Uncategorized
grrlscientist | April 28, 2008tags: Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen, poetry, National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me).
Today's poem was suggested by a reader, Mike, who writes "This has been one of my favorites for a long time. It reminds me that poetry need not be beautiful, nor speak of beautiful things to be meaningful. Indeed it is the very ugliness of this poem and the situation that sticks with me and makes it all the more poignant."
Dulce et Decorum Est…
cortex | April 28, 2008War Emblem, the 2002 Kentucky Derby winner, is one finicky horse:
By all accounts, he [War Emblem] is a happy horse -- gamboling through fields most of the day, showing the turn of foot that propelled him to lead every step of the way in America's greatest horse race.
In reality, however, War Emblem is in therapy.
He is isolated from the other studs at Shadai Stallion Station in the hope that he will feel safe and more confident in his sexuality. Mares surround him in an effort to revive a long-dormant libido.
"We know he is fertile, but he has no interest in mares," said Dr. Nobuo Tsunoda,…
pharyngula | April 28, 2008A reader reminded me of a good corrective to the awful little man who claims that science leads to killing people: a dose of Jacob Bronowski.
"When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods."
My students in introductory biology will be watching this whole episode next week — I wish there were a way we could spare the time to have them watch the whole series … which, come to think of it, would make for an excellent framework to discuss the history of science.
petnoyer | April 27, 2008This is first in a series of five referenced articles about shared characteristics in deep-sea and shallow-water corals.
Deep-sea corals are benthic suspension feeders in the classes Anthozoa and Hydrozoa. They share the Phylum Cnidaria along with the jellyfish, sea anemones, and the siphonophores. Cnidarians all share one common trait, a stinging cell called the cnidocite, which is the fastest known biological structure (1) and the unparalleled apex of organelle specialization (2).
Cnidocite structures, aka nematocysts, or stinging cells, are housed within the tentacles of the polyps.…
pharyngula | April 27, 2008Warning: this is an extremely disturbing video. It's of an unpleasant and rather personal surgery, in which a man had a can of perfumed body spray stuck in a certain orifice, requiring a medical extraction. The circumstances and the graphic operation are distressing enough, but what's most horrifying are the medical staff — the room is packed with non-essential personnel who are laughing uproariously and mocking the patient, and of course, there's the other inappropriate circumstance, that someone taped this and then uploaded it to youtube. Keep that in mind if you're ever hospitalized in the…
cmcclain | April 27, 2008
A yellow stony coral courtesy "Mountains in the Sea" scientific party, NOAA, and the Institute for Exploration via Oceanus
cmcclain | April 27, 2008Given the comments on the last post, I thought it time to give almost-a-religion-major Craig a work out.
The origin of the word coral is traced to Greek korllion and Latin coralium probably both derived from the early Hebrew goral meaning "small pebble". In the Torah goral occurs in reference to small stones used in casting lots (Num. 33:54; Jonah 1:7). The word also may have denoted "a portion or an inheritance (Josh. 15:1; Ps. 125:3; Isa. 17:4), and a destiny, as assigned by God (Ps. 16:5; Dan. 12:13)."
In English translations the specific word coral also occurs:
Ezekiel 27:16 (text from…
petnoyer | April 27, 2008Coral is a polyphyletic term for polypoid animals in the cnidarian classes Anthozoa and Hydrozoa that secrete either 1) a black, horn like proteinaceous axis or 2) carbonate skeletal material in the form of either a) continuous skeleton or b) an assemblage of microscopic, individual sclerites (Cairns, 2007). That covers black corals, reef-building corals, solitary corals, and soft corals, respectively.
The word "coral" derives from Old French (say it with an accent!), but it appears in the Old Testament twice, so its origin may be Hebrew. The word first referred to the beautiful and precious…
grrlscientist | April 27, 2008tags: Survival Skills, Kay Ryan, poetry, National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). My poetry suggestions are starting to run dry, which means I can start posting my own favorites (but you've seen many of those already) or you can send me your favorite poems, which I probably haven't read before!
