Science
jrosenhouse | September 28, 2006Have a look at this article from the current New Yorker. It focuses on the recent anti-string theory books from Lee Smolin and Peter Woit. The article provides a decent summary of Smolin's and Woit's views, but it is seriously marred by the lack of any contrary views of the matter. The views expressed by Smolin and Woit appear to be in the minority among physicists generally. From reading this article you would have no idea why that is.
For example, the article includes paragraphs like this:
The usual excuse offered for sticking with what increasingly looks like a failed program is that…
pharyngula | September 28, 2006By popular request, here's a roughly annotated version of that zebrafish development movie.
Stuff to watch for:
This movie starts at the 8-16 cell stage. The cells of the embryo proper (blastomeres) are at the top, sitting on a large yolk cell.
The pulsing is caused by the synchronous early divisions of all the cells. They lose synchrony at the mid-blastula transition.
Epiboly is the process by which the cells migrate downward over the yolk. An arrow will briefly flash, pointing to about 11:00, in the direction of the animal pole (where the future nose will form, sorta). That happens…
pharyngula | September 28, 2006Carl Zimmer brings up another essential point about the HAR1F study: it was work that was guided by evolutionary theory. The sequence would not have been recognized in the billions of nucleotides in the genome if it hadn't been for an analysis directed by the principles of evolution.
Wells' diatribe was amazingly wrong. I looked at it again and there could be another half-dozen essays in just picking up apart the stupidity in it.
pharyngula | September 28, 2006At my talk on Tuesday, the centerpiece was a short movie of zebrafish development—I was trying to show just how amazingly cool the process was. People seemed to like that part of the show, at least, so I thought I'd try to figure out this YouTube doohickey and upload it for general viewing. So here it is, a timelapse recording of about 18 hours of zebrafish embryology compressed into 48 seconds:
I've got more, and my students will be making videos of their own soon enough, so maybe I'll try uploading some other stuff soon. I'm discovering that YouTube is a little tricky about the aspect…
pharyngula | September 27, 2006We have a new 527 political organization specifically set up to fight for the representation of science and engineering in politics and policy. Michael Stebbins has the details, and you can read the scientists' and engineers' bill of rights here. If you're interested, join now!
pharyngula | September 27, 2006There are days when I simply cannot believe how dishonest the scoundrels at the Discovery Institute can be. This is one of them. I just read an essay by Jonathan Wells that is an appalling piece of anti-scientific propaganda, an extremely squirrely twisting of some science news. It's called "Why Darwinism is doomed", and trust me, if you read it, your opinion of Wells will drop another notch. And here you thought it was already in the gutter!
First, here's the science news that was published in Nature back in August, and which has set Wells off. The research is the result of the ability to…
catdynamics | September 27, 2006The 2006 Nobel Laureates will be announced on Monday, October 2. Any early guesses as to who this year's honorees will be?...
No.
To be precise, on monday the boring old medicine prize will be announced. Things don't really get exciting until tuesday... and the process doesn't finish until oct 13.
The Academy learned a long time ago what NASA knows well, you need to spread things around the news cycle. Except the Norwegians, who clearly don't understand yet that you never make a big announcement on fridays - don't they realise journalists have lives!
Serious guesses?
No idea about Medicine…
drorzel | September 27, 2006The AIP news feed features a story about a paper suggesting that the universe is ellipsoidal. Or at least, that it was, back in the early days.
The work is based on the famous WMAP picture of the microwave background (and no, it's not because the picture is oblong):
As you know, Bob, the picture shows the distribution of temperature fluctuations in the early universe. These temperature correlations correspond to slight variations in the density of matter at that time, density fluctuations that eventually evolved into galaxies and galaxy clusters.
(Explanation after the cut.)
We can't…
pharyngula | September 26, 2006
It’s April (not anymore—it's September as I repost this), it’s Minnesota, and it’s snowing here (not yet, but soon enough). On days like this (who am I fooling? Every day!), my thoughts turn to spicy, garlicky delicacies and warm, sunny days on a lovely tropical reef—it’s a squiddy day, in other words, and I’ve got a double-dose of squidblogging on this Friday afternoon, with one article on the vampire squid, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, and this one, on squid evolution and cephalopod Hox genes.
