biology

In this week's episode of Science Saturday, John Horgan chats with philosopher Denis Dutton about his book, "The Art Instinct," which argues that our artistic values are due, in significant part, to biological adaptations dating back to the Pleistocene. Next, John and Denis discuss sex and creativity, why there is no art of smell, and the appeal for highly abstract art.

The Pigeon of Passage The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, 1754 Mark Catesby Unlike Benjamin Button, he's not up for an Oscar, but he's also a film star - several hundred years late. Mark Catesby (1683-1749), a forerunner of Audubon, was the first European scientist/artist to document the flora and fauna of North America. He depicted live specimens in their natural habitats, and made special study of both migration and extinction. You can view Catesby's masterwork, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, Vol 1 and Vol 2, at the University…

Weirdest lede ever? A giant flower beetle with implanted electrodes and a radio receiver on its back can be wirelessly controlled, according to research presented this week. Go DARPA! Article (MIT Technology Review) here. Video here.

For Christmas, my friend Vanessa got me this wonderful Equal Measure measuring cup by Fred. One side gives measures in cups and ounces, along with the equivalent quantity of various granular substances (five thousand drops of water, as many grains of flour as people on the planet). The other side gives metric volumes, alongside biological volumes (half a human brain; enough corn oil to fuel a biodiesel car for three miles, amount of table salt in a large human). If I were still teaching physiology, I'd totally be using this in lab! As it is, I may have to convert a recipe or two into T. rex…

ScienceBloggers are up in arms about the cover article of New Scientist which boldly proclaims "Darwin was Wrong." The article, authored by Graham Lawton, explains that occurrences such as horizontal gene transfer and hybridization transform the shape of Darwin's famous tree into something more like a thicket with criss-crossing branches. But some argue that new information in genetics doesn't render Darwin's model obsolete, and, moreover, that the headline is misleading and could be used as a tool for Creationists. "Very few readers will read your article. But everyone will see the cover,"…

A notorious bacterial foe has made its first documented appearance in the U.S. and is jumping species around the farm scene. First, MSRA—methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus— was found in chickens. Just recently, research conducted by ScienceBlogger Tara Smith from Aetiology found that ST398, a strain found in pigs, was also found in many of the humans who came into contact with the pigs at a large food production farm in Iowa. While this strain seems to spread readily between animals and humans, its potential for lethal infections is still unclear. Related ScienceBlogs Posts: Swine…

While I was at work, Sciencepunk beat me to posting that Damien Hirst (of dead-shark fame) has created an original artwork for the anniversary reissue of Darwin's On the Origin of Species: Human skull in space (oil on canvas) Damien Hirst Hirst says: As in a lot of my work, there's a nod to the scientific. The painting sits firmly in the tradition of "still life" and is made up of objects I've come to imbue with my own meanings, some of them Darwinian in origin, and that I guess are seen in other areas of my work. The painting has an X-ray-like quality to it, as if it is revealing something…

Slacktivist has an interesting plan for abstinence education: Two things I've never been able to figure out about "abstinence only" sex education. 1. Isn't it necessary, at some point, to describe what it is, exactly (or even generally), that they're supposed to be abstaining from? 2. Since the goal here seems to be to put off or delay the onset of sexual activity, why bother with abstinence only sex ed at all? Why not just create a curriculum to instill a crippling social awkwardness? I sometimes wonder if that's not the real purpose of religious home-schooling. And of "Christian T-shirts…

Review by Scicurious, from Neurotopia Originally posted on: January 19, 2009 1:27 AM It is rare that a non-fiction book, let alone a non-fiction book about science, makes me laugh so hard I have to put the book down until I can get off the floor. In fact, I would say it's only happened once. That once was during this last week, when I finally got to read "Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex" by Mary Roach. I don't know why I never read the book before. You'd think as the lover of all things Weird Science, Sci would be all over this thing. Me, I blame grad student poverty. So…

Sardine eggs Richard Kirby/BNPS Over the last few weeks, I've received many interesting link ideas from readers. I've gotten behind on sharing them, so I'm going to try to catch up. Thanks to Laura for this gallery of beautiful plankton photos by Richard Kirby. Read more here. Ludia sarsii Richard Kirby/BNPS

