biology
emjohnson | December 7, 2009The twice monthly premiere science blog carnival has just been posted at Mauka to Makai. Many of your favorite science bloggers have been included (as well as yours truly). Make sure to stop in and prepare to be amazed.
bioephemera | December 5, 2009
The smallest orchid in the world (above) - only 2 mm across! (Thanks for the heads-up, Laura!)
Cassette-tape skeletons at Designboom.
Via Wired Science: Mini microbe portraits from the Micropolitan Museum
Dude - there are spiny, venomous catfish? Who knew?
Finally, an interview I did recently with Ava at Paw-Talk.
milhayser | December 4, 2009
On Wednesday, the NIH approved thirteen new embryonic stem cell lines for federally-funded research, with ninety-six additional lines still under review. These new approvals come as a direct result of the "Obama administration's new rules on federal funding for stem cell research, which reversed the Bush policy of prohibiting such funding in most cases." Read more about the new rules and a dismissed lawsuit against them on Dispatches From the Culture Wars by Ed Brayton. On Framing Science, Matthew C. Nisbet suggests that public attitudes toward stem cells are changing, and reminds us that…
bioephemera | December 3, 2009Ever wonder what the pilot for "Gray's Anatomy:Uncanny Valley" would be like? Well, you're in luck!
If It Weren't For You (I'd Be Sued) from Justine Cooper on Vimeo.
Yes, that was a . . .
music video in which an unseen clinician serenades the mannequins used in medical simulation with an infectious rock ballad. Emoting on the depth of their relationship, the doctor or nurse apologizes to the mannequins for what they go through in the name of patient safety and the improvement of clinical skills, crooning the chorus "If it weren't for you, I'd be sued."
It turns out the video is just part of…
Deepak Chopra and his Choprawoo translated: "Skeptics, take my ill-informed speculations seriously!"
oracknows | December 1, 2009He's baaaack.
Deepak Chopra. Remember him? It's been a while since I've said much about him and him alone. True, I've gone after him this year when he joined up with three other major league woo-meisters Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy, and Andrew Weil to try to try to help Senator Tom Harkin hijack the health care overhaul bill currently before Congress. However, given that a couple of years ago, Chopra was the man for whose abuses of quantum theory, evolution, and "universal consciousness" ideas I coined the term "Choprawoo" and the only response ever needed to Choprawoo, it's been a while since I…
awild | December 1, 2009Do any of you know what this little animal might be? I honestly have no idea, and rather than look it up I thought I'd crowd-source it to you folks first.
It was lurking on the underside of a leaf at the Archbold Biological Station in Florida along the shores of a sinkhole lake. This was back in June. It's about a centimeter long.
update: It's a hover fly larva. Ted MacRae picked it- thanks!
milhayser | December 1, 2009
Listen up, procrastinators—Coturnix reminds us on A Blog Around the Clock that we only have until the stroke of midnight to submit the best blog entries of the year to OpenLab 2009. He writes "we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics" as well as essays. You can see which posts have already been nominated, and order previous years' editions. So start scrounging the archives! And while you're at it, head over to Effect Measure to learn about the inner workings of viruses from Revere. You can compare photomicrographs of the swine flu virus with highly detailed, colorful…
bioephemera | December 1, 2009
Thylacine Dingo Comparison
Carl Buell
In Slate, Matt Gaffney explains how the constraints of a given system - in this case crossword puzzles - may lead to suspiciously similar yet independent solutions. Gaffney wrote a Poe-themed crossword with the elements BRAVE NEW WORLD, INTRAVENOUS DRIP, CONTRAVENE, COBRA VENOM, and VENTNOR AVENUE (all of which have "raven" embedded in them). He was very proud of his puzzle, but. . .
I soon learned that I wasn't as clever as I thought. Over the next couple of days, I started getting e-mails from solvers telling me that my theme had been done before. In…
bioephemera | November 30, 2009
Via 1o9, a timelapse BBC video of hundreds of unbelievably colorful Antarctic invertebrate species swarming and devouring a seal carcass. It's beautiful but somewhat graphic - be warned, some people may find the giant worms in particular rather skin-crawling. (And I thought I overindulged at Thanksgiving. . . )
grrlscientist | November 30, 2009tags: new species, biology, botany, orchid, tiniest orchid, Orchidaceae, Platystele, Lou Jost
A close-up of the world's smallest orchid, at just over 2mm from petal tip to petal tip.
Image: Lou Jost.
