biology
tfk | October 27, 2006There is nothing as free
as a fox
cavorting with the rain.
The fox chased a skunk, but recognized its mistake in time. I was taking shelter under a tent, hoping for a break in the rain. After abandoning the skunk, our vulpine friend hopped from puddle to puddle in an empty parking lot. It was good to see someone enjoying the weather.
While we're at it, a better poem, by Ted Hughes.
The Thought-Fox
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near…
grrlscientist | October 27, 2006
As a professor who (sometimes) teaches Anatomy and Physiology to nursing students, I think this is a great video.
Bones are heard of, but seldom seen,
'Cept each year 'round Hallowe'en.
But I've got a shockeroo
Right now there's a skeleton locked up inside of you! (Ha-ha-ha)
Minus bones you're just a blob,
Being framework's their main job.
All your organs, muscles, too,
They need your bones to hold them safe and sound inside for you.
Your heart and lungs are tucked away,
In there behind your ribs.
Those bones have been protecting them
Since we were little kids.
.
tags: schoolhouse rock…
grrlscientist | October 25, 2006
Green Tree Frog, Hyla cinerea.
Nelson Farms Preserve, Katy Prairie Conservancy, Texas.
NABA Butterfly Count, 4 September 2006.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image 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 like it to be credited.
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tags: green tree frog, frog, Amphibia, zoology
evolgen | October 24, 2006No ocean, river, or fjord is safe. The manatees are attacking. We've warned you before. Now is the time to take notice. Three times is a trend.
razib | October 23, 2006One of the many hypotheses in palaeoanthropology is homonids shifted to meat eating because it was metabolically rich and allowed the increase in our brain sizes. Well, there might now be some support from primate analogs finally, Study suggests evolutionary link between diet, brain size in orangutans:
In a study of orangutans living on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra, scientists from Duke University and the University of Zurich have found what they say is the first demonstration in primates of an evolutionary connection between available food supplies and brain size.
Based on…
tfk | October 23, 2006Iceland breaks ban on commercial whaling:
Iceland announced last week that it would resume commercial whaling, ignoring a worldwide moratorium that came into effect in 1986.
They kicked things off by killing a fin whale, one of only 30,000 estimated to be alive as of 2001.
A female gives birth to a single calf every couple of years after a year-long gestation. That low reproductive rate means that recovering from historical hunting has been very slow. More than 10,000 fin whales were taken annually between 1946 and 1965, and lower numbers were taken until the whaling ban was imposed in…
grrlscientist | October 23, 2006When you see Bush's bone-headed responses to cutting-edge scientific research, especially global warming and embryonic stem cell reasearch, it's easy to think that he is the worst thing to happen to science in the history of this nation. But other 19th and 20th century presidents have ignored science to further their own political and religious agendas, so is Bush really the worst enemy of scientific research?
If you are the science advisor to the president, you would deny this allegation;
According to John Marburger, Bush's science advisor, allegations that Bush is harder on science than…
tfk | October 22, 2006This weeks ask the Scienceblogger question is: What's the best science show ever?
I'll go with David Attenborough's Life on Earth. I probably would have become a biologist without Attenborough's example, but who can be sure. I watched our tapes of that show until they wore out. I wanted to be David Attenborough until I realized that wasn't really a career description.
The cinematography of all of his work is just astounding, and the man can explain biological diversity with the sort of personable passion that you just don't get often enough.
The show is available in pirated BitTorrent…
grrlscientist | October 22, 2006
Clouded Sulfur butterfly, Colias philodice,
nectaring at the garden of the (now defunct) Tierra de los Suenos
Bed and Breakfast near Patagonia, Arizona, mid-July 2003.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image 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 like it to be credited.
.
tags: butterfly, clouded sulfur butterfly, insect, lepidoptery, zoology
grrlscientist | October 22, 2006A friend emailed this picture to me, so I am sharing it with you -- just to let you know that I am here and thinking about all of you. This image has inspired me to share some images with you throughout the day today. I hope that you enjoy them!
