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grrlscientist | May 23, 2007tags: Australia, blog carnivals
Wow, this is the day of the blog carnivals, isn't it? This time, the 3rd issue of the new Carnival of Australia is now available for your reading pleasure, and they included a piece that this lowly American wrote! So even though many of you don't live there, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy visiting, even if only it is a virtual visit!
pharyngula | May 23, 2007Well, "we" meaning my fellow residents of rural communities. I suspect most of the people reading this are members of the urban elite, so you won't really care that today is the day when urban populations were predicted to exceed rural populations. That is, for the first time in the history of the world, a majority of human beings live in cities rather than in the countryside.
Now I don't want to hear any sneering from you glossy depilated metrosexuals about us barefoot hayseeds reeking of eau de porc. We're the ones with the low-traffic, low-stress, low-cost lifestyle and the fresh local…
cmcclain | May 23, 2007
You may be asking yourself how these two fit together. I would like to say something like "every box of Cheerios contains a model Alvin in it." That would be great but totally fictional. The connection is actually more interesting and involves Bud Froehlich.
You may have heard of a little submersible called Trieste that set a depth record in 1960. The mechanical arm on it was built by Harold "Bud" Froehlich an engineer at General Mills who sadly passed away this week. Bud after the Trieste dive started circulating plans for a replacement, the Seapup. Meanwhile on the east coast talk…
petnoyer | May 22, 2007Wood's Hole researchers in the Eddies Dynamics, Mixing, Export, and Species composition (EDDIES) project confirmed that ocean productivity is enhanced by upwelling eddies in the oligotropic Sargasso Sea. The slowly swirling water masses were teeming with diatoms in concentrations 10,000 to 100,000 times the norm, among the highest ever observed in the Sargasso Sea. They compare these features to "oases in the desert".
The researchers employed a combination of remote sensing, video plankton recorders, ocean drifters, tracers and traditional measurements of water properties and current speeds…
cmcclain | May 22, 2007
For some reason the work of Deanna Molinaro just speaks to me. I wonder what it could be?
tqa | May 22, 2007
. . . what the hell is it going to take before those flaming idiots running Congress figure out how the hell to do the right thing? Collectively, they've got the spine of a beached jellyfish, the tenacity of a chipmunk on speed, and the leadership qualities of a concussed pigeon. At this point, they're going to have to work overtime to make it to the Homer Simpson level. Right now, the only thing that they've got going for them is that they're not as bad as the Republicans. That's enough to keep me voting for them, but only just. Call me crazy, but "not as bad as Bush" just doesn't get me…
cmcclain | May 22, 2007And a virgin shall be with pup, and shall bring forth a hammerhead, and they shall call his name Elasmobranch which being interpreted is, to beat the gill...
Three female hammerheads in a tank in Nebraska and no males in site for three years. Poof! A pup is born. Realizing that the important part is really the first discovery of asexual reproduction in sharks, I cannot get over the idea that these poor females are stuck in Nebraska and getting no sex.
moleculeoftheday | May 22, 2007Last November I mentioned the Dess-Martin reagent. Hypervalent iodine reagents are mild oxidants that tend to be more soluble in organic solvent than many of the alternatives. Dess-Martin has largely supplanted another iodine oxidant - IBX acid.
Dess-Martin is more soluble, and, as I understand, a little less inclined to get lively under pressure or impact. Too bad IBX acid is a much cooler name.
grrlscientist | May 22, 2007Tomorrow is my court date. I am being sued for wages by the person who took care of my birds while I was in the hospital, even though she told me that these costs would be paid for by the social work department at the hospital. So I went to small claims court several months ago to solve this little problem, but there were so many other people there ahead of us that we had to reschedule for a later date. Tomorrow evening is that date.
To say that I am nervous is an understatement. I am terrified, even though I have been told by a couple lawyers that I have a good case (there was no contract…
grrlscientist | May 22, 2007tags: blogosphere, five lives meme, meme
I don't think this was intended to be a meme, but it is certainly has all the makings of a good meme. Basically, it is a self exploration exercise where you imagine that you could have five lives where you could explore five different careers, lifestyles, whatever -- what would they be? So if "Five Lives" became a meme, I'd be quite pleased because I am curious to know how all of you would answer it. I found it at Day by Day, an interesting blog written by a female postdoctoral scientist.
