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cmcclain | November 27, 2007
Coryphaenoides armatus arrive to feed on bait (mackerel) set by ROBIO. Photo from here
A recent study by Barry and Drazen (open access)notes that some deep-sea fishes avoid the odor of dead conspecifics. Coryphaenoides armatus, the Pacific grenadier, is a prominent scavenger and typically one of the first fish to arrive at a food fall of a carcass. However, in caging experiments to test the effects of ocean acidification on seafloor organisms, cages where C. armatus died potentially due to cage-related stress, predation, or exposure to acidic waters, did not attract C. armatus. Figure 6 (…
cortex | November 26, 2007I'm quickly learning that these webmagazines really don't like my book. This review, however, is actually rather thoughtful. Daniel Engber of Slate begins by pointing out that neuroscientists are constantly quoting Proust:
My career as a grad student in neuroscience was filled with these obligatory madeleine moments: It seemed like every talk, lecture, presentation, or paper on the biology of memory began with a dip into Swann's Way. An extended passage from the book appears in the brain researcher's standard reference manual, Principles of Neural Science, and Proustian inscriptions routinely…
gregladen | November 26, 2007A team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Milan has discovered some unexpected forms of liquid crystals of ultrashort DNA molecules immersed in water, providing a new scenario for a key step in the emergence of life on Earth.
CU-Boulder physics Professor Noel Clark said the team found that surprisingly short segments of DNA, life's molecular carrier of genetic information, could assemble into several distinct liquid crystal phases that "self-orient" parallel to one another and stack into columns when placed in a water solution. Life is widely believed to have…
cortex | November 26, 2007Life is getting tough for the running backs of the NFL. First comes the news that becoming a star rusher doesn't require a Heisman Trophy or even a high-profile start in NCAA Division I-A:
The debate has simmered for a decade, at least since the Denver Broncos began making a habit of turning unsung players into 1,000-yard rushers. Other championship-caliber teams, like the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots, began casting aside top running backs, finding younger and cheaper alternatives with no regrets.
But the question of whether N.F.L. running backs are overvalued -- generally…
cortex | November 26, 2007And it comes with recipes, too! Here's Billy Collins:
As soon as the elderly waiter
placed before me the fish I had ordered,
it began to stare up at me
with its one flat, iridescent eye.
I feel sorry for you, it seemed to say,
eating alone in this awful restaurant
bathed in such unkindly light
and surrounded by these dreadful murals of Sicily.
And I feel sorry for you, too --
yanked from the sea and now lying dead
next to some boiled potatoes in Pittsburgh --
I said back to the fish as I raised my fork.
And thus my dinner in an unfamiliar city
with its rivers and lighted bridges
was graced…
pharyngula | November 25, 2007This is why we need to keep a few philosophers around: they can succinctly name the logical fallacies committed by a certain cosmologist.
cmcclain | November 25, 2007Perhaps as no shock, oceanography is going to need some more money, about $2-3 billion to be exact. A group of international scientist called the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO) says "warming seas, over-fishing and pollution are among profound concerns that must be better measured to help society respond in a well-informed, timely and cost-effective way...A system for ocean observing and forecasting that covers the world's oceans and their major uses can reduce growing risks, protect human interests and monitor the health of our precious oceans." So what would we…
cmcclain | November 25, 2007
I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me down
The largest known arthropod is now followed by the largest known landslide. 60,000 years ago a submarine landslide off the coast of north-west Africa traveled 1,500 kilometers before dumping 225 billion metric tons of sediment. For perspective, 1,500 km is about the distance from Miami to Memphis and 225 billion tons is the weight of about 45 billion male African elephants. One of the authors, Peter Talling, of the article published in…
jlynch | November 25, 2007Births
1703 - Jean-François Séguier, French astronomer and botanist
1814 - Julius Robert von Mayer, German physician and physicist
1887 - Nikolai Vavilov, Russian geneticist
1913 - Lewis Thomas, American physician and essayist
Deaths
1686 - Nicolas Steno, Danish geologist
1694 - Ismael Bullialdus, French astronomer
1884 - Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe, German chemist
1972 - Henri CoandÄ, Romanian aerodynamics pioneer
cortex | November 24, 2007Paul Davies dares to utter the f-word in the context of science:
The problem with this neat separation into "non-overlapping magisteria," as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to…
cortex | November 24, 2007One of my favorite parts of this whole book publication process has been getting to meet the people behind the voices on NPR. I spend so much time tuned to my local public radio station that I feel this intimate conversational bond with the anchors and reporters on the air. So it was a special treat to get to meet Kurt Andersen, host of Studio 360, which I listen to religiously. You can listen to an excerpt from our conversation this weekend on the show. We talk about Whitman and the body, Cezanne's blank spots and the possibility of unraveling the rainbow. (Even if you're sick of hearing…
gregladen | November 23, 2007Bored with your computer? No need to be. As you probably know, there is a whole culture, perhaps even cult, surrounding tricking out your computer. There is even a journal devoted to the topic (the name of which escapes me at the moment). My favorite example (from that journal) is the "PC in a Fridge" concept, where you build your PC inside a refrigerator or freezer. This lets you "clock up" your processor speed considerably, and keep beer handy at the same time.
