Science
pharyngula | December 14, 2007
On the one hand, this is a strange tale of mutant, bisexual, necrophiliac flies, and you've got to love it for the titillating nature of the experiments. But on the other, much more interesting hand, it's a story about drilling down deeply into the causes of a complex behavior, and tracing it to a single gene product — and it also reveals much about the way the chemicals sloshing about in the brain can modulate responses to stimuli. Work by Grosjean and others on a simple Drosophila mutant, genderblind, which causes flies to be indiscriminate about gender in their courtship, opens up a…
oracknows | December 14, 2007
It's almost here.
No, not Christmas, although that's almost here too. what I'm talking about is the fast-approaching 76th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which is due to land at Aardvarchaelogy on Thursday, December 20, right in time for the holidays. (And what better time to indulge in a serious dose of skepticism than in the midst of all this pre-Christmas cheer?) Ebenezer Scrooge would be proud. Well, the pre-visitation Scrooge, anyway. The post-visitation Scrooge clearly believed in ghosts and other paranormal happenings, like visitations promised to happen in over three nights…
oracknows | December 14, 2007
I have to confess, the ol' Folder of Woo was looking a little thin this week.
No, it's not that I'm running out of topics (a.k.a. targets) for my usual Friday jaunt into the wacky world of woo. Far from it. It's just that, in the run-up to writing this, perusing the odd stuff therein just wasn't getting me fired up to do the feature the way that it usually does. There just wasn't anything there that was grabbing my attention and refusing to let it go, as has happened so often in weeks past. I began to worry whether Your Friday Dose of Woo has been going on too long (it's approaching a year…
awild | December 13, 2007Warning: long ranty post to follow.
Taxonomy is an unusual discipline in the balance it strikes between legal and scientific concepts. There's the obvious biology bit about discovering and defining taxa, but unlike any other science there's a backbone of legalistic code that regulates the dynamics of names. If you're the sort who really digs dry legal documents, you can read the zoological code here and the botanical code here. The codes are largely concerned with nomenclature, dealing with issues such as the proper hierarchy of ranks, and resolving conflict among competing names. For…
awild | December 12, 2007
Technomyrmex fisheri Bolton 2007
Madagascar, line drawing by Barry Bolton
Last month, British myrmecologist Barry Bolton published the first ever global synthesis of the ant genus Technomyrmex. The tome describes 37 new species, including Technomyrmex fisheri from Madagascar, named after Brian Fisher of Antweb. I'm always keen to try out new taxonomic keys, so I tested Bolton's out on several unidentified African and Australian species in my collection. As is nearly always the case with Bolton's meticulous work, the key worked flawlessly. I only wish I had more Technomyrmex to key.…
grrlscientist | December 12, 2007tags: science, public policy, politics, federal funding, research, reality-based government, 2008 American presidential elections, ScienceDebate2008
I have spoken with quite a few people from CraigsList and other places regarding the logistics and goals for ScienceDebate2008, and have found that there are plenty of misperceptions as to what scientists wish to accomplish. In short; ScienceDebate2008 is not a "science pop-quiz" that demands that the presidential candidates regurgitate a bunch of scientific theories and formulae on television.
Instead, ScienceDebate2008 is focused on…
pharyngula | December 12, 2007
I've known that scorpions have fluorescent cuticles — if you go out into the desert with a black light and shine it on the ground, the scorpions will often glow green and blue and be easy to spot. I had no idea that many spiders exhibit the same phenomenon, but there they are, glowing away. I may have to visit my local head shop (in Morris? Hah!) and get some black light bulbs to see what the fauna in my living room is up to.
Fluorescence is actually a fairly common property: all it requires is a molecule called a fluorophore that can absorb and capture transiently photons of a particular…
drorzel | December 12, 2007There's another Mars article in the Times this morning, which I wouldn't bother to note in a full post save for one thing: the way they got the results.
The right front wheel of Spirit stopped turning in March 2006. Since then, the rover has been driving backwards, dragging the lame wheel along. This May, scientists noticed a bright spot in the trail of overturned dirt.
They turned Spirit around for a closer look, finding high levels of silica, the main ingredient of window glass. They then aimed the rover at a nearby rock, wanting to break it apart to determine if the silica was just a…
oracknows | December 12, 2007Let's see, the ScienceBlogs collective started out in English. Earlier this week, our German partner Hubert Burda Media soft-launched ScienceBlogs.de, a German version of the ScienceBlogging collective that you've come to know and love (or, in some cases, hate).
Now, our benevolent (well, most of the time, anyway) overlords at the Seed Collective Mothership in New York ask:
What language shall we tackle next?
