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grrlscientist | March 9, 2007
These are the birthday wishes for PZ, indexed in the order I received them;
Dan Rhoades made a cephalopod cartoon
GrrlScientist sends a scientific paper
Sean Carrol read PZ's horrorscope
John Wilkins published a song
Richard Dawkins wrote a poem
Afarensis with the state invertebrate of Missouri
Bora made a cephalopod collage last year
Martin Rundkvist presents an ancient molluscan warlord
Arunn Narasimhan makes you search for the message written in invisible ink
Sandra Porter asks why this fish looks surprised
John Lynch posted a tentacular birthday wish
Jim Anderson wrote a villanelle for…
cmcclain | March 8, 2007
A celebration of International Polar Year
Picture: Craig R. McClain, Iceberg in Weddell Sea taken from the deck of R/V Polarstern
grrlscientist | March 8, 2007The 44th edition of I and the Bird is now available for your reading pleasure! Besides contributing a piece of my own, I also sent in a link written by one of my birding pals in Seattle who doesn't (yet) have a blog of his own; How to Identify the Peterson First Edition.
cmcclain | March 8, 2007In the tradition of Internet adages, I'd like to add another. In any discussion of sea life, no matter how rare, strange or disgusting, some knucklehead will always ask how well it goes with lemon or butter. I am calling this Gorton's Law.
cmcclain | March 8, 2007
Laser line scan mosaic of a pool of brine surrounded by mussels at a depth of 700 meters in the Gulf of Mexico. From here.
What is a brine pool?
A brine pool is a volume of hypersaline (~4-5x) water that is denser than the surrounding water forming anywhere from a puddle to a lake on the seafloor with a distinctive shoreline and surface. They are common in the Gulf of Mexico.
At the shore of the brine pool, the mussels form dense 'reefs'. In this picture you can see a float marking one of [the] study sites.From here.
How do brine pools form?…
sb admin | March 8, 2007by Liz BorkowskiÂ
Itâs International Womenâs Day, and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is holding its 51st session with the theme of âthe elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child.â Elisha Dunn-Georgiou at RH Reality Check reports that this theme, which youâd expect to get broad support, is under attack from some groups because itâs linked to sexual and reproductive health.
For those who donât believe that itâs a moral imperative for women to have control over their reproductive lives, thereâs another compelling argument in favor of…
grrlscientist | March 8, 2007A colossal squid, a 33-foot-long adult male weighing half a ton, was captured recently in the Antarctic Ocean. Because International law requires that anything caught in Antarctic waters must be taken onboard and documented to guard against overfishing, the captain had no choice: haul it aboard.
What captain John Bennett and his crew pulled in that day turned out to be the largest colossal squid ever recovered -- cause for considerable excitement aboard his ship, the San Aspiring, and around the world.
Including Bennett's catch--and a 20-foot female he found floating dead in 2003--only a…
tqa | March 7, 2007
In addition to being a boundless resource for those seeking accidental humor, Conservapedia is also used as a resource by homeschooled children. "Lectures" for various "classes" are available on the site, and can easily be used to demonstrate the advantages in requiring that homeschooled children be taught to a certain standard.
Here's a choice bit from "American History Lesson 2:"
In 1692, Salem Witch trials. There was a panic that some girls, just about your age, were practicing witchcraft. Girls were prosecuted for this. Some were convicted and then executed. The authorities thought…
cmcclain | March 7, 2007
From MBARI: This is a worm? This photograph of the newly named worm shows its mouth, which typically faces downward as the animal drifts about 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) below the ocean surface. Image: Karen Osborn (c) 2006 MBARI
The picture is of a new marine worm, Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, that dwells at 1000m. Its Latin name translates into "Chaetopterid worm that looks liek th rump of a pig. It has a segemented body like other polychaetes but the middle segments are inflated. The posterior and anterior segments are compressed against the inflated segments. One of the…
razib | March 7, 2007To all the physical anthropologists out there, what kind of elf is this? I thought their kind were all gone!
petnoyer | March 7, 2007 Wired Magazine is running an interesting story on Nautilus Minerals and their plans to mine the seafloor off Papua New Guine. The media offerings and graphics are pretty sharp.
revere | March 7, 2007Let me apologize in advance. This is a bit of a rant about scientific writing. It didn't start out that way, but as I hit the keyboard, Satan took control.
A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, or "penis" in the trade) is said to be reporting that bird flu comes from southern China (Wallace et al., "A statistical phylogeogrpahy of influenza A H5N1," PNAS, March 13, 2007, 104:4473-4478). We already knew that. So what's new? That's a bit harder to say.
Here's the lede (i.e., the opening lines of a news story) from the Agence France Presse news agency:
US…
moleculeoftheday | March 6, 2007Folate is a cofactor, or a small molecule that is involved in the function of an enzyme. It's involved in a number of enzymatic reactions; perhaps the most important relate to the biosynthesis of DNA.
It's amazing to think about the fact that we've only known about its existence for seventy-odd years, considering its crucial role in metabolism. No doubt this was (partly) due to the fact that the requirement for folate is vanishingly small; it's on the order of half a milligram a day! Because of folate's central role in DNA synthesis (along with various other reactions, many of which are…
cmcclain | March 6, 2007 A great response from the readers to last week's Pose a Question post. Here are some answers.
Jim inquires, "What's the current take on a deep sea origin of life?" A great question that I addressed as part of the ongoing 25 Things You Should Know Series.
Mustafa ponders, "Does an octopus have a medulla oblongata?" No. The medulla oblongata, although fun to say, is part of the brain stem, which is not found in invertebrates. Yet, the octopus central nervous system is more like the vertebrate brain than 'brains' of its relatives, snails and clams. Consider that the common seaslug,…
grrlscientist | March 6, 2007I have been out of the psychiatric hospital for three months, can you believe it? I hadn't even thought about it until today, when they conducted their three month follow-up interview.
For those of you who don't know the story, I was caught attempting suicide early in August, was taken to the ER and then placed in a state psychiatic hospital against my will for four months where I was diagnosed with a rapidly cycling bipolar disorder.
So basically, today was a time of reflection about my previous three months of freedom. It probably wouldn't surprise any of you to know that the first month…
tqa | March 6, 2007
Speaking of Lt. Gen. "Heckuvajob" Kiley, John Stewart has some nice things to say about him.
tqa | March 6, 2007
Two generals sat next to each other at yesterday's Congressional hearings on the Walter Reed problems. Both are physicians. Both have experience commanding Walter Reed since the beginning of combat in Iraq. There, the similarities end. One of them stood tall and accepted responsibility, even though the committee gave him every opportunity to blame others. The other blamed the situation on the failures of subordinates. One of them talked only to the Congressional subcommittee. The other, when given the opportunity, turned away from the committee, looked the troops who had suffered as a result…
signout | March 6, 2007The next issue of Pediatric Grand Rounds will be hosted at a blog I love, Blog, MD, on Sunday, March 11th. If you blog about anything related to pediatrics, send contributions to PGR by e-mailing them to samuel (dot) blackman (at) gmail (dot) com by Friday, March 9th.
grrlscientist | March 5, 2007The March edition of Mendel's Garden is now available for you to read. Be sure to check it out!