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razib | May 2, 2008Saw Iron Man with that genderist SOB Jake Young. All I can say is that it is nice that G. K. Paltrow finally has a hit on her hands after all these years....
petnoyer | May 2, 2008This is the fourth in a series of five referenced articles on the shared characteristics of deep and shallow water corals.
Shallow water corals reefs have been called "the rainforests of the sea" because nooks and crannies created by reef building corals form micro-habitats for other animals, like trees in the rainforest create habitats for beetles and birds. On the coral reef, these niches are home to small mobile species like gobies, gastropods, shrimps, crabs, and seastars; and sessile fauna like bristleworms and sponges. A single 10cm radius colony of Oculina sp. in the shallow Gulf of…
petnoyer | May 2, 2008How does Coral Week end? With a bang or a whimper? Can you tell? I still don't know.
Three stories still sit on my desktop. While I polish them off, consider this:
Coral reefs are in decline around the world, and species are disappearing every day. But new species are being discovered, too. So, can society mitigate species loss by investing in species discovery? Below the fold is a graphic illustrating coral species discovery rates since the 1750's.
Reference:
Cairns, SD. 2007. Deep-water corals: an overview with special reference to diversity and distribution of deep-water scleractinian…
cortex | May 2, 2008Razib has some thought-provoking, if incorrect, speculations on literature, literary audiences and modernity:
Here's the argument: contemporary mainstream fiction is very different from the storytelling of the deep past because of a demand side shift. Women consume most fiction today, and their tastes differ, on average, from those of men. How do they differ? To be short about it men are into plot, while women are into character. This means that modern literary fiction emphasizes psychological complexity, subtly and finesse. In contrast, male-oriented action adventure or science fiction…
petnoyer | May 2, 2008
Marine aquarists have a photographic edge on field photographers. Their work is fixed, dry, and well-lit, while field photogs slosh back and forth with one finger on the camera and one on the reef while trying to avoid fire coral and maintain buoyancy. No wonder aquarists get such sharp focus.
A favorite gallery for coral reef creatures is Clippo's "Digital Reefs Gallery". More than 900 images decorate the site, and they're not mucked up with embedded credits. Go ahead, take all day. He's got macro shots, fish, echinoderms and crustaceans, too. The photo of the yellow sun coral (Tubastrea…
cmcclain | May 1, 2008Coral spawning occurs when multiple corals release their gametes at the same moment. The underwater love fests are triggered by the moon, temperature, and mood music (Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe). All this sexual activity underwater can trigger other organisms to join in. Basically little colored balls consisting of both sperm and eggs, wrapped in a mucus, detach and float away. These love packets eventually break apart due to water movement. Now the real action happens were sperm and eggs seek each other out. When a match occurs, the development of the larvae ensues that hangs in…
eklemetti | May 1, 2008Welcome to the inaugural post on Eruptions, a weblog about volcanic eruptions, volcanoes and the people who live near them. I'm going to attempt to compile everything I can about volcanic eruptions currently going on worldwide on this weblog in a hope to foster better understanding of volcanic eruptions, clarify and correct popular media reports on volcanoes and generally hope to get people excited about learning more about the dynamic realm of eruptions.Â
As for me, I actively research volcanoes at UC Davis and have a Ph.D. in igneous petrology (the study of molten rocks and volcanoes) from…
kevin z | May 1, 2008It has been one amazing coraliscious week! I'm learning a ton and have enjoyed the guest articles and all the blogger contributions. Maybe you just can't get enough coral, like me?? Well have I got the cure! As Bruce Dickinson might have said had known how fabulous deep sea coral is, "Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more coral!"
Michael Barton attempts a remedy by dispersing some Darwin for us. Darwin Online now has an article (open access) by Rosen in 1982, published in BioScience, describing Darwin's earliest work in... you guessed it... coral reefs!
Have had…
pharyngula | May 1, 2008I'm confused by the consequences of the Virginia twisters.
Brenda Williams, 43, returned Tuesday to the shopping center where she was buried beneath a collapsed ceiling in a manicure shop during the storm. She was pulled to safety by a stranger, she said.
"I'm not lucky, I'm blessed," said Williams, who had a 2-inch gash stitched above her left eyebrow and stitches on her right forearm. "I'm fine. I'm here. I'm in the land of the living."
She retrieved possessions from her car, which was flipped on its roof and destroyed in the parking lot.
