biology
tfk | April 30, 2009Both the mammalogist and the political junkie in me wish we could see this:
rumors are flying like monkeys and squirrels, which, of course, clouds the issue
A literal cloud of flying monkeys and squirrels would be quite a sight.
razib | April 30, 2009I blogged about this a few months ago, but Dan MacArthur reports that the firm which was going to roll it out first claims that it doesn't really work as advertised.
razib | April 30, 2009
I'm in the mood for a "feel good" story with the past week's fixation in swine flu. Half A Glass Of Wine A Day May Boost Life Expectancy By Five Years:
The Dutch authors base their findings on a total of 1,373 randomly selected men whose cardiovascular health and life expectancy at age 50 were repeatedly monitored between 1960 and 2000.
Here are the findings:
And men who drank only wine, and less than half a glass of it a day, lived around 2.5 years longer than those who drank beer and spirits, and almost five years longer than those who drank no alcohol at all.
Drinking wine was strongly…
revere | April 29, 2009In June 2005 a reader over at the old site suggested we put up some of our flu related material on Wikipedia. That sounded like a great idea to me. Even better, why not start a special purpose wiki -- a flu wiki -- to harvest the vast knowledge of the hivemind? Many, if not most, of the problems that would plague us in a pandemic weren't medical or even scientific in nature. They were things like, how do you prepare your small business for the possibility that the one person who knows how to unjam the fax machine is out sick for 4 weeks? Two other bloggers were also doing flu stuff at that…
jlynch | April 29, 2009Mark posted this on Facebook, but is is so wonderful I need to pass it along:
bioephemera | April 29, 2009Let etsy seller foliage help you fight swine flu with this bagful of handmade soaps in "skin-ish colors"!
I vascillate between finding them cute, and thinking they resemble a crowd of damned souls reaching out for help from my soap dish. Weird.
Dedicated to John O., who truly appreciates disembodied hands. Via DailyArtMuse.
bioephemera | April 29, 2009
Check out Brian's new review of A History of Paleontology Illustration (Life of the Past) by Jane Davidson, in Palaeontologia Electronica:
It is rare for fossils to be featured in fine art, but in the 15th century painting A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly Saint Eligius by the Flemish master Petrus Christus there is, if you look carefully, a fossil shark tooth among the objects scattered on the shop's table. The fossil plays a nearly insignificant role in the painting, but it reflects the general interpretation of such natural curiosities at the time. From this modest starting point,…
aardvarchaeology | April 29, 2009A recent press release from the University of Lund includes a confusing contradiction. Summarising Dr. Geraldine Thiere's recent doctoral dissertation, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Created Agricultural Wetlands, the release claims that on one hand natural wetlands are not more biodiverse than recently dug ponds, on the other hand that biodiversity in wetlands increases with age. Both statements can't be true.
After I had written to Dr. Thiere she kindly clarified the matter for me. It turns out that arguably neither of the two contradictory statements is true.
To begin with,…
razib | April 28, 2009Carl Zimmer points out that Marianne Williamson is making some real strange suggestions in regards to the swine flue in The Huffington Post:
l) Pray it away. Just pray it away, asking God as you understand Him, the Divine Physician, Jesus or whatever other form of divine imagery works for you. Simply ask that it be removed from our midst.
2) Send love to Mexico. Between what's actually been happening there with the drug wars, plus all the "Mexico is dangerous" thoughts we've loaded onto it over the last several weeks, it needs a major dose of love - the most powerful medicine of all - to…
bioephemera | April 28, 2009
Birth of the Gastric Brooding Frog
Photo Mike Tyler
Unfortunately, species are the ultimate bioephemera.
Amphibians in particular have been declining at an alarming rate over the past several decades; some estimates suggest that a third of amphibian species are on the verge of extinction. My latest essay for SEED's website opens with the story of the Gastric Brooding Frog, Rheobatrachus silus, an extremely peculiar species. It was discovered in the 1970s, and already believed extinct just over a decade later. That's barely enough time to describe a species, much less save it.
