biology
jlynch | May 26, 2007
It's funny how much smaller the "Monster Pig" looks in this photo (source).
And for what it's worth, here's one of the "positive comments" the boy hunter got:
Don't pay attention to those west coast sissys, they live out there because homosexuality is fround upon in the USA
Your dad is teaching you how to survive in a world that's scareing most parents. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day
Teach a man to fish, and he has to take care of all the hippie wanna be seudo animal lovers who don't know squat aboutthe animals they eat, because they are to concerned with pushing same sex marriage…
jlynch | May 25, 2007
In this photo released by Melynne Stone, Jamison Stone, 11, poses with a wild pig he killed near Delta, Ala., May 3, 2007. Stone's father says the hog weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. If claims of the animal's size are true, it would be larger than ``Hogzilla,'' the huge hog killed in Georgia in 2004. (AP Photo/Melynne Stone)
Apparently, we're supposed to believe that the eleven year old "shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it…
evolgen | May 25, 2007For some reason, I have been collecting links to articles involving hybridization. That, on its own, would call for a massive link dump, but a recent news item makes for a nice contrast. First, the hybrids:
Where better to start than this review of hybrid speciation -- a topic I've discussed previously. The take home message: we first thought that hybrid speciation only happened in combination with polyploidy in plants, then we found out that hybrid speciation can also occur without polyploidization in plants, and then we discovered that the same thing happens in animals.
Here's an article…
grrlscientist | May 23, 2007tags: science, biology, medicine, nature, blog carnivals
Those of you who have been holding your breath for the past two weeks can now inhale again because the 80th issue of Tangled Bank is now available! Yippee! I would also like to mention that this is a fairly large issue and it included three pieces that I wrote, so I am quite pleased. Go there to see which articles of mine were included. Yes, there will be a quiz tomorrow.
jlynch | May 22, 2007
As, no doubt, many will be posting today, Linnaeus (the "father of modern taxonomy") was born 300 years ago. It's a pity a tiny minority of taxonomists still dont get the genius of what he achieved under the guise of "complet[ing] the Darwinian revolution".
jlynch | May 22, 2007AP is reporting:
Female sharks can fertilize their own eggs and give birth without sperm from males, according to a new study of the asexual reproduction of a hammerhead in a U.S. zoo.
The joint Northern Ireland-U.S. research, being published Wednesday in the Royal Society's peer-reviewed Biology Letter journal, analyzed the DNA of a shark born in 2001 in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb. The shark was born in a tank with three potential mothers, none of whom had contact with a male hammerhead for at least three years.
The baby was killed within hours of its birth by a stingray in the same…
revere | May 21, 2007One of the enduring scientific mysteries about influenza is what causes its marked seasonal pattern. A new paper in the Journal of Virology provides a useful mini-review of the many theories. [PubMed says its free online, but it seems to be behind a subscription firewall; maybe that will change. Here's the cite: Lofgren E, Fefferman NH, Naumov YN, Gorski J, Naumova EN., "Influenza seasonality: underlying causes and modeling theories", J Virol. 2007 Jun;81(11):5429-36. I have a print copy only.] The most surprising thing to most people who don't follow this is that this is still a mystery. We'…
oracknows | May 19, 2007A few days ago, I posted a note of congratulations to Gregory Simonian, a 10th grader at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, for winning the Alliance For Science essay contest, for which the topic was Why would I want my doctor to have studied evolution? At the time, the winners had been announced, though, the actual essays hadn't been published yet.
Now they are.
Head on over to the Alliance for Science website and read Greg's essay and the other three winning essays; they're each only two or three pages long, and it'll be well worth your time. (I'm only disappointed that none of…
aardvarchaeology | May 18, 2007[More blog entries about sex, monogamy, polygamy, evolutionarypsychology; sex, polygami, monogami, evolutionär psykologi.]
The nature vs. nurture debate will always be with us poor cultured apes. Only very rarely can we lay the blame for our behaviour on genetic programming. A typical issue is that of monogamy.
