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kbonham | November 5, 2010Most biological systems have trade-offs, so this really shouldn't come as a surprise. A recent paper published in Science shows that in sheep, some females have a stronger immune system and tend to live longer, but also tend to reproduce less often. This seemed to translate to roughly equal reproductive fitness over the course of their lives. It's a cool study, clearly involving a lot of work (they took samples over the course of a decade). The New York Times comes soooo close to having a great science article - they just forgot one thing.
They found that the average life span of the 410 ewes…
cwilcox | November 5, 2010It's official! The results are in, and thanks to all of you, I came in first place in the $10,000 Blogging Scholarship!
I know I owe a lot of people thanks (all 135,000 some odd of you!), but first and foremost I'd like to thank PZ Myers. Without his support, the outcome would have been very different. So thank you, PZ! Expect some nice things from Hawaii in the mail soon.
As for the rest of you - PZ's hordes, my tweeps, facebook friends, blog followers, and reddit users - I don't know how to thank you. The outpouring of support from the science community has been overwhelming, and I feel…
gregladen | November 4, 2010The answer to the eternal question turns out to be:
"Nobody knows" ... but we have some theories
jgoldman | November 4, 2010
I don't often get too personal on this blog, but today is an important day. Fifteen years ago, Israeli Prime Minster Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated after speaking at a peace rally in Tel Aviv in Kikar Malchei Yisrael (now called Kikar Rabin).
I don't have very many flashbulb memories from my childhood, but one of my most vivid memories were of watching PM Rabin and Chairman Arafat sign the Oslo Accords on the South Lawn of the White House on September 13, 1993. I was in the third grade, and we were allowed into the teachers room (!) where there was a TV set up so we could watch the…
pharyngula | November 4, 2010You've got one more day to vote for Christie Wilcox to win a $10,000 scholarship. Get in there!
cwilcox | November 3, 2010I couldn't help but be intrigued that my stiffest competition for winning the $10,000 Blogging Scholarship was a makeup blogger. What is it about cosmetics that is so appealing? Why do people wear makeup, and what might have caused early man to play around with blush and lipstick? Well, like everything else in life, a lot can be explained by science.
Makeup has been around for centuries. The earliest records of makeup use date back to around 3000 BC when ancient Egyptians used soot and other natural products to create their signature look. Evidence suggests that the origins of makeup may go…
gregladen | November 3, 2010
She refuses to answer. But she does plan to eliminate health care reform.
Chris Matthews has a great theory as to how Michele Bachmann's brain "works." Listen for it just past 3 minutes.
heathero | November 3, 2010[This post was originally published at webeasties.wordpress.com]
I was trained as an Environmental Scientist long before I was at all interested in Microbes. So, I get excited when I come across microbial studies that are environmentally relevant. I get particularly nerd-cited when these studies take place in the ocean. A paper published in PNAS last month describes identifies what may be the key environmental factor distinguishing the evolution of microbial populations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific sub-tropical gyres.
The finding that populations of the abundant, widespread, and…
kbonham | November 3, 2010If you're in the Boston area, come see me (and two other awesome grad students) give a talk on microbes, especially the ones that live in you and on you.
We've got everything from fecal transplants to whether bacteria can make you fat or not. Come out to Armenise amphitheater at the Harvard Medical School at 7pm, you won't regret it!
gregladen | November 2, 2010Which I take to be some kind of improvement.
Human rights advocates who felt that this resolution wasn't exactly what they were looking for have continued to fight on behalf of Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two. But according to the International Committee Against Stoning, Iranian authorities have given the green light for Ashtiani's execution to take place as early as tomorrow, November 3rd. And it's not clear what means they ended up deciding on to take her life, or if they're going to go ahead and stone her after all.
Well, maybe they will stone her.
Click here, learn more, sign the…
gregladen | November 2, 2010Have a look at the Carnival of Evolution and the I and the Bird Carnival. Both have lists of excellent, amazingly wonderful non-political bird and evolution posts, the best of the best in the blogosphere for these topics.
jgoldman | November 2, 2010
Carnival of Evolution #29 is being hosted this month at Byte Size Biology. Click on the big green button for lots of evolutionary wonderfulness.
pronald | November 2, 2010 The Economist is running an online debate and we need your vote.
Vote here.
My opening statement:
The number of people on Earth is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9 billion by 2050 with food demands expected to rise by 70%. How will we feed them? If we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions of birds and billions of insects will die, scarce water will be wasted, greenhouse gas emissions will increase and farm workers will be exposed to harmful chemicals. Clearly, the future of our planet requires that we improve the…
pharyngula | November 1, 2010If you haven't voted for Christie Wilcox yet, get on over there and help! She's got the lead, but it's slipping right now.
Think of it as practice for tomorrow, when all you Americans will get out and vote for the good guys. Right? Right?
Or at least the not-so-evil guys. We're just trying to keep the riff-raff out of control.
heathero | November 1, 2010Hi ScienceBlogs... it is GREAT to be here!
I just spent the weekend with many of the scientists whose research has comprised the bulk of my reading material (ie brain-biggering) over the last 1.5 years... yikes! I also got to meet many other young scientists hoping to make a career out of this crazy science game. It was totally awesome, and quite a whirlwind.
I was at the 2010 Ridge2000 community meeting in Portland, OR. It was a meeting of about 140 people united by their shared interested in better understanding what goes on at mid-ocean ridges. We represented disciplines ranging from…
kbonham | November 1, 2010We beasties came together through our love of microbes, but also through a graduate student group called Science in the News. SITN is completely run by graduate students, and our mission (much like the mission of this blog) is to share our love of science with the general public. We have a lot of events to this end, from school out-reach to a monthly newsletter to Science Cafes (called "Science by the pint" - we basically get drunk and talk science with whoever happens to be in the bar). But our main event is a lecture series every fall.
And it just so happens that this week, I'll be…
pronald | November 1, 2010November 1 begins the rainy season in California and it is time for Kori's newsletter about The Market Garden at the Student Farm.
Kori tells us that all over the farm the rains have called forth the hoards of sleeping winter weed seedlings, and the dry, dusty brown is transforming rapidly. It is as though the earth is growing a brilliant green winter coat! Everywhere you look, tiny cotyledons are springing open above the soil surface.
Onn Friday they planted four rows of onions, and were hoping that the promised rains would water them in for us. Instead we had such beautiful weather that…
cwilcox | November 1, 2010One of the toughest concepts to grasp about evolution is its lack of direction. Take the classic image of the evolution of man, from knuckle-walking ape to strong, smart hunter:
We view this as the natural progression of life. Truth is, there was no guarantee that some big brained primates in Africa would end up like we are now. It wasn't inevitable that we grew taller, less hairy, and smarter than our relatives. And it certainly wasn't guaranteed that single celled bacteria-like critters ended up joining forces into multicellular organisms, eventually leading to big brained primates!…
kbonham | November 1, 2010I was there! Not that it was easy. We decided to park in VA (in the parking garage of the National Science foundation - totally by accident) and take the metro in, but evidently the entire world had the same idea; the metro was about a 2 hour wait, and the bus stop had like 3 buses worth of people, and only two buses scheduled in the next hour. So we decided to walk the 6 miles to the National Mall, with less than an hour before the thing started. I was at Obama's inauguration two years ago, and there were screens and speakers all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, but apparently Comedy Central…