biology
terrasig | December 13, 2006Many ScienceBloggers are quite fond of manatees; I still keep my 'Save the Manatee' fundraising license plate from my days in the Sunshine State.
But this made me laugh.
From the New York Times, a Conan O'Brien skit on the absurdity of college mascots led NBC to cover its butt:
At the end of the skit, in a line Mr. O'Brien insists was ad-libbed, he mentioned that the voyeur (actually Mark Pender, a member of the show's band) was watching www.hornymanatee.com. There was only one problem: as of the taping of that show, which concluded at 6:30 p.m., no such site existed. Which presented an…
grrlscientist | December 13, 2006
Chrysalis of Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae,
Nelson Farms Preserve, Katy Prairie Conservancy, Texas.
NABA Butterfly Count, 10 September 2006.
This is a case of mimicry where the chrysalis resembles bird poop.
Image: Biosparite.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd…
moleculeoftheday | December 13, 2006Tris is one of the most common buffers out there and absolutely ubiquitous in molecular biology. The idea behind a buffer is that you have a compound that takes on a proton (hydrogen) at a certain pH, usually somewhere near neutrality, you have about half with and half without a proton, and you have a solution held near that pH. Tris buffers a shade above pH 8, which is a little basic, but not so bad. It's pretty transparent to UV light, water soluble, and cheap. The last is probably the big thing; we have a paint-bucket sized container of tris in the lab. It's probably the only compound I…
revere | December 13, 2006Again, H5N1 is rewriting the book. Influenza A is usually thought of as an intestinal disease of birds. Surveillance and monitoring, therefore, has been carried out by sampling bird feces and cloacal (rectal) swabs. In a meeting in Singapore, however, the dean of flu virologists, Robert Webster of St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis, is now reporting there are much higher H5N1 viral loads in the upper respiratory tract of birds than in the intestines. This is work done jointly with Albert Osterhaus in The Netherlands. It has led to changes in recommendations for detecting the virus in…
evolgen | December 12, 2006My call for ecology blogs went better than expected. I expected next to nothing, but I got more than nothing -- at least enough to consider it further away from nothing than next to it. Anyhow, I have compiled a list of blogs below the fold. They are grouped into those that deal with the science of ecology and those that deal with conservation, environmentalism, bird watching, etc. Some of the blogs were on the boarder between science and other, and I can't give a great explanation for how I decided where to put them. The order is somewhat arbitrary; it's the order in which I put toghether…
moleculeoftheday | December 12, 2006Methyl viologen is a groove-binding DNA ligand; that is, unlike an intercalator, which slips between bases, it slips into the grooves of the DNA helix.
You've probably heard of it as paraquat.
It is an herbicide, but it's not that specific; the stuff can hurt you, too. The mechanism of action here has less to do with it being a ligand for DNA, and more to do with its redox chemistry. Herbicides, including paraquat, have comprised a part of US anti-drug strategy for awhile. We've been spraying certain drug-related plants (mostly marijuana and opium) for decades, and we're still up to it. Note…
grrlscientist | December 12, 2006
Peregrine falcon, Falco peregrinus.
Orphaned image. Please contact me for proper attribution and linkage.
As I get my blog-feet under me, one of the things I plan to do is to resume publishing Birds in the News on Mondays, at noon, EST. Until that happy moment, perhaps you will enjoy seeing a peregrine falcon family in downtown Brisbane, Australia?
This well-designed site, Frodocam, has thousands of still pictures, galleries of video for you to watch using either Quicktime or Media Player, and lots of information about peregrine falcons so you can learn more about these, the fastest…
grrlscientist | December 11, 2006
Wandering Glider, Pantala flavescens
Notice the beautifully delicate body coloration and nearly invisible black veination in the otherwise transparent wings.
W. 11th St. Park Butterfly Garden, Houston, Texas.
October 2006
Biosparite writes; While I visited the West 11th st. Park, I was fortunate to find a perched Wandering Glider. These dragonflies rarely go to ground in the daytime, instead feeding above open areas and abruptly executing 90- and 180-degree turns.
Image: Biosparite.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the…
tfk | December 11, 2006IDolatrous bloggers ask Is altruism all about cost-to-benefit ratios?, and conclude after reviewing a paper in Science that lays out the current thinking on the evolution of altruism:
Of course, there is another avenue for thinking about altruism: but this means going beyond neodarwinism and entertaining the thought that human beings need to be explained not only in terms of law and chance, but also in terms of design.
Let's set aside that they never bother to explain how "design" would actually resolve this. That would require some sort of "theory of design," and we all know no such thing…
tfk | December 11, 2006The first bill filed for next year's state senate session would ban thimerosal in vaccines. Thimerosal is a preservative formerly used in many vaccines, now mostly found only in flu vaccines. Because it contains a form of mercury, people have tried to link its use in childhood vaccines with rising autism rates. As the Lawrence Journal-World's Scott Rothschild notes:
Federal officials maintain there is no association between the disorders and thimerosal. Critics, however, say the studies are flawed and note that mercury is a known toxin.
