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An international team of researchers, including Monash University biochemists, has discovered evidence at the molecular level in support of one of the key tenets of Darwin's theory of evolution.
... that it happened ...
Trevor Lithgow said the breakthrough, funded by the Australian Research Council and published recently in the prestigious journal PNAS, provides a blueprint for a general understanding of the evolution of the "machinery" of our cells.
"Our cells, and the cells of all organisms, are composed of molecular machines. These machines are built of component parts, each of which…
You may know that much of the climate change on earth over the last two million years-the coming and going of ice ages-is caused by the "orbital geometry" of the planet. The amount of planetary tilt and the time of year the tilt occurs change over time. When the Northern Hemisphere is less tilted towards the sun on June 21st, and at the same time the Earth is as far from the sun in its elliptical orbit as it ever gets, ice age conditions prevail. This makes ice ages on Earth pretty regular, cyclic, events....
... Read the rest of this amazing blog post here!!!!
Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday of atonement. It's traditional to fast on Yom Kippur for all the usual religious reasons - not eating is a way to elevate the spirit and purify the mind (or so says the Talmud). It makes the sacred day feel a little less ordinary.
I have to confess: I'm a terrible faster. When I don't eat, my thoughts don't become more ethereal and holy - they become fixated on calories, so that the only thing I can listen to is the impatient gurgling of my stomach. (My belly drowns out the sermon.) I get cranky and tired and squander hours daydreaming about ice…
The De-Fund Acorn Act of 2009: Shame. Maybe even illegal.
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Do not watch this if you can't handle geeks wearing viking hats.
Video created by The Sneer Review.
Since I have recently developed quite a history of visiting cold and snowy places, often during the winter (remember Morris, Minnesota in January? Or how about Helsinki, Finland in November, then again in February?), I wish to preserve that tradition. I am competing for the opportunity to go to Antarctica in February 2010 -- a dream adventure that I've always wanted to pursue (and almost did pursue when I was an undergraduate researching Fin Whales and Crabeater Seals at the University of Washington). To enter, all candidates must publish a picture of…
Here at The Lake I don't get enough intertubules to watch a video reliably. So I can't separate the DJ effect from the Slow Connection effect in this video, but it looks good:
The Cuban Rapper AL2 of the bad Los Aldeanos has been arrested by the Cuban Police, and released. Meanwhile, some of his personal effects including a computer were confiscated. Rappers are considered very dangerous by the Cuban government. You may recall a major bust up of a concert there a few weeks ago. I think this arrest was not entirely unexpected.
The following is a statement from very close to the source of the events that that was sent to me by Emetrece for your information.
Statement from La Aldea regarding the arrest of AL2 (Los Aldeanos)
At this time, La Aldea is confirming…
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published recently at Lab Rat. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 12th edition.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The host for the upcoming 5 October edition will be me. To send your…
In my essay on social networks and research of Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, I describe a few of the striking medical effects produced by social networks:
By studying Framingham as an interconnected network rather than a mass of individuals, Christakis and Fowler made a remarkable discovery: Obesity spread like a virus. Weight gain had a stunning infection rate. If one person became obese, the likelihood that his friend would follow suit increased by 171 percent. (This means that the network is far more predictive of obesity than the presence of genes associated with the condition.)
A…
Did you ever wonder about what I do in my spare time? Did you ever wonder about The Eastern Pacific Black Ghost Shark? Well, these things are connected....
For this week and next, I'll be guest blogging at the Smithsonian, and my first blog post there, is on The Eastern Pacific Black Ghost Shark. More specifically, I'll be covering the Surprising Science Blog while the usual excellent blogging staff (mainly Sarah Zielinski) is off for a couple of weeks.
So, please go over there and read about the fish with the sex organ sticking out of its head, and don't forget to leave a comment or…
I don't want my plant twittering me. It is bad enough that they are alway staring at me. Especially the one in the kitchen.
From Bora:
I do like that it is OpenSource
Which means we have to start guessing and taking bets on who will win the pretty prizes. MedGadget has a contest — leave a name there and maybe you'll win an iPod.
I have no idea who will win this year, so I'm not making an entry. I do think it's about time for Mark Ptashne to get the nod, though.
by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
A good story by the AP's Lauran Neergaard yesterday highlighted the need for better public health surveillance and the efforts being made to improve it so as to keep track of possible rare side effects from the swine flu vaccine. This is an issue we've talked about a lot here, most recently in the context of not being able to fully test any vaccine for rare adverse outcomes prior to deployment. There's more involved than that, but first here's Neergaard's lede:
The U.S. government is starting an unprecedented system to track possible side effects as…
Roman Polanski has been wanted by the Las Angeles police since he skipped town a few decades back before sentencing on an "unlawful sex with a minor" charge. That was the plea he copped for much more serious rape charges. He has more or less ignored the fugitive warrants because for some reason you can rape someone in the United States and then live in France and that's OK. Polanski was busted by Swiss officials when he went to Switzerland to receive a lifetime achievement award. He is expected to fight extradition.
Originally ...
Polanski -- a household name both for his movies and…
So, Barry, his brother Brian, and I decided to spend our Saturday tooling around the Wai'anae coast. For those of you who aren't familiar with Hawai'i, the Wai'anae coast extends west of Pearl Harbor up to Kaena point, shown in the map on the right in orange. It's drier than most of the island, which leads to less polluted runoff, making the water there spectacular.
So we had a nice day. We played at the beach. We laid out in the sun. And, we decided to play some football on a nice stretch of green near one of the Ko Olina lagoons. Here's some action footage that I thought was just amazing:…
They've got another one entering the fray in November, and they need your suggestions for a name.
It's a boy, which makes it harder. When we were in those distant childbearing years, I hit up taxonomy for interesting names, but for some reason, most Latin names always sound feminine to me. I was always fond of Ciona (Thaliacea and Styela are also pretty). It just doesn't work for a boy. It was one of the names I considered for my daughter, Skatje, but my wife squelched it when she saw what a urochordate looked like.
.... of the blog Highly Allochon ... Highly Allochthon ... no, wait, .. Got it Highly Allochthonous.