Science
oracknows | June 22, 2006The latest Tangled Bank has been posted. Go get your science fix there.
Over at Emergiblog, a new nursing blog carnival (Change of Shift) has been inaugurated with Volume 1, Number 1.
pharyngula | June 22, 2006This new strange question is sweeping the scienceblogs: "what kind of scientist is Batman?"
The answer is obvious.
He's a fictional scientist. He's a member of a long and distinguished lineage, from Tom Swift to Grissom of CSI, of imaginary scientists written by people who don't know any science, and who imbue their characters with cross-disciplinary super powers and give everyone a false impression of just how easy and unambiguous scientific research is.
Not all fictional scientists have to be so cartoonishly omniscient, though. I recommend Allegra Goodman's Intuition(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)…
pharyngula | June 22, 2006
While I was out playing all day yesterday, a new Tangled Bank appeared at Centrerion. I'm so late in my announcement that you've probably all read it already, but if you haven't, there's much science writing to occupy you for a while.
pharyngula | June 21, 2006
PvM at the Panda's Thumb has already written a bit about this issue in the article "Human Gland Probably Evolved From Gills", but I'm not going to let the fact that I'm late to the party stop me from having fun with it. This is just such a darned pretty story that reveals how deeply vertebrate similarities run, using multiple lines of evidence.
Here's the start of the situation: fish have a problem. Like most animals, they need to maintain a specific internal salt concentration, but they are immersed in a solution that is much more dilute they they are (for freshwater fish) or much more…
oracknows | June 21, 2006Via Evolving Thoughts, this article about Ann Coulter's misrepresentation of the Dover case is just too good for me not to link to also. Best excerpt:
One part of her latest book that's getting little notice is the part that deals with Dover and what is purported to be the "debate" over evolution.
She begins her screed by saying that liberals have contempt for science.
What?
She offers as proof that liberals support stem-cell research.
Yes, I know, I don't get it either.
Lots of conservatives also support stem-cell research. Nancy Reagan, for one. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for another. Gov.…
pharyngula | June 21, 2006
Cephalopods can inflict a nasty bite. On their underside, at the conjunction of their arms, they have a structure called the beak which does look rather like a bird's beak, and which can close with enough force to crush shellfish. Many also dribble toxins into the wound that can cause pain, tissue necrosis, and paralysis. They aren't the best animals to play with.
If you think about it, though, cephalopods don't have a rigid internal skeleton. How do they get the leverage to move a pair of sharp-edged beaks relative to one another, and what the heck are they doing with a hard beak anyway?…
catdynamics | June 20, 2006Beautiful post by Tara on network connectivity and outbreak of exponential spread in disease transmission.
drorzel | June 20, 2006For those interested in keeping abreast of the latest stuff on string theory and its discontents, some links:
Jonathan Shock is based in Beijing, and blogging about the Strings 2006 meeting. He's got a first-day recap including descriptions of several of the talks, and incident events.
Victor Rivelles is also blogging from Beijing, and has recaps of day one and day two.
The Paper of Record loves Stephen Hawking, and writes about his visit to China for the conference.
Christine Dantas has re-posted her top ten lists (which were taken down in part due to some unpleasant comment behavior). The…
oracknows | June 20, 2006Time - He's waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me, boys
Time - He flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
His trick is you and me, boy
Time - In Quaaludes and red wine
Demanding Billy Dolls
And other friends of mine
Take your time
Excerpted from Time by David Bowie(one of my favorite Bowie songs)
Uh-oh.
This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question strikes a bit close to home. This week, our Seed overlords demand of us:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary…
drorzel | June 19, 2006The big event of the moment in physics, at least on the high energy/ theory side, is the Strings 2006 meeting in Beijing, which will feature the usual suspects talking about the usual topics in string theory. This comes on the heels of the SUSY06 meeting, which was extensively blogged by Clifford and others.
This would probably be a good time to post a long entry about how string theory is all a bunch of crap, as that's been a reliable way to generate traffic in the past, but I just don't really have the heart for it. From my outsider's perspective, the big issues seem to be exactly the same…
drorzel | June 19, 2006Inside Higher Ed has an article today on a study of career tracks that found markedly different results for different ethnic groups. This ought to be interesting data for the endless debates about diersity in science hiring, especially this tidbit:
Asian doctorates - 51 percent of them - are far and away the most likely to be employed in industry. White doctorates are the next closest at 29 percent, and blacks are the lowest at 19 percent.
