" when manipulating the media is Generation Rescue's raison d'être, Mike the Mad Biologist turned me on to a rather fascinating article in the New York Times by its Public Editor Clark Hoyt entitled The Doctors Are In. The Jury Is Out. It discusses a topic very near and dear to my heart, namely how newspapers report scientific or medical controversies, specifically, how the NYT covers controversies in which one side is the…
pharyngula | February 18, 2008Oh, joy! Carl Zimmer has published a profile of Roger Hanlon, the well-known cephalopod expert, and he is specifically discussing the work on camouflage that I previously summarized. I've also cited his work on sexual mimicry and nuptial dances — this is a fellow whose work all true worshipers of the cephalopod should be following.