Science
tqa | February 7, 2008
This is a highly modified version of a post that appeared back at my old blog quite some time ago. Since it involves a quiz of sorts, I'm not going to post the link back to the original right now. The post with the "answers" will appear on Monday, also slightly modified from the original.
Taxonomy and systematics are the areas of biology that are involved in describing groups of organisms and determining how they relate to one another. One of the jobs associated with these disciplines involves trying to figure out whether or not two different populations of organisms should be considered…
pharyngula | February 6, 2008A dismaying update: the paper in question contains a significant amount of outright plagiarism, and large chunks of text are taken literally from Butterï¬eld et al. 2006, "Oxidative stress in
Alzheimer's disease brain: New insights from
redox proteomics," European Journal of
Pharmacology 545: 39-50. I hope we hear from Han and Warda sometime; they've got a lot of 'splaining to do.
Mitochondria are fascinating organelles. They are the "powerhouses of the cell" (that phrase is required to be used in any discussion of their function) that generate small, energy rich molecules like ATP that are…
awild | February 3, 2008Circus of the Spineless #29 is now posted at Andrea's Buzzing About. The circus rounds up invertebrate blog posts from the previous month, a great read!
#30 will be at A D.C. Birding Blog at the end of February.
pharyngula | February 3, 2008Many of you have already seen the gorgeous video below: it's a spectacularly beautiful animation of the activity in a cell.
I like it, and it's a useful illustration, but … there's something fundamental that it gets completely wrong. So today I'm not going to praise it, I'm going to criticize it. It's a substantial criticism, too, one that means I wouldn't show this video in my classes without spending more time explaining the error than it takes to show it.
Here's the central problem: molecules don't behave that way. What is portrayed is wonderfully precise movement; it looks like the…
razib | February 2, 2008I stated earlier this week that I would post on papers from William D. Hamilton's Narrow Roads of Gene Land. I've narrowed down which ones I'll blog:
Day 1: The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I
Day 2: The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II
Day 3: The moulding of senescence by natural selection
Day 4: Extraordinary sex ratios
Day 5: Innate social aptitudes of man
awild | January 31, 2008
Lordomyrma vanua Lucky & Sarnat 2008
Fiji
image by A. Lucky & E. Sarnat
Last week's Zootaxa contained a excellent short paper by Andrea Lucky and Eli Sarnat describing a pair of new Lordomyrma species, including the beautiful L. vanua pictured above. As is true of most insects, Lordomyrma vanua remains a largely unknown quantity. It has been collected just twice, both times from the island of Vanua, in Fiji, for which it is named.
Source: Lucky, A. & E. M. Sarnat. 2008. New species of Lordomyrma (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Southeast Asia and Fiji. Zootaxa 1681: 37-46.
pontiff | January 31, 2008I enjoy reviewing papers even knowing it sucks up too much of my time. I mean what better way is there to get out any inner angst than to take it out on the writers of a sub par paper? (That's a joke people.) Reading Michael Nielsen's post taking on the h-index (Michael's posting more these days!), reminded me of a problem I've always wondered about for reviewing.
Suppose that in the far far future, there are services where you get to keep control of your academic identity (like which papers you authored, etc.) and this method is integrated with reviewing systems of scientific journals. (…
awild | January 31, 2008
We often think of ants as paragons of hard work, but a surprising number of species get by through mooching off the labor of others. Trachymyrmex fungus growers, the larger spiny ants pictured above, do things the old-fashioned way. They dig their own nests, send workers out to gather food, and meticulously cultivate the fungus garden that serves as the primary food source for the colony.
Then, along comes the slim, sneaky Megalomyrmex symmetochus. These little parasites hollow out a cozy little nest within the Trachymyrmex garden and spend their time leisurely consuming the brood of…
razib | January 30, 2008If science is a culture it needs a way to punish free-riders & cheaters. Otherwise the whole system will collapse. So check out Tetrapod Zoology; Darren has some details on shady goings-on.
tqa | January 30, 2008
It's safe to say that 2007 wasn't the best year of US Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside's life. She started off the year with a bullet wound to her torso that damaged, among other things, one lung, her liver, and her spleen. She ended her year as an outpatient at Walter Reed, waiting for her superiors to decide whether or not she would have to stand court-martial for inflicting that wound upon herself. In between, she had to recover from her physical wounds, learn to deal with the inner demons that led to them, she had to deal with superior officers who believed that she would be more…
awild | January 29, 2008My lovely wife Jo-anne has been in South America the last couple weeks doing field research on Argentine ants while I tend the home fires here in Tucson. I hope she finds it in her to forgive me for the post I am about to write.
