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grrlscientist | March 22, 2007
A new species of dinosaurs have been discovered in a burrow in Montana
and has been given the scientific name Oryctodromeus cubicularis,
meaning "digging runner of the lair". The adult length is about 2 meters.
The juvenile is in grey.
Fossils from a family of the first known burrowing dinosaurs have been found by scientists in Montana. The fossils are from an adult and two juveniles. The bones are 95 million years old and were unearthed in a chamber at the end of a 2.1 meter long tunnel that was filled with sediment. The researchers say their discovery is the first definitive evidence…
jlynch | March 21, 2007Nearly ten years ago I started a book on Creationist misuse of intellectual history. I never finished it, which is probably for the best. The file is unfortunately MIA and all I have remaining was a section that I turned into a talk that I gave at ASU in 1999. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting the text of that talk. Enjoy and feel free to comment.
"Pithecophobes of the World, Unite!"Revisionist ’History’ and Creationist Rhetoric.
"This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornography,…
tqa | March 21, 2007
By this point, the name Michael Egnor should be familiar to readers of this blog - but if you need a reminder, he's the neurosurgeon who recently signed on to the staff of the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints blog. Over the last week or two, Egnor has been trying to convince people that evolution is really not important in any way to medicine.
His last attempt, before today, came less than a week ago, with this spectacular piece of inane argumentation. I responded to the arguments that he made, Orac responded to the arguments he made, Afarensis responded to the arguments he made,…
grrlscientist | March 21, 2007These past few days, I've been quite ill, such that I was unable to venture out today to the library where I use the free wifi (wifi is inconsistent in my apartment).
Anyway, this whole episode of illness began two days ago when a dark cloud of despair settled down over me. I felt physically okay, but the depression was so sudden and intense that I was unprepared for it. I contemplated going back to the hospital. But the next day, I was definetely ill and the depression had mostly lifted.
Normally, when there is a change in my physical condition, I go manic (agitated, hyperactive, unable to…
cmcclain | March 21, 2007The University of Chicago Press just launched a Flash Website, complete with gallery, for The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss by Claire Nouvian. Fantastic site with some of the same pictures as in the book.
cmcclain | March 21, 2007
Perspective view of East Pacific Rise and the seismic velocity structure of the underlying mantle. Surprisingly, regions of magma storage in the mantle (shown as orange and red colors) are in many places not centered beneath the plate plate boundary. Courtesy Douglas Toomey
[Note from Craig: I have asked Kevin Zelnio, a graduate student with preeminent deep-sea biologist Chuck Fisher, to guest post. I am excited by the addition of Kevin as this should add breadth to DSN in the realm of chemosynthetic communities.]
Current thought about the formation of vents is that mantle upwells…
tqa | March 21, 2007
I've been kind of quiet the last couple of days - I've been dealing with an exam and a dental issue - so I didn't get into the whole Michael Egnor (aka The DI's Pet Neurosurgeon) linkfest. I agree with Bora, though. It would be good if anyone who wants to Google him is able to quickly find out exactly how skilled he is at making bad anti-evolution arguments. My contribution there can be found below the fold.
In addition, I'd also like to join Orac and Afarensis in reminding Dr. Egnor that there are specific challenges waiting for him, and that he hasn't responded to mine, either.
Michael…
cmcclain | March 21, 2007 Perhaps unsurprisingly DSN's pick for Science Bracket Smackdown, Team Invertebrate demolished 9th seeded Surgeons with a final score of 158-37. Through an amazing dorsal heart defense initiated by the arthropods the Invertebrates quickly took an early lead. The open circulatory offense also proved difficult to stop. Ronald Plasty for the Surgeons stated after the game, "What can I say we were expecting a closed system and ultimately that beat us." The colossal squid did not return for the second round game. In the lockeroom DSN learned that a tentacle strain in the fourth quarter was still…
grrlscientist | March 20, 2007Red-breasted nuthatches appear to have learned the language of black-capped chickadees. Nuthatches interpret the type of chickadee alarm and can identify what sort of predator poses a threat.
Chickadee calls carry a great deal of meaning to other members of the species but to the human ear, chickadee alert calls sound very similar. However, when a chickadee sees a predator, it makes a soft "seet" for a flying hawk, owl or falcon, or a loud "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" for a perched predator.
Nuthatches have learned to tell if the chickadees are threatened by pygmy owls, which pose a serious threat…
grrlscientist | March 20, 2007Liverpool, which will be celebrated as the European Capital of Culture in 2008, is apparently disgusted with the flocks of oversized pigeons that live throughout the city and has opted to use a robotic peregrine falcon to scare them away.
Peregrine falcons are the natural predator of pigeons. The robotic peregrine falcon, known as a "robop", can move, flick its wings and squawk to scare away pigeons. Ten robotoc peregrines are being placed throughout the city center to scare the pigeons away and the public is being admonished not to feed the birds.