Well, for my first life, I would choose to be exactly what I am…
grrlscientist | May 22, 2007tags: food stamps, poverty, fish, hunger, politics
Congresscritter Tim Ryan has his own blog and, if you recall, he has been participating in the "Food Stamp Challenge" where he tries to eat on no more than $3 per day for one week. His solution to this problem was to purchase peanut butter and jelly and a loaf (or was it two?) of bread and just live on that for one week. (Incidentally, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a real luxury in my life. Even though I am not on food stamps, I have to eat on approximately $2 per day or less, which means I eat vegetarian spaghetti). Anyway, Ryan…
apalazzo | May 22, 2007CCP asks
What is the phylogenetic distribution of centrioles? Does it match that of cilia / flagella?
Just to summarize what all these cellular structures are, centrioles are distinct structures found in most eukaryotic cells. They are composed of nine microtubule triplets and two of these centrioles come together to form a centrosome, a structure which often sits at the microtubule organizing center (MTOC). Microtubules radiate out of the MTOC to form an aster (see images in this post). Remarkably, in most tissue culture cells, the MTOC sits near the cell centroid where as the nucleus lies…
petnoyer | May 22, 2007The New York Times posts a stunning selection of images in their review of Claire Nouvian's "The Deep". Craig ran a book blurb on the blog back in March.
The collection of images definitely raises deep-sea photography to a new level. The quality of light and posture of the photos is reminiscent of some great painters (e.g. Francis Bacon) and art house photographers. The text features essays by top notch marine biologists Laurence Madin and Craig Young.
Clear the coffee table, folks. This one's a keeper.
petnoyer | May 21, 2007
Hydrothermal vents have given us many things, including new autotrophic paradigms, new species, a new appreciation for seafloor spreading centers, some cool websites and a best-ever IMAX movie . But the fact that seafloor massive sulfides can precipitate a king's ransom in gold, silver, copper, and zinc was an unexpected boost to the cauldron-like charisma of hydrothermal vent ecosystems.
Deep Sea News first started reporting on Vancouver based company Nautilus Minerals' intention to mine extinct hydrothermal vents in Papua New Guinea back in November of 2005. Big-time scientific weeklies…
tqa | May 21, 2007
The Discovery Institute is (still, and predictably) in an uproar over Iowa's decision to reject Intelligent Design proponent Guillermo Gonzalez's tenure application. The DI is claiming that the decision could not possibly be anything other than an example of discrimination against a brave non-Darwinian scientist by the Darwinian Orthodoxy. Personally, I think it's something different. I think it's about the money.
According to an article that was just published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Gonzalez has not received any major research grants since arriving at Iowa. Casey Luskin of…
grrlscientist | May 21, 2007tags: bolide, mammals, mass extinction, North America, Younger Dryas
Why did huge numbers of large mammals in North America suddenly die out approximately 13,000 years ago? Over the years, there have been plenty of hypotheses proposed, ranging from overhunting and disease to death by freezing. However, another group of scientists have recently proposed a different hypothesis; a large space rock exploding over North America.
Collecting layers of sediment from more than 20 sites across North America, James Kennett, from the University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB) and his colleagues,…
pharyngula | May 21, 2007That simple and charming organization, The Friends of Charles Darwin, has just signed their thousandth member. Good for them, but still, that's pathetic — I hope it takes less than a decade to sign up another thousand. Go ahead and join if you haven't already, it's painless, I promise.
grrlscientist | May 21, 2007tags: ornithology, birds, flamingo, gay
An orphaned Greater Flamingo chick is carefully placed into a used eggshell in preparation to hatch a second time -- in its foster parents' nest.
A pair of flamingos have become proud foster parents after they took an abandoned chick under their wings at the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, Great Britain. But this probably doesn't sound unusual, until you know that the birds, Carlos and Fernando, are two male Greater Flamingos. Despite both being male, they had resorted to stealing eggs from other pairs as they sought to…
tqa | May 21, 2007
The Economist is normally my favorite weekly news magazine. It has a much broader focus than any of the major American publications, covers topics in more depth, and uses a vocabulary that goes beyond the 6th grade level. Every now and then, though, they come out with something that makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking - and this week is one of those times.
Their recent opinion piece on species and conservation (which was also picked up by the Wall Street Journal) was written by someone whose head was so far up - well, let's just say that their scalp's not getting a lot of…