biology
bioephemera | February 19, 2008The following is my most popular post, by far, from the "old" bioephemera (originally published Jan 5, 2007). I'll do a repost each week for the next few weeks to give new readers a taste of the blog. . .
Anatomical Teaching Model of a Pregnant Woman
Stephan Zick, 1639-1715
Wood and ivory
Kunstkammer Georg Laue is a Munich antique/art gallery informed by the sensibility of the "wonder cabinets" (kunst- or wunder-kammer) of 17th century Germany. One of the interesting objects described on the site is this ivory model of a pregnant woman with removable parts, including internal organs and a…
razib | February 18, 2008A week ago I offered my own theory as to why 3rd and 4th cousin pairings in Iceland have been so fertile historically. Now, this from John Hawks, For maximum fertility, marry more than 20 km from your birthplace. John says:
This study isn't orthogonal to the Iceland cousin study, but it adds another element. These people are about as close to the genetics of Icelanders as we can hope to get. The authors suggest that greater mobility in the last 50 years has removed a significant inbreeding depression. Yet, the inbreeding between people born within 15 km of each other is mostly at the level…
bioephemera | February 17, 2008
Golden Age of Scientific Computing
Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute
In a Friday session at the AAAS conference here in Boston, Dr. Chris Johnson of Utah's Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute showed this short video encapsulating some of his team's striking 3D imaging innovations. He also made what I think is a very important point: that one of the biggest challenges in his field lies not in finding new technologies to capture details, but finding new ways to generate abstractions of data - images that don't just depict results for presentation, but help to clarify…
tqa | February 15, 2008
Last Thursday, I presented some data about three populations of an insect and asked you to try and figure out how many species scientists think these populations should be grouped into. On Monday, I added data from two more populations, and asked the same thing - try and figure out how many species are present. Now, I'm going to try and answer the question myself, and tell you what other scientists have said about these insects.
A quick review is probably in order before I get to the "answers":
The five populations are arranged in a line, with each separated from the next by a minimum…
vhughes | February 15, 2008It's winter. And here in NYC, that means it's cold, icy, and generally miserable. Everyone I know is coughing, aching, sneezing, and blowing noses. Ten million sick readers undoubtedly want to know the answer to our latest "Ask A ScienceBlogger" question:
What is a Disease?
Four scibling responses below the fold...
Greg and John discuss how evolution changes what's classified as a "disease." Mike narrows the question down to infectious diseases. And Janet wonders how pharmaceutical advertising may affect our feelings of health.
moleculeoftheday | February 14, 2008Biotin is just a vitamin to most of us. To a lot of biologists, though, it plays the unlikely role of some of the strongest glue around.
There are proteins known as avidins that bind biotin so strongly that it's pretty much irreversible. If you stick biotin on something you're interested in, and stick avidin on a solid surface, you've pretty much got a molecular glue that's not going anywhere.
bioephemera | February 13, 2008
Michelangelo's Creation of Adam
From Paluzzi et al., Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2007
For a few years, Nature Reviews Neuroscience stuck to a humorous theme in its cover art: everyday objects that mimic brains. A dandelion, spilled wine, a rock, a cave painting: if you know what features to look for, a surprising number of things resemble brains. We are a species that sees faces on the Martian surface and the Moon; we're very good at pattern recognition, and it's probably evolutionarily better for our brains to err on the side of "recognizing" something that isn't there, than…
moleculeoftheday | February 12, 2008I have a lot of sympathy for graphic designers. For every one preaching to you about how you can't possibly appreciate whitespace on the same level she does, there's nine out there slogging away doing honest work. The ones who are just trying to convince the guy with the mattress store not to put seven fonts on the flyer (that's how many that are on MSNBC as I write this; you see how it's an uphill battle).
Chirality is easy to get wrong. Connectivity errors are a little rarer; usually designers seem to realize moving one of those lines in a stick figure might do something bad. However, the…
vhughes | February 12, 2008(This is a guest post written by Mo, the Neurophilosopher.)
I'm very pleased to announce that the fantastic Bioephemera has been "acquired" by ScienceBlogs. When I first started reading it, I knew that I had found a unique blog, and it soon became one of my favourites.
(More below the fold...)
Bioephemera is a curiosity box filled with weird and wonderful things from the intersection of art and biology. Take, for example, this wax anatomical figure of a pregnant woman, attributed to Stephan Zick, and dated to around 1700.
Jessica Palmer, the author of Bioephemera, is not a biologist with an…
scientificactivist | February 11, 2008The New York Times reported yesterday that "scientists find new receptor for HIV," referring to a paper published online in Nature Immunology on Sunday by Arthos et al. This is basically correct, although it would be more accurate to call the new receptor a co-receptor, since the infection of a cell with HIV still depends on the primary receptor, CD4, in combination with either CCR5 or CXCR4. The newly-identified co-receptor, just like the other HIV receptors, is a protein located on the surface of white blood cells (T-cells, specifically). HIV, like any other virus, can only replicate…
tqa | February 11, 2008
On Thursday, I presented a species problem taken from a post over at my old blog. I presented data from experimental matings that were carried out among three insect populations, added a little bit of information about the appearance, behavior, and location of the populations. I asked you to tell me how many species these three populations represented, and promised that I'd give you the "official" answer today. I've decided, though, that it wouldn't be totally fair to answer the question just yet. You see, I withheld relevant data when I presented the original version of the question.
When…
omnibrain | February 9, 2008To reduce the severity of his seizures, Joe had the bridge between his left and right cerebral hemispheres (the corpus callosum) severed. As a result, his left and right brains no longer communicate through that pathway. Here's what happens as a result:
jlynch | February 8, 2008I don’t usually do blog carnivals but Linnaeus’ Legacy #4 is up at The Other 95% and mentions a post of mine. Wander on over to see the current best posts on taxonomy and systematics.
oracknows | February 7, 2008Nooooo!
I thought I might be safe. It's been a really long time since I've had to hang my head in shame and contemplate covering it with a paper bag because of creationist pontifications of a fellow physician bringing shame upon our shared profession. It had even been longer since I had dealt with Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, a particularly clueless "intelligent design" creationist. And don't even get me started on the whole "Physicians and Surgeons Who Dissent from Darwinism" silliness started by the Discovery Institute.
Now P.Z. Myers informs me that Dr. Simmons is back and dumber than ever…
bioephemera | February 7, 2008
Tragopogon pratensis
Edvard Koinberg
Herbarium Amoris
Through March 16, the House of Sweden in Washington, DC, is hosting a collection of luminous botanical photographs by Edvard Koinberg. The exhibition, "Herbarium Amoris," is a tribute to Swedish-born systematist Carl Linnaeus, whose innovative classification of plants - by the number and gender of their sexual organs - reportedly caused a salacious stir in eighteenth-century Europe.
This collection of photos is hardly controversial (Koinberg is no Georgia O'Keefe), but it is stunning. The color is simply breathtaking.
Tulipa;…
sb admin | February 7, 2008
Tragopogon pratensis
Edvard Koinberg
Herbarium Amoris
Through March 16, the House of Sweden in Washington, DC, is hosting a collection of luminous botanical photographs by Edvard Koinberg. The exhibition, "Herbarium Amoris," is a tribute to Swedish-born systematist Carl Linnaeus, whose innovative classification of plants - by the number and gender of their sexual organs - reportedly caused a salacious stir in eighteenth-century Europe.
This collection of photos is hardly controversial (Koinberg is no Georgia O'Keefe), but it is stunning. The color is simply breathtaking.
Tulipa;…
tqa | February 7, 2008
This is a highly modified version of a post that appeared back at my old blog quite some time ago. Since it involves a quiz of sorts, I'm not going to post the link back to the original right now. The post with the "answers" will appear on Monday, also slightly modified from the original.
Taxonomy and systematics are the areas of biology that are involved in describing groups of organisms and determining how they relate to one another. One of the jobs associated with these disciplines involves trying to figure out whether or not two different populations of organisms should be considered…
revere | February 6, 2008Bird flu is all over the Indian state of West Bengal and the country that borders it on the east, Bangladesh. The Ganges River flows through West Bengal, dividing in two, with one branch headed into Bangladesh. The Gangetic alluvium and delta region also has another unhappy claim to fame: it is the site of an enormous chronic poisoning from groundwater containing naturally occurring arsenic.
The mass poisoning that is occurring in West Bengal and Bangladesh is another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Drinking water is one of the most important resources for any community and the…
terrasig | February 2, 2008Readers and colleagues often ask why scientists care to blog, especially given increasing time demands and decreasing research funding. For me, the blog is an opportunity to have discussions with colleagues from diverse research areas all around the world. Quite often, I learn something quite new that I would not normally encounter in my chosen field of cancer pharmacology.
A case in point stems from a reader comment by Dr Italo MR Guedes, a Brazilian soil scientist who writes the blog, Geófagos (Google Translate works well enough unless, of course, you are already fluent in Portuguese).…