biology
bioephemera | August 28, 2009
Blue Barnhouse Letterpress is simply awesome. I was idly coveting these classy anatomical heart thank-you cards when I discovered they actually have a special card FOR COLONOSCOPIES:
No, not even letterpress can make these brutal (and hopefully fictitious) colonoscopy implements "classy." But that's not stopping me from blogging it.
bioephemera | August 27, 2009
I'm still tickled by the British scientists who discovered a cache of ancient squid ink and used it for. . . art:
Paleontologists discovered the remains of the creature, called a Belemnotheutis antiquus, during a dig at a Victorian excavation in Trowbridge, Wilts. They cracked open what appeared to be an ordinary looking rock only to find the one-inch-long black ink sac inside. After realising what they had stumbled across, they took out a small sample of the black substance and ground it up with an ammonia solution. Remarkably, the ink they created was good enough to allow them to draw the…
emjohnson | August 26, 2009It took the threat of nuclear annihilation between the two greatest powers of the 20th century to solve one of the most profound scientific controversies of the 1800s. In 1952 Dr. Harry Ladd, a researcher for the US Geological Survey, convinced the US War Department to drill holes deep into the Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls just prior to their obliteration by hydrogen bombs. The reason for the drilling had little to do with the nuclear tests as part of Operation Crossroads, but was simply to conduct an experiment based on the hypothesis of coral reef formation first proposed by Charles Darwin…
bioephemera | August 25, 2009
Lovely minimalist poster design from Jordan Michael Gray's flickrstream.
via NOTCOT.
bioephemera | August 22, 2009
"Neurosigntist" and blogger John Ohab sent me this photo of garish carpet in a Vegas hotel. It appears to depict mitochondria on a field of roses. And it's really, really ugly. Thanks John!
esiegel | August 22, 2009New technology has led to breakthroughs in practically every aspect of our lives since the dawn of the industrial revolution. In nearly every case, it's for the betterment, in some way, of society. (And yet, I like my music best when it's acoustic, unprocessed, and barely produced at all.) Take a listen to Song for Roy by the amazing Sam Bush (with help from Emmylou Harris) about his late bass player, Roy Huskey, Jr.
One of the more memorable technological advances in my lifetime came in the mid-1990s, when DNA testing/evidence became a very controversial part of our culture with a…
emjohnson | August 21, 2009This will be my first foray into baby blogging (technically it's my second, however the first ended up being somewhat accidental). What I hope to explore through these posts will be child development through the lens of anthropology and primatology as I observe my child going through various stages. I first wanted to explore a new idea (at least new to me) that my partner and I have been working with: early potty training, also known as Natural Infant Hygiene or Elimination Communication (EC).
The concept of EC is a simple one: mammals don't like to sit in their own waste and, if allowed…
ejohnson | August 18, 2009As reported in The New York Post, British botanists recently discovered a species of pitcher plant that consumes entire rats—not insects, rats. The plant was found atop Mount Victoria in the Philippines and has been named Nepenthes attenboroughii after Sir David Attenborough. Hapless rodents, like the one below, that stumble into its open mouth are dissolved by plant enzymes in what we can only imagine is a slow and horrific death.
As if we didn't have enough to worry about.
aardvarchaeology | August 17, 2009Sean B. Carroll's latest book has been sitting on my reading shelf (and been read by my wife) for over four months, but now I've finally read it. Remarkable Creatures is a collection of mini-biographies of people who have made important discoveries in evolutionary biology.
I won't mention names, but we've got both of the scientists who discovered evolution, the guy who discovered mimicry, the man who found the first Homo erectus fossils on Java, the man who discovered the Cambrian Burgess shale with its soft-part fossils, the man who found the first dinosaur nests, the father and son team…
grrlscientist | August 17, 2009tags: How DNA is Replicated in a Living Cell, biology, molecular biology, DNA, streaming video
I still remember when I learned how DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) replication occurs, and it was like a lightning bolt from the sky: it changed my view of the world and a molecular biologist was born. This video uses the latest research to create an animation of how DNA is replicated in a living cell [1:54]
DNA replication is a fundamental process underlying biological inheritance that occurs in all living organisms to accurately copy their DNA. This process occurs through a "semiconservative"…
bioephemera | August 16, 2009
H. annuus
Macoto Murayama
Nanobots? Alien spaceships? A scene from TRON? No, it's illustrator Macoto Muriyama's delicate diagrams of flower structure. Muriyama says,
Generally, a plant is considered to be a being that has an organic form. However, that is just one of the aspects because along with their organic form, a plant possesses a contradictory element of geometric/mechanical structure. By highlighting the later, the plant's out-of-the-ordinary form is revealed, and in it, a different kind of attractiveness can be found. (source)
See an entire gallery of Muriyama's work at Pink…
bioephemera | August 16, 2009I read Scibling Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide some time ago, but Moveable Type ate my half-finished review, and it's taken me until now to get back to it. You may have seen quite a few reviews elsewhere by now - Adam Kepecs reviewed it for Nature back in April, and to make a long story short, I largely agree with him: Lehrer is a very good writer, but this is not a great book.
