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cmcclain | October 18, 2007I am relaxing the 200m rule for DSN, to bring you some photographs from one of my favorites, Kawika Chetron. To say that Kawika's photos of the kelp forest are stunning would be a gross understatement. Luckily, you can view most of his portfolio online.
"Deep Shale", Monterey Bay, California February 17, 2007:
Often, when I show a picture to a non-diving friend, the first question they ask is "How deep were you when you took that?". The implication, of course, being that the deeper the depth, the better the photograph must be. This, then, is the very best photograph on the site. This…
pharyngula | October 18, 2007I mentioned before Cosma Shalizi's excellent discussion of heritability; add to that now his summary of g. We've got a few pompous no-nothings lurking in the comments who are fond of declaiming that they know that they have proof that the brain works in such-and-such a way, and that we can blithely assert an average stupidity exists in broad swathes of humanity (said broad swathes typically sweep across very diverse groups, united only by the obvious ephemera of skin color), but they need to read and comprehend those articles in order to learn that their certainty of a heritable simplicity is…
jlynch | October 18, 2007Events
1943 - Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.
1688 - William Cheselden, English surgeon and anatomist
1858 - George Albert Boulenger, Belgian naturalist
1897 - Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Pakistani scientist and scholar
1909 - Marguerite Perey, French physicist
1910 - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Indian-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1916 - Jean Dausset, French immunologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1951 - Demetrios Christodoulou, Greek mathematical physicist
Deaths
1937 - Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron…
pharyngula | October 18, 2007I am distressed at this news: the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has suspended Chancellor Jim Watson over his comments about race.
I disagree with Watson passionately, and he is completely wrong in his opinions about Africa and women and who knows what else…but he has the right to say it, just as we have the right to disagree vehemently and volubly with him. This does the CSHL no good: it's a declaration that their director must be an inoffensive, mealy-mouthed mumbler who never challenges (even stupidly).
Maybe that's what they want — someone diplomatic, who'll woo donors and visitors with…
sb admin | October 18, 2007A lot of people who care about the high rates of uninsurance in the U.S. do so because it just seems wrong that the wealthiest country in the world leaves a large swath of its population without healthcare â and, thus, facing employment difficulties, financial ruin, years of unnecessary pain or disability, and an overall impediment to pursuing the American Dream.
If youâre an unpopular president with a bizarre sense of what fiscal responsibility means, this argument might not convince you. Even if it doesnât, you should still try to bring the rate of uninsurance toward zero out of sheer self-…
grrlscientist | October 18, 2007I have been following this furor over Nobel laureate Jim Watson's comments about blacks, women and homosexuals and I am astonished that he would walk around, openly spouting such stupid and irrational prejudices when his beliefs are easily disproven scientifically! Has he read anything in the scientific literature that has been published since he won his Nobel in 1962? I would guess not, since he is woefully and inexcusably ignorant.
In view of his fresh onslaught of unabashed racism, sexism and homophobia (this isn't the first time he has openly blasted anyone who is not a priviledged white…
cortex | October 18, 2007Bldg blog writes an ode to LA:
L.A. is the apocalypse: it's you and a bunch of parking lots. No one's going to save you; no one's looking out for you. It's the only city I know where that's the explicit premise of living there - that's the deal you make when you move to L.A.
The city, ironically, is emotionally authentic.
It says: no one loves you; you're the least important person in the room; get over it.
What matters is what you do there.
And maybe that means renting Hot Fuzz and eating too many pretzels; or maybe that means driving a Prius out to Malibu and surfing with Daryl Hannah as a…
cmcclain | October 18, 2007A bill in the senate has passed that will focus research on ocean acidification. The Lutenberg Measure, crafted by Senator Frank R. Lutenberg (D-NJ) and cosponsored by Barbara Boxer (D-CA), directs funds to the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study of the acidification of oceans and how this process affects the United States.
"Ocean acidification is a threat to our marine ecosystem and our economy," said Sen. Lautenberg. "The change in ocean chemistry caused by greenhouse gases is corrosive and affects our marine life, food supply and overall ocean health. But research on ocean…
cmcclain | October 18, 2007
How much would you pay to save a lobster? $160 is the amount Chris Crowell and his wife Jyll Prole paid to purchase a lobster from a Halifax grocery store. Why so much? The lobster, now named Rex, weighed in at 7kg (15.4 lbs). The couple donated Rex to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography where Jim Frost, laboratory manager, estimates Rex is 60 years old based on his size. Although large, Rex will not be the largest on record. The top 3 largest lobsters, Homarus americanus, by weight on record are.