Save the Frogs…
bioephemera | April 27, 2009An interesting perspective from today's WaPo: David Kessler, doctor, lawyer, and former FDA commissioner, argues that the food industry manipulates the neurological impacts of fats and sugars to program consumers to eat more than we need or want.
"The food the industry is selling is much more powerful than we realized," he said. "I used to think I ate to feel full. Now I know, we have the science that shows, we're eating to stimulate ourselves. And so the question is what are we going to do about it?"
Read more about Kessler's Dumpster-diving quest to prove his point here. Kessler's new book…
razib | April 27, 2009Serum Vitamin D Levels and Markers of Severity of Childhood Asthma in Costa Rica. See ScienceDaily. Anecdote: my own asthma has gotten much better since I started Vitamin D supplementation. Not only have I had many fewer bouts of bronchitis the past few years, but my basal respiratory functioning is much improved.
bioephemera | April 27, 2009
This air purifier ad from Sharp is a little creepy, in a Spongebob Squarepants way. I love how you can see their fluorescent organelles! Unfortunately I don't see anything here that resembles a virus, but with swine flu all over the news, this serves as a good reminder to wash your hands.
Ad by Takho Lau for ad agency M&C Saatchi of Hong Kong. Found via Next Nature
grrlscientist | April 26, 2009tags: Blue House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, birds, blue feather color, plumage color, refraction
Blue House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, photographed in Sydney, Australia.
I contemplated giving this bird to you as the daily Mystery Bird, but decided that you'd all probably riot, so instead, I am going to identify this bird so we can discuss it. It's a House Sparrow, Passer domesticus. (I have received dozens of emails telling me I'm a dumbshit: this is clearly a Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Passer montanus, thus, my wavering ID).
House Sparrows were introduced in various places around the world…
bioephemera | April 25, 2009
Christmas greeting card, school unknown, circa 1920.
Dittrick Medical History Center
from Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930
Slate has an intriguing new review by Barron Lerner of a book called Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930, by John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson. The book delves into the turn-of-the-century practice of photographing medical students with cadavers - photos that today read as weird, grotesque, even offensive.
The photos unearthed by Warner and Edmonson depict an astonishing variety of…
razib | April 24, 2009See FuturePundit & Effect Measure. Also see H5N1. CDC recommends (especially for residents of California & Texas):
* Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
* Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
* If you get sick, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs…
oracknows | April 23, 2009Better late than never, given that DrugMonkey has already been all over this. Unfortunately, there was another serious outbreak of antivaccine idiocy over at HuffPo that I felt I had to deal with before this:
Embedded video from CNN Video
It was a great day indeed. For far too long, animal rights terrorists have intimidated reesarchers into silence. According to the L.A. Times:
Competing rallies at UCLA today over the controversial issue of animal research are peaceful so far, with supporters of the research appearing to outnumber opponents by more than 10 to 1.
About 400 people,…
amillikan | April 21, 2009
Following through with President Obama's executive order issued March 9, Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells (link to PDF), the NIH has released a draft of guidelines revising the NIH's position on how it may fund "responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell research." The funding only extends to human embryonic stem cells derived from embryos created in excess at fertility clinics. ScienceBlogger Nick Anthis from The Scientific Activist views the creation of these guidelines as a "significant…
esiegel | April 21, 2009In addition to the article I just wrote about the newly discovered planet in the Gliese system, Dynamics of Cats has a great writeup as well.
They also have a picture that I didn't include in my original post, and it's so good that I'm including it here:
Take a look at that. Two of the planets, Gliese 581 c and Gliese 581 d, are just on the theoretical edges of the habitable zone. And there's a whole looooot of space in between them. In our Solar System, that's not how it works. We don't have a gas giant mixed in with the rocky planets, and we don't have a gap the size of the habitable zone…
razib | April 21, 2009The New York Times has a story about a new paper, Humans at tropical latitudes produce more females:
Skews in the human sex ratio at birth have captivated scientists for over a century. The accepted average human natal sex ratio is slightly male biased, at 106 males per 100 females or 51.5 per cent males. Studies conducted on a localized scale show that sex ratios deviate from this average in response to a staggering number of social, economical and physiological variables. However, these patterns often prove inconsistent when expanded to other human populations, perhaps because the nature of…