Or, you could do a number of other things, such as....
First, get one of these:
Then get one of these...
This is the Optimus…
grrlscientist | November 23, 2007tags: housecat, pets, birth defect, Lil'Bit
Do you notice anything strange about the cat in the photo? At first, I didn't believe this .. er, cat .. was alive, instead of being the product of a zit-faced basement-dwelling photoshop prankster with too much time on his hairy-palmed hands. But after poking around on the internet for a few hours, it appears that this is the real thing.
This cat, named Lil'Bit, was born to a cat named Lil'Pine. Lil'Bit is now seven months old and is living with his original family. His family prefer to remain anonymous to avoid the crush of public attention,…
cortex | November 23, 2007I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. My own holiday meal was the subject of a simple food experiment. I made two versions of the same dish: brussels sprout gratin with chestnuts, bacon and Comte. (Yes, it's as delicious as it sounds, even if you don't like baby cabbages.) One version was made with fresh brussels sprouts. (Cost: $13.25) The other dish was made with frozen brussels sprouts. (Cost: $5.97) I naively assumed that the fresh version would be clearly superior.
I was wrong. While I slightly preferred the texture of the fresh sprouts - they were a bit less mushy - the frozen…
grrlscientist | November 22, 2007tags: thanksgiving, holidaze
Now that I finally have a wifi connection tonight (it disappeared yesterday afternoon, boohoo), I discovered that a reader sent this e-card to me, so I thought I'd share it with all of you.
Image: orphaned.
thescian | November 21, 2007I was listening to The Salmon of Doubt, the posthumously published book with material collected from the computer used by Douglas Adams. Douglas Adams: what a brilliant, witty and fabulously engaging man!
His sharp and hilarious analysis of the phrase "it turns out" is a great Adamsian moment:
"..am I alone in finding the expression 'it turns out' to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It's great. It's hugely…
zooillogix | November 21, 2007The Bleiman Brothers are in New Mexico for the week, which as many of you know, has not yet invented the internet. Unfortunately this means this is probably the only post we can send up, but hopefully you all can amuse yourselves by contributing the weirdest Thanksgiving meal you have ever had. Maybe you were doing research at Lake Baikal and enjoyed a fresh Thanksgiving Nerpa seal! Maybe you were in Madagascar and sat down to a traditional Lemur supper. Maybe you were in Southeast Asia and enjoyed their version of the turducken: five of any extremely endangered animals stuffed into one…
cmcclain | November 21, 2007Caption below under next figure: Image from "Giant claw reveals the largest ever arthropod" (2007), Biology Letters
The arthropods we are familiar with today tend toward the small side compared to the some of the giants found in the fossil record. From the Late Palaeozoic, 2m long millipedes and dragonflies with 75cm wingspans are known. Even marine arthropods obtained large sizes with examples including Ordovician trilobites and Siluro-Devonian eurypterids (sea scorpions). In part the Late Paleozioc pattern might be explained by increased atmospheric oxygen levels. Work on extant groups…