'Mike' caught in 1934 19.25kg (42.44 lbs)
an unconfirmed, unnamed female at 11.34kg (…
pharyngula | October 17, 2007It seems like retribution is in order: Richard Roberts wants a leave of absence, as his wife claims to live in "a morally upright manner" even while rumors of associations with a 16-year-old boy swirl about.
James Watson's sold-out lecture in London has been cancelled. I guess making bogus accusations about the congenital stupidity of a whole continent has consequence.
pharyngula | October 17, 2007Greg knows a bit about the anthropology of race, and he also knows how to make fools suffer. Now he has weighed in on Watson.
I'm pretty sure he left boot marks on the old man.
Greg has followed through now with more criticisms of 'scientific' racism.
cortex | October 17, 2007Hendrick Hertzberg takes on the Navy sonar technology which is killing whales:
Whales live in a world of sound. A large part of their brains, which in many species are larger than ours, is devoted to processing sound. We don't know how they subjectively experience the processed sound, but it is reasonable to speculate that their experience of hearing is comparable in depth, detail, and complexity to our experience of vision. (They may be able, for example, to "see" inside each others' bodies, giving them an analogue of the nonverbal communication of emotion for which we use gesture and facial…
cortex | October 17, 2007Joseph LeDoux helped make the amygdala famous - his seminal studies of fear conditioning illuminated, among other things, the importance of unconscious processing - so it's only fitting that he would be part of a rock band called The Amygdaloids.
Imagine Jefferson Airplane, with perhaps a dash of the Eagles and a lot of a neuroscientific puns, and you've got a pretty good idea of what The Amygdaloids sound like. "All in a Nut," for example, begins with a slightly psychedelic guitar solo and a plaintive question: "Why do we feel so afraid?/Don't have to look very far/Don't get stuck in a rut…
cmcclain | October 17, 2007I am concerned about comments on a few websites and in the press over the last year. Most disheartening is a EU memo entitled "Questions and Answers on Destructive Fishing Practices"
When scientists talk about vulnerable marine habitats in the context of the deep sea, they are referring to structures such as cold-water corals, hydrothermal vents, sea mounts or deep sea sponge beds. Not a great deal is known about such structures, but two things are already clear from the research that has been conducted to date: 1. that they function as concentrators of biodiversity in what are otherwise…
pharyngula | October 17, 2007James Watson has really put his foot in it this time. He has a tendency to say some shockingly offensive and bizarre things.
Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no…
cortex | October 16, 2007As heard recently on The Daily Show:
Those guys don't know membrane vesicles from their taint.
It's a funny line, but membrane vesicles are serious stuff. Just ask Jack Szostak:
Our goal is generate a nucleic acid system that can replicate accurately and rapidly, without any enzymatic assistance. We have already developed a membrane vesicle system that allows for the repeated growth and division of the vesicles, without the involvement of any biochemical machinery. We are just beginning to do experiments in which we combine the nucleic and membrane systems, and we can already see the…
cmcclain | October 16, 2007Two major expeditions took place in the last few months. The first explored Celebes Sea south of the Philippines from the surface to a depth 2700m.
"This is probably the center where many of the species evolved and spread to other parts of the ocean, so it's going back to the source in many ways," Madin [the expedition leader] stated.
The project involved the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and National Geographic Magazine in cooperation with the Philippine government, which also provided the exploration ship.
The most striking creature found was a spiny orange-colored worm that had…
grrlscientist | October 16, 2007tags: carnival of Cities, blog carnival
The new edition of the Carnival of Cities is now available for you to read. This is a really interesting blog carnival where people write stories about the city they live in (where ever in the world that city might be), and it also includes essays about citylife in general. The editor for this issue was kind enough to include one of my essays -- I thought it was stretching the boundaries of what his carnival is about, but he was fine with it -- so be sure to go there and take a look at what he's put together for you to read.
blue_expo | October 16, 2007I noticed that PZ posted one of our take-home exam questions on Pharyngula and so I decided to make an entry with my answer (I okayed this with PZ first although he did warn me of the certainty of harsh reader criticism). The question referred us to a recent article in Nature about TRPV1 ion channels and asked us to describe TRPV1 ion channels and the testing that was done on them.
The transient receptor potential cation channel (TRPV1), also referred to as vanilloid receptor subtype 1, is a ligand-gated cation channel (2). This means that the channel contains organic molecules that can…