biology
bioephemera | May 29, 2009
Thank goodness Science has finally given us protection against. . . Kooties!
Kootie Killer promises to "kill 99.9% of germs & Kooties without water!" This claim is clearly rigorously lab-tested and evidence-based, but although I wouldn't dream of questioning its veracity, it does invite the question. . . what the heck is a Kootie?
Personally, I always thought cooties (with a "c") were symbiotic, invisible organisms that spontaneously accrued on children, causing healthy developmental conflict with members of the opposite sex. Shows you what I know. Apparently, the Kootie is a yellow-…
bioephemera | May 28, 2009It is no secret that 3 Quarks Daily is one of my favorite blogs. It's the first blog I told my boyfriend to put on his Google Reader (he'd already added BioE, but still). Which is why I'm overjoyed to announce that 3QD has created its own prize for blogging. It's called a Quark. Oh, how I covet the Quark - especially the Strange Quark. And the finalists are to be judged by the 3QD editors and their guest judge . . . Stephen Pinker! w00t!
Any blog post on a natural or social science topic published since May 24, 2008 is eligible. The catch? Nominations are only open until midnight on June 1.…
bioephemera | May 26, 2009
This would be funnier if it weren't so painfully true. Also see the sequel.
I didn't get to this for a few days because I was working too hard to blog last week. In the meantime, Language Log responded with an especially egregious example of this sort of oversimplification.
Cartoon by Jorge Cham, via Sheril at the Intersection.
ejohnson | May 26, 2009
A paper published May 19 in PLoS ONE has the blogosphere in a frenzy over a 47 million-year-old primate fossil unearthed in Germany that might be the ancestor of all modern day humans, monkeys and apes. Scientists discovered the fossil—they're calling it Ida—in 1983, but only recently has it been restored. Ida was once a lemur-like animal and belongs to a newly classified genus and species, Darwinius masillae. The most intact primate fossil discovered to date, the find will have particular meaning to evolutionary biologists who have long searched for a "missing link," though ScienceBlogger…
esiegel | May 19, 2009One of the greatest challenges in all of evolutionary science is to figure out which species evolved into which over time. From our perspective, we would love to know how humans came to be, who our ancestors were, and what simpler animals gave rise to us.
Well, we don't know this right now. We know a good portion of the fossil records, but -- like anything that relies on fossils -- there are gaps, referred to colloquially as missing links. One of the fun things to track is cranial capacity over time, and we find that Homo Sapiens' huge brains are recent developments.
And, as you can also…
jstemwedel | May 17, 2009About half of the Free-Ride silkworms (who you know from pictures and videos) have decided that it's time to pupate.
Of course, we immediately broke out the video camera. But, then the truth started to dawn on us.
It takes a good while for a silkworm to make a cocoon. The ones that seem ready started almost 24 hours ago, and we're only now starting to see convincing signs that there will be cocoons soon.
Because, having never made cocoons before, the silkworms kind of flail around for awhile, spinning silk and trying to stick it to surfaces it won't stick to, then tumbling down, then trying…
bioephemera | May 16, 2009Students and laypeople alike often view biotech patents with baffled disbelief. How is it possible to patent bacteria? Mice? Cell types and DNA sequences? How can someone else "own" gene sequences that all of us have carried inside our bodies since birth?
Honestly, as a biologist, the concept of patenting a gene doesn't really throw me for a loop. Think about it: although we all have genes, we can't read them unless we use a variety of lab techniques, many of them patented. In turn, reading the sequence isn't any use unless we know why we care - that this gene is relevant and can be used to…
jstemwedel | May 16, 2009Dear Natural Selection,
Can we have a chat about weeds?
Don't get me wrong, I am duly impressed with the variety of plants that have evolved under your pressure. I'm all about the plants, and I try to be respectful of the growing conditions you impose in our zone.
But would it kill you to make more of the plants that grow like gangbusters without us tasty? Why can't they all be like mint and lemon balm?
Sure, yeah, if the weeds were tasty, it would be hard for them to defend themselves against being eaten. But I promise we're not drinking mojitos every night at Casa Free-Ride. And if the…
bioephemera | May 13, 2009Well, not really. Artist Carel Brest van Kempen timelapsed stills of an acrylic painting to show his work process. It's remarkable how quickly the anole comes to life!
I especially enjoy watching the glazes go on and come off - each time he blots out part of the painting, I think, "oh NO!" But that's because I work in watercolor, which is pretty near irreversible. Acrylic is much more forgiving.
awild | May 13, 2009One of the most vociferous debates in taxonomy is over a catchy-sounding concept called DNA barcoding. Since nearly all organisms carry a version of the COI gene in the mitochondrion, the idea is that the DNA sequence of the gene can serve as a standard identification marker. A barcode, of sorts. Of course, the practice only works if species have unique COI sequences. Which they do, much of the time, and the barcoders consequently have been successful in garnering research money and churning out publications.
So what's the problem?