Today's poem was suggested by a reader, Nan, who writes "I lurk around ScienceBlogs and always enjoy your column. Geese are my passion and I…
petnoyer | April 26, 2008This is Coral Week. Not to be confused with International Year of the Reef 2008. The goal of this week is to pull you away from the reef, actually, down into the deeper, darker parts of the ocean where corals still thrive. We want to introduce you to the other corals, the maligned and neglected ones, like the octocorals (aka soft corals, or sea fans), the cup corals, the matrix formers, the black corals, and the zoantharians like the gold corals, which can grow to be 2000 years old. Deep corals hold secrets just like the shallow ones. They have alot in common, actually. We'll write about that…
pharyngula | April 26, 2008For a guy who has been dead for 126 years, he's pretty lively. You must see the result of a contest to caption a photo of Darwin's statue and the odious Ben Stein: trust me, Stein gets less than he deserves.
You just can't keep a brilliant man down. Charles Darwin also has a blog.
grrlscientist | April 26, 2008tags: Thank you, My Fate, Anna Swir, poetry, National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). My poetry suggestions are starting to run dry, which means I can start posting my own favorites (but you've seen many of those already) or you can send me your favorite poems, which I probably haven't read before!
Today's poem was suggested by a reader, Suzanne;
Thank you, My Fate
Great humility fills me,
great purity fills me,
I make love with my…
kevin z | April 26, 2008Continuing the series from VBS.tv's TOXIC-Garbage Island series. Contains some vulgar language. They finally actually do something, but they are still just as annoying. Yet, part 9 starts to nail it.
cortex | April 25, 2008I'm no forager. Once, I took a foraging class in Brooklyn's Prospect Park and managed to find varieties of poisonous mushrooms that even the instructor had never encountered before. (They looked like porcini mushrooms to me.) Nevertheless, I've gotten very excited this year about the wild chives that grow in a nearby field. I trust myself to forage for these chives because their oniony reek is unmistakable, allowing me to easily distinguish between the chives and the interspersed leaves of grass that are there just to trick me. If I were smart, I'd sell my harvest in the Union Square…
grrlscientist | April 25, 2008tags: Oda a la Tristeza, Pablo Neruda, poetry, National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). My poetry suggestions are starting to run dry, which means I can start posting my own favorites (but you've seen many of those already) or you can send me your favorite poems, which I probably haven't read before!
Today's poem was suggested by a reader, Dave;
Oda a la Tristeza
Tirsteza, escarabajo
de siete patas rotas,
huevo de telaraña,
rata…
cortex | April 25, 2008Razib calls my attention to this new Nature study on the genetic variation underlying the stress response. The researchers focused on neuropeptide Y, an endogenous anxiolytic (it's like an anti-anxiety drug naturally produced by the brain) which is released in response to stress. They focused on a single nucleotide polymorphism (aka SNP) which "alters NPY expression in vitro and seems to account for more than half of the variation in expression in vivo."
The pertinent question, of course, is how they measured variation in vivo. The researchers used a few different, and quite interesting,…
kevin z | April 25, 2008
Is that a gang sign that crab is flashing? West Side ya'll!
A half-blue lobster! Its cool how the mutation only affects part of the segment. In arthropods, each half of a segment is regulated by developmental patterning genes. Much work has been done on this in Drosophila research.
For more of the crustacean freak-show,including double crusher claws and albino lobsters, visit GoodMorningGloucester a wonderful blog that journals life on the docks in Gloucester. Make sure you sign up for their RSS feed!
kevin z | April 25, 2008Continuing the series, here is parts 6 and 7 from VBS.tv's series TOXIC-Garbage Island. Contains some vulgar language. If you can get past the annoying attitude of the host, there are some lessons here! I extremely disagree with his statement about it being so boring out on the open sea. I'm sorry you don't get fucking cell phone reception or cable TV out there brah.
petnoyer | April 25, 2008Modern ocean prophet Wallace J Nichols presented the first ever Ecodaredevil Award to Duke University graduate student Elliott Hazen this past April 22nd, on Earth Day. Elliott received the award for on-campus activism at Duke Marine Lab, co-founding GreenWave, a student led sustainability movement, and introducing a class "Green by Design" that brought experts from business, and fisheries to speak about sustainability. Elliott does great research, too.
J Nichols is on the left in the picture below, while Elliott Hazen proudly dons his brand new helmet-slash-environmental award.…