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grrlscientist | April 14, 2007I have been teaching my parrots a few tricks, but I haven't attempted anything like this (yet). I am not entirely sure how to train them to play basketball or golf, although the other behaviors are something I can train them to do.
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tags: AJ, parrot, birds
tqa | April 13, 2007
Dr. Michael Egnor, creationist neurosurgeon and Discovery Institute blogger, has a problem. Either he hasn't figured out that we're way past April Fools Day, or he has just managed to produce what might just be the single dumbest anti-evolution argument that I have ever seen. We're talking about a demonstration of absolute, rock-bottom, Kent-Hovind-eat-your-heart-out, triple-distilled essence of pure stupid.
The argument today - and I warn anyone who knows anything at all about evolution to put down all food and drinks right now - is that if evolution was right, we should see some brain…
tqa | April 13, 2007
The big news here today is all about evolution - we've got the rhesus monkey genome and Tyrannosaurus rex protein sequences published. There's also some cool science policy stuff to look at - there's information on abstinence-only sex ed and more manatee material available. Finally, we've got an excellent - although sad and nearly tragic - example of how government policies can (if followed) help reduce injuries in certain situations.
More Monkey Business:
As I mentioned yesterday, the rhesus macaque genome was released yesterday. Carl Zimmer wrote an excellent blog post on the project,…
zooillogix | April 13, 2007In February of this year Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist with Iowa State University, witnessed Kenyan chimpanzees break off branches from trees, sharpen them using their teeth, and then use these spears to hunt lesser bush babies, a kind of small primate. The bush babies sleep in the hollows of trees, and the chimps were repeatedly seen jabbing their spears into the hollows and pulling them back out with fresh bush baby babies impaled on the end.A chimpanzee, seen here, finishing up his degree in Information Technology from the University of Phoenix Online.
Pruetz recorded a video of the…
cmcclain | April 13, 2007 Attributed to Aesop is the old parable of the tortoise and the hare. We all know the story and the moral. Slow and steady wins the race. Now lets add to the story a snail and mess with the plot a bit. In the new story both the tortoise and the hare are the winner, and no one thinks the snail will amount to anything-let alone win a race. But eventually the snail does finish. And to truly take the parable over the top all three finish at the same time. Everyone lives happily ever after basking in the glow of their mutual win.
I have probably stretched this analogy as far as it can go.…
grrlscientist | April 13, 2007The Carnival of the Dogs is now available for your reading pleasure. Dogs? You ask. Yes, I submitted a piece about dogs to this carnival, and they liked it very much.
cmcclain | April 12, 2007
Aplacophora is a class of mollusks comprised of about 320 species. They were considered echinoderms until around 1987 when they were moved to Mollusca. Species ingest sediment while inhabiting burrows. A shell is lacking but the epidermis secretes a cuticle in which are embedded scales (seen above) that point posteriorly. The posterior end (right) contains the ctnedia (gills, and can be seen in the photo as the fluffy material at end) and the anus. The mouth located at the anterior (left) can also been seen (flat region on right side of anterior end). The internal structures…
tqa | April 12, 2007
In what is undoubtedly one of the more spectacular cases of bad staff work in recent political history, Rudy Giuliani flunked the "Mr. Candidate, what's the going price for a gallon of milk?" pop quiz. (His estimates for the prices of milk and bread were substantially too low, but he was pretty close on the gallon of gas question.) Some bloggers - both conservative and liberal - and some mainstream media commentators have been wondering what the big deal is. Mr. Giuliani, they point out, probably doesn't buy his own milk, and even if he does his mind is probably on other things.
More than…
moleculeoftheday | April 12, 2007Benzophenone is a colorless solid, tetrahydrofuran is a colorless liquid, and sodium metal is unremarkable stuff. When pure, it's silvery and bright, but it tarnishes easily in the presence of oxygen or water, leaving it looking like any other metal - kinda greyish silver. If you mix the three together and boil them for a few hours (sometimes you don't even have to do that if everything's very pure and dry), you end up with an impossibly dark royal blue-purple solution. This is benzophenone ketyl radical (and the related benzophenone dianion - reduced one step further by one more atom of Na0…
petnoyer | April 12, 2007There is so much happening in the world of sea turtles right now that we're going to dedicate an entire week of postings to sea turtles and their air breathing kin. We're calling it Megavertebrate Week. Note the new banner above. We argue that turtles, seals, and whales should all be considered denizens of the deep because 1) they traverse deep waters while migrating, and 2) they regularly descend to depths greater than 200m. Expect a few curveballs about deep diving animals you might not expect.