"We need to get the message across that…
mikethemadbiologist | March 20, 2007Just watch: the Republicans are going to blame the Democrats for fouling up the Justice Department. From U.S. News:
"You have no idea," said one Justice official, "how bad it is here."
The fear that virtually any piece of communication will have to be turned over has paralyzed department officials' ability to communicate effectively and respond in unison to the crisis, as has the fact that senior Justice officials themselves say they still don't know the entire story about what happened that led to the crisis. So they are afraid that anything they put down on paper could be viewed as lies…
cmcclain | March 20, 2007
Coming into the Spring Science Bracket Showdown, the pundits pegged the Invertebrates as the most powerful in the field. Coach Bufo when asked about Team Vertebrates chances stated "We're a powerhouse dominated by charismatic megafauna! We're unstoppable!" But stop them is exactly what top seeded Invertebrates did in the first round. "I thought the lack backbone would help us, but we were overwhelmed by their numbers."noted Bufo after the game. In a surprising appearance by the rarely seen colossal squid, who dished out nine assists, the Invertebrates handled tentacled the Vertebrate…
petnoyer | March 20, 2007Here's a short list of 21 things you can do with a deep sea coral.
1.Raise awareness of deep-sea habitats
2.Display in a museum (e.g. Smithsonian NMNH)
3.Make a GIS database (Etnoyer and Morgan 2003, 2005)
4.Make photographs for books and pamphlets (Glover and Earle 2004)
5.Make jewelry
6.Investigate branching patterns (Sanchez et al 2004)
7.Identify to species level
8.Perform SEM microphotography
9.Population genetics (Baco-Taylor, 2005)
10.Global biogeography (Cairns, in press)
11.Estimate biomass in-situ (Belko, 2004)
12.Define protein structure (Ehrlich et al 2006)
13.Study reproduction (…
cmcclain | March 19, 2007
You can now see a life-size whale on the world wide web. That's not a typo either!
cmcclain | March 19, 2007So I know what you are asking? Craig, when I am out collecting deep-sea corals what protocols should I use? Your in luck! A considerable amount of Peter's time has been to compile Deep Sea Coral Collection protocols which is "designed to build international capacity to document deep-sea coral diversity." The document represents Peter's hard work and will no doubt lead to increase in our knowledge of deep-sea corals through a standardization of procedures. You can download the document for free!
Peter was also the topic d'jour at CenSeam (Census of Marine Life: Seamounts). He was…
cmcclain | March 19, 2007You may notice the new button on the sidebar that looks like this...
I posted last week on this great organization and will continue to leave the button on the side bar. In the coming weeks I will announce a campaign in which if certain donation levels are met, I will will reward readers with a surprise that may or may not encompass public acts of humiliation or special posts.
cortex | March 19, 2007It's hard to believe it's been four years since the war began. If you missed Bob Woodruff's important documentary on the epidemic of brain injuries caused by war, I highly suggest watching it. According to Woodruff, up to 10 percent of all veterans suffer some sort of brain injury - often caused by explosive shock waves - while in Iraq. Most of these injuries will go untreated.
And then there's the psychological toll. Numerous reports indicate that the army still doesn't get PTSD, and isn't providing our veterans with a suitable level of care. It seems that, because mental illness is…
drorzel | March 19, 2007The first weekend of the NCAA tournament wound down pretty much the way it started. There were a few good games, but almost all the higher seeds won. Only one of the top eight seeds failed to advance, and that was Wisconsin, who have looked shaky since the loss of Brian Butch. Purdue gave Florida a surprisingly good game, and Nevada hung with Memphis for a good while, but the only other upsets by seed were in the 4-5 games, with trendy pick Texas and VA Tech both losing.
This is the chalk-iest tournament in recent memory, and my personal theory is that this is closely related to the other big…
pharyngula | March 19, 2007Geoffrey Simmons, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, is going to be on the prestigious Coast to Coast AM show to talk about evolution and the impossibility thereof on Tuesday night. Simmons is an MD (lately, we're seeing a trend in DI's taste in proponents, aren't we?) in Eugene, Oregon … one of my favorite places, so it's a little sad to see craziness that isn't of the granola-and-herb type coming out of there.
But Coast to Coast AM … I remember listening to that years ago, when it was just Art Bell broadcasting out of his double-wide in Pahrump. It's a show for loons — conspiracy…
jlynch | March 18, 2007March 19th
Events
1915 - Pluto is photographed for the first time but was not recognized as a planet
Births
1684 - Jean Astruc, French physician and scholar
1865 - William Morton Wheeler, American entomologist, myrmecologist, pioneer in ethology
1883 - Walter Haworth, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1900 - Frédéric Joliot, French physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1943 - Mario J. Molina, Mexican chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1871 - Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger, Austrian mineralogist
1914 - Giuseppe Mercalli, Italian volcanologist
1950 - Walter Haworth,…