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loom | June 8, 2008
Imagine that mad scientists defied nature and violated the barriers between species. They injected human DNA into non-human creatures, altering their genomes into chimeras--unnatural fusions of man and beast. The goal of the scientists was to enslave these creatures, to exploit their cellular machinery for human gain. The creatures began to produce human proteins, so many of them that they become sick, in some cases even dying. The scientists harvest the proteins, and then, breaching the sacred barrier between species yet again, people injected the unnatural molecules into their own bodies…
gregladen | June 7, 2008Minnesota Atheists' "Atheists Talk" radio show
Sunday, June 8, 2008, 9-10 a.m. Central Time
The first half hour will feature an interview with James Kakalios, author of "The Physics of Superheroes."
The second half hour will feature August Berkshire discussing his essay "The Problem of Evil: The Top 12 Excuses Religious People Give for the Horrible Behavior of their God."
"Atheists Talk" airs live on AM 950 KTNF in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.
To stream live, go here.
Podcasts of past shows are available at Minnesota Atheists or
through iTunes. For all other podcast systems, such as…
cortex | June 7, 2008Dave Munger has a great post on how fMRI images bias the brain. The researchers asked 156 students at Colorado State University to evaluate three different summaries of brain research. As you can probably guess (especially if you're familiar with this research) the students gave significantly higher ratings for "scientific reasoning" to articles accompanied by pretty pictures of brains. Anatomy is persuasive.
In a final experiment, McCabe and Castel modified a real write-up of a real brain-imaging study, which argued that brain imaging can be used as a lie detector. Students read one of two…
petnoyer | June 7, 2008A group of five European recreational divers separated from their dive boat in Komodo National Park, Indonesia later came ashore on a nearby island only to find themselves fending off a Komodo dragon and scraping mussels from the rocks for food. The group was rescued two days later. Read more here at CNN Asia.
The currents can rip in the Flores Sea, so when diving Indonesia, stay close to your dive buddy, and stay close to the boat. Oh, and pack a lunch. Failing that, prepare to do battle with dragons and pirates.
sb admin | June 6, 2008by revere (originally posted at Effect Measure)
Does the Obama candidacy signal a return of "the sixties"? It's possible. What does that mean? Even those us who were there remember the sixties imperfectly. Not because we were permanently stoned. Memory is selective. We remember it as better than it was. We were young, and that makes a difference.Yet, as tristero observes over at Digby's place, the sixties were not just a time of flowering creativity and the securing of new freedoms, but also a terrible, difficult and dark time for anyone who had any political awareness.
The run-up to the…
jessica.sachs | June 6, 2008Carl, of course, is right in that it wasn't long ago that biologists scoffed at the idea of bacteria being more than bags of chemistry. Carl's thoughtful reply to my question included what, for me, is the best distillation of what virus's "are." He writes,
"So viruses may or may not be alive, but they are definitely a part of life."
And as John and several commenters point out, viruses sure as hell evolve!
Still, I find myself in the gotta-have-metabolism camp. To me, that's the dividing line between chemistry and biology.
As Carl notes in the section "The Shape of Life," (page 20), "But on…
pharyngula | June 6, 2008Jeff, the Blue Collar Scientist, has just been diagnosed with liver cancer. Pay him a virtual visit and let him know that we expect him to get well soon and are quite pleased that modern science gives him good prospects for a long, productive, and happy life.
cortex | June 6, 2008Kottke links to some early reviews of cinema. Needless to say, hyperbole ruled the day. As one critic proclaimed:
Photography has ceased to record immobility. It perpetuates the image of movement. When these gadgets are in the hands of the public, when anyone can photograph the ones who are dear to them, not just in their immobile form, but with movement, action, familiar gestures and the words out of their mouths, then death will no longer be absolute, final.
But Hollywood didn't erase death and the internet won't nullify time, space, geography, etc. Technology is marvelous, but human nature…
cortex | June 6, 2008Humans are exquisitely social animals, and yet we're vulnerable to some pretty stunning flaws in social cognition. Unfortunately, most of these flaws are on full display during a presidential campaign. Consider the false rumor, which can influence our beliefs even when it has been debunked. The most powerful example of this phenomenon, of course, is the swift-boating of John Kerry. It didn't matter that every reputable news source found most of the charges to be misleading. The sheer fact that Kerry was being accused of lying was enough to impugn his honesty. Even when we're found innocent, a…
petnoyer | June 6, 2008The Global Oceanographic Data Center (GODAC) has a webpage of favorite deep-sea videos from the Japanese Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) with cool names like "Milky Way floats on the abyss" and "Unusual atmosphere". What better way to whittle away the hours AND do your research at the same time?