We introduced the turtle problem last week in a clarion call about a letter to the Pope. Through…
tqa | April 12, 2007
Senator Daniel Inouye,
Senator Daniel Akaka,
Senator Hillary Clinton,
Senator Charles Schumer,
Representative Eliot Engel,
Representative Neil Abercrombie,
I am the husband of a currently deployed Army officer stationed in Hawaii, and with a home of record in New York. I'm writing today for two reasons: to thank you for your support of emergency war funding legislation that included a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq and to ask you to take an additional step and require that any additional funding for the current conflict be paid for immediately, through a tax increase.
When my wife was…
grrlscientist | April 12, 2007
The United States Navy is planning on constructing a jet landing field in eastern North Carolina within 3.5 miles of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, one of the most critical wintering grounds for waterfowl in the Atlantic flyway and home to endangered red wolves.
This would be a disaster for the refuge and the hundreds of thousands of waterfowl that winter in the area, as well as the many sportsmen, birdwatchers and wildlife enthusiasts who regularly enjoy the refuge. The landing strip would not only put wildlife at risk. It would also pose unacceptable risks to the safety of…
tqa | April 12, 2007
I took a stroll over to the Campus Center here at UH Manoa a couple of hours ago, and was treated to an interesting sight. UH has been engaged in discussions with the Navy for a couple of years now about the possibility of getting Manoa designated as one of the Navy's University Affiliated Research Centers (UARC). There are a fair number of people on campus who are very much opposed to the idea, mostly because of concerns over the possibility of weapons research and/or classified research programs being conducted here. Personally, I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. I'm not a huge fan…
tqa | April 12, 2007
Today, let's start with a note about the title. Yesterday, I got an email from a reader (I'm not sure which of the two of you it was) who was wondering why the "Morning Roundup" appeared on his screen after he got home from work. I think Jimmy Buffett covered that one best when he said, "it's 5 O'clock somewhere." Scienceblogs is a New-York based operation, and to avoid massive confusion that's the time zone we all use when we post. I'm living six hours behind New York, which means that my morning news usually includes half the day's events.
In the quick roundup today, we've got some…
cmcclain | April 12, 2007
Going on as we speak is an experiment of monumental proportions. It may not seem that way to you sitting in front of your computer this moment, but to a kid in middle or high school I guarantee that it is their world! At least the highlight of their school day anyways...
As part of the GLOBE program funded by NASA, NSF and the U.S. Dept. of State, the Pennsylvania State University. in cooperation with scientists from the RIDGE and InterRIDGE communities, is leading the way for students to explore science From Local to Extreme Environments (FLEXE). "FLEXE students study aspects of their…
grrlscientist | April 12, 2007
Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007.
I was saddened this morning to learn that another one of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut, died. He died last night in Manhattan after suffering a head injury several weeks ago. Like another one of my favorite authors who recently died, William Styron, Vonnegut struggled with depression, and survived a suicide attempt in 1984. But despite this challenge, he still managed to publish 14 novels, three collections of short stories, five plays and five works of non-fiction. His last book, Man Without a Country, was a collection of essays published in 2005, and was a…
grrlscientist | April 12, 2007I just wanted to thank you, dear readers, for showing me that you are thinking of me by sending me books -- many of which were sent anonymously. So many books arrived on the same day that the post man decided it was Christmas in April for me! I received the following books from you this week;
Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe by Michael Osterholm and John Schwartz.
Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad.
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological…
jjacquet | April 12, 2007
Kurt Vonnegut visted the Galapagos Islands in the early 1980s and wrote looking back on the future of the islands (shifting baselines). I read Vonnegut's Galapagos while in the islands and my favorte line, then and now, is still:
[The Spaniards] did not claim the island for Spain, any more than they would have claimed hell for Spain.
Today, we all have a different impression of Galapagos. The Galapagos Marine Reserve is one of the largest in the world and the archipelego has been named a World Heritage Site. The BBC and National Geographic just released a three-part series that captures…
integrityofscience | April 12, 2007The Seattle Post Intelligencer editorial page didn't hold back in opining on Monday's federal appeals court rejection of a Bush Administration salmon restoration plan.
In strong and appropriate terms, a federal court has rejected the false ways the administration tried to revise science and the law to ignore the role of four lower Snake River dams in destroying salmon runs. The administration claimed the dams had to be treated as part of the natural landscape. A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled the feds had indulged themselves in "sleight of hand," manipulation and a uniquely "…
cmcclain | April 12, 2007
Kurt is up in heaven now.
My first book report was on the Cat's Cradle. A novelty read for a student in rural high school. "Why don't you just read To Kill a Mockingbird?" my teacher asked. I was hooked and proceeded to spend what little money I had on any used copy of a Vonnegut book I could find. I couldn't afford new. I may have shed a tear the first time I purchased a first edition of Slaughter House Five and this morning when I heard of Kurt's passing. I defended him to my adviser once who equated him with King. Heresy. Vonnegut was and is a master of satire and prediction…