evolution
gregladen | January 14, 2008Syphilis is first clearly seen in Europe in 1495, when it appeared as a plague (though it was not "the blague" ... Yersinia pestis) among Charles VIII's troops. When these troops went home shortly after the fall of Naples, they brought this disease with them, staring an epidemic. The level of mortality in Europe was truly devastating. Is it the case that syphilis was brought to Europe by Columbus and his men just prior to the plague-like outbreak of 1495?
The origin of syphilis has been debated for years, really since the actual 1495 event itself. Some researchers have asserted that…
razib | January 14, 2008A nice post over at evolgen about the evolution of pathogens in response to antiobiotics.
grrlscientist | January 14, 2008tags: atheism, religion, science, evolution, humor
A reader sent me this list of atheist-positive anecdotes that have been seen either on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt. Of course, they are accurate as well as hilarious. Which ones are your favorites?
Top Fifty Atheist T-Shirt and Bumper Sticker Aphorisms
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers
Honk If Your Religious Beliefs Make You An Asshole
Intelligent Design Makes My Monkey Cry
Too Stupid to Understand Science? Try Religion.
*There's A REASON Why Atheists Don't Fly Planes Into Buildings
"Worship Me or I Will Torture You…
evolgen | January 14, 2008While much of the research in evolutionary biology is purely academic in nature -- designed for the purpose of understanding the biology of a system rather than for immediate human benefit -- there is some research that yields immediate practical uses. One research area that is particular fruitful in this regard involves applying evolutionary theory toward combating infectious disease agents. The metaphor of an arms race is often used to describe the evolutionary dynamics of parasites and their hosts. This true for the naturally evolved reactions in hosts, but also for human engineered…
razib | January 14, 2008A few weeks ago I watched a Bloggingheads diavlog between Carl Zimmer and Peter Ward, the latter a paleontologist at the University of Washington. I had been developing a deeper interest in the broader patterns of evolution across Deep Time, so I really enjoyed the discussion and learned quite a bit. When I saw Ward's book Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere at the library, I had to pick it up! Overall it's a quick and breezy read; but nevertheless he manages to pack a pretty big scientific punch from what I can tell, the occasional interruptions of the…
gregladen | January 13, 2008The 2007 Darwin Awards are out, and can be found here. [hat tip Afarensis!]
I have no comment, except that I'm glad I'm not on them this year. And believe me, it was a close call.... Especially after what happened last night.
Remember the kitchen? Well, this weekend, it was electrical wire rewiring time.
I keep asking myself the following questions.
1) How often can you check that a circuit is dead, and have it not be dead?
2) How is it that a human can survive a shock from household current (several times in one afternoon) but the same exact current melts metal tools (in the same exact…
terrasig | January 13, 2008Leave it to PharmGirl, MD, to point me in the direction of a story that addresses the core theme of this blog: not only can medicines come from the Earth, but the Earth can itself be medicine. This time we're not talking about South Carolina "sandlappers" as detailed in my inaugural post here as authored originally at the old blog. (For newcomers, you'll get this gist if you also read, "Why Terra Sigillata?").
Instead, we wish to point your attention to a LiveScience article by Clara Moskowitz entitled, Why Chimps Eat Dirt. The practice of eating soil, known as geophagy, is common among…
jlynch | January 13, 2008Elliot Sober has a new book coming out this year, Evidence and Evolution; The Logic Behind the Science. The book is divided into four sections: The Concept of Evidence, Intelligent Design, Natural Selection, and Common Ancestry. Below are the contents of the section on ID:
Darwin and intelligent design
Design arguments and the birth of probability theory
William Paley: The stone, the watch, and the eye
From probabilities to likelihoods
Epicureanism and Darwin’s theory
Three reactions to Paley’s design argument
The no-designer-worth-his-salt objection to the hypothesis of…
gregladen | January 13, 2008
We are reminded, via Mousie Cat at Evolving in Kansas, that Yesterday (I'm so embarrassed I missed this) was Alfred Russel Wallace's birthday!
Wallace was born in 1823.
We should now clearly recognise the fact, that the wealth and knowledge and culture of the few do not constitute civilization, and do not of themselves advance us towards the "perfect social state." Our vast manufacturing system, our gigantic commerce, our crowded towns and cities, support and continually renew a mass of human misery and crime absolutely greater than has ever existed before. They create and maintain in…
razib | January 12, 2008Just noticed that Nature's Oracle: A Life of W. D. Hamilton is finally out. I haven't read it yet, but will have soon once my copy arrives. If you don't know who W. D. Hamilton is, you know his work. Hamilton's early theoretical papers on the evolution of sociality (e.g., kin selection) were the root of many of the ideas presented by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, while his later ideas about the origins of sex figured in the background of Matt Ridley's The Red Queen. If you wish to familiarize yourself more directly with Hamilton's science and life, I highly recommend his collections…
gregladen | January 12, 2008Florida has a purifying effect on politicians. Around the nation, there is a range of opinion among politicians about science education and other issues, but it seems that in Florida, we have a purified strain of politicians. They are pure idiots.