Why was Ms Williams praying to be buried beneath a…
sb admin | May 1, 2008The Washington Post is running a series on the global food crisis, and if you haven't read it yet, it's worth a look.Â
In The New Economics of Hunger, Anthony Faiola explains how what started as an apparent blip in wheat prices has mushroomed into widespread hunger and unrest:
The convergence of events has thrown world food supply and demand out of whack and snowballed into civil turmoil. After hungry mobs and violent riots beset Port-au-Prince, Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Ãdouard Alexis was forced to step down this month. At least 14 countries have been racked by food-related violence.…
pharyngula | May 1, 2008The infamous proposed Christianist license plate for the state of Florida, the one that said "I believe", is dead. The supportive faith rays emanating from the prayerful public were apparently not strong enough to overcome the ass-suing beams radiating from the likes of the ACLU.
Boy, so far this day of prayer seems to be working out well for us godless, prayer-free heathens. God must be working in his mysterious ways again.
cortex | May 1, 2008Now that the boomers are entering their sixties, the problem of age-related cognitive decline is going to become a serious mental health issue. The aged brain often suffers from a bevy of symptoms, from memory loss to problems with concentration. The question, of course, is what causes these symptoms?
Over at Mind Matters, we recently featured an interesting post on some recent research that tried to answer these pertinent questions. The short answer is that, over time, the different parts of the brain becomes less interconnected.
Jessica Andrews-Hanna and her colleagues at Harvard…
petnoyer | May 1, 2008Always thoughtful Mark Powell of Blogfish says corals are "the canary in the coal mine", and points out a list of political actions you can take to help preserve fragile coral reef habitats.
Commenter Jives from the The New Blue contributes two stories about the Giant Ocean Tank at the New England Aquarium. Remodeling doubled the number of species and individuals in the tank by adding a magic ingredient--a massive coral reef replica. Coral biologist extraordinaire Dr. Les Kaufman tells his story as one of the principal designers.
And finally, Lucia Malla from Uma Malla pelo Mundo in Brazil is…
petnoyer | May 1, 2008
Speaking of explosives, the nematocyst, or stinging cell, is one character that binds all cnidarians together. The nematocyst is "high tech cellular weaponry", the unparalleled apex of organelle specialization (Boero et al 2007), and the fastest known biological structure (Tardent, 1995). From ScienceDaily, the discharge kinetics of nematocysts in Hydra to be as short as 700 nanoseconds, creating an acceleration of up to 5,410,000 g. Take that mantis shrimp! A dramatization is above, with narration in French.
References:
1. Boero et al. 2007. Cnidarian milestones in metazoan evolution. Int…
petnoyer | May 1, 2008News outlets enjoyed a field day last month reporting on the amazing vitality of Porites sp. coral colonies in the South Pacific Bikini Atoll where Americans tested the fifth most powerful atom bomb ever exploded 54 years ago. The Bravo bomb was a 1000 times more powerful than the bomb at Hiroshima. It vaporized three islands, raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees, rocked islands 200km away and left a crater 2km wide and 73m deep. According to a recent field survey, the crater is filled today with luxuriant coral beds.
Trees of branching Porites coral up to 8m high have been established…
petnoyer | April 30, 2008Since the first day of Coral Week we've been joking that a proper invertebrate carnival should include recipes, especially if its Scallop Week or Oyster Week.* Alas, nobody eats coral, even as a snack. Yes, people eat sea anemones and jellyfish, but they would have to be seriously, deliriously, Castaway hungry to eat a coral. Or else corals would have been gone long ago... But, this does NOT mean coral is without natural enemies.
If you scuba dive on West Atlantic coral reefs, you probably know that Hawksbill turtles frequent the habitat, and eat sponges, but did you know that sea turtles…
sb admin | April 30, 2008After so many stories about tainted drugs and food, here's some good news for a change: The FDA plans to hire hundreds of new employees to help it fulfill its responsibilities to assure the safety of food, drugs, cosmetics, and medical devices.
They've identified a critical need for "medical officers, consumer safety officers, chemists, nurse consultants, biologists, microbiologists, health/regulatory/general health scientists, mathematical statisticians, epidemiologists, pharmacologists, pharmacists and veterinary medical officers" in their DC-area office as well as U.S. regional and…
grrlscientist | April 30, 2008Wow, you guys! I learned that the National Geographic Traveler blog has picked up on my subway art series. The author wrote an amusing little story and included lots of links to the AMNH subway art series of photographs, which you helped with by helping me ID some of the animal species.