voltagegate | June 28, 2007The tropical dry forests of Madagascar are notoriously fragile. The plants and animals inhabiting these areas are highly endemic; 48% of the genera of plants in southern Madagascar are unique to the island. Clear cutting of these forests has escalated with the expansion of agriculture since 1970.
But to what extent? According to this paper recently published in PLoS One, recent literature on the subject has shown a less dramatic model of deforestation in the area. The researchers broaden the scope of analysis to include rates of stability and regeneration in these forests, as well as the…
voltagegate | June 27, 2007PETA's prez sent Michael Moore a letter last week calling him a hypocrite for being fat while promoting his new film, SiCKO, a documentary criticizing the US healthcare system. Let the fat jokes begin!
Congratulations from PETA on the reviews for SiCKO. Although we think that your film could actually help reform America's sorely inadequate health care system, there's an elephant in the room, and it is you. With all due respect, no one can help but notice that a weighty health issue is affecting you personally. We'd like to help you fix that.
Zing! He's sure to take the request seriously now…
voltagegate | June 25, 2007"When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."
-Charles Darwin
voltagegate | June 25, 2007This post was from last July, when I suppose I felt like siphoning some science history into a blog post after reading a great post from Carel. Early 20th century paleontology was exciting stuff.
Tangled Bank # 59 is just itchin' to be read at Science and Reason.
My highly subjective pick of the bunch: A look at the Cambrian explosion from Rigor Vitae:
Everyone's talking about the Cambrian Explosion, it seems. While evolutionary biologists discuss the actual rate of adaptive radiation, a handful of creationists have hailed it as proof of...something...I forget exactly what. The Cambrian…
voltagegate | June 22, 2007I've been brutally tagged by Brian, who seeks to infect my mind with a blog meme that demands eight random facts as an offering to the blog gods:
1. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
2. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
3. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.
Egotism and irrelevancy below the fold.
I have filled just about every position one can have in the restaurant biz, from prep to line to waiter to FOH and bakery manager. Hospitality was a career choice out of need; science writing is a choice…
voltagegate | June 22, 2007Sheril's going to South Africa to join the "Indiana Jones of Conservation Biologists" at the SCB conference.
Looking forward to the travel diary...
voltagegate | June 22, 2007But not in the way you might think.
Bay Area CEOs think global warming is a threat to local business, according to a survey from the Bay Area Council.
The survey, released Thursday, said 77 percent of Bay Area chief executives who responded think that environmental warming is a serious threat to the local economy and to the region's quality of life. Just 6 percent of CEOs in the study said it wasn't at all a serious problem.
The council polled 510 Bay Area CEOs and top executives for the study. Those who responded overwhelmingly supported legislation to require cuts in pollution that could…
voltagegate | June 21, 2007Glaciation opening new niches? The bushbuck, Tragelaphus sciptus, is sure to fill them.
I finally had the chance to this paper on molecular biogeography, an interesting method of analyzing the biodiversity of widespread populations of organisms, their core habitats and their interconnectivity. The bushbuck is a perfect model; it populate most of Sub-Saharan Africa. Genetic data - from mitocondrial DNA and cytochrome b complimentary data - was contextualized and integrated with geomorphologic and climatic history. For those keeping track of the ecology basics posts, this is a perfect example…
voltagegate | June 21, 2007A very important, ground breaking survey was released today, revealing shocking news... about which words spawned from the internet were the most "irritating":
Wikipedia already has thousands of people logging on at their homes and offices. "Blog", "netiquette", "cookie" and "wiki" have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to a poll...
"Blogosphere", the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; "blog" itself was third; "netiquette", or Internet etiquette, came fourth and "blook", a book based on a blog, was fifth.
Fascinating.
voltagegate | June 20, 2007Found this on ECOLOG this morning:
Dear Colleagues:
We are writing to invite your participation in a survey of wildlife
responses to climate change in the Rocky Mountains. Results of this
important project will help frame policy decision making, media reports to
the public, and the direction of future science and management programs.
Climate change is no longer a matter of "what if" or "when." The
scientific community agrees: a growing body of evidence indicates that
human activities are causing unprecedented disruptions to the global
climate system. Furthermore, it is clear that these…
voltagegate | June 19, 2007It's about damn time. If their first single is any indication, Icky Thump will be less folky than their last release. And I love this line:
Well Americans want nothin' better to do, why don't you kick yourself out ,you're an immigrant too? Who's usin' who? What should we do? Well ya can't be a pimp and a prostitute too.
voltagegate | June 19, 2007"I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms."
-Stephen Jay Gould
voltagegate | June 19, 2007From ScienceDaily/Press TV:
The ancestor of today's giant panda really was a pygmy giant panda, says Russell Ciochon, UI professor of anthropology. Ciochon is a co-author of an article published in the June 18-22 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Previous discoveries of teeth and other remains made between 1985 and 2002 had failed to establish the animal's size.
Ciochon says that the ancient panda (formally known as Ailuropoda microta, or "pygmy giant panda") was probably about three feet in length, compared to the modern giant panda, which…
voltagegate | June 19, 2007For an important mission to Earth?
Their spaceship will comprise a series of interlocked modules in an research institute in Moscow, and once the doors are closed tight, the volunteers will be cut off from all contact with the outside world except by a delayed radio link.
They will face simulated emergencies, daily work routines and experiments, as well as boredom and, no doubt, personal friction from confinement in just 550 cubic metres (19,250 cubic feet), the equivalent of nine truck containers.
Communications with the simulated mission control and loved-ones will take up to 40 minutes,…
voltagegate | June 17, 2007"The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature's transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to feared our subdued."
-Thomas Kuhn
voltagegate | June 16, 2007From the ESA blog:
All of this research is needed. But where is the balance? It is the ecologists who know about primary productivity, about the effects of harvests on biodiversity, and about designing sustainable systems. We know about fluxes of greenhouse gasses. We study the effects of biomass removal on biodiversity. In summary, it is the ecologists who should be the leaders in this debate. The Ecological Society of America and other representatives of the community of ecologists should demand that our science receive proportional attention. Otherwise, we will merely end up…
voltagegate | June 16, 2007"Mythology is popularly defined as 'other peoples' religions' ...but actually religion is misinterpreted mythology"...
-Joseph Campbell
voltagegate | June 16, 2007Greg Laden has a newspaper style carnival of the best ecology and environmental science posts from the past month. A lovely brain snack for the weekend.
voltagegate | June 15, 2007Bora (and many others) reviewed the paper I've been meaning to get to all week, on climate change and land use impact projections on bird populations based on the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. He has all the details and the links.