biology
evolgen | March 21, 2007SECOND ROUND PREVIEW | PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
Welcome back to our coverage of the second round of the Science Spring Showdown. We had two great games yesterday, and another one finished earlier today. The final game of the round, between HIV and Psychology, is just wrapping up now; we'll bring you the result as soon as that one goes final.
Tom Ribosome: Earlier today, Phylogenetics took on Unipotent in one of the more non-traditional match ups. Coming off of games against classic rivals, Taxonomy and Totipotent, no one was sure what to expect when the tree builders and fated cells…
evolgen | March 21, 2007SECOND ROUND PREVIEW | PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to our comprehensive coverage of the second round of the Science Spring Showdown. We had two great games yesterday, and we have two more match ups today. The game between Phylogenetics and Unipotent is just underway, and the final game of the round, between HIV and Psychology, is coming up this afternoon.
Jim Pipetman: Yesterday's first game, between the top seeded Invertebrates and the ninth seeded Surgeons, turned out like most of the experts predicted. The Surgeons came into the game bragging about…
tfk | March 20, 2007IDolator David Tyler wants to make something clear about a new fossil, Yanoconodon:
The first point to make is that this is not an example of a transitional fossil. …
Rather, the new fossil has been hailed as illustrating an important evolutionary transition: detachment of the middle ear bones from the mandible. It is therefore better described as a fossil claimed to have a transitional structure associated with ear bones.
You get that? It's a fossil of a transitional form, not a transitional fossil.
Here's the thing. Practically every fossil is transitional in some sense. Every fossil had…
tfk | March 19, 2007Michael Egnor is confused.
No, wait, that's like saying that the Titanic is made of metal. Let's try again.
Michael Egnor's confusion is drowning him in his own turgid prose:
I can't tell what live people (or live rats) are thinking by looking at their brains, and I can't even tell using two-photon confocal microscopy (the latest in capillary imaging). Of course, I can't tell what dead people used to think by studying their brains, and I certainly can't tell what dead people used to think if I don't have a speck of tissue from their brains. And I certainly can't tell what 3.2 million year…
evolgen | March 17, 20071st ROUND RESULTS | PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
After the excitement of the first round action in the Octopus region, we can only hope that the second round is half as dynamic. The big upset last round saw Unipotent knocking off Totipotent. There has also been an interesting twist, as Internal Medicine was disqualified for a positive steroid test. That means Surgery advances to play the Invertebrates. In the other matches this round, we will see Genomics take on Photosynthesis, Unipotent challenge Phylogenetics, and HIV play Psychology.
#1 Invertebrates vs. #9 Internal Medicine #8…
evolgen | March 16, 20071st ROUND RESULTS | PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
The results are in from the first round in the Octopus Region of the Science Spring Showdown hosted at the World's Fair. By seed, there were three upsets, but the nine seed Internal Medicine knocking off eight seed Surgery was hardly a surprise (although the 107-76 score was a wider margin than many of the experts predicted). The win by 14 seeded Unipotent over the three seed, Totipotent, on the other hand, was quite a shocker, with many people attributing the victory to the definitive coaching style of the Unipotent's lead general,…
omnibrain | March 16, 2007It sounds good doesn't it?! Just read a bit further until you realize what they're actually saying...
The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has suggested that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven, and that prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified.
The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and one of the country's evangelical leaders, posted the article on his personal Web site earlier this month.
Mr. Mohler said in the article that scientific research "points to…
jlynch | March 15, 2007
This beauty is a Bornean clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi ), a new species native to Borneo and Sumatra.
For many years the clouded leopard was traditionally regarded as a monotypic genus with four subspecies. But recent molecular genetic analyses (mtDNA, nuclear DNA sequences, microsatellite variation, and cytogenetic differences) have revealed that there is however a strong case for reclassification and the defining of two distinct species of clouded leopard - Neofelis nebulosa (mainland Asia) and Neofelis diardi (Indonesian archipelago). This case for two clouded leopard species based…
tfk | March 15, 2007Research published in PLOS Biology reveals a fascinating trend – a survey of the seas shows that we have barely scratched the surface of the genetic diversity of microbes floating there. Craig Venter and his team have sailed around the world, collecting bacteria and viruses and rapidly sequencing chunks of DNA.
By comparing those sequences to previously described genes, it was found that half of the DNA was as different from existing genes at a species level, 10% at a family level. Given that the rate of discovery of novel sequences hadn't leveled off by the end of the survey, it's not…
tfk | March 15, 2007I have no major problems with genetically modified organisms. There are, however, very legitimate concerns about their widespread use. Genes for herbicide resistance could spread to weeds related to crop species, making it even harder to control weeds. Genes interact with each other, sometimes in unpredictable ways, and the rapid pace of genetic engineering – as compared with traditional breeding techniques – means it's more likely that dangerous interactions would be more likely to slip past.
