biology
grrlscientist | August 1, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, white-crowned sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys, steroids, brain growth
White-crowned sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys [song and other information].
Image: Birds of Oklahoma.
The first thing that most people think of when they hear the word "steroids" is baseball players who rely on these chemicals to increase their muscle mass and thereby improve their athletic performance. But recently, a small songbird that I studied for my dissertation work, Gambel's white-crowned sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii, has shown scientists that steroids trigger the growth…
revere | July 31, 2007One reason Helen Branswell is such a good flu reporter is she has the best contacts. Of course this is a chicken-and-egg proposition, because she has the best contacts because she is the best flu reporter. She gets it right and she explains it the way it was told to her. [By the way, I am not on her payroll. In fact she is uncomfortable about being praised. But I don't do it for her sake. She doesn't need it anyway. My motive is to show other reporters what good flu reporting is and encourage them to do the same. And there are a number of other excellent reporters, which I try to acknowledge…
razib | July 30, 2007Circumcision doesn't reduce sensation: study:
The study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, looked at a group of 40 men, half of them circumcised. Using sensory testing, the men were monitored at two points on the penis and the forearm while viewing erotic films. Thermal imaging was used to measure sexual arousal.
I think one can criticize this study on the relative coarseness of measure, after all, registering qualia is not a trivial task. Nevertheless, do note that in my previous comment on circumcision I did suggest that "pleasure" might be renormalized by the brain. Remember…
aardvarchaeology | July 29, 2007
From Pär Svensson of Kurtz, this fine portrait of a red river hog, Potamochoerus porcus, in Berlin's zoo. These cool-looking omnivores make their home in sub-Saharan Africa.
From the same recent zoo visit, our cerebal rock guitarist provides us with a peek at the nocturnal fellows who give this blog part of its name.
jstemwedel | July 27, 2007Chad and Rob have already noted this piece of news about soon-to-be-published research indicating that the order in which high school students are taught physics, chemistry, and biology makes very little difference to their performance in science classes at the college level, while a rigorous math curriculum in high school gives their college science performance a significant boost.
I have a few things to say about this.
Good math instruction is good for students.
As Chad points out, it helps you build problem solving skills and think systematically. To the extent that these skills are…
hrynyshyn | July 26, 2007Now here's something you don't see every day: a cogent argument in defense of cloning. Not just therapeutic cloning, the better to produce embryonic stem cells, but full-on human reproductive cloning. And from a bioethicist, no less. Hugh McLachlan of Glasgow Caledonian University, doesn't actually say cloning is a good thing, but he does deftly destroy the arguments against it.
The essay is in the subscription-only section of New Scientist, and I wouldn't even think of violating copyright by re-posting the whole thing (I've written for New Scientist and want to keep that option open). I will…
moleculeoftheday | July 24, 2007(Simul-blogged with The Lab Lemming - check it out.)
Fluoroacetic acid is plain old acetic acid, plus a fluorine. It is a poison of some potency. Oddly, neither the "fluoro" or "acetic acid" part is associated with any general tox risks - acetic acid, as you'll see, is central to metabolism, and fluorinated compounds aren't inherently bad. It is a "mechanism based" poison.
The overwhelming majority of energy in your food is made useful via the Citric Acid (Krebs) Cycle. Some of it you get directly, and some of it is claimed later, but without Krebs, you're dead.
Fluoroacetic acid will…
omnibrain | July 23, 2007This weeks article is again from the Book Review section of the NYTimes on April 28, 1890. Admittedly, I'm not very familiar with the history of Physiognomy so I am learning about it a little bit today as I post this. It is essentially Phrenology of the face, even more ridiculous and can be used for racist conclusions more readily. From Wikipedia:
Physiognomy (Gk. physis, nature and gnomon, judge, interpreter) is a theory based upon the idea that the study and judgement of a person's outer appearance, primarily the face, may give insights into their character or personality. The term…
oracknows | July 22, 2007Can anyone explain how something like this might have happened?
Maybe I lack imagination, but I'm having trouble figuring out a plausible explanation.
tfk | July 19, 2007Reposted from the old TfK in honor of this story at BoingBoing.
Botflies are disgusting. Horrible, horrible little things. We get their larvae on the white-footed mice we trap here in Kansas. The picture to the right is a white-footed mouse botfly that I caught here in Kansas.
