biology
omnibrain | December 4, 2007I love science blogs but you know... I really get sick of the acronym filled science talk, the obnoxious politics, and of course the religion sometimes. I just discovered a great new blog that has all the natural curiosity of a science blog but non of the crap. It is wonderfully written by a non-scientist in a 'what I did today' format (which for the first time ever I like!)
The Daily Coyote chronicles, through pictures and stories, the life of Shreve Stockton, her cat, and her coyote friend. Here's the scoop from her:
Charlie is a wild-born coyote who was unexpectedly delivered to my…
omnibrain | December 3, 2007I've always heard that a beard can keep you warmer during the winter months but how can you really know?! After all, if you start with a beard and then shave it off there might be some strange adaptation effect going on. And who knows the memory of cold might be completely inaccurate anyway. That's where Pete Hickey from Canada comes in (of course he lives in Canada).
I had only one choice. Shave half of my beard.
The experiment
I shaved the right half of my beard. The result can be seen in the picture above. I then proceeded to perform my various outdoor activities.
Weight
I…
evolgen | December 3, 2007
Not all animals must have sex with another individual to produce perfectly viable offspring. And neither do humans, thanks to technological breakthroughs in artificial insemination. But what about those critters that do not require masturbation and meat basters to produce babies sans contact with another individual? Remarkably, this is quite common in the animal kingdom, although different animals go about doing it in different ways.
Caenorhabditis elegans, the roundworm that has become a popular model in developmental biology, lives in populations made up almost entirely of hermaphrodites.…
oracknows | December 2, 2007There are certain bloggers who can reliably be counted on to deliver the stupid. We've met several of them over the time this blog's been in existence. One such blogger, the born again Christian named LaShawn Barber, has been particularly good at it, although we've only met her a couple of times before, likening the NAACP to the white nationalist teen duo Prussian Blue as a means of trolling and saying rather odd things about Ted Haggard. Those were bad enough, but now she's even more out of her depth than usual as she decides to pontificate about something about which it is brain-fryingly…
grrlscientist | December 1, 2007
Red-eyed tree frog, Agalychnis calidryas.
Red-eyed tree frogs live in Costa Rica and other Neotropical regions. Their bright red eyes presumably startle would-be predators. Their diet consists of flies and moths, and possibly includes smaller frogs and crickets. All tree frogs are classified into the families Hylidae and Rhacophoridae. Many tree frogs are green in color, while the terrestrial and aquatic species have muted coloration.
Image: Don Farral (Photodisc) via National Geographic.
Since the holidays are advancing upon us like a rampaging SUV, I thought I'd talk about an essential…
oracknows | November 29, 2007Heard on the radio this morning, a commenter responding to a radio talk show host's pointing out to him that Mike Huckabee doesn't accept evolution as valid. This is as close as I can remember what he said, but the gist is correct:
We disagree on that. But not believing in evolution is something I can overlook. It's not that important. It's not as though he'll have stormtroopers knocking down my door because of it.
Maybe not, but if elected Huckabee would have a huge say over federal educational and biological research policy and funding. Being a creationist, as Mike Huckabee is, to me is an…
scientificactivist | November 29, 2007Two weeks ago, on November 15th, researchers reported in the Journal of Translational Medicine (see citation below) that they had successfully isolated and characterized stem cells from menstrual blood. The researchers, Meng et al., were able to differentiate these cells--called Endometrial Regenerative Cells (ERCs)--into nine distinct cell types, and the stem cells displayed other encouraging characteristics (including rapid proliferation, unique expression of an embryonic stem cell marker, and particularly high production of certain growth factors and matrix metalloproteinases). These…
jstemwedel | November 28, 2007Do you know that feeling one gets that is characteristic of "about to come down with something", where you have an off taste in your mouth and your head feels fuzzy, and it seems like the very best thing you could possibly do is just lay your head on your desk for a few moments and close your eyes?
Yeah. I've had that feeling all day.