A biology-driven ad for the Oslo Gay Festival, via Sociological Images. Demerits for promulgating the tenacious myth of the sentient sperm, but kudos for production values - those are really nice flagella.

tags: nature, oceanography, marine life, sardines, South Africa, streaming video I watched this film a couple days ago when I visited the AMNH, and then a reader and friend found this video on youtube -- so of course, I had to share it with you! [3:33] While Wild Ocean explores the causes and effects of man's impact, it an inspirational film looking toward a bright future, taking audiences to a rare unspoiled marine wilderness to glimpse what the oceans of the world once looked like. The film champions the creation of marine reserves necessary to bring our oceans back to life. South Africa…

Carl Zimmer Live Blogging The Mars Methane Mystery: Aliens At Last?, reports that: 2:14 Lisa Pratt of Indiana University is talking biology. She is stoked. 2:15 Okay, I mean as stoked as scientists get at press conferences where they talk about photic zones. You can see it in the rise of her eyebrows. Now, a reporter used to covering press conferences on the steps of a courthouse or a state or federal capitol would not catch that as "stoked." But Carl Zimmer covers scientists, and he knows what we look like when we're excited. That means his article about this will convey her excitement, and…

ScienceOnline09 kicks off tonight. Formerly known as the Duke Blogging Conference, it's a weekend of interactive sessions on science blogging with lots of Sciblings and others representing the science blogging collective. Follow along on the conference wiki or Scibling Bora's blog for all the details. I am extremely disappointed that I am too sick to go and co-chair the arts sessions with Glendon Mellow, but I made the right decision, because I am not getting better - I spent Wednesday at the State of the Net conference only a few miles from home, and I was destroyed afterward. I'll be…

tags: zebroid, zorse, hebra, zebra-horse hybrid, streaming video Here's some video of an individual zebroid (zebra-horse hybrid) that I wrote about in July 2007 [0:48] here's more footage of this animal along with a companion [1:22]; And an old news report [1:14];

Definitely bio. Definitely ephemera. Definitely NSFW...

Larry Young has written a rather ambitious essay for Nature that skims over the prairie vole/AVPR1A research, breasts as erotic objects, and evidence of dopamine-based mother love on its way to a "view of love as an emergent property of a cocktail of ancient neuropeptides and neurotransmitters." Young then asks whether "recent advances in the biology of pair bonding mean it won't be long before an unscrupulous suitor could slip a pharmaceutical 'love potion' in our drink." Unlikely? Maybe - but his point that antidepressants like Prozac influence the same neurotransmitters implicated in love…

Here's a cool idea. Take a newbie, who has never read Charles Darwins' On the Origin of Species, and have the newbie actually read the book. Then have him blog each chapter. That's exactly what John Whitfield, London-based freelance science writer, is doing, and ScienceBlogs has him over at Blogging the Origin. Check it out. John promises to have all the chapters of Darwin's seminal work blogged by the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth on February 12. You know, come to think of it, I've never read all of Origin. I've read a couple of chapters of it, but I've never read the entire book.…

There are certain organisms that you hear about a lot in evolutionary biology. In some cases, like Drosophila flies or E. coli bacteria, that's because the organisms are easy to use in experimental studies. Other organisms, like Hawaiian silversword plants or Galapagos finches, come up frequently because they're fantastic examples of evolution happening out in the "real world". And then there are those rare cases where an organism is both a fantastic example of evolution in the field, and a convenient organism to work with in more controlled circumstances. The three-spined stickleback (…

Aphaenogaster cockerelli, Arizona Here's a new study in Current Biology from Adrian Smith, Bert Hoelldobler, and Juergen Liebig: Abstract: Cheaters are a threat to every society and therefore societies have established rules to punish these individuals in order to stabilize their social system [1â3]. Recent models and observations suggest that enforcement of reproductive altruism (policing) in hymenopteran insect societies is a major force in maintaining high levels of cooperation [4â6]. In order to be able to enforce altruism, reproductive cheaters need to be reliably identified. Strong…