The world's smallest orchid was discovered recently in a mountainous nature reserve in Ecuador by American botanist Lou Jost. Dr. Jost, a former physicist, now works as a mathematical ecologist, plant biogeographer and conservation scientist, and is one of the world's most expert orchid hunters. In the previous decade, Dr. Jost discovered 60 new species of orchids and 10 other new plant…
revere | November 29, 2009We talk so much about the flu virus we thought we'd show you some nice pics that CDC has just put up. This is a review for many of you put reviews are always helpful. In these three pics, only one is the actual swine flu virus, the other two being "cartoon" depictions of a generic influenza virus. The cartoons are quite nice and helpful to see what you are looking at in the electron micrograph of influenza virions (virus particles), probably grown in tissue culture. I say "probably" because there is no other information on the site other than the micrograph was taken in the CDC Influenza…
bioephemera | November 29, 2009
The beautiful 2009 Burning Man poster, by artists Corey and Catska Ench, portrays evolution as a fantasia of related patterns.
bioephemera | November 27, 2009I encountered this jaw-dropping story, by one Emily Miller for AskMen.com, as the top "health link" on FoxNews this afternoon:
It seems like a reverse sexism started to take hold as the feminist movement came about and equality for women began gaining ground. Some women use their girl-power solidarity to come to a consensus on what's socially acceptable for women to do to men in a relationship. They've agreed among themselves that these behaviors are perfectly justifiable regardless of how they play with a guy's emotions or ego. With that, we've compiled a top 10 list of cruel things women do…
bioephemera | November 27, 2009
A few of my favorite holiday shopping suggestions from the past year of blogging. . .
#1. Pandemic, the Board Game. Turn H1N1 into holiday fun for everyone! (Already have Pandemic? Z-Man games has an upgrade pack.)
#2. Blue Barnhouse letterpress. Yeah, they're artistic and individually pressed, but these are not your parents' greeting cards. In addition to their Happy Colonoscopy cards, they have many more offensive yet hilarious greetings - these invites were perfect for a certain unexpurgated physiologist of my acquaintance. . .
#3. Like some paper with your science? Ork posters' heart…
bioephemera | November 27, 2009
Apparently this toy company needs a zoologist on staff. (Parents: this is the perfect gift to seriously confuse your pre-adolescent wanna-be biologist, and derail them into a more profitable career in law!) From FailBlog.
aardvarchaeology | November 21, 2009
Dear Reader, usually the deal here on Aard is that I tell you what to think and you reply, zombielike, "Yes... Master... Kill... Kill...". But today, let's turn the tables. I'm going to ask a question about a simple scientific-culinary matter that has baffled me for decades. And I hope someone out there knows enough about yeast to enlighten me.
When starved of oxygen, yeast turns sugar into alcohol.
When germinated, barley grains, by means of the enzyme amylase, turn some of their constituent starch into sugar. This process is called malting.
In order to make beer, you must malt the barley…
revere | November 21, 2009The Norwegian Institute of Public Health is reporting sporadic occurrences of a mutation in a portion of the flu virus that is involved with the process by which it attaches to cells. I use the word "sporadic" because at this point there is no evidence that the cases where the genetic change has been found are epidemiologically linked. Therefore we don't see it spreading from person to person but rather arising in people after they have been infected. At least that's how it appears from reports, but we have only preliminary information at this point. According to WHO, the mutation has been…
jstemwedel | November 20, 2009Dr. Free-Ride: Any ideas for tomorrow's sprog blog?
Younger offspring: I wanted to do how photosynthesis works.
Dr. Free-Ride: Did you do any research on that since last week?
Younger offspring: I don't do research.
Dr. Free-Ride: You don't do research?! How do you do science, then?
Younger offspring: I don't research stuff.
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, then, how do you learn stuff?
Younger offspring: (after a pause) I didn't do research about how photosynthesis works at night.
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, but does it work at night? 'Cause, what is photosynthesis?
Younger offspring: The moon could make it…
emjohnson | November 19, 2009
(To watch this as a music video click on the volume icon in the top left.)
Here you are, all your bright, shining faces with a brand new copy of On the Origin of Species. It's extremely generous of Ray Comfort and Living Waters Publications to distribute so many free copies of a book with no political agenda whatsoever. I noticed that some of you found an odd additional chapter to the book that never appeared in the original edition. But many of you reclaimed Darwin's intent by removing these unfortunate pages and now have an excellent copy for yourselves or to donate to a worthy…
emjohnson | November 18, 2009Carl Zimmer, science writer extraordinaire and blogger at The Loom will be speaking tonight at the University of British Columbia. It's at 7pm in
Room 2 of the Woodward Instructional Resources Centre (map).
According to his hosts at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum:
This year the world celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species; the most important book in the history of modern biology. The science of evolutionary biology has come a long way since 1859. In this talk, Carl Zimmer takes a look at how scientists are studying evolution to…