Earlier today I got an email explaining why I'm not getting my much-awaited phone call:
I'd call but there aren't any phones at this locutorio and we're on our way out to look for social spiders."
Excuse me? Social spiders? More important than me, your needy hubby?
Ok, I grant that social spiders are pretty cool, if a bit creepy. I remember those things from when…
pharyngula | January 29, 2008Come on out to Morris this evening — at 6:00, at the Common Cup Coffeehouse, Van Gooch of the biology discipline will be talking about bioluminescence and other phenomena in our Cafe Scientifique. The title of his talk is "Light Giving Life: Real and Artificial," and I know he's planning to bring sample organisms to hand out to the attendees.
oracknows | January 29, 2008In nondescript dressing room in a nondescript studio in a nondescript office building in in a nondescript industrial park, a short, pudgy 63-year-old man with the stereotypical demeanor of a particularly boring economist was trying to squeeze into a pair of shorts.
"Why oh why did I agree to do this?" he muttered in a whining drone.
He continued to struggle to get into the black shorts, virtually identical to the ones worn by English schoolboys and still worn by Angus Young of AC/DC on stage. Even though Young is over 50, somehow he managed to get into them, and so will I, thought the man.…
pontiff | January 28, 2008The CRA Policy Blog has the latest info on the impact of the underfunding of science in the budget. In particular
NSF will likely fund 1,000 fewer research grants in FY 08 than planned and the average award size will be smaller.
Sweet! Data to update my probability of employment. Oh wait. (Note for those playing along at home, I think the relevant total number of NSF grants is on the order of 11500.)
awild | January 26, 2008Finally, a solid taxonomy for the Australian Aphaenogaster:
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Shattuck, S. 2008. Australian ants of the genus Aphaenogaster (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 1677: 25-25.
ABSTRACT: The Australian species of the myrmicine ant genus Aphaenogaster Mayr are revised. Eight species are recognised, four of which are described as new. The species include barbara sp. n., barbigula Wheeler (for which a lectotype is designated), kimberleyensis sp. n., longiceps (Smith) (with its newly recognised synonym, flava Emery), mediterrae sp. n., poultoni Crawley, pythia Forel (for which a neotype is designated…
awild | January 25, 2008
Adranes ant-nest beetle
California
The most exciting finds are often the least expected. I stumbled across this odd little beetle while collecting ants several years ago in northern California. It was tiny, only a few millimeters long, with a little blind nubbin for a head whose sole purpose seemed to be supporting antennae that looked like a pair of cricket bats. The Lasius ants whose nest played host to this strange creature did not appear to pay it any particular attention. Ants are normally rather vicious towards interlopers, so their nonchalance often reveals successful infiltration by…
drorzel | January 25, 2008The questions posed in yesterday's posts about hopes for 2008 were half of what we were asked by the Powers That Be. The other half:
What scientific development do you fear you'll be blogging or reading about in 2008?
As with yesterday's posts, the original question was more general, but I restricted my answer (below the fold) to science stuff, and for the sake of general sanity, I'm going to restrict this post to scientific issues. I'll put up a second post for political fears.
But for this post, what are you afraid to be blogging about (if you're a blogger) or reading about (if you're not…
denialism | January 24, 2008Here I thought I was the only one but apparently photic sneezing has received enough attention to get researchers interested in it. Apparently it's an ancient problem:
Aristotle mused about why one sneezes more after looking at the sun in The Book of Problems: "Why does the heat of the sun provoke sneezing?" He surmised that the heat of the sun on the nose was probably responsible.
Some 2 ,000 years later, in the early 17th century, English philosopher Francis Bacon neatly refuted that idea by stepping into the sun with his eyes closed--the heat was still there, but the sneeze was not (a…
grrlscientist | January 24, 2008tags: SEED magazine, sciencebloggers, Universe in 2008
Have you read your February 2008 copy of SEED magazine yet? I have received my copy and discovered that I have finally been published in a magazine after years of rejection letters (yippee) because the editor included a few of my responses to two questions they asked that were included in their "Universe in 2008" piece (p 69). The questions;
What would you like to be blogging about in 2008?
What do you fear you'll be blogging about in 2008?
My responses (only a very very few of which appeared in SEED) are below the fold;
In 2008, I…