These are fairly rare in collections because the adult is only active for a short time. Many species lack mouthparts because of their short adult life. It flies around, it mates, and the females lay eggs on grass stems. The mouse brushes against the egg, the heat of the body causes the egg to hatch, the larva…
aardvarchaeology | July 19, 2007
Some time around the turn of the millennium a friend gave me a cactus. It's been sitting happily in its pot ever since, proliferating into a cluster of green phalli until it was clearly too big for the pot. Yesterday I relented and transplanted it to a larger one. This involved a few arcane steps to make sure it would continue to thrive, steps I will describe in the following. The thing to note here is that I didn't know what I was doing. I have no cactus expertise, instead making it all up as I went along. Watch closely -- and kids, do try this at home.
Getting the cactus out of the pot…
evolgen | July 18, 2007
Remember that new species of leopard that was "discovered" earlier this year? Well, it wasn't really discovered so much as recategorized as a unique species (it was originally discovered in the early nineteenth century). That's a picture of it on the right if you don't remember.
Anyway, there's an Editorial in PLoS Biology arguing that we're creating too many damn species. We're not really "creating" them, mind you, but categorizing what were previously subspecies as distinct species. The authors of the editorial think that this is getting out of hand; they're taking the lumping position in…
revere | July 18, 2007A "cytokine storm" as the lethal element in H5N1 infection is back, not with a bang but a whimper. Maybe. Here's the gist, from the ever reliable Helen Branswell:
New research suggests successful treatment of the H5N1 avian flu virus requires targeting the virus, not the overwhelming immune response it triggers.
The study, done in mice genetically engineered to lack critical immune system chemicals called cytokines, found these mice were as likely to die from H5N1 infection as mice armed with an intact immune system.
That suggests the activity of the virus, not the immune response it induces…
grrlscientist | July 17, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, birds, ornithology, evolution, radiation, Chernobyl
Normal Barn Swallow (a),
while the other pictures show signs of albinism (white feathers; b & c),
unusually colored feathers (d), deformed beaks (e & f), deformed air sacs (g),
and bent tail feathers (h & i).
Images: Tim Mousseau.
Twenty years after the Chernobyl reactor disaster, which released clouds of radioactive particles in April 1986, the uninhabited forests within the 19 mile (30 kilometer) "exclusion zone" around the disaster site are lush and teeming with wildlife, giving the appearance…
omnibrain | July 16, 2007Wow... I knew that many animals had herpes and if you want to get a herpes free lab animal it costs many times what a 'normal' herpes carrying animal does. But wow... Chlamydia in Koalas?! Maybe some of you bio people out there can tell us whether it's the same Chlamydia humans carry. So basically If I go to Australia and nail a koala - can I catch it and give it to my sheep?
Here's the exciting details on how Australian scientists are going to protect the koala population from STD's.
Professor Peter Timms, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said chlamydia was a…
evolgen | July 12, 2007The American Institute of Biological Sciences has posted talks from their meeting on Evolutionary Biology and Human Health. Not only have they provided audio and video of the talks, but there are also transcripts and slides that go along with the talks. Very cool.
jstemwedel | July 11, 2007Regular readers know I frequently suggest the community of science would be better off if its institutional contexts favored more collaboration and less competition. (I'm not the only one.) So I wanted to mention a project, OpenWetWare that's trying to move biology in that direction.
The project "is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering." Its website is a wiki where members can contribute information about crucial experimental materials (and how to make them), experimental…
tfk | July 11, 2007The Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita announced the birth of a 60 pound baby girl rhino. She will be named by the winner of an auction in September.
The unnamed rhino was born to Bibi, the second Eastern Black Rhinoceros in the US obtained from a Japanese zoo. A survey in 2001 found fewer than 500 of the subspecies in the wild. Their populations are threatened mainly by poachers, who sell their horns in the Middle East and Asia. Their phallic shape of the horns, which can reach over four feet long, causes people to treat them as aphrodisiacs or signs of virility. Trade in rhinos is…
tfk | July 10, 2007Carl Zimmer sez:
go to the Wellcome Library's new image bank and find your favorite scientific image.
On the old blog, I wrote a post about an X-ray Wilhelm von Röntgen took of his wife's hand and wedding ring. While hunting for that image, I came across this X-ray of a snake eating a mouse by Sir Arthur Schuster, taken in 1896. It is at least as cool, and is much more biological.
Which pictures are your favorites?
omnibrain | July 10, 2007Channel 4 in Britain has created a series documenting what goes on in Autopsies, but even more exciting is that they've made them available online for your viewing...pleasure?
I'm a pretty squeamish guy, which is one of the (many) reasons I didn't go to medical school. So if you're particularly grossed out by dead, cut open people then you should perhaps not watch these graphic videos. I'm about to force myself to check out the videos though! Wish me luck ;)
Here's a short description from the show webpage:
These clips contain scenes of a graphic nature demonstrating disections of the…