I happened upon two bloggers (here and here) who argue that humans are polygamous ("everybody's built to screw around"), or at least polygynous ("men are built to screw around"), by nature. They base this assertion on the results of research showing that a) somewhere between a percent…
evolgen | May 17, 2007Keith Robison, at Omics! Omics!, asks and answers the question, "What math courses should a biologist take in college?" His answer: a good statistics course is a must (one where you learn about experimental design and Bayesian statistics), and a survey course that covers topics like graph theory and matrix math would provide a nice introduction to important topics (that course probably doesn't exist at most colleges). He also advocates taking a programming class and turning math education into something more stimulating rather than rote drilling (easier said than done).
This being a blog, I,…
omnibrain | May 17, 2007Here is an updated reposting (originally published on 04-26) with further information at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!
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I really like soda, especially the kinds with lots of caffeine and sugar. However, I have minor panic attacks whenever I drink them and think about all the corn syrup and other scary junk that goes into the soda flowing through my body. On the other hand I can't stand diet sodas - whose chemicals won't make me fat and diabetic (and probably take a lot longer to insidiously wreck the body) but taste…
worldsfair | May 15, 2007"Why is anisogamy important? Anisogamy is the fundamental cause for the majority of differences between males and females, both in terms of macro-scale physiology, post mating sex-roles, reproductive strategies, and sets the stage for sexual conflict. For instance, anisogamy is the fundamental reason why:"
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worldsfair | May 15, 2007"A biological clock is a structure that times regular re-occurence of biochemical, physiological and behavioral events in an organism in constant environmental conditions Perhaps the best way to explain this is to dissect the definition word-by-word, explaining my choice of words included (and those omitted) in the definition. But first, I need to make it clear that I am NOT trying to invent a new definition, or to impose my views on others. Instead, I am trying to capture the sense in which the term has actually been used by the practitioners in the field, and the way such usage may have…
worldsfair | May 15, 2007"Species: A term which everybody thinks they understand, but which nobody agrees upon, to denote the "basic units" of groups of biological organisms. It is sometimes said, or has been said to me, that one ought not know too much about a topic if you are to define it clearly. "
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worldsfair | May 15, 2007"A clade is, simply expressed, any branch (Greek: klados) of the evolutionary tree which is separated from the rest of the tree by a single cut. Any branch, however large or small, that is cut off this way is monophyletic, or of a single origin. Monophyly is, under cladistic terminology, the property of a single species and all of its descendant species."
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worldsfair | May 15, 2007"The rapidity of this folding reaction tells us something about the mechanism of protein folding. We know that folding is rapid and spontaneous because proteins can be purified then unfolded by treating them with certain chemicals that cause them to become denatured or unfolded. These denatured proteins can then be allowed to re-fold when the chemicals are removed."
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worldsfair | May 15, 2007"Collagen is the major protein component of the connective tissue of vertebrates; it constitutes about 25% to 35% of the total protein in mammals. Collagen molecules have remarkably diverse forms and functions. For example, collagen in tendons forms stiff, ropelike fibers of tremendous tensile strength; in skin, collagen takes the form of loosely woven fibers, permitting expansion in all directions."
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worldsfair | May 15, 2007"I talk a lot about genes, so let's just step way back and give a useful definition of a gene. I admit right up front, though, that there are two limitations: I'm going to give a very simplified explanation that fits with a molecular genetics focus (pure geneticists define genes very differently), and I'm going to talk only about eukaryotic/metazoan genes. I tell you right now that if I asked a half dozen different biologists to help me out with this, they'd rip into it and add a thousand qualifiers, and it would never get done. So let's plunge in and see what a simple version of a gene is…
worldsfair | May 15, 2007"There is much misunderstanding of this term, and people often pack a lot of differing concepts under it. Consider this rant by a creationist in The American Spectator: there are "six types of evolution" according to him. They are cosmic evolution, chemical evolution, stellar evolution, organic (or organice [sic]) evolution, macroevolution and microevolution. Apart from being deeply ignorant about all the topics he classifies, some of this is just ridiculous."
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worldsfair | May 15, 2007"Most non-scientists seem to be quite confused about precise definitions of biological evolution. Part of the confusion is because the word "evolution" has many different meanings, depending on the context. When we talk about biology we are thinking about biological evolution and that's the term I want to define here. What do biologists mean when they refer to biological evolution?"
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