Male Indian Peafowl, Pavo cristatus, in courtship display.
Orphaned image.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image 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 like it to be credited.
.
tags: peacock, birds, biology, photography, ornithology,…
tfk | October 21, 2006Newfound bacteria in South Africa are fueled by radiation. The scientists who discovered it summarize the discovery by saying:
"The bottom line is: Water plus rocks plus radiation is enough to sustain life for millennia."
The paper in Science is less succint:
Most subsurface microbial ecosystems examined to date (including subseafloor sediments, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, terrestrial sedimentary aquifers, and petroleum reservoirs) ultimately depend on sunlight. …
To determine the long-term sustainability of a deep terrestrial environment, we examined the microbial diversity and metabolic…
razib | October 20, 2006Via The American Scene, Skin Color and Wages Among New Immigrants (Update: Steve Sailer an interesting critique of this study). The basic finding is that controlling for all variables that they could nail down darker skinned immigrants tend to make less bank. As someone of luscious brownitude (see picture to your far left) this does concern me, but mom always told me that true Ãbermenschen always have their burdens. In other, somewhat related news, Dienekes reports on an interesting finding that in regards to skin tone a lighter shade of brown is oh so sexy baby, more so than black berry…
grrlscientist | October 19, 2006A friend emailed this link and even though I have only begun to poke around on it, but already I find it fascinating. Darwin OnLine is a searchable webbed database that contains more than 50,000 text pages and 40,000 images of publications and handwritten manuscripts. It also has the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published and the largest manuscript catalogue ever assembled. More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from secondary reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, published descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens and important related works…
evolgen | October 17, 2006Science has published THE genome of breast and colorectal cancers. Not the whole genome, mind you, but just 13,023 protein coding genes. The researchers identified mutations associated with cancers, but I'm not sure if they looked outside of the protein coding sequences (I have yet to read the paper, and I'm not sure when I'll get around to it). Nobel Intent has a review of the paper.
When I first heard about this project I wondered what exactly they'd be doing. The fact that this study only looked at 11 cancers for each tissue is somewhat surprising. What I'd really like to see is a study…
scientificactivist | October 17, 2006One of the goals of modern structural biology is to integrate the two traditionally distinct subfields of structural molecular biology (determination of the structures of macromolecules at atomic resolution) and structural cell biology (general architecture of of the cell and the localization of subcellular structures within it). The end result--as my research advisor at Oxford, Prof. Iain Campbell, often points out--is to be able to make a "molecular movie", at atomic resolution, of the whole cell. (Such a video might look something like this video from XVIVO and Harvard University--…
scientificactivist | October 16, 2006I think I can finally call myself a legitimate scientist (whatever that means), since last week one of the papers I worked on during my undergrad at Texas A&M University was published in The Journal of Cell Biology (JCB). I'm the fourth author on the paper, meaning that I was only peripherally involved (and made a much smaller contribution than the first author, Dr. Brian Saunders, and my advisor, Dr. George Davis, among others). Regardless, this is my first appearance in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and since I (not surprisingly) find the subject of this paper incredibly…
evolgen | October 16, 2006This video confirms two things I've long suspected: nature is really cool and white people can't dance. Okay, I have independent evidence for the second thing, but check out this little fella's moves:
He really shakes a proverbial tail feather. But like human males, the only reason for this guy to get on the dance floor is so that he can score a little trim. Unless that male is Michael Jackson, who dances 'cause he's freakin' weird.
tfk | October 16, 2006Every week, the Kansas Guild of Bloggers gathers to share the finest craftsmanship in the bloggish arts. This week brought us 5 submissions, plus a few posts that I snagged on my own.
In Kalimba-bel's Canon?, John of Blog Meridian:
cannot help but be seduced, at least for this morning, by the fancy that a non-Western culture built an instrument designed specifically to play one of the most-recognizable Western melodies ever composed
Fire up your Konono Number 1 and read on.
The KU chapter of Kansas Citizens for Science is writing about Art and Science.
Meanwhile, Joel of Cup o' Joel says Let…