Unfortunately, he leaves out a lot of background.…
omnibrain | December 11, 2006For some reason this research sounds like it was done by that short criminal guy from the Princess Bride (you know... the one who gets poisoned?)
Check out this quote from one of the Authors:
"This required a particularly nasty experiment, in which we inoculated colonies with the most virulent disease of honeybees that is known, the dreaded American foulbrood disease," said Seeley.
See the reason for the experiment below the fold...
The reason for the experiment is actually pretty funny in itself. It seems that queen bees can be quite promiscuous - they go out looking for sperm from many…
moleculeoftheday | December 11, 2006The catnip plant belongs to the genus Nepeta. The molecule responsible for its odd effects on cats is called nepetalactone:
Apparently catnip can repel insects in a garden, and some people have looked into whether nepetalactone works as an insect repellent.
revere | December 11, 2006Compared to other viruses, the influenza virus is relatively simple, although its biology is not. To date, the eight genetic segments in the viral genome (the totality of its genetic information) has been shown to code for only eleven proteins. A virus can get away with this because it hijacks the host cell's extensive protein making machinery and doesn't use its own. But we are still learning about those eleven proteins, what their role is, how they work and even what they look like. A paper that just appeared in Nature (.pdf, subscription only) is the first to reveal what one of these…
grrlscientist | December 10, 2006
White pairie aster, Symphyotrichum ericoides var. ericoides
W. 11th St. Park Butterfly Garden, Houston, Texas.
28 October 2006
Biosparite writes; This tiny aster, about 8 mm or so, was driving a lot of the bee and butterfly nectaring activity this past summer at the W. 11th st. Park. People with grass lawns consider it a weedy nuisance as it will run along the ground when it is mown a lot. The plants I was monitoring stood around four feet high and had hundreds of flowers open, yielding a mild scent detectable several inches away from the flower masses.
Image: Biosparite.
I am receiving…
grrlscientist | December 9, 2006
Texan crescents, Phyciodes texana, mating.
W. 11th St. Park Butterfly Garden, Houston, Texas.
28 October 2006
Biosparite writes; The Texan Crescents pictured here are also multivoltine. This species is the mascot of BEST-NABA (North American Butterfy Association).
Image: Biosparite.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me,…
evolgen | December 9, 2006There are certain scientific disciplines that are well represented in the blogosphere. Bioinformatics comes to mind. As does physics. But these are computer savvy people who probably spend quite a bit of time hooked up to the interwebs. How about scientists that need to get their hands dirty? Like ecologists.
Does anyone know of any good blogs by ecologists about ecology? Not conservation or environmentalism, but ecology. Like population dynamics, landscapes, nutrient cycling, predator-prey interaction. I've got a couple in mind, but I want to hear your suggestions.
And if you're an ecology…
tfk | December 8, 2006Scientists from the University of British Columbia have been following the oldest animals alive in unexpected places. Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) are believed to live several hundred years, and can reach sizes of several meters.
While they are usually found in cold, Arctic waters, the population that the GEERG has been following returns to the Saint Lawrence River every summer, disappearing as cold weather sets in.
Researcher Chris Harvey-Clark says that "all the papers published on the species, including magazine articles, can barely fill two shoeboxes," in part because of…
grrlscientist | December 8, 2006
Green Tree Frogs, Hyla cinerea.
Nelson Farms Preserve, KPC, NABA Butterfly Count, 4 September 2006.
Biosparite writes; For the sake of completeness, here is the entire frog photo from an earlier image. The male is supposed to be smaller than the females. Color is variable, but the paler specimen may be a female.
Image: Biosparite.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your…
grrlscientist | December 8, 2006
Ebola Virus, one of the most deadly of all viral diseases, has killed more than 5,000 gorillas in the Republic of Congo and Gabon, located in central Africa. In addition to commercial hunting of gorillas, this outbreak of ebola could be sufficient to push gorillas into extinction.
The study, published in the US journal Science, looked at gorilla colonies in Republic of Congo and Gabon. Ebola is also blamed for many chimpanzee deaths.
Ebola is one of the most deadly viruses known to primates, killing more than 1,000 people since it burst upon the medical scene in 1976. Ebola causes a viral…
grrlscientist | December 8, 2006
Llama, Llama glama.
Image: source
Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington have discovered that llamas, a member of the camel family, have unusual antibodies in their blood that do not break down at high temperatures, unlike those of humans and most other animals. As a result, llama antibodies could be developed for use as biosensors against potential biological warfare agents in the field.
"We're interested in the development of biosensors for biothreats in the field, and hopefully these antibodies will help lead to more rugged antibodies that have longer shelf…