However, I have absolutely zero time to actually come down with something at this particular juncture. Therefore, I will be conducting a Mind Over Immune System experiment (not a very scientific one, I'll admit) in which I see whether telling myself sternly…
omnibrain | November 28, 2007Just because animals doing human things are funny I give you an elephant throwing darts:
-via Neatorama-
evolgen | November 28, 2007John Hawks linked to a wiki with information on cultural anthropology job searches. If you poke around the website, you'll find a list of such wikis for many different academic disciplines. Of interest to evolgen are the Biology Jobs Wiki and the Ecology/Evolution Jobs Wiki. If you're currently on the job market, consider contributing information to these wikis.
Do you know of any other academic job wikis for biologists? If you do, link to them in the comments.
scientificactivist | November 22, 2007From today's (well, technically, tomorrow's) New Zealand Herald:
Creature from hell promises salvation
by Errol Kiong
Scientists have discovered a methane-eating bacterium at Hell's Gate in Rotorua which may offer hope for global warming.
Researchers at GNS Science hope their discovery of the bacterium could one day be used to cut down methane gas emissions from landfills and geothermal power stations.
The bug is part of a group of methane-eating micro-organisms known as methanotrophs, but this one is able to live in hotter and much more acidic conditions.
This article--sporting a wildly…
scientificactivist | November 21, 2007That could easily have been the shared title of a pair of articles in today's New York Times discussing the science and political implications of two very significant stem cell papers published online yesterday. The biggest offender was Sheryl Stolberg:
It has been more than six years since President Bush, in the first major televised address of his presidency, drew a stark moral line against the destruction of human embryos in medical research.
Since then, he has steadfastly maintained that scientists would come up with an alternative method of developing embryonic stem cells, one that did…
omnibrain | November 21, 2007Everyone has been talking about stem cells in the last couple days. Here's something to offend most of you - Christopher Reeve eating fetuses for their Stem Cells. Enjoy ;)
Now that you are probably horribly offended about something or other here's why I'm posting this video now:
Now paralyzed people can eat their own stem cells to become superpeople!
grrlscientist | November 19, 2007The fourth edition of the new Natural Sciences Blog Carnival is now available for you to read and enjoy. They saw fit to include a few pieces that I wrote -- considering that I have felt very discouraged and depressed this past month (terminal unemployment combined with lots of job rejections can do that to a person after a few years -- try it sometime if you don't believe me), it is a great compliment to see that someone out there considers my writing to be worthwhile, at least.
oracknows | November 19, 2007...apparently, that's what the Discovery Institute thinks, as William Dembski proudly announces, for reasons that escape me:
Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host and bestselling author, has joined the Discovery Institute in the role of senior fellow. The position cements a longstanding friendship and recognizes a commonality of values and projects across a spectrum of issues.
"Michael Medved is an intellectual entrepreneur, a political and cultural polymath with great insights, judgment and wit. We are delighted to have this new relationship with him," said Discovery…
moleculeoftheday | November 15, 2007Amino acids impart lots of functions to proteins, and a lot of the interesting chemistry happens at a few residues. Many hydrophobic residues like valine and leucine play a huge role - they don't like to touch water, and they help the protein fold, but the heavy lifting of catalysis happens in just a few reactive places. Two of these are cysteine, and its rare brother, selenocysteine.
Going down the periodic table, things at once change and stay the same. A chlorine will act a lot like a bromine, which will act a lot like an iodine, but there are distinct differences in how they react. Just…
revere | November 15, 2007SciBling Bora (aka coturnix) at Blog Around the Clock has scored a major coup for Open Access publishing today. Fittingly the subject matter is a dinosaur, an apt symbol for the new nail in the coffin of traditional scientific publishing that the paper represents. Bora is the Online Community Manager at PLoS-ONE (Public Library of Science), one of the leading Open Access science publishers. PLoS ONE is unusual even among OA publications in that it concentrates on rapid publication after a baseline technical review by Editorial Board members. It covers all areas of science and medicine and…
omnibrain | November 14, 2007An entertaining posting on craigslist:
Survival Of The Fittest
Date: 2007-08-30, 2:03PM EDT
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.
Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically…