biology

Neuroskeptic has written a great post evaluating the much-hyped 2008 study that showed people will more readily accept information if a neurosciency-explanation is attached - even if the neuroscience is irrelevant. If this effect is real, it has big implications for those of us involved in science/health communication - when to use this advantage, and when to eschew it? (Especially when we're trying to explain neuroimaging studies. . ?) And what is the source of this bias - mass media's ongoing love affair with neuroscientific explanations and pretty brain pictures? Or something else entirely?

Ed reports on a putative new species of iguana that has been found on the Galapagos archipelago. Darwin saw two species (one marine and one land). We now have two additional land species, the Barrington land iguana Conolophus pallidus and this new one which is found only Volcan Wolf, the northernmost volcano of Isabela Island. Paper is in press with PNAS (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806339106).

We spent most of last night playing a very cool board game, Pandemic. It's sort of like Risk, but instead of fighting opposing players' armies, you're cooperating against a global wave of infections. In the game scenario, four different diseases break out in different regions of the world (they're given colors, not names, though you can guess at an ID based on the games' illustrations; one is clearly a bacillus, another is a filovirus). The players have to cooperate and pool their resources to treat and control local outbreaks, while searching for cures for all four diseases. The surprising…

Dude, I knew gecko feet had some amazing physical properties, but I didn't know they bent backward! Check this out: The video is by John Stevens by way of Heather at Cabinet of Wonders. (While writing this post, I got a little sad: someday YouTube will cease to work, and all YouTube links embedded in blog posts will be broken, and the posts will cease to be useful. The internet is too young to have accumulated much urban blight, but eventually a Google search is going to be choked by abandoned crap. That is, unless the Google of the future designs its engines to filter out old content, in…

Via ZooBorns, Amani the Baby Aardvark: The keepers at the Detroit Zoo describe young Amani as "hideously cute," which is fair only if one emphasizes "cute."

Artist Kim Boske's photography captures disturbing moments of predation - moments from which most of us would rather avert our eyes. Via IBL3D

Every couple of months a major flu paper appears purporting to reveal why the 1918 H1N1 virus was so horrifically virulent in comparison to the other pandemic viruses of the last century, H2N2 (1957 pandemic) and H3N2 (1968 pandemic). It's not just the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus that made it so deadly. There's still lots of H1N1 around, even as I tap this keyboard, but it isn't as virulent as the 1918 variety. Why not? If we knew the answer we might be able to spot a genetic change in circulating viruses indicating a turn toward virulence or find a drug or vaccine solution to…

Last week, I gave everybody's favorite creationist neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Egnor, the gift everyone loves to read but not to receive: the gift of not-so-Respectful Insolence. Christmas or no Christmas, he did ask for it, and far be it from me, given my benevolent nature, not to respond to his plaintiff plea with a resounding "Affirmative!" Nor was I alone. Others joined in. But apparently not everyone thought Dr. Egnor deserving of such a group slapdown. Apparently there is at least one blogger out there who thought that Dr. Egnor needed a defender. Apparently there is at least one blogger…

People are doing biology in their kitchen now, or in rented labs with cheaper equipment: In Cambridge, Mass., a group called DIYbio is setting up a community lab where the public could use chemicals and lab equipment, including a used freezer, scored for free off Craigslist, that drops to 80 degrees below zero, the temperature needed to keep many kinds of bacteria alive. Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use…

Another year passes.  The economy is in the toilet.  Violence spreads in the middle east.  In these trying times, one question must weigh on the minds of concerned citizens: "What's happening in world of ant science?" Of course.  Here are the myrmecological highlights of 2008: The Demise of the Standard Ant.  That is the title of a review by Juergen Heinze, but the idea that our basic conception of how ant colonies work is overly simplistic receives plenty of additional support from the research community.   For instance, Smith et al document the complexity of caste determination in…

These charming photos by bre pettis capture a lovely, detailed diorama at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. I'm not sure how old it is, but it's very cool.

...more not-so-Respectful Insolence, courtesy not of Orac this time but of other skeptical physician-bloggers! Enjoy: Smackdown, please (yes, Egnor, I'm talking to you) (by blog bud PalMD) Defending science-based medicine (by skeptical neurologist Dr. Steve Novella, who's been known to spar a bit with Dr. Egnor himself over evolution and neuroscience) Egnorance is Bliss (by Dr. Kimball Atwood IV)

Mike the Mad Biologist is, well, mad. In writing about Obama's science team, I commented that: scientists often distinguish [technical challenges] from the challenges in testing our broad conceptual understanding of the laws of nature. While "test tube jockeys" often produce important results, there tends to be a certain skepticism of their work. Similarly, medical research is so focused on the practical application that scientists in other fields are dubious about regarding medical researchers as being engaged in the same sort of enterprise as a theoretical physicist or a landscape…

This cake, complete with circulatory and musculoskeletal diagrams, is pretty amazing. (I'd like to give one to my friend Rhett to celebrate his admittance to an excellent medical school.) Via shewalkssoftly

At io9, Annalee Newitz asks, "can robots consent to have sex with humans?" Do you think the blondie bot in Cherry 2000 was really capable of giving consent to have sex with her human boyfriend? Or did her programming simply force her to always have sex, whether she wanted to or not? And what about the Romeo Droid in Circuitry Man, or the Sex Mecha in AI, who live entirely to sexually please women, even when those women are abusing them or putting them in danger? Obviously this isn't a urgent social issue. An insentient robot is just an appliance, not a person, and a truly sentient AI doesn't…

The Center For American Progress's Wonk Room wonders Is Coal-Poisoned Sushi Killing Jeremy Piven? Piven left a Broadway play because of a doctor's finding that he has elevated mercury levels. "Piven’s doctor, Carlon Colker," the Wonk Room relays, "explained that his mercury poisoning was caused by a high-sushi diet": Dr. Colker said that an initial battery of tests on Mr. Piven had shown normal results. But after Mr. Piven said he was a frequent sushi eater who consumed fish about twice a day, and that he used herbal remedies, Dr. Colker tested him for heavy metals. Dr. Colker said that…

. . . at least according to XKCD: (All right, fine: they're acknowledging cephalopods' supremacy, not biologists'. It's probably a ploy to lull us into complacency while they corrupt our cuttlefish minions and eventually wipe us out.)

ZOMFG! The Museum of New Zealand has a website where you can build your own squid! I present you with my invention, Joshteuthis. Go forth!

This Indonesian mimic octopus pretends to be other creatures in order to avoid predators:

Vireo bellii nest with newspaper Rosamond Purcell Egg & Nest "It seems the bird had confiscated a shredded detail from a story involving Adolph S. Ochs, newspaper baron and one-time owner of the New York Times and Chattanooga Times. . . since the story is from Tennessee but the nest was found in Texas, I wonder if the newspaper had been transported by the vireo across state lines." Photographer-artist-naturalist Rosamond Purcell has a new book out, in collaboration with Linnea Hall and Rene Corado. Harvard University Press describes Egg & Nest as "a tribute to the natural wonders…