The JAMSTEC video database at GODAC....
...provides streaming of the valuable deep-sea research videos maintained by JAMSTEC, along with various detailed information (metadata) including research location, purpose, video content (organism names and phenomena recorded), and…
petnoyer | June 6, 2008
The deep-sea cup coral Flabellum deludens Marenzeller 1904, from the Philippines between 200 - 700 m depth. More here at the Ocean Biogeographic Information System.
kevin z | June 5, 2008
Being a marine biologist is a tough occupation. Long stretches out at sea, weeks at end, with nothing but memories to accompany you.
This song is about trying to forget what you left behind at the docks. Being hundreds of miles from land. Its a hard feeling to describe.
There are times when you snuggle up to the swells holding her tight. Hours looking at the horizon for something, whatever that is. Perhaps watching the coconuts and palm leaves drift by the ship. Other times are spent alone at the bow watching the midnight bioluminescence sparkle the crest of the waves.
During these times…
cortex | June 5, 2008It's been recognized for a few years that drinking diet sodas can actually cause weight gain, since the phony sweetness of artificial sweeteners disrupts the "predictive relationship" between a sweet taste and caloric satisfaction. In other words, people drink a diet Coke when they are craving a sweet pick-me-up. However, because the soda doesn't actually contain any calories, the craving remains unsatisfied. The end result is that rodents (and people) end up consuming more calories later on. The craving returns with a vengeance. Here, for instance, is the abstract for a recent paper in…
cortex | June 5, 2008Allegra Goodman is a marvelous writer. Intuition, her last novel, was an uncannily accurate depiction of the slog of a science lab. It captured the epic tedium of empiricism, the way experiments are ambiguous even when they work. (And they so rarely work!) I bring her up now because she just wrote a gorgeous few paragraphs on religion, faith and doubt. The piece doesn't neatly slot into the religious wars of scienceblogs - Goodman isn't devout about anything - but it manages to express an idea that I often struggle to put in words. She begins by talking about the boredom of a child when…
petnoyer | June 5, 2008Ship strikes are a common source of mortality for right whales and humpbacks in the North Atlantic. CNN runs a story on how a plan to save critically endangered right whales is muddled in bureaucracy thanks to...
The World Shipping Council, an industry group representing more than two dozen global shipping companies, filed documents with the U.S. federal government opposing the speed limits [to protect 300 remaining right whales] saying the change would cause "significant economic costs".
The group even suggested that if large ships went faster through the whales' habitat, the chance of a…
loom | June 4, 2008Jessica asked if I think viruses are alive. John has given his opinion. I will waffle, but I hope in an interesting way. The hard thing about answering that question is that we'd have to agree on what it means to be alive.
We all have a sense that we know what's alive and what's not, but I think that sense is really just an intuition. We use different circuits in our brains for recognizing biological motion, for example, as opposed to the motion of rocks or cars or other dead things. But the trouble comes when we try to turn that intuition into definition. We can see that things that look…
cortex | June 4, 2008Sometimes, when I walk through international airports, I get a little sad about the homogeneity of homo sapiens. I guess it's an inevitable by-product of globalization and modernity, but I can't help but wish that we didn't all drink Starbucks and wear Nike shoes and listen to Rihanna on our iPods.
So when I see pictures like this (and you better click on that link) I'm utterly shocked. The world isn't all flat: somewhere, somehow, members of my own species are living a completely different sort of life. And then I wonder what the people in red body paint were thinking. Did they just…
cmcclain | June 4, 2008I believe the mighty Mark Powell is to blame for this. But what can you do but join them?
cortex | June 4, 2008Last year, some drunken teens decided to trash the house of Robert Frost. The teens are now being required by a judge to take poetry classes focusing on the verse of Frost:
Using "The Road Not Taken" and another poem as jumping-off points, Frost biographer Jay Parini hopes to show the vandals the error of their ways -- and the redemptive power of poetry.
"I guess I was thinking that if these teens had a better understanding of who Robert Frost was and his contribution to our society, that they would be more respectful of other people's property in the future and would also learn something…
jdennehy | June 4, 2008It has been suggested that the first posts of this book club be devoted to the Universal Rules of Life. So... What is life?
Jessica asks,
Carl, twice in the book you refer to viruses as "creatures." Perhaps you used the word metaphorically. In any case I'd love to know whether you think viruses qualify as being alive, and I'd love to hear your reasoning either way.
Historically, viruses have been considered non-living. Some of the first discoverers of viruses, Frederick Twort for example, thought they were enzymes secreted by bacteria. Other biologists, such as Felix d'Herelle, contended…