biology
grrlscientist | January 24, 2007
Bacteria species.
Image: burningmonk.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-term monetary gains. But if we decide to destroy these other life forms, the least we can do is to know what we…
omnibrain | January 24, 2007I posted this story a week or so ago about Nobel prize winners living longer. Some people didn't seem to believe the study and now it seems that even some Nobel Prize winners are questioning the results.
Winning the Nobel Prize can add almost a year and a half to a laureate's life, two British economists say. But though he's 81, Harvard physicist Roy J. Glauber, a 2005 Nobelist, isn't buying it.
So why doesn't Roy buy it?
But Glauber said the study might have been biased by the fact that many laureates aren't selected until they're quite old.
Glauber won his Nobel 40 years after publishing…
revere | January 22, 2007A little noticed paper in CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases takes us back to a year ago when dead and dying birds infected with H5N1 were first found near water in Germany, Slovenia and Austria. In mid February 2006 a sick swan picked up from a river in Austria was taken to an animal shelter in Graz. It died a day later. While there it infected 13 of 38 other birds (swans, ducks and chickens), detected 3 days later. That day the poultry area of the shelter was disinfected after the birds were removed.
But the animal shelter had more than birds:
In the same shelter were 194 cats; most had…
grrlscientist | January 21, 2007
Unknown beetle species on wild prickly rose
at the photographer's house in Eagle River, Alaska 25 June 2006
using a Canon 5D, with a 100mm macro lens.
Image: David Lee.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them…
tfk | January 19, 2007I wish their whole site weren't built around Flash, but EDGE has put together a great package highlighting a range of species that are unique and disappearing around the world.
The solenodon, for instance, is a possible relative of Madagascar's tenrecs, separated by Africa and the Atlantic. The Hispaniolan species lives only on the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. If you recall my post on rainforests and development, or my article for Seedmagazine.com, the Haitian side of the island is in pretty serious trouble. The Dominican Republic is doing better, but…
revere | January 19, 2007The news that H5N1 viruses isolated from an uncle and niece in Egypt who died in December has been found to carry a genetic change suggestive of resistance to the main antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) headlined the H5N1 newswires yesterday. Specifically, WHO announced that genetic sequencing had found the N294S change in the isolates (explanation below the fold). It is not clear at the moment whether the change occurred during treatment of the pair with the drug or the virus carried the change when it infected them. It is also not clear what the clinical significance of the change is. We…
grrlscientist | January 18, 2007
Calypso Orchid, Calypso bulbosa.
Photo taken on 26 May 2002 using a Kodak DC-4800, some images with a lens adapter and a 7x or 10x (or both) lens, at full camera resolution (2160x1440). This image was taken at the Eagle River Nature Center in Eagle River, Alaska.
Image: David Lee.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a…
revere | January 18, 2007It may not be the most comforting headline, but it certainly is of interest to flu watchers: Rebuilt 1918 Flu Infects Monkeys, May Assist Research (John Lauerman, Bloomberg). It's also a pretty accurate headline. Nice to see. So what's it all about?
Most people who come here know that the 1918 "Spanish flu" virus has been reconstituted, using information frm fragments of the viral genetic material dug up from frozen corpses in Alaska, Siberia and pathology samples kept in archives. Once the entire sequence was pieced together the actual genetic material could be constructed and allowed to…
grrlscientist | January 17, 2007
A prairie falcon, Falco mexicanus.
This photo was taken on Christmas Eve in north-central Kansas.
Image: David A. Rintoul.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-term monetary gains. But…
evolgen | January 17, 2007Esquire runs a regular article called "Answer Fella" in which stupid questions get stupid answers. In this month's edition we find out whether cloned humans have souls, why South Dakota's badlands are called badlands, and how many potatoes make up a bag of chips. My favorite answer, however, is to the question of what happens to the bodies of large animals when they die at the zoo:
According to Brandie Smith, director of conservation and science for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a necropsy--an animal autopsy--is performed first, to determine the cause of death and for research. "We…
omnibrain | January 17, 2007It looks like there are a couple of interesting articles/TV shows out there in the last couple days highlighting some Omni Brain topics of the last few weeks.
You know how I love the mind control people, It looks like the Washington Post has a great article on it...
Mind Games
New on the Internet: a community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that.
And of course you all remember the severed dogs head! National Geographic is producing a show about the Russian research that came up…
evolgen | January 17, 2007Two science blogging carnivals have been posted in the past few days. The first edition of Oekologie (ecology and environmental science) is up at The Infinite Sphere, and Aardvarchaeology has the newest Four Stone Hearth (anthropology). Also, Evil Monkey is scheduled to post a fresh edition of Mendel's Garden any minute now -- or two days ago. Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for that one too.
evolgen | January 17, 2007Imagine you put grandma in a retirement home. One day, you and the kids head out to Shady Acres to pay a visit to grandma. You meet her in her room -- planning to hit up the 4pm dinner as her guest so she can show off the grandkids to the other retirees -- only to discover she's got an infant in her arms. Well, it's happened:
SHREVEPORT, La. - It's both a surprise and a mystery. At Caddo Parish's Chimp Haven, where retired male chimpanzees all get vasectomies, a female chimp has turned up pregnant. Chimp Haven managers knew something was up when they could not find one of their chimps last…
revere | January 17, 2007Two news reports in recent days added another dimension to the already worrisome seasonal resurgence of H5N1. First, there is little doubt that the current spate of human cases is just what we expect to see at this time of year, based on past experience. This doesn't mean that the increase is "just" seasonal, however. It can easily be masking or being accompanied by a change in the virus that makes this year different than last year, just as perhaps previous years were different than the ones before. To say this is a the usual seasonal resurgence is more descriptive than explanatory. It is…
grrlscientist | January 16, 2007
A couple of grunion on a sandy beach, spawning.
The photographer said, "I like how colorful they turn out to be - honestly, when you're standing there looking at them late at night with flashlights they don't look much more than gray." This photo is one of a series.
Image: Carl Manaster.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We…
omnibrain | January 16, 2007It seems that if you win the Nobel prize you can live for 2 more years! Screw exercise and eating right - I'm gonna win the NOBEL PRIZE!!!!!
Anyone have any good research ideas? Just think you can be responsible for me living TWO MORE YEARS!
The average life span for this group was just over 76 years. Winners of the Nobel Prize were found to live 1.4 years longer on average (77.2 years) than those who had "merely" been nominated for a prize (who lived on average for 75.8 years). When the survey was restricted to only comparing winners and nominees from the same country, the longevity gap…
razib | January 15, 2007p-ter has an interesting post where he explores some current findings about human population substructure. He begins:
First, an important preliminary-- there are millions of places in the human genome where any two given people could possible differ, either by a single base change, the addition of an entire chunk of DNA, the inversion of a chunk of DNA, or whatever. Keep that in mind: millions and millions of places (for a database of many of the single base changes, see the HapMap). Now, the intuitive argument: after humans arose in Africa, they dispered themselves throughout the world. By…
evolgen | January 15, 2007There are a lot of different ways for animals to determine which individuals develop into boys and which ones become girls. You're probably most familiar with the form of chromosomal sex determination that utilizes X and Y chromosomes -- males are XY and females are XX. There are others, including ZW (males are ZZ, females are ZW) and environmental sex determination (e.g., sex can be determined by egg rearing temperature).
One of the most interesting sex determination systems -- from an evolutionary perspective -- involves differences in ploidy between males and females. Hymenoptera (ants,…