Personally, I vote for French, but that's just because French is the only language other than English that I used to be able to speak and can still understand to some extent.
oracknows | December 12, 2007Readers may have noticed (or maybe they haven't) that I haven't commented at all on the Guillermo Gonzalez case. As you may recall, Gonzalez is an astronomer at Iowa State University, as well as advocate of "intelligent design" creationism. In May 2007, ISU denied tenure to Gonzalez. Not surprisingly, the ID movement in general and its propagnda arm (Discovery Institute) in particular have done their best to try to portray Gonzalez as a martyr who was "persecuted" for his beliefs and denied his "academic freedom." Despite the attempts of the DI to milk it for all its PR value, as usual, the…
grrlscientist | December 11, 2007Everyone knows that the universal language of science is English, which is not to say that scientific papers are not published in other languages, but if the author wants his or her papers to be widely read, they must publish in English. However, the citizens of the world speak many different languages and their lives are impacted by scientific research just as much as English-speaking peoples' live are .. so, ScienceBlogs is launching a German-speaking counterpart and now they are wondering .. which language should they focus on next? They have a very short poll (2 questions) for you to…
drorzel | December 11, 2007Dave Ng over at the World's Fair is at it again, asking what sort of science background Santa Claus has:
So the premise is that Santa is at least several hundred years old, and you've got to assume that somewhere along the line, he spent some time in academia and probably got a degree or two. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that he is a man of science, but I guess the question to ask is in what way specifically?
Now, you might think that there are lots of ways to go with this. You could note the flying reindeer, and say that they're clearly the product of either genetic…
drorzel | December 11, 2007Faith in theory and curve-fitting, at least...
Tommaso Dorigo reports some new results, which are based on a figure that could be titled "Why I Am Not a Particle Physicist #729":
"What's the problem?," you ask, "There's a nice big peak there, looking a little like a black-body spectrum."
Ah, but that's not the signal. The green shaded region in the big plot is all background. The signal is in the tiny little gap between the green background line and the blue data points on the right-hand side of the enormous background peak.
Now, this is actually a pretty solid result, as you can see from…
drorzel | December 11, 2007I have a good deal more synmpathy for the plight of religious scientists than most of my fellow ScienceBlogs bloggers. For example, I'm willing to believe that people can both have sincere religious faith and be practicing scientists, without assuming that they're either brainwashed or evil.
I really find myself feeling sorry for Richard Colling, then, who Inside Higher Ed reports has been barred from teaching introductory biology because of his religious beliefs. "Boy," you might be thinking, "I bet the Discovery Institute and the Christian Law Association must be all over that..."
Not so…
oracknows | December 11, 2007It's been a while since I've visited the cesspool that is Uncommon Descent, a.k.a. Bill Dembski's home for wandering sycophants, toadies, and lackeys. There's a good reason for this; I just get tired of the sheer stupidity that routinely assaults my brain every time I make the mistake of taking a look at UD's latest attempt to try to refute evolution. Worse, there's lots of other pseudoscience there these days, from the promotion of the use of cancer therapies that haven't been subjected to clinical trials yet to anthropomorphic global warming "skepticism." Yes, every time I peruse the posts…
drorzel | December 11, 2007Here's the first of this year's series of pictures proving that our Christmas tree is all about SCIENCE!!! (which, for the record, needs to be said like it's in a Thomas Dolby song). Some of these will eventually get kind of obscure, but we'll start with an easy one:
This little guy, obviously, stands for the life sciences and evolution.
Why evolution? Well, because he's an iguana, and they're found in the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin did all that work, back in the day.
Also, we got him (her? it's hard to tell...) at the Darwin exhibit at the science museum in Boston.
You can't see it…
pontiff | December 10, 2007There's a new initiative to get a presidential debate on issues of science and technology: Science Debate 2008 (list of supporting Important People (capital letters) and bloggers (no capital letters).) I'm all for the idea, since I know little about the candidates positions related to science and technology. Which of course, is a bad excuse, and thus led me to try to dig deep into the intertubes and see if I could find a list of the candidates positions on science and technology.
Here is a collection of some of the relevant links I could find. For some candidates it was quite hard to find…
drorzel | December 10, 2007Following on an article in Seed and an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, ScienceBloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum (of The Intersection) have teamed up with a bunch of other smart people to launch Sciencedebate 2008:
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their…
tqa | December 10, 2007
Why - and when - do bridges fail? How and why does veterinary usage of some medications pose a risk to humans? How important is it to be absolutely certain that global warming is causing an increase in hurricane strength before taking action on the issue? How important is space exploration? How much money should we spend on science education? Do we need to re-examine the way the federal government handles its many science research agencies?
All of those questions - and many, many others that involve science - have the potential to shape the future of the United States for better or worse…
denialism | December 10, 2007We must adapt to the fact that over the last few decades it has become critical that our politicians and policymakers understand science and implement policy that is consistent with scientific facts. And it is past time that we made science enough of a priority to merit a presidential debate on science. The need is clear, these days policymakers must be able to respond in an informed fashion to new technologies, new scientific findings, and potential disasters (such as climate change). Despite the need for a scientifically-literate political leadership, we have a president who says the…