biology
omnibrain | September 30, 2009Wow, their brains are small. It all makes sense now - all they want to do is eat shit and kill their competitors.
Anyone want to translate the, what I'm assuming, is Japanese for me?
-Via Neatorama-
bioephemera | September 30, 2009
What You're Made Of (ABS)
Jason Freeny, 2009
Anatomy teachers: this would be an awesome quiz for your students, wouldn't it? :)
Jason Freeny is the digital artist behind Balloon Animal anatomy, Gummi Bear anatomy, and the dissected Gingerbread Man. Visit his site to see more! Via SheWalksSoftly.
ejohnson | September 29, 2009Ligers are known in popular culture for being pretty much Napoleon Dynamite's favorite animal, but a lesser known fact is that the lion-tiger hybrids are actually the largest of the big cats, more massive than either parent due to a quirk of genetics. As Razib explains on Gene Expression, parental imprinting is responsible for the difference in size: Imprinted genes from female lions usually keep "largeness" genes from the males in check, but female tigers have had no selective pressure to evolve such genes. The resulting offspring of a tiger mother and a lion father are the oversized ligers…
jstemwedel | September 28, 2009GrrlScientist is in a contest to become Quark Expedition's official blogger from Antarctica. (So is DN Lee from Urban Science Adventures.)
Grrl has been doing pretty well getting votes in this contest, despite the fact that her competition includes a radio personality from Portugal and a member of the Osmond family.
Of the top vote-getters, it is clear to me that Grrl would do the best job with the specified task (blogging from, and about, Antarctica). She has a personal and professional interest in nature, science, the environment, and conservation. She has a history of writing pieces…
emjohnson | September 28, 2009SUNY-Binghampton evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson currently has a response to my review "Survival of the Kindest" up at Seedmagazine.com. In his response he suggests that Dawkinsian critics such as Frans de Waal and Joan Roughgarden have adopted a group selection perspective in all but name:
Rejecting group selection was wrong.
The rejection of group selection as an important evolutionary force in the 1960s was one of the biggest blunders in the history of evolutionary thought. The extremely simple idea--I was just able to describe in just a few lines--was branded as so wrong that…
emjohnson | September 24, 2009Seed magazine has just posted my review of Frans de Waal's The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. I wanted to use this opportunity to thank Nikki, Evan, Bora and everyone else that helped in developing this piece. For posts on related topics please see Misunderstanding Dawkins, The Sacrifice of Admetus, Bonobos "Red in Tooth and Claw", The Evolution of Morality and Laboratory Evidence for the Breakdown of the Selfish Gene.
In a fitting metaphor, the most recent experiment with social darwinism resulted in mass extinction. Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling claimed he was…
emjohnson | September 23, 2009Author's Note: This piece is a continuation of my article "Survival of the Kindest" that appeared in Seed magazine.
As an undergraduate in biology and anthropology I read every one of Dawkins' books voraciously and would get into heated debates with my close friends about the Dawkins-Gould rivalry. He was one of the primary voices that taught me to love science and want to devote my life to the pursuit of natural knowledge. So before you read anything else, go out and read Dawkins' work. It's worth your time. This post will still be here when you come back.
The problem that I've found as…
bioephemera | September 21, 2009
On how many chilly fall days have you woken up and thought to yourself, "it's too cold for bare legs and too warm for wool tights - I need some vintage cell division illustration leggings"?
Okay, maybe never - but now you will.
From regeneration's etsy shop. Thanks to Laura for the heads up!
emjohnson | September 21, 2009Heracles battles Death for generosity's sake / Frederic Lord Leighton (1869-71)
Whereas great scientific theories stand the test of time when they accurately predict the natural world through repeated empirical trials, great literature transcends the ages when it speaks to universal qualities of human experience. Such inspirational works can also, without the authors realizing at the time, reveal the sublime beauty and tragedy of our evolutionary drama. Few classical authors have tapped into this zeitgeist of biological experience as the Greek tragedian Euripides. The conflict between…
bioephemera | September 21, 2009No, it's not a stupid joke. It's my candidate for the worst press release title of September? "Neurons Found To Be Similar To U.S. Electoral College":
A tiny neuron is a very complicated structure. Its complex network of dendrites, axons and synapses is constantly dealing with information, deciding whether or not to send a nerve impulse, to drive a certain action. It turns out that neurons, at one level, operate like another complicated structure -- the United States, particularly its system of electing a president, through the Electoral College. (source).