Lehrer starts his book with an airplane anecdote, so I'll do the same - although his opening anecdote is about crashing a plane (albeit a simulated plane), so I'm not sure I'd recommend the book for nervous flyers.…
aardvarchaeology | August 16, 2009My son just got back from a happy week on Hallands Väderö, a small island nature reserve off the southwestern coast of Sweden. It reminds me of my own visit there at about his age and the bird ring I found.
We were staying in BÃ¥stad on the mainland for a week, and I remember having a lot of fun despite my parents having a number of violent tearful fights. The worst of them got sparked when I complained about how boring my visit to Hallands Väderö had been: my dad was angry with me for complaining, my mom defended me, and soon they were fighting again -- so I thought it was my fault. And…
bioephemera | August 15, 2009
Photographer: Rudy Huhold
Agency: Artplan
Apparently package delivery service Sedex Express is quite similar to. . . your brain on drugs. Hmmmm.
Via fubiz
ejohnson | August 14, 2009
A recent paper in Nature Biotechnology reported the first complete human genome to be sequenced using third-generation, single-molecule sequencing technology. The genome sequenced belongs to one Stephen Quake, co-founder of the biotech company Helicos that developed the Heliscope instrument used to perform the analysis. On Genetic Future, ScienceBlogger Dan MacArthur analyzes the paper itself, explaining that while single-molecule sequencing is undoubtedly the direction in which genome analysis is headed, the technology is not yet on par with second-generation sequencing platforms in terms…
bioephemera | August 14, 2009How NOT to practice medicine - no matter how bad the health care situation gets:
Benson has no medical degree. His expertise comes from his youth, which was spent on a farm in Indiana. "When one of us needed medical attention," he told me, "we dipped into our veterinary supplies." According to Benson, many pharmaceuticals for animals are the same as those formulated for humans, and can be purchased without a prescription at veterinary supply stores, of which most rural communities have several. In figuring out how to translate livestock dosages to human ones, Benson offers this jaunty rule of…
bioephemera | August 12, 2009I missed a few weeks of Jon Stewart while we didn't have cable, so many thanks to David Bruggeman for pointing out this awesome Daily Show clip of scientists failing to communicate. I'm still chortling.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Human's Closest Relative
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes
Political Humor
Spinal Tap Performance
My favorite part is when Oliver gets the chimp guy to admit no one will read his papers.
bioephemera | August 12, 2009
Japanese artist Kawano Takeshi's 2007 rendition of global warming is simple, a little funny, and a lot sad.
For another version of the same theme - using a real child's toy - check out Ours (the Bear), a video by French artist Simon Dronet. I'll try to embed it, but the link's wonky, so you might have to click through to see it.
OursUploaded by laperitel.
Via Fubiz
bioephemera | August 11, 2009Remember the first time you learned sterile technique, or how to make a bacterial spreader, or how to blow up a distillation apparatus? Well, now you can relive the disorientation and anxiety nostalgic fuzzy feeling with benchfly.com, a site that offers video tutorials on various lab tasks, like making a bacterial spreader using a glass rod and a bunsen burner.
Overall, looks like an excellent resource for teachers. But wait - how'd this one slip in there?
Now that is a productive use of glass and alcohol!
awild | August 10, 2009
Pogonomyrmex maricopa (at left) tussles with an Aphaenogaster albisetosa at the Aphaenogaster nest entrance.
While in Arizona, I chanced upon a set of ant fights that I'd observed several times previously. Single workers of the maricopa harvester ant Pogonomyrmex maricopa would approach a nest of their competitor, Aphaenogaster long-legged ants, and spend a few minutes drawing heat from the guards before wandering off.
Same thing, but different individuals (note differences in limb wounds from the previous photo)
The interaction is common enough that it really couldn't be just a chance…