A likely future candidate for Mayor of St. Petersburg, Bill Foster, believes that the study of Darwinism led Hitler to come up with the Holocaust, and the Columbine shooters to come up with murder and mayhem. Foster, currently a city council member in St. Petersburg, wrote a letter to the Pinellas County School Board (considering changes in the…
gregladen | January 12, 2008Cooperation in nature is very common, and papers about how unlikely cooperation in nature would be are also common. Especially in Nature. (The Journal.)
The latest paper is nicely summarized in a press release from the University of Bristol:
Cooperative behaviour is common in many species, including humans. Given that cooperative individuals can often be exploited, it is not immediately clear why such behaviour has evolved.
...
Professor John McNamara and colleagues demonstrate that when individuals in a population are choosy about their partners, cooperativeness is rewarded and tends to…
razib | January 11, 2008Over the past two days I've been arguing that multiple avenues of insight are critical in historical scholarship. That's a general assertion; check out this bloggingheads.tv exchange between Carl Zimmer and paleontologist Niel Shubin. Carl points out that though Neil is a paleontologist focused on Deep Time, his laboratory is a conventional wet environment where a fair amount of developmental genetic research occurs. Uniformitarianism strikes again! The present is a window onto the past....
gregladen | January 11, 2008The latest on the Florida fight over the use of the actual word "evolution" in the classroom. (Or, more specifically, in the science standards)
A panel of education experts just wrapped up three days of meetings at the state Department of Education to hammer out new standards. The state Board of Education will have the final say next month.
The way science is taught in Florida public school classrooms could soon change. Right now, the state science curriculum uses the words "biological changes over time" instead of "evolution".
Biology teacher Nicholas Daigle believes the current standards…
gregladen | January 11, 2008Sure, the Taylor County school board was apparently the first to pass a resolution complaining about evolution, but they're not the only one.
Two more counties passed resolutions, too: Baker County and Holmes County.
Florida Citizens for Science and Dispatches from the Culture Wars are covering this.
gregladen | January 11, 2008Everyone these days knows about the "island effect" where certain animals evolve to a diminutive size because they live on islands. You know this because of the Flores hominid. Now, it has been shown to have operated in a dinosaur.
Thecodontosaurus Thecodontosaurus is also known as the Bristol Dinosaur. It is one of the first named dinosaurs, having been found in 1834, even before dinosaurs were recognized as a phenomenon. It is a diminutive dinosaur that was originally thought to have lived in an arid area of the mainland. Research just published in Geological Magazine shows that…
gregladen | January 10, 2008 Why is there no Birth Control Pill for men?
This latest "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question will certainly engender a wide range of responses from the Scienceblogs.com team. Answers may address physiology, endocrinology, pharmacology, economics, and other areas of scientific thinking and practice. The answer I'd like to propose can be summed up in two closely linked words pilfered from the question itself:
Men. Control.
Myriad aspects of life can be understood by recognizing a single critical fact, and the layered, sometimes complex, deeply biological effects of that fact. Males, by…
razib | January 9, 2008Apropos of Mike Huckabee & Ron Paul's evolution skepticism and its relevance to their political runs Andrew Sullivan has been posting a series of comments from readers about whether evolution and gravity are laws or theories. I am generally somewhat averse to these semantical debates, and more interested in the fundamental question as to whether one can be rational & informed and reject evolutionary theory. But what do readers and others ScienceBloggers think? I was taught that laws are empirically validated truths and rest upon induction. Theories are basically systems of highly…
jlynch | January 9, 2008Just discovered that the Arizona Natural History Museum (in Mesa) will be featuring the "Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight" exhibit come March 1st. Sweet!
Some photos of a previous installation in San Diego are here (pdf) and just for giggles, here’s a review of the Royal Ontario Museum installation by Answers in Genesis.
Have any readers seen the exhibit?
bleimanb | January 9, 2008Why do some creatures forgo their own reproduction to help their relatives survive and reproduce? While we all might like to believe that naked mole rats really do care and are thus willing to sacrifice their creepy little lives for the good of the colony, the true answer probably has more to do with gene frequency across generations and evolution.
A scene from the 2003 ant remake of "Saving Private Ryan". Needless to say, it did not fare well at the box office.
Since the late 1950's, the idea of 'kin selection' has been the most widely accepted explanation for such bizarre behavior in…