Uh. . . thanks for that bizarre free…
aardvarchaeology | September 20, 2009
Uppsala, at the roadside by the castle, Friday 18th at noon. Its unblinking eye was very clear.
bioephemera | September 19, 2009
This toddler t-shirt from Twisted Twee comes in sizes up to 4 years, and is inspired by "just a few of the items my young daughter Betty consumed in her first year." The buttons I understand, but the toy soldier? And what is the toy soldier doing to that cow?
Remember, parents: B is for baby, barium swallow and bougienage!
Check out their "ride-a-dad" set, too. Cute!
jstemwedel | September 19, 2009The other day, while surfing the web, my better half came upon this semi-official looking symbol for psychohazards:
The verbiage underneath the symbol seem to indicate conditions that might have serious consequences for one's picture of the world and its contents, or for one's ability to come to knowledge about the world. A philosopher who was so inclined could go to town on this.
However, while this particular icon was new to me, this isn't the first time I've seen the term "psychohazard" in use.
A long time ago, I was an undergraduate with an internship working in a cancer pharmacology…
aardvarchaeology | September 19, 2009Follow-up: in July last year I wrote about a giant vertebra that had been found in a lake in northern Sweden at 210 meters above sea level. The find spot hasn't been near the sea since the end of the latest ice age. This meant that the bone might be very old.
But already in October there was news in the matter. Zoologists determined that the bone belonged to a sperm whale, and a radiocarbon analysis pegged it at only about 100 years of age. So during the big whaling era someone took the vertebra to the lake and threw it in.
emjohnson | September 18, 2009
As part of the series of reposts leading up to my review of Frans de Waal's newest book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society I present the first of three pieces that appeared after Ian Parker's 2007 article "Swingers" appeared in The New Yorker.
As expected, the apologists for unreason who promote Intelligent Design have jumped on the recent article in The New Yorker about bonobos. This inspired me to write at more length about the article since this is a species I've studied closely for the last two years. Denyse O'Leary at Uncommon Descent uses the article to proudly…
grrlscientist | September 17, 2009tags: Planet Earth, nature, animals, BBC, television, streaming video
Martha Holmes, series producer of BBC Earth programs discusses the importance of preserving the planet, along with comments from her colleagues, Neil Nightingale and Dale Templar. This amazing series will air this Sunday, 20 September, from 300-800pm. Yes, I am jealous beyond words of all you people who have televisions.
emjohnson | September 17, 2009
Darwin evicts a Social Darwinist and Eugenicist from his house / Northwestern Univ.
Primatologist Frans de Waal, author of such classic works as Chimpanzee Politics, Peacemaking Among Primates, Good Natured: The Origin of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, and Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape is now coming out with his new book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. My review of this work will be out early next week to mark the book's national release on September 22. Today and in the next few days I will be reposting pieces I've written over the years on the…
grrlscientist | September 16, 2009tags: Planet Earth, nature, animals, BBC, television, streaming video
Neil Nightingale, Head of the BBC Natural History Unit, discusses the impact and variety of BBC Earth expeditions, as well as the passion of the crew members. Martha Holmes and Brian Leith, share their thoughts on these subjects as well. This amazing series will air this Sunday, 20 September, from 300-800pm. Yes, I am jealous beyond words of all you people who have televisions.
revere | September 16, 2009There is no way to keep up with all the flu news, so we pick and choose, usually based on some kind of point we want to make. That's both the good and the bad of this blog: the news comes with a point of view. But so does most news, and we try to make ours both explicit and scientifically as accurate as we can with the information at hand. Today is a typical example. Bloomberg is reporting that any swine flu virus resistant to oseltamivir (trade name Tamiflu), the only antiviral pill effective at all for the infection, transmits less well than swine flu that's sensitive to Tamiflu. The source…