Hox genes are members of a family of genes with a number of common attributes:
They all contain a…
pharyngula | September 26, 2006Archy goes looking for mastodons, finds fanged hippos with massive organs instead.
catdynamics | September 26, 2006This spring I took a look at the Iranian nuclear options.
The summary version is that I think the focus on uranium enrichment is a red herring (unless there is intelligence that says there is a policy decision in Iran to go that route - presumably following Pakistan - except the public evidence is consistent with Iran following all options for nuclear development, HEU, Pu-239 breeding from power reactors, and from natural uranium heavy water reactors).
The way for Iran to get a few nukes quickly, is to reprocess the fuel of the Bushehr-1 reactor, after a "short burn" (to avoid Pu-240…
pharyngula | September 26, 2006One has to wonder how fundies react to the images enshrined on the floor of the state capitol building (you can also see a more panoramic view here).
pharyngula | September 26, 2006
We need to appreciate beer more. Alcohol has a long history in human affairs, and has been important in purifying and preserving food and drink, and in making our parties livelier. We owe it all to a tiny little microorganism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which converts complex plant sugars into smaller, simpler, more socially potent molecules of ethanol. This is a remarkable process that seems to be entirely to our benefit (it has even been argued that beer is proof of the existence of God*), but recent research has shown that the little buggers do it all entirely for their own selfish reasons…
pharyngula | September 25, 2006
Here's a small taste of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a sweet story about a poor boy and his visit to an amazing candy factory…you've probably heard of it, since the new movie is getting a lot of press.
Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste a bit of chocolate. The whole family saved up their money for that special occasion, and when the great day arrived, Charlie was always presented with one small chocolate bar to eat all by himself. And each time he received it, on those marvelous birthday mornings, he would place it carefully in a small…
pharyngula | September 25, 2006
Hox genes are metazoan pattern forming genes—genes that are universally associated with defining the identities of regions of the body. There are multiple Hox genes present, and one of their unusual properties is that they are clustered and expressed colinearly. That is, they are found in ordered groups on the chromosome, and that the gene on one end is typically turned on first and expressed at the head end of the embryo, the next gene in order is turned on slightly later and expressed further back, and so on in sequence. That the tidy sequential order on the chromosome is associated with…
oracknows | September 24, 2006Thanks to Norm, I recently found out that Richard Dawkins now has a web page (the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science). Certainly, any self-respecting skeptic would have to add that one to his sidebar, which I've now done. Even though I don't always agree with the vociferousness of some of Dawkin's views, he is vigorous defender of science and critical thinking. (I also like where he has placed Ann Coulter on his website.) Thanks to the generosity of our Seed overlords in using their contacts with the book industry, I was greeted upon my return from North Carolina with a nice…
catdynamics | September 22, 2006Our masters voice speaks and Asks the ScienceBloggers:
Why do men have a longer period of fertility, relative to their lifespan, than women? (Bonus: is this true of other species as well?)...
I Am Not A Biologist, but... I am a theorist, so here goes:
Because it is metabolically cheap for men to remain fertile, so worth the risk and low odds of reproductive success, particularly with possible rise in social stature at late age (and hence new mating opportunities).
Conversely, fertility is very expensive metabolically for women, and the risk high enough that at some point you're better off,…
drorzel | September 22, 2006I'm teaching our senior major seminar this term, which means that once a week, I'm giving hour-long talks on topics of interest to senior physics majors. This week's was "How to Pick and Apply to a Graduate School."
I've probably written this basic stuff up about three times already, but I'm too lazy to look for it, and this particular presentation was slightly different than anything I may have put on the web in the past. And I might as well wring another post out of the topic, while it's fresh in my mind...
There are several steps to the grad school application process, but the most…
pharyngula | September 21, 2006Don't be too grossed out, but the University of Wisconsin Madison has put a whole series of high-quality videos of human dissection online. It's extremely cool, but not for the squeamish—there's more than just the sight of a cadaver getting hacked up, and the sound of a saw on bone or a chisel being used to peel up the cranium are, ummm, memorable. At least you're spared the odor and the textures.
I'd almost forgotten how muscular gross anatomy is—it takes some heft and brute force to take apart a body.
(via Mind Hacks)