There are two major objections. The first is…
razib | May 13, 2009
When I found out a while back that Jonah Lehrer's next book was titled How We Decide, I knew I was going to check it out. It's no coincidence that I recently reviewed Predictably Irrational, I blog because I'm interested in reducing the human animal down its basic units of organization. Due to my disciplinary focus I generally touch upon behavior genetics or the inferences of human history one can glean from evolutionary genetics. History, psychology and economics are all domains which have piqued my interest. But I'll be honest and admit that I tend to avoid neuroscience because there's a…
grrlscientist | May 11, 2009tags: Blue House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, birds, blue feather color, plumage color, refraction
Blue-colored Male House Sparrow, Passer domesticus,
photographed in Sydney, Australia, April 2009.
Image: Richard Shears, Daily Mail [larger view].
Some of you might remember the remarkable photographs of the blue-colored male house sparrow, Passer domesticus, that was photographed in a garden in Sydney, Australia a couple weeks ago. I posted the images I had, along with my speculations, but was unable to go further than that. However, I tracked down the photographer and he has very kindly…
bioephemera | May 11, 2009Over at his Discover blog, Carl Zimmer has asked readers to help choose a cover for his new non-majors evolution textbook. If you have a good eye for design, as I'm sure many BioE readers do, go over and help him pick the most appealing cover!
It's a hard choice, as so many design choices are. I'll leave my vote until after the fold so I don't prejudice you.
Okay; so I like all of them, but don't *love* any of them. My problem with the orchid, which I think is the most elegant and subtle design, is that it doesn't say "evolution" to me. It says "botany." Then it says "yawn." The minute I…
bioephemera | May 10, 2009
Okay, these dolls by David Foox are just plain disturbing. And they're not just a concept - you can actually BUY ONE.
Via Street Anatomy.
tfk | May 6, 2009It's said that cockroaches would survive a nuclear war, but can they withstand scientists who understand evolution? A new study finds that evolution-based Integrative Pest Management was more effective than conventional treatments at killing cockroaches in North Carolina schools.
This is good news for asthmatics and people with allergies, since cockroaches produce allergens and are linked to incidence of asthma.
It's also good news for scientists, yet another in a long string of reasons why people need to understand evolution. IPM is based on an evolutionary and ecological understanding of…
oracknows | May 6, 2009A while back, Mark Hoofnagle coined a term that I like very much: Crank magnetism. To boil it down to its essence, crank magnetism is the phenomenon in which a person who is a crank in one area very frequently tends to be attracted to crank ideas in other, often unrelated areas. I had noticed this tendency long before I saw Mark's post, including one Dr. Lorraine Day, who, besides being a purveyor of quackery, is also a rabid anti-Semite and Holocaust denier who had treated arch-Holocaust Ernst Zündel with "alternative" therapies when he was in jail awaiting trial, and a conspiracy theorist…
bioephemera | May 5, 2009You've probably already heard that Merck and Elsevier are being called on the carpet for producing a medical "journal" - Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine - that appeared to be peer-reviewed, but was actually a marketing ploy to encourage doctors to prescribe Merck drugs. Ouch.
Elsevier told The Scientist,
"Elsevier acknowledges the concern that the journals in question didn't have the appropriate disclosures," the statement continued. "It is worth noting that project in question was produced 6 years ago and disclosure protocols have evolved since 2003. Elsevier's current…
razib | May 2, 2009Low Vitamin D Causes Problems For Acutely Ill Patients:
Dr Paul Lee, Professor John Eisman and Associate Professor Jackie Center, researchers at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, examined a cohort of 42 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. Forty-five percent turned out to be Vitamin D deficient.
...
When the team correlated the Vitamin D levels with a disease severity score, there was a direct correspondence between sickness and Vitamin D deficiency. In other words, the sicker someone was, the lower the levels of Vitamin D. Out of the 42 patients studied, there were 3 deaths. The…
esiegel | May 1, 2009There are plenty of great sites here on Scienceblogs that have talked about the swine flu, including Aetiology, the Scientific Activist, Greg Laden, Ethics and Science, and Effect Measure, among others.
But I've noticed, reading comments here and elsewhere, that people are really, seriously terrified of this. And yes, it can kill you if you don't take care of it. But what does the swine flu mean for you? Here's my rundown on it:
Swine flu will not kill you if you treat it in time.
You will not be asymptomatic. If you have swine flu, you will have (surprise) flu-like symptoms.
It is about as…
scientificactivist | May 1, 2009On Wednesday, the CDC reported that influenza A H1N1 viruses from 13 patients with confirmed diagnoses of swine flu had been tested for resistance to a variety of antiviral drugs. The good news was that all of the isolates were susceptible to the antiviral drugs oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza). However, all 13 were resistant to adamantane-based drugs (amantadine and rimantadine). Resistance to adamantane drugs (which were developed first) has actually become quite widespread among flu viruses in general, so oseltamivir and zanamivir are commonly the drugs of choice.
The…