Honestly, though, I don't have the foggiest idea what it means. That's a really big gap, though, and I'm sure somebody will come up with a theory of why…
pharyngula | June 18, 2006The very first edition of Mendel's Garden, a genetics carnival, is now up at The force that through….
While I'm at it, let me remind everyone that a new Tangled Bank will be appearing at Centrerion on Wednesday—now is the time to send entries to me or host@tangledbank.net.
pharyngula | June 17, 2006My kids like these energy drinks that are so popular nowadays—so it's useful to learn what is in Red Bull. It looks like I won't have to slap that can out of their hands next time I catch the whippersnappers drinking it (although I may have to give them a lecture about being thrifty—we fogies have to have something to complain about.)
pharyngula | June 16, 2006I've been listening to Bethell vs. Mooney on Science Friday, and I've come to one conclusion: I really need to slap Ira Flatow. Repeatedly. And maybe kick him a few times, too.
He was playing right into Bethell's hands. Bethell was rambling and vague, and he went on and on, and Flatow fed into it. Mooney had to interrupt several times and demand a chance to rebut (and good for him—he was on the attack, as he needed to be), and at least once Flatow stopped Mooney for a commercial and then asked Bethell to follow up afterwards.
Worse, Flatow wouldn't allow any depth. They'd start getting into…
pharyngula | June 16, 2006
The diagram above shows the early cleavages of the embryo of the scaphopod mollusc, Dentalium. You may notice a few peculiarities: the first cleavage is asymmetric, producing a cell called AB and a larger sister cell, CD. Before the second division, CD makes a large bulge, called a polar lobe, and it almost looks like it's a three-cell stage—this is called a trefoil embryo, and can look a bit like Mickey Mouse. The second division produces an A, a B, a C, and a D cell, and there's that polar lobe, about as large as the regular cells, so that it now resembles a 5-cell embryo. What's going on…
pharyngula | June 16, 2006
Maternal effect genes are a special class of genes that have their effect in the reproductive organs of the mutant; they are interesting because the mutant organism may appear phenotypically normal, and it is the progeny that express detectable differences, and they do so whether the progeny have inherited the mutant gene or not. That sounds a little confusing, but it really isn't that complex. I'll explain it using one canonical example of a maternal effect gene, bicoid.
Bicoid is a gene that is essential for normal axis formation in the fly, Drosophila. It is this gene product that…
pharyngula | June 16, 2006We have received most excellent news from Seed: notice that challenge bar to the left, where I (and many other science bloggers) are asking you to donate to public education? We're doing great—my challenge has gathered over a thousand dollars so far, all to help out teachers and schoolkids—but now Seed has announced that they will match the total donations, up to $10,000. Double your money!
I've set a goal of raising $2000 for teachers, but I've got a dozen projects listed, and they're going to need more than that if all are to be fully funded. If I hit the goal, don't stop—you can keep…
pharyngula | June 16, 2006Darksyde has a summary of the science panel in which he says nice things about us speakers…but I'm sure that what everyone will want to see is the link to a transcript of Wes Clark's speech.
oracknows | June 16, 2006Over at the Nature blogs, they're soliciting comments and opinions about open peer review:
The goal of any change in the peer review system must be to improve the quality of review, where quality is determined by two distinct functions: filtering manuscripts for publication in a given journal; and making constructive suggestions on how the manuscript or study could be improved. Would open review (in which reviewers sign their reviews) accomplish this goal? I have experienced several cases of open review, intentional and unintentional, with mixed results.
It's an interesting question, which…
drorzel | June 16, 2006Rob Knop has another post to which I can only say "Amen!", this time on the relatioship between simulation and experiment (in response to this BoingBoing post about a Sandia press release):
Can simulations show us things that experiments cannot? Absolutely! In fact, if they didn't, we wouldn't bother doing simulations. This has been true for a long time. With experiments, we are limited to the resolution and capabilities of our detectors. In astronomy, for example, we don't have the hundreds of millions of years necessary to watch the collision of a pair of galaxies unfold. All we can look at…