biology
revere | July 10, 2007CDC recommends (MMWR Recomm Rep. 2005 Jul 29;54(RR-8):1-40) hospitalized patients with influenza A be placed under standard and droplet isolation precautions for 5 days after the onset of their symptoms. This is based on studies of volunteers who received live attenuated flu vaccine drops in their noses. After 7 days only 1 of 18 were shedding virus. One might wonder if attenuated flu vaccine in healthy volunteers is the best way to estimate the length of viral shedding. A new paper of viral shedding in hospitalized elderly patients at the Mayo Clinic suggests it isn't. Sensitive methods for…
jlynch | July 8, 2007
I received a copy of Planet Earth on DVD (the version with David Attenborough narrating) for my recent birthday. This was a fun segment and one that my daughter loved - a displaying male Superb Bird of Paradise (Lophorina superba).
jlynch | July 6, 2007
Wendy the Whippet has a genetic disorder that has resulted in an exceptionally muscular appearance. For comparison, this is what a normal whippet looks like. Story here, ht to Fark.com.
Photograph by Bruce Stotesbury, Times Colonist
aardvarchaeology | July 6, 2007[More blog entries about hiking, Sweden, Norway, mountains; fjällvandra, Sverige, Norge, Dalarna.]
Spent Monday through Wednesday on a trip to Lake Grövelsjön in the mountainous northwesternmost corner of Dalecarlia province. The lake is sausage-shaped with one end in Sweden and the other in Norway. On Tuesday my wife and I hiked around it, a walk of 25-30 km involving the ascent and descent of 250 m heights -- twice, as we touched down to the valley floor at the far end of the lake. Most of the time we were above the treeline at about 980 m over sea level.
The area is right in the middle…
jlynch | July 4, 2007Back in October, Afarensis introduced us to the Douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), and noted that the species was comprised of three subspecies, one of which was the grey-shanked douc langur (P. n. cinerea). That subspecies is one of the 25 rarest primates in the world and fewer that 1000 individuals were believed to exist in Vietnam. Encouragingly, AFP is reporting that a new population of at least 116 individuals (and perhaps 180) has been discovered in Quang Nam province. Scientists believe that any more individuals may live in the surrounding un-surveyed forest.
jlynch | July 4, 2007
My post-doctoral research was in hybridization among endangered desert fishes here in the American Southwest, so it has made me happy to read that a new population of the endangered Desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius, above) has mysteriously appeared in man-made research ponds in Salton Sea, California. Many of the over 1000 specimens are juveniles, which has lead scientists to infer that substantial breeding is going on in the ponds.
jlynch | July 4, 2007
This little cutie (click for bigger version) is the first Maclaud’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus maclaudi) ever photographed and the first seen in the wild in 40 years. The species was rediscovered in the highland forests of Guinea and is one of the approximately seventy species of horseshoe bat within the genus Rhinolophus.
Of course, nothing comes close to Centurio senex in batty beauty.
Picture source: National Geographic
omnibrain | July 4, 2007There is a great article today on Slate about why the pretty ridiculous idea that vaccinations containing trace amounts of mercury cause autism will never go away. Here's the first little part of the article:
At the recent 12-day hearing into theories that vaccines cause autism, the link between the disorder and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine came across as shaky at best. As for the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which was used in other vaccines, witnesses showed that in all known cases of actual mercury poisoning (none of which caused autism), the dose was hundreds or…
jlynch | June 28, 2007
One of a set of red ruffed lemur (Varecia rubra) triplets born at Palm Beach Zoo last month. The species is critically endangered with approximately 1000 remaining on Madagascar. Kind of screams for a LOLlemur caption, now doesn’t it?
moleculeoftheday | June 27, 2007Cotinine is the principal metabolite of nicotine:
Cotinine spends quite awhile in the body; it can take several days to eliminate, so it's a marker for recent exposure to tobacco (secondhand smoke counts). This makes it one of the few drugs other than marijuana that will reliably show up on a drug test.
tfk | June 26, 2007
In today's big section on evolution in the New York Times, John Noble Wilford explains the explosion of new material and new understanding of the human family tree. Through the 1990s and into this century, new fossil discoveries have pushed our understanding of hominid origins back in time, and refined our knowledge of how we got from those origins to our current form.
Those new fossils are helping molecular biologists trace the ways that our genes evolved over millions of years, and those insights are sending anthropologists and systematists back to the bone to test new hypotheses.…
jlynch | June 25, 2007
Apparently, five-foot tall penguins (Icadyptes salasi) with seven inch beaks (top) roamed a warm South America 40 million years ago. Details will appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. Opus is impressed.
tfk | June 25, 2007Researchers around the world have found signs of life fitfully adjusting to global warming. In Greenland, an earlier spring is causing insects and plants to emerge earlier. The problem is, the birds that feed on those plants and insects aren't adjusting as fast. Plants emerge 20 days earlier than they did in 1996, some insects emerge as much as a month earlier, but birds are only 10 days ahead of their previous schedule. Insects and plants can respond more quickly to changing environments because they produce so many more offspring per female. On average, no more than two offspring per…
revere | June 25, 2007For a long time I (and many others) were of the opinion that the reported deaths from H5N1 and the extraordinaraily high Case Fatality Ratio (CFR; proportion of all infections that end fatally) was an over estimate due to underascertainment of infections that were mild, inapparent or just undiagnosed because they weren't severe enough to come to the attention of the medical care system. The reason for thinking this was that this is the pattern for most other infectious diseasesk, even serious ones like TB and cholera. Most of the infections are asymptomatic or at least undiagnosed. It is…
jstemwedel | June 24, 2007Since it has come up in the comments on my review of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go, I'm going to go ahead and discuss some of the issues around cutting-edge biomedical technologies in the book that might, or might not, be plausible when pondered. (As Bill points out, the scientific details in the novel itself are pretty minimal -- the focus is squarely on the interactions between characters -- so plausibility is only an issue if you're not good at suspending disbelief.)
WARNING: This post will be packed with spoilers!
Unless you've already read the book, or you have sworn a blood-…
grrlscientist | June 20, 2007tags: blog carnival, biology, nature, medicine, science
Hey, good news, science geeks! The 82nd edition of the Tangled Bank blog carnival is now available for your reading pleasure. It is packed full of science-y goodness to satisfy even the most eclectic tastes.
scientificactivist | June 19, 2007For this round of Ask a ScienceBlogger, the question is "Is sunshine good for you?"
It's a beautiful sunny day outside. And, of course, you're stuck in the lab (or the office, classroom, or daily holding tank of your choice). Although you may thumb your nose at those who seem to have nothing better to do than have fun in the sun, don't be so quick to judge. In fact, your lack of sun exposure might be partially to blame for that not-so-sunny disposition of yours. Or worse.
Your body operates on a 24-hour circadian rhythm, and regular daily exposure to sunlight keeps it running smoothly. So,…