On the other hand, there's a compelling argument, advanced by Nobel winner Norman Borlaug among…
evolgen | March 15, 2007I'm really digging the interviews with high profile scientists that Current Biology has been publishing. Last November I quoted their interview with Michael Ashburner (ie, he who will not pose with Prof. Steve Steve) on his thoughts on open access publishing and pointed out that they were being published in a non-open access journal. In the most recent issue, they interview Stephen O'Brien, head of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute. O'Brien was trained as a Drosophila geneticist, and now works on topics as diverse as cheetah population genetics and HIV…
tfk | March 14, 2007It's mating season for frogs in Kansas. On a walk through the Baker Wetlands, the air was full of the sweet nothings frogs sing to each other.
I'm not sure what species they were, but I'm guessing it was mostly cricket frogs.
In Aristophanes' classic comedy The Frogs, the chorus of frogs sing:
Brekekekex koax koax
Brekekekex koax koax.
Children of the marsh and lake
harmonious song now sweetly make,
our own enchanting melodies
koax koax
To which Dionysius, god of the vine, replies: "I’m starting to get a pain in the ass/ from all your koax koax."
Most frogs don't sing to irritate gods or…
terrasig | March 14, 2007The new issue of Newsweek (19 Mar 2007) carried a surprise for me: former Wall Street Journal health reporter, Sharon Begley, has moved back to the magazine. In fact, Begley wrote this week's excellent discussion and cover story on the massive amount of science in support of evolution.
"The debate over human origins has been one of the most significant and controversial conversations in American society over the last 150 years. Whether they believe in Darwin's theory of evolution as it was proposed in his "Origin of Species", adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible or inhabit some…
evolgen | March 13, 2007The New York Times has published an article in their Science section on the evolution of human parasites, and it's not by Carl Zimmer. In the article, Nicholas Wade (another good science writer at the NYTimes) presents a few vignettes of human-parasite co-evolution, including a bacterium that causes tooth decay, the ulcer causing Heliobacter, and a tapeworm we share with pigs. I guess Carl called dibs on the pubic lice. Anyway, Wade made me smile when he presented the phylogeography of one human parasite:
The latest organism to be identified as a longtime member of the human biota club is…
omnibrain | March 12, 2007Grunt pant exhale grunt uugh grunt exhale. Pump that iron!
That's all you really need to know.
So get with it! Get to the gym and start exercising!
Actually, it seems that aerobic exercise was the beneficial form of physical activity. The researchers next step is to determine what forms of activity are the best for avoiding memory loss.
Here's some details from the CNN article:
Exercise boosts brainpower by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with memory and memory loss, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called…
omnibrain | March 12, 2007It looks like under very controlled circumstances, with rats, you can pick and choose which memory stays and which memory goes with a new drug. Don't worry though - the CIA won't be implanting and removing memories of last Tuesday any time soon. I'm not saying they can't wipe out most of last January, but they've always been able to do that with a whole lot of electric shocks and crazy drugs ;) Now, aliens on the other hand, they have a decent success rate with people. At last it seems that way since some people don't recover the memories of their anal probes until years later.
In any case…
oracknows | March 12, 2007It figures.
After my having written repeated debunkings of various physicians who are creationists (mostly of the "intelligent design" variety), in retrospect I should have seen this one coming. I should have seen that the Discovery Institute, eager to use anyone they can find whom they can represent to the public as having scientific credentials (never mind whether those credentials have anything to do with evolutionary biology) and thus dupe the public into seeing them as having authority when they start laying down ignorant brain farts about how they "doubt Darwinism," would settle on…
ksharpe | March 10, 2007If you're thinking about pollen much and you're not a farmer or a beekeeper, chances are you probably suffer from wicked seasonal allergies. Then again, you could be an artist.
Kysa Johnson, a painter whose work explores microcosmic and macrocosmic natural phenomena, opens a show this weekend at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The paintings depict magnified versions of the tiny particles that populate the air around the museum.
The opening reception for "Kysa Johnson: Blow Ups--Spores, Pollen, and Pollutants" will be held on Sunday, March 11 from 3 to 5pm;…
jlynch | March 6, 2007
A large-billed reed-warbler (Acrocephalus orinus), one of the world's least known birds, is seen in this photo released by Birdlife International. A wetland bird that has eluded scientists for nearly 130 years, it has been rediscovered at a wastewater treatment plant in Thailand. More details here,
tfk | March 5, 2007The Times reviews a biological Hot Spot in Tanzania:
So far, researchers have identified 96 endemic species of vertebrates in the Eastern Arc Mountains, including sunbirds, chameleons and the wide-eyed primates called bushbabies.
Many insects are also endemic to the Eastern Arc, including 43 species of butterflies. Some of the most popular houseplants in the world come from its forests, including African violets, and the mountains are home to at least 800 other endemic species of plants.
All of these species are crammed into 13 patches